Amplify Yourself

Welcome to Capability Amplifier. My name is Mike Koenigs. I'm here with the incredible Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, and we are here to help you expand your life and your business by amplifying who you are, what you do, and even how you do it. And what we do in this podcast is we deep dive on the most powerful aspects of building and growing who you are, and like we said, amplifying your capabilities. We're going to talk about who you are multiplied, how you can see everything you love is always getting bigger and better, how to play your best cards and engage with opportunities where you can produce superior results, where you can look for amplifiers, where you're always taking advantage of the best available external resources, connecting and creating. You're never operating in isolation, but always within teamwork and collaboration. And you always see endless new possibilities. There's more growth opportunities than you'll ever need. And how you can take advantage of teamwork and technology and master the central formula for all human progress going forward and leaving scarcity behind, you're continually escaping from every trap that keeps other people anxious and afraid. And finally, being abundantly unique. Your life always grows more abundant the less you compare yourself with others. Again, my name is Mike Koenigs. I'm here with Dan Sullivan, and we are here to amplify your capabilities.

Mike is just a infinitely interesting person to spend time with because he's just about interested in anything that moves on the planet and especially things that are in the entrepreneurial world where new solutions, new opportunities, new resources, new capabilities are being created. Mike, you were just telling me, and I was fascinated, that you've just started a new business contract with somebody who is in the cutting edge of high technology. So I'll let you do the wraparound on this, but this is really your favorite type of business situation. You were telling me that not only do you like the person, not only do you click with the person, but they're doing something that you are intensely interested about. So could you talk about them? And this is what we're going to do. It's. We're going to constantly talk about great new things that are happening in the entrepreneurial world throughout this podcast series. And I was excited when you told me about it, so I know how excited you are.

All right, well, thanks, Dan. First of all, I'm going to take you with me everywhere I go from now on. That was an awesome intro. So here's the backstory. I just met this gentleman about a week ago at an event. It was mixer, networking event, and it Turns out this guy just exited from selling an artificial intelligence company and he is an expert at neural networks and he's a CTO type. But he's reached a point in his career after this exit. He's got plenty of cash, he has great knowledge, really amazing network available to him. I mean, I don't think he even fathoms the level of huge human connection and resources he has at his fingertips or his brain tips. But he came to me and he said, look, I want to expand my reach with the world. What should I do? And what wound up happening in this is first of all, it resulted in a very large advisory contract for me, which was awesome, of course. And what made this particularly interesting is first of all, AI by all accounts represents the next big frontier. I think most people would say, look, it's AI and some mixture of blockchain and cryptocurrency, even though there's all sorts of government, yada yada going on and a certain degree of fear. But we've reached a point now where machine intelligence is so good it can beat anyone at any game, including Go. That's fairly recent. But these machines can self learn. And you're starting to see this show up in whether it's animals or basically these like darpa, what they're doing with ruggedized soldiers that can jump and flip. But more importantly, from an information point of view, they're self learning organisms. You can just throw information at them and they start figuring stuff out without actually being taught, which is pretty profound. And one of the things that really started getting interesting and I think first of all, why is this guy so cool? Number one, he's interesting because he's interested. So he has that in common with you and I. The next thing is he's in this beautifully fantastic industry that represents the next big frontier that's going to affect all of us. And in a scary way, it's going to completely affect every business in the world. There's a lot of white collar jobs that are just going to disappear and no one's going to know why. But I always think about the abundance side of this. I think more opportunities are going to be created because of it. But then I immediately thought of a couple ideas and we started co creating together. So just in a matter of minutes I had a couple ideas and one of them, for example, is well, what would happen if you could load in every phone conversation you've ever had and then maybe if you had for example, a sales team, for example, and each time a sale actually occurred this system would find out when the decision making point occurred, what language was going on. And Google recently announced, I just saw this happen, that in their latest speech API, Google can listen to a crowd of voices and look at their mouths and then determine what areas of sound to mute out. So if you just have a camera in a room with a microphone, it could actually essentially mute out 19 of the 20 conversations and then isolate them and then do voice to text recognition and then analyze. Just think about the immense amount of knowledge that can be pulled based upon people behaviors and outcomes. So that's a long winded explanation of where this went to, but God, I love people like that.

