Breakthroughs Are In The Obstacles

Welcome to Capability Amplifier, the show for business owners and entrepreneurs who want high performance upgrades for their brains, bodies and bank accounts. Hello, welcome to another episode of Capability Amplifier. This is Mike Koenigs. I'm here with Dan Sullivan. Hi, Dan.

I'm Mike. Always a pleasure. We revved up. So for the listeners here, Mike and I try to do two minimum, two, but actually ideally three podcasts at a time. And I'm all revved up from the previous ones. This is about not being bothered, and this is a great one. And this was kind of a observation on my part, and it came from my experience at Abundance360. Mike, you know Peter Diamantis really well, and Peter achieved real, real spotlight popularity probably about nine years ago. Eight. Nine years ago, he wrote a book called Abundance, which was all the good news that's happening in the world, largely through massive cooperation around exponential teamwork. And also he was on ted, and I think he had over a million downloads of his performance. And it was like great news when everybody's kind of pushing out bad news. And so Peter and I just collaborated. It's a collaboration between Strategic Coach and Peter's organization. And we put on an event every January, three days. And then there's a digital component to it that goes 365 days. So we call it Abundance 360, because every year there's more and more evidence that so many things which have been scarce in the past are now becoming abundant. So when I go to abundance A360, it's very easy to go on overload very, very quickly as expert after expert comes in and is talking about longevity, talking about virtual reality, talking about driverless cars, talking about spaceship Mars and everything else. And I'm sitting there as I'm changing and I'm getting overloaded with this. So I hit a technique, and this is a technique. Whenever a new prediction was made about a breakthrough technology, I would go to Google, I'd punch in what are the 10 biggest obstacles to whole cities going? Driverless cars. And there's 10 obstacles. One of the big ones is that the massive transformation isn't going to be in the cars, it's going to be in the streets. And that you're going to have to retrofit all the streets with sensors. And actually the cars won't be having so much of the technology. The streets will be continually sending information to the cars, and the cars have to interpret the information, and they just gave an estimate. So I looked at New York City and New York City, it would be about a Million and a half dollars a mile to retrofit the streets. And New York City's got 6,500 miles. So it's 6,500 times 1,000, which is getting into some serious.

It's a couple billion dollars.

It's getting into some serious money. And I said, and that doesn't take into account kickbacks, bribery, overcharging. So I said, you probably multiply that by four. And I said, so all the money with driverless cars is going to be actually in the obstacles to driverless cars.

Yeah, that's a $25 billion problem you just described.

No, I just created a $25 billion budget for future employment. You know, future employment. And you go industry after industry after industry where there's this breakthrough. But you say, hey, you know, for example, Elon Musk was going to do a tunnel under Los Angeles from the northern suburbs to lax. He says, this is going to be simple. We're going to do this. And then he forgot that in the Constitution of the United States, there's the things that says, if you own the acre on the top, you own the acre underneath. And if you put your tunnel underneath my land, I own the land. So you're going to have to come do a deal with me. And there's about 500 deals that have to be done as you go there. And he said, well, why doesn't the city just declare that nobody has those property rights? Well, then it's about eight years to the Supreme Court to get a decision to get a mile. You're probably into an eight or nine session of dealing with obstacles. And they're very boring meetings. And maybe that's why he called it the Boring Company.

It's very interesting. Well, I'm gonna bring this around and circle back to what we talked about. The purpose of this episode is that the breakthroughs are in the obstacles. And when anyone predicts a great new capability breakthrough, look for the pushback, but.

Look for the strategic byproducts off to the side.