So, Michael, I'd like to give a little background to my listeners because we're combining two networks, maybe three or four networks of podcast listeners here. First of all, my knowledge of Michael, which is a lot of chatting, and I'm fortunate to have Michael in the 10 times program. What I'd like to talk about is you're a master marketer and you're a master packager, but I think more than that, you're a master contextualizer. And without knowing exactly what the project is with this new client, I suspect you're giving him a totally different type of context with which to develop because he's coming from an organization and now he's really going into an entrepreneurial mode from the very start. So could you talk a little bit about your background? Because I think I'm accurate in saying the three things that I said about you. The marketing, the packaging, which includes branding. But the more important is providing new context in the marketplace. Can you talk about it in those terms? Because we're really talking about sudden capabilities and you know that basically what we're both interested in is something that just suddenly appears and if properly structured, properly target and focused, it just creates sudden capabilities for lots of people.

That's really interesting, Dan. So yeah, I'll answer the question within that context. No one's ever presented me that way, but you turned on my intrig o meter. And not from an ego perspective, but you have a very fascinating way of looking at, analyzing and thinking about people and seeing their value. That's one of your bajillion skill sets. So to answer the question, I grew up lower middle class, in a non technical environment, very poor at school and all things organization or anything that requires thinking in a straight line or behaving in a straight line. But fortunately I was so interested in technology at an early stage that one of my first things I ever purchased, I Corn detasseled for a year because I was born and raised in Minnesota, which is amongst the worst jobs imaginable. Imagine walking through a field and having 10,000 paper cuts happening while you're sweating. It's basically corn is slashing your eyeballs in your face while you're walking through and pulling the tops of corn off while salt is dripping off your face in 105 degree weather. But the point of that is I made about $200 and I bought a pinball machine, an old fashioned electromechanical pinball machine and was intrigued by the relays and the switches and the solenoids and the wires. And it just opened up this feeling of infinite possibility in me. Of course, that was during the dawn of microcomputers. And I decided then that I had to do something focused on technology and electronics and computers. But I love people too, and networking. But I taught myself how to program over a Christmas vacation, a neighbor loaned me an Apple II computer. They knew we didn't have the money and I started developing a game. And over time I ended up writing code. And my dad was a barber, so he introduced me to bottom line is he had someone in his barber chair. One day he said, hey Mike, this guy was complaining about how they bought a computer, but no one knew how to use it. My dad said, well, my son figured out how to make a computer work. Let's call him up. So dad called me up, said, this insurance agent needs some help. You think he can show his secretary how to use a word processor? And I said, sure, I can do that and beat the hell out of flipping burgers. So from there it developed into my first business, which then someone said, do you think you can write me a program that does X? And I said yes. So over time I became a consultant and a programmer, eventually wrote video games, then started one of the first digital marketing agencies and then got into information product development, meaning I just helped people solve problems and educated using digital content. So that's the fast way, but you know, every step of the way. So someone says, hey, do you think it's possible to X? And I'd be like, yeah, I think it's possible. And I'd figure out how to do it and either put together a team and one thing led to another. So a few businesses have been bought and sold in the meantime. I don't know if that answered your question or not.

Well, it does, because the first time that I met you, it was at Evan Pagan Screen Room at the Fountain Blue in Miami Beach. And we were at the pool party and I was talking to you and what I gathered, because I talked to a lot of other people on that weekend about you, that you were kind of in the, we're going back here probably seven, eight years since that. And you were kind of the 800 pound gorilla creating the foundation and the platform for people to do marketing. I mean you were, you were a big hitter at that time. And I remembered you being described because it was the first time that I actually met you to chat with you. So the thing is that first of all, a little confession. I grew up on a sweet corn farm in Ohio.

And I've got lots of cuts and scars.

You know what it's like.

Yeah, yeah. But the thing that I want to kind of get some insight is when you meet someone like this and it's really in a field that's kind of new to you too. I mean, you have a technological background and you have a pretty programming background and you've used technology extensively for marketing purposes. How does your mind work? In other words, when you have someone new like this and clearly they know a lot more about what you're going to advise them on, what you do, where do you create your space in the conversation to show them that something that you're going to learn a lot about by being in a business relationship, you've got to create value right off the bat to get something going. Because a lot of entrepreneurs would be listening in on this right now and they'd say, gee, how does he do what he does? So I just like you if you can reflect and maybe this is my question is getting you to focus in on something that you just do naturally. You know, maybe you're stepping back and taking a look, but how do you approach a situation like that?

So I think the first thing that popped into my head there were two things. One of them is where's the hidden opportunity here? And the other one is without exception, everyone I meet has a story. And they don't even realize that as they've increased their skills over time that their perception of their own value hasn't shifted and increased as much as their customers perception has. There's a gap there. And there's a classic saying that the best thing you can ever do is double your prices and get better customers. Right? You can work less and make more and you'll have more time to think and create and manifest. So what I've become very good and skilled at is listening to what the story is and asking questions. And one of them, for example, If I brought in on an advisory level with the company, the first thing I'll do is I'll say, give me a list of your top 10 or top 100 customers. Do a reverse sort in terms of how much revenue they've spent. Then let's do a little exercise and find out what are the most profitable activities out of all those, and which are the ones that you love to do. In other words, if you had to get rid of 80% of what you despise and hate and focus on the 20, what would it be? And is there a business there? Is there a business within a business? But you can do that with anything, you know. So it's kind of a reverse Pareto principle, frankly. So I'd say that's one of the strategies. But the other one is, in this particular case, I like to ask a question that inspires a reaction that's generated pure about a what if? Imagine for a moment if we could grab a whole bunch of this. So again, it all comes down to finding out what they're really interested and passionate about, but more importantly, what someone else sees value in. And there's a history of repeated value, in other words, repeated transactions. That's where the gold is. And it's just a matter of crisscross and elimination until you find where's the 80, 20, the 2% and the 0.2%. And the real diamonds are in the 0.2%. The unobtainium. The Unobtainium.

Mike, this would have been around 1990. I came across a resource that was very important for me that exactly relates to what you're talking about. And it's from a organization in Australia which was called the Results Accounting Network. And these were all accounting firms. And what they did is they did a worldwide survey where all the accounting firms would get their top 50 customers and they would analyze the companies that they were dealing with, they would analyze their customers, and they determined where the profitability was in anybody's client base. And it exactly corresponded to what you just said, that when they got to the 80 line, in other words, they divided the 80 20. They found that actually the bottom 80 of anyone's clients, you're actually paying to work for them. You're actually losing money to work for them. And the top 20% are responsible for all the profit. So that's break even. But then all the profit. And I told people, why don't you just walk away from the bottom 80, give yourself all the time back from the bottom 80 and devote that time to value Creation of much better focus on the top 20, much more deep dig on what they're doing. And I said, you're not losing any money, you're losing a loss. And you would jump to the next level. And why is it so hard for people? You know, not that this particular client is a target for that because he's starting something brand new, but he could get into that very quickly. He could do that setup. Why is it that people have such a hard time walking away from the 80% of their client base that they're actually losing money on?

That is a damn good question. So I have a few responses that pop up because I've been doing the same thing too for a long time. The first is it's a fear of missing out. It's a fear base, which is the rule set, I think most of us live under is, well, in order for my escalation in my business to actually work, I need that 80% to actually find the top 20%, which of course is foolish. I'll give you one example which is next week I'm speaking at an event. There are 275 or 225 people there. They are the result of a 5,000 person event that produces over $6 million in revenue. It might be 8 million. So just imagine the fortune that goes into marketing and producing this and then the filtering that goes through and how many impressions online are required to get those five or six thousand people in the first room, which comes down to they sell them a super high end program that's around $100,000 that these 225 or 275 people are in front of. I'm going to be speaking in front of them next week. That is my creme de la creme. Perfect customer, frankly.

Right?

These people are running 8 million all the way up to I think $6 billion companies. I mean, it was insane when I heard the demographic psychographic makeup. So the question is, what if you had the moral fortitude to say no to all that ugly stuff? And that's really. I'm just repeating what you're saying. But the fact is, how do you get in front of just those 225 or 275 and find 20 of them? That's all the business you'd want or need. I'd put that in circle number one right now. Circle number two is, it's like neuroplasticity. I believe that the human brain is a record with grooves in it. One thing that I have heard, it's called Maps M a P S. It's some research. They do addictions. They also deal with people who have PTSD and stuff. They've learned that a combination. I might have some of the details out, but I met with the founder of this a while ago. I kind of understand it. They're using plant medicine, basically. LSD and mdma. There we go. Molly or ecstasy.