Exactly. You and I make a living. We get inspired and are creative by working with entrepreneurs, getting them together in groups, listening to their challenges, and coming up with creative solutions that essentially bypass or hack through the system. I've made my living developing technology that really superseded a problem or aggregated someone else's technology into. Into solving a problem and allowing me to build an infrastructure without paying for it. I might as well give you an example here, because this'll allow us to go in. Cause one of the goals that I know you and I have is to talk about how we get inspired, how we're creative, how we solve problems and get paid while we do it, and allow us to either build businesses, create businesses, or elevate and amplify other people's businesses so they just make more money with less effort and without all the problems and obstacles. So here I'll give you one example. I've got a few. But when I created Traffic Geyser originally, which was a subscription based software tool that did search engine optimization in an automated fashion, the origin of that was I had figured out how to hack search engines and generate hundreds of thousands of highly optimized web pages and feed them into the vast army of search engines at the time. Back then there wasn't really a Google Yahoo. There were dozens of search engines, small ones, Lycos go to, there was altavista and then Yahoo, and then a swarm of other ones at the time. And this wasn't considered content spam at the time. You'd create a highly optimized page, it was filled with keywords and some content information and replicate it and then send it to the search engines and then it would index it immediately. So I wrote some software and developed some products that would generate a couple hundred thousand pages in a minute, submit those, and literally what would happen is I could own a category. And like one of my first clients was Citrix, for example, and they did events every year. So we found all the keywords that Citrix wanted to own and dominate and I just generated hundreds of thousands of pages for them. And they were registration pages for their live event. And my little tools would run in the background and generate what were probably millions of pages, eventually flooding the search engines. And again, that wasn't frowned upon at the time, it was just smart. Well, what wound up happening is eventually the search engines got smart and figured out ways to block duplicate content from existing. And by the time that started to shut down, I discovered a new hack, which was Google at the time, came out with Google videos. It was before YouTube. And I realized that if I made a video and I named the file a keyword, people would search for. And I gave it a title and a description that people searched for because there wasn't a lot of video that was treated as sacred ground. And again, all the search engines would index that in minutes. And again you could dominate keywords in about 15 or 20 minutes. So we modified our software tools to now replicate the videos using a bunch of keywords and then point back to the website. Basically, again in minutes, you could own and dominate these keywords. And our software became this subscription service called traffic Geyser. So what happened, though, is we effectively sat on top of billions of dollars of infrastructure. And when YouTube came out, suddenly there were about a hundred knockoffs. So our tool would submit to a hundred video sites and a bunch of social sites, et cetera, et cetera, again giving you an unfair advantage. And that was all automated. Now again, eventually that became content spam because people would abuse the privilege of this tool. But it was an evolution. And eventually I did a variation of this with mobile text marketing with this tool called instant customer. So the whole point is, big problem. There was an existing infrastructure and we just glued together a solution that sat on top of it. But having said that, Dan, you've been in circumstances many times with strategic coach clients. You've watched them get bothered by and consumed by problem, problem. And just with a simple exercise that you devised, they had a breakthrough and broke through. So can you think of a particular story or an instance where you've been able to create a massive transformation that was inspired and super creative?

I'm a participant in this solution. In other words, a phenomenal entrepreneur from San Diego by the name of Matt Lehrer. L E H R E R and Matt comes from a lawn family of garment district workers in New York City. So his family was into garment making. But he got interested in computers and what computers could do to clothing manufacturer. And long story short, one of his businesses, not his only business, but he's the largest manufacturer of amateur sports uniforms in the world. So he's got 500,000 sports teams every year that they have new players, they have new teams, they can change colors, you know, and everything else. I'll just give you a fact about what Matt can do. So it's Monday morning. You've got responsibility for ordering your sports uniforms. And let's say you're in Newport beach, right up the coast from San Diego. So you go to this website and you go in and they ask you a whole series of questions. You know, how many players? And you put in the players names, you put in their numbers, you put in their sizes, and then you pick colors. If you have a logo, you can put the logo in and everything. And it takes you about 10, 15 minutes to do that. And then, you know, you've got your shopping cart and you hit the button and he tells you, please submit your credit card. You know, the order begins now. If you needed those uniforms, from the moment you submit your credit card, 18 months later, they're ready to ship. And if you have Amazon prime and you're in Newport beach, you order them at 7:00 and you have your uniforms before noon. So he's got this massive capability. He's got this massive capability and it's all automated. It's all automated. So anyway, long story short, he's running into problem because he doesn't know where to go with it because he's got this massive capability. And I got him to say, well, who would you really, really love to work with in the future? So we have a thing in Strategic coach called the Mindset Scorecard. And it's really based on who you've loved working with in the past, but you're just basically making it more formal. You know, everybody in the past had these mindsets. You know, they were easy to work with. Once they made a deal, it was a deal. I mean, we all have our preferences, Mike, and probably if we compare notes, we overlap quite a bit. You know, anything that's the opposite of a jerk we tend to, you know, liking working with. But what I found was, is that generally who you want to work with are people who have your same mindsets. We like people who have our mindsets and it's like a radio frequency. He was trying to get into Nordstrom's, he was trying to get into all the big ones and if they were excited, he could expect to have an order in two years. You know, like the big bureaucracy like Nordstrom's, you know, they could be just all out committed and maybe you get a first order in a year. And what he found was the gaming industry which changes teams and changes venues within two or three days. His technology completely matches the fluidity and the rapid turnover in the gaming. And a lot of people don't know this, but there's now over 2 billion people a year who sometime during the year does gaming. And it's the biggest participation sport in the entire world. And it's not just all guys in their parents basement either. There's about 45% females who play games and you know, senior citizens play games. And it's a wonderful venue that's basically not all that well known. A new kind of game comes out. A new Hollywood film, Can't Touch. I mean, a new game comes out on a Friday and they've made a billion doll worth of sales within 24 hours. It's just massive, it's worldwide. But he comes up with this neat idea and he said, if you go on Google now, everybody wants to be on Google, Everybody wants to be on the Internet. And everybody wants to be interesting. Every organization, every geographic location is now competing. And they're getting logos, they're packaging their logos, they're getting good typefaces, they're packaging themselves, but they're all in competition. So he came up with this neat idea. And what's your hometown where you came from? What's the name of the hometown where you came from?