They started with lsd, I think, from minute sections of lsd, you know, which was of course the psychedelic in the 1960s. And mushrooms.

And mushrooms. Which is psilocybin. Correct?

Yeah.

Now my brain doesn't like these chemicals at all.

It's another story for another time for you and me. We don't need it because we already naturally generate these chemicals inside our own brains.

Exactly. We're in the process of falling off the edge all the time. We don't need any help.

One point away from total insanity all the time. There's a party going on inside our brains.

The edge of chaos, where all creativity happens at the edge of chaos.

Totally. So here's what I believe to be true, and I think this is part of the reason, is in order to build a business that's successful, we all go through an enormous amount of trauma. And I believe that someday there will be an analysis done on successful entrepreneurs and. And how we stack trauma. And it's unresolved. It's why you have an energy coach. It's why I have one as well, which is it's just a stacked stuff. And because we're fast moving and we deal with all this chaos, we just learn to endure it.

So imagine for a moment that you've either got to do a lot of meditation or some sort of energy work, or in the case of maps. And again, I'm not speaking from experience here, but based on analysis and talking to people. Think of your brain as a gigantic wax record. And once in a while you kind of want to melt the grooves and put some new grooves in there that are based upon your current state and circumstance and a lot of experience, data and wisdom. And instead of just trying to grind new grooves in the same old wax and most people don't have, as we age due to neuroplasticity and habits, et cetera, et cetera, we just don't stop and slow down and breathe through this and go, you know, where is our true power coming from? That gives us the gifts that people see as being valuable and be able to see ourselves from a totally objective perspective and see that as well. So it's deeper than data. That's for Damn, sure.

Yeah. But the thing about it just going back to the 2080, which I find is so true. I mean, sometimes it's even more restricted than 2080. Sometimes it's 5 95, sometimes it's 10 90. But what it means is that the largest amount of your results will always come from a subset of the entire world that you're working in. Okay. We have this Strategic Coach program, and by far the majority of Strategic Coach clients are in what's called the signature program, and they have 15 other coaches. So over the years, we've attracted and really developed great relationships with 15 other coaches whose sole job is just to come in and coach the beginning of the strategic coach. And then I have another group which are called the 10 times level, and I have about 500. And from that I've just jumped to another level. So one of the progressions you believe that the 8020 is really true is that periodically you have to create a new level of what you're doing. You have to jump to the next level. And what I sense about your recent excitement, because I've had the good fortune to spend more time than usual with you over the last week, is that you are kind of in a position now where everything that Mike Koenigs has done in his life is being summed up and you're jumping to the next level. So there's one thing about freeing yourself up from what isn't all that interesting to you anymore. In fact, you're not being profitable there. But there's another thing about having a bigger game that you're now jumping to where you will be pleased to simplify everything that you've done before, and you will jettison things you've done before. So you have this opportunity, but you have other opportunities of the same nature that are actually coming along now that you're in this mindset.

That's interesting. I would like to insert angelic heavenly music here, please. So I have one commentary, plus I will add before. Thank you for the kind words, is you either have to have immense discipline, in my opinion, not be a horribly creative person, be in love with money, to stick in the same place with the same products all the time and just groove with it. It's kind of like a traditional brand. If you want to be General Mills and Coca Cola and sell Cheerios for your whole life, God bless your soul, okay. But that kind of business requires grinders, grinding, grinding, grinding all the time with an immense amount of moral fortitude to stick to one thing. On the other hand, in our business, and industry or any kind of knowledge capital intensive, evolutionary entrepreneurial activity, you are either outgrowing your customers or your customers are outgrowing you. And you are put into a position where you have to make the choice to elevate and escalate and evolve on an ongoing, constant, consistent basis or else they shall and they will abandon you. Especially in today's, as I say. So this is a statistic I used to cite and actually changed it recently, which is the average lifespan of an attention span is a thumb flick now. That's how long you exist. It's like, boop. It's past an imessage, it's past your email, it's past a Facebook thumb flick. And I believe that the intense dissatisfactions many people have, whether it's addiction crisis, food crisis, is due to the fact that people are starving for human connection and social media is the worst thing that ever happened to it. And there's enough evidence and proof, if not with data, by just follow your instincts. So that's a long winded way of saying the greatest thing you can ever do for yourself and your customers is to elevate and escalate and give them something to strive for. And also, as there's social proof accumulates with what you do, people are more willing to put more skin in the game to experience that. And you've seen that. I know Joe Polish has seen that. I've seen it as well.

Yeah.

Community building.

I have a habit of liking things that last forever.

Yeah.

So one of the things that I really know of all the things that are available on the planet, relationships can last forever.

Absolutely.

But you have to be a certain person to attract that type of relationship. And then you have to have filters which allow you to see that type of relationship. And I was talking to someone you know real well. As a matter of fact, you had dinner this last week with him as Steve Krein, who we have another podcast series that is just launching in the next couple weeks, which is called Game Changer Jumps. I was reflecting because I, you know, have read a lot of philosophy in my life, starting with the Greeks. And you know, one of the smartest Greeks was Aristotle. And Aristotle had this book which is called On Friendship, where he talks about three types of friendship. The first one is friendship of utility, where you're friends with someone as long as they're useful to you. Okay.

Wow.

And what Aristotle says, the world requires this type of friendship. Okay. And then he said there's a second one which is called Friendship of Pleasure, where the friendship Lasts as long as you enjoy them. Okay. Shipboard romances are a very good example of a friendship of pleasure. It's friendship for six days. And then he says, but what really makes everything work is the third level, which he calls the friendship of the good. And that is that you see the other person and you see something really admirable that inspires you to improve yourself so that you're in resonance with that other person. And you going through that activity inspires the other person. So it's like a double helix going upward. And he said, this is the foundation of every great society. Are people having these type of friendships. And one of the things that I love about the entrepreneurial world that it's always struck me that it's easier to do this in the entrepreneurial world, where you have control over money, you have control over time and control over purpose, than it is in any other sector of society. I think of Joe Polish, who I've been buddies with for 20 years. Well, I look forward and I'll be friends with Joe for the rest of my life, you know, And I have so many friendships that go back 20 years and they'll go for the rest of my life because we each admire each other and both of us are growing. So if you admire someone else's growth and they reciprocate, then the relationships will last forever. So in the midst of everything changing, in a thumb click, you can also have parts of your life that are certain, that are predictable. They're predictably surprising, but they're predictable in the sense that the growth always surprises you, but it's a relationship. So that's what I really strive for. And I found my permanence and relationships, and I don't bet that I'm going to find it anywhere else.

I love that I got chills while you were describing it. And I wrote down four words while you went through it. The first word that I'm going to say, but I wrote it last, was velocity. Because it's a combination of speed and direction, Right. And for the type of friendship, the most important one you talked about requires velocity, which is also combined with acceleration and amplifiers. And you said admiration, which is a. A beautiful energy. If you're going to isolate and think about. If you could visualize and feel what admiration really is. It is the tinder for acceleration and amplifiers within the context of a relationship. But it does require. This is the part again, I can't put my finger on it. But you talk about when you both cause or make this happen and one makes A leap. And the other one does. And you combine this knowledge. It reminds me of an experience I had a long time ago. I went to Egypt with Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer. And I was on this trip and there was. I can't remember what it's called. It's an etymologist. Is that what they're called? Someone who studies language?

Yeah.

Okay. There was an etymologist who was taking us through some of the great ruins. And we wound up going and being inside the great pyramid in the center, the king's chamber. And I got to lay in the great sarcophagus. Some people believe that's the center. Center of the planet and the largest energy vortex that exists on the planet as well. It was freaking awesome. But on this journey as we went there, this guy was describing words and they were super simple words that were Egyptian in nature. And then he'd say, well, that word evolved into a word in Greek and then the Romans took it over and did this to it. And then the English version is this. And at that moment I realized something that I re experienced when you were describing this, which is a really simple word as it evolves into a meme. A simple emoticon, A simple symbol can represent a feeling, a sensation and an entire story. And our ability to communicate incredibly complex social references with simple things right now that are stacks upon stacks are what occurs when you are in deep, meaningful relationships that are based upon admiration and velocity. So that was the first time I've ever experienced understanding that on the level that I do right now is when you describe that. But that deserves a book upon itself. It's so beautiful. It's very poetic.

Yeah, but the thing is that, you know, it's the Jeff Bezos thing. He said, you know, when everybody asked me what's going to change most over the next 10 years, and he said, I don't get my insight from that. I get my insight from asking what isn't going to change over the next 10 years? Because he said, it's the things that people will always do that you can build a business model. And I remember I mentioned this in, I think the workshop on Monday, that Warren Buffett never invested in technology for the longest time. He says, because I don't really know what's going to be the same 10 years from now that I could make a long term bet. But he said, I do invest in Gillette because I think 25 years from now, more men are actually going to be shaving in the morning than are right now. And I can Bet on that for the next 25 years. So the thing is that to be really good at dealing with change, you got to be a real master at what doesn't change.

So, as you said that another member of the group who was there this past week is Dean Jackson. And his measure, very similar to Bezos, is based upon convenience. He says he'll always bet on convenience, and people will even drop quality. They'll lower their expectations on every level. As long as there's convenience, that, too is something you can always bet on. And I don't know. Do you know if there's ever been someone who's quantified convenience and being able to create, like a matrix to determine it?

Sure. Bezos. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, faster, easier, cheaper. Yeah, I mean, it's his whole model. I was just thinking of an example where people bet on convenience rather than quality, and that was people choosing Windows over Mac at the very beginning. There's a saying that Bill Gates would come around to his designers every year, or Steve Ballmer, it was probably Steve Ballmer, not Bill Gates. And he says, is it as good as Mac yet? And they said, no, we're not as good as Mac yet. But Meanwhile, they had 95% of the world market. You know, it was a bragging rights thing that they were after. But Mac is a superior graphic user interface system. Easier to train people on everything. But Windows was cheaper and it was supported. They opened their things so that all sorts of people before Mac did that, people could write all sorts of apps on it and everything like that. So there was a real case where convenience was the choice over quality, and that evolved in.

One of the other reasons why I think Windows was what it was for as long as it was is because it was easier to steal. So stealing is convenient. It's why MP3s took off. I mean, think about the Napster and the Kazaa generation is, again, that's very wise, is how easy is it to steal? And that would be a criteria. So going along with the convenience matrix, I think one of my outcomes and goals, maybe to think about as this podcast evolves, is how do we develop a matrix for making decisions on what's going to be permanent. So we'll have to think about this as we evolve this. If there are some knowledge, tools that we can develop over time that we'll be able to share.

I have a book coming out in the near future because I write a book a quarter, a little book that can be read in an hour. The book is called Capabilism and it would be interesting to actually spend time on this when we have more time. But as you know, both of us are political junkies and we spend a lot of time talking about politics. And I find it a form of entertainment. I think that politics is actually a subset of the entertainment industry. I completely agree totally, and I find it entertaining. And I love the roles that people play and the dramas that they create. But I treat it like entertainment. And the present occupant of the White House is the first president, I think, that really understands that. He's in the entertainment business, you know, anyway, so I find him intriguing. But the thing about this is that forever now, for the last couple hundred years, there's this argument between capitalism or socialism. And I said these are simply means for something that's a bigger system. And I call it capabilism. And that is that every human being who's born has an immediate natural desire to increase his or her capability in whatever way is possible, whatever is accessible. And this starts probably before the baby's actually born. The human brain is already developing and trying to become more capable. Capitalism is just a subset of capabilism. This is a way that we can continually create new products, that we can expand new markets, and we can create more teamwork using the capabilism subsystem than we can the socialism. So I said, it isn't which is superior, it's just which one allows for the greatest expansion in surprising ways and unpredictable ways of human capability. You know, and science is another subsystem, and technology is another subsystem, religion is another subsystem, and the political systems are subsystems, but they're just ways of channeling the increasing desire on the part of human beings to be more capable. And if you have an insight, does this make people more capable or less capable? I think you make better decisions rather than some theory about politics or the way society should be. What I love so much about what we're doing here is both you, Mike, and also I feel very strongly this way is that I constantly want to increase my capabilities on two levels. One personal, but also on the organizational level. But the other thing is I want to be useful in the marketplace by helping other people actually increase their capabilities. This is where I get my greatest sense of reward, because people have spent time with me that they are now more capable in the way that they want to be capable than anywhere else. So I don't think I've ever interviewed with someone where you're just starting a brand new chapter in Your life. But I would say that this thing of capabilism is kind of like a gyroscope for you. If I'm making this person more capable, I'm on the right path.

Well, I'll tell you what. I have an idea that I'll share with you after we're done recording because I want to bounce it off you. But really what we're doing, talking about here, I'll tell you the two words is a capability amplifier. And I think there's something to be done with that. And I'll explain why. Again, like offline. But it's super fascinating. I want to touch on something you mentioned recently, and I don't remember the words, but it's something about intrinsic knowledge. In other words, what can be written down and systemized, what isn't. How you said something along the lines of like 98% of the world revolves around one type of knowledge versus the other. What is that?

In any field of activity, there's two types of knowledge. One of them is called implicit knowledge, and the other one is called tacit T, A C, I, T knowledge. It's related to the word tactical. So tacit and tactical are related to each other way back in etymology. But the thing is that if somebody followed you around all day, recorded what you did, you know what they observed. This is how Mike actually operates. And they did that for a year. At the end of the year, they could not be more than 1% of what you actually do to be successful, because you have thousands of little habits. When I'm in this situation, I do this when I'm in that situation. And you don't even reflect on these. This is just experiential learning that you've patterned and you've gotten smarter and you've gotten faster and you've gotten more effective at doing this. And you can't write this down. You can't observe this. I brought it up in the context because I read a lot of world politics and they were talking about the military. China's getting the military to compete with the United States. And I said, yeah, they've got one problem. And the biggest problem is that no member of the Chinese military has been in combat since 1979. They can do anything they want and kind of try to copy the U.S. and everything, but they can't get closer than 1% of all those troops that the U.S. has, Navy, Air Force, Marines, army, who've just been in combat a lot. And they have worked out all this tacit knowledge of how you operate in combat. Okay, so it's. You can't write down this knowledge, and it's always 99% of what makes things work. Doesn't matter how much implicit knowledge you have. The tacit knowledge will be 99%.

Yep. And it just goes to show, I mean, this is. When anyone gets into an argument about China versus the U.S. i'm like, Yep, well, how about doing a deal?

Yeah, why don't we do it this way? Whatever tariff you put on our products, we'll put the same tariff on your product. If you want to have no tariff, we'll have no tariff. If you want 10% tariff, we'll do 10%. And why don't we just trade tariffs? We'll match each other. War has been tried. It doesn't work all that well. It actually doesn't really sell that much anymore. It did at one time, but it doesn't do it as much.

That's because it comes down to stealing stuff. I mean, really, it's a creative way to steal stuff for the most part, or resolve fundamentalist differences, which we know how that goes. At the end of the day, the game's way different. I mean, the only real win, I guess, why terrorism works so well is because chaos is kind of a useful outcome for some people who behave that way. But even that, that's good for the economy.

Well, the only people who resort to terror are people who have nothing to sell.

Yeah, right. That's so true.

You know, there's no use in killing off your customers.

I say, I agree this is a tiny little rabbit hole, but I believe that entrepreneurial ism is the international language of peace. And you can be a fundamentalist Muslim doing business with a Orthodox Jew or a fundamentalist Christian. And if each one gets a good deal and is treated fairly and respectfully, they're going to continue doing business with each other.

Right.

On a practical level.

And the deal you do today is the foundation for a bigger future Deal.

Yep. It just makes good sense. So, out of all the stuff that works. So I think there's clearly a lot of interesting challenges we can solve. So I'm going to ask you this question, Dan, which is, as we move forward right now, based on what we know and the path we've gone down, what are you most excited about moving forward that we're going to talk about in our upcoming episode that you're tickling around in your brain these days?

Well, I love the concept that you just introduced about five minutes ago, and I think that almost anything that we could talk about would actually be within this context. And that's the capability amplifier.

Yep. I think you and I are thinking along the same line for a variety of reasons. I like the idea of introducing a new capability amplifier, and it is a combination. The other thing that popped out of this is this notion of implicit versus tacit, which is how do we find a faster way to compress time and instill experiential wisdom that's hyper valuable inside the mind of a listener or a viewer in record time? There's got to be a way to compress language and experience and find a more effective way to do that.

You know, and I've been experimenting with that in the coach program, that exact issue for the last three years. And it has to do with we can check things out really fast without knowing what the implicit knowledge or skills is of another person or the tacit knowledge and skills through mindset, because people can communicate mindset very, very quickly. So the breakthrough for me, and like all my books are mindset books. They're not knowledge books, they're not skill books. They're actually mindset books. And my feeling is that what really holds things together in the human set is actually mindset. It's not particular capabilities, it's not particular structures, but it's a way of looking at probably the future, because that's what really matters to us. We bet on futures. And when we pick up. The reason why we were both interested instantly in the idea of doing a podcast is because I think there's a tremendous resonance of mindset between us, Mike. And we didn't do any planning for this at all, except to make sure we showed up at the same time. But the moment we got into it, we were going on the basis that we have resonant mindsets. So I think that this is a great breakthrough, the mindset.

I agree. And that's another word that I've loved for a long time. I've spent an enormous amount of time meditating on it, which is the word resonance. And that goes all the way back to when you were talking earlier about relationships, which translated into velocity. The velocity of a relationship has to do with resonance as being a prime ingredient in that and making it work. So I think as this program, this podcast evolves, what we're going to naturally see from it is how we can systemize the combination of experiential learning, mindset habits which have come up, and this notion again, of compressing implicit and tacit wisdom and finding a more effective way to compress how we can accelerate capabilities.

Yep. Yep.

We'll find a creative way of being able to describe that in the liner notes, but I know we'll be able to do that for sure.

Yeah, I think it's new territory. I mean, what I love is new territory. You know, there's massive amounts of new territory being created in the world by millions of people right now. So the topics, whether it's artificial intelligence or neural networks or blockchain and everything, these are new territories of amplified capability that we're talking about. So I think that this is a very rich subject, and I think it's endless because I think it's expanding. I mean, I just mentioned one, you know, in the workshop, and I know we're coming to the close here, but an Israeli company has come up with a way of extracting fresh water from air. It sucks the moisture out of air and then just produces fresh water. And an affordable household machine can do 30 gallons of fresh water a day. I said, well, just amplify this over the whole area of the planet, and immediately there's a probably 80, 90% drop in violence in the world because most of the conflicts in the world are over fresh water or the deficiency of fresh water.

Well, and you'd even add that most diseases are caused by dirty water. So the conflict will even be reduced and the productivity of the planet would be increased by an amazing amount. I wouldn't even go so far as to guess what it is. And we already know something. I had heard recently that the cost per kilowatt hour to produce, at least in some desert regions, is under 2 cents per kilowatt hour now with solar. So we've reached a point, and I don't know if you'd heard of this, there's a company that recently announced that they figured out a way to produce power. I think it was using infrared. So they basically are creating like an infrared solar panel, and everything produces infrared. So soon we're going to be operating in a different spectrum, which will be more efficient. And it just goes to show that no matter what your belief system is, the notion of the universe and creation is there is for all practical purposes, an endless, infinite supply of energy. And I think this notion of if someone says, well, there's a water shortage, so, like, you know, we have an energy challenge, right? There's an endless supply of ocean water, and its filth is determined by having good filter technology, which is a idea away from being solved. It's an idea you can manifest anything. And that's the thing is, as creatures, as human beings, we are Manifestation, creatures and engines. We're just converting ideas into structures. Useful structures for self preservation, but fascinating.

Yeah, some of it's out of survival, but some of it is out of just delightful play. You know, there's two sides of it that we're just creating things because it's a fun thing to do, you know, and it's a great way to spend your life.

I completely agree with that. So what? Sounds to me like we've got an endless supply of infinite topics and opportunities here. So what do you say we turn this over and we just let everyone know that our next episode, our goal is to make it twice as good or 10 times better than the last one. So we're going to hold ourselves to a higher standard to be even more interesting, even more useful. And we want to add more capabilities to your life by amplifying who you are and what you do in a way that adds more value to you. And you have a lot more fun, too. How's that, Mr. Dan Sullivan?

Sounds like a plan.

All right, well, let's let everyone go. We're going to see on the next episode.

Thank you, Mike.

You got it. Me too.