My original little town is Eagle Lake, Minnesota, population 763. It's up to about 23 or 2600 now.

Eagle Lake, I mean, that's a winner right there. Eagle Lake.

Yeah, that's right there. Right up there in Minnesota. You know, the land of the hot dishes and the roofs.

So this is what Matt will do. He'll go to Eagle Lake and probably they have a website. And probably on their website they've now got a logo for Eagle La. And they've got colors and everything. And he takes the artwork right off the Internet and he puts it into a platform he has, and he pressed the button and out come 32 uniquely designed T shirts for Eagle Lake, Minnesota. Their colors, everything. He'll have a search that just gets who's who in Eagle Lake, like who's the mayor? Okay. And it generates an email. And he sends the email and he says, here's the artwork for 29 T shirts for Eagle Lake, Minnesota. And with your approval, we will put this on Amazon. And every time we sell one, we're going to send you $15. He charges 40. Amazon takes its cut, he takes his cut. And he's now done this with, you know, it's in tens of thousands of organizations. And he said, the biggest problem I have is I'm trying to find the cost in this business.

It's just this is one of those things where when you hear it, you can't help but think, oh, what an obvious thing. Why didn't I think of that?

Of course.

And those are always the best ideas and they're the most non obvious, which is just like. I'm gonna go down a tiny tangent here. Remember where you were gonna go? But I've been studying comedy lately and researching it because I'm going to start doing standup and also improv.

You're going to start getting paid for doing stand up. You've been doing stand up all your life.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's in some ways very true.

You're just saying my amateur stage is.

Over and I'm not interested so much. Of course I'll do it. I'll do the open mic thing. But I been really paying close attention to how comedians think and assemble their act and their structures and how they think later on in their careers. One guy right now who's really, really fascinating. I love his podcast. I love who he is.

He.

And I love his evolution as Joe Rogan.

Oh, Joe. Yeah. Well, I listen to his podcast. He's got some really, really great podcasts.

He does. And he has amazing people. And he's a comedian. It's one of the reasons why some of the people I've been interviewing for our interviews when we're not working together, I've got Joel Zadak, for example.

Oh, Joel. Yeah. Joel is prince of a guy. He is prince of a guy.

And because of him, he's the most.

Normal human being I've ever met in Hollywood.

He very much is. Well, one of his clients is Adam Conover, the Adam ruins everything guy. So I interviewed Adam. We're going to be releasing an Adam Conover episode.

Tiffany Haddish is another one of Joel's.

She's another one we're going after. So the whole idea is, I thought, what a great way to increase the value of capability amplifier. But to have really interesting entertainers, because it ties directly into this notion, what you were just saying before, which is everyone wants to be online, everyone wants to be interesting. And if you pay attention to not always, but many of Joe's most popular episodes, they're the ones with comedians and entertainers. Right. So we all have some great lessons to be learned. Going back to when you're talking about Mr. Lehrer here and what he's done. Matt Lehrer. I was looking at his website while you're talking about him, which is teamworkathletic.com. what a brilliant, brilliant solution.

Well, think of people, you know, small, and they're trying to compete with the world and get attention, you know, I mean, they would like a lot of visitors. And it sounds like a place that has, you know, Minnesota's beautiful state. So I got to believe this is a beautiful part of the state.

Right, right.

But how do we get any attention? You know, how do we get. Well, how do we raise money? How do we raise money? You know, and he just solved their problem and gave them the solution. And they don't have to do anything except sign. Yes, we agree that you can put our artwork on Amazon. That's the only commitment they have to.

Make, you know, and this is another idea. So I want to go back to, like, what's going on from an inspiration, creativity point of View. My goal was to bridge this. So lately, in addition to doing this comedy bit, I'm always looking for. One of the questions I ask myself all the time is who already has a substantial platform that I can build on top of without having to invest in the infrastructure, the support costs, the human costs. So not long ago I got introduced to Entrepreneur magazine. I met a contributor and through a mutual connection, I became a VIP advisor. And then they asked me if I wanted to be what's called an insider because they have a membership based site. And from there I created some great content. And I got to meet the president of Entrepreneur. His name's Bill Shaw. He and I talked for a little while and I gave him some ideas. He loved them. And that led to a conversation where now one of the things that we're about to do is put capability amplifier on entrepreneur.com okay. And turn our episodes into articles.

That's great.

And as a result of that, I sent him a video proposal and I explained, well, I've got some ideas to further elevate Entrepreneur again, all coming from a service perspective. But the net is, I got asked to be on their online TV show. It's called Elevator Pitch. It's like Shark Tank. So I'm gonna be in the latest season of that, which is recording about a month from now. And there's some other stuff going on I can't talk about. That's even bigger. Well, the net result is you and I are gonna get huge exposure. Entrepreneurs footprint, just their social footprints. Over 10 million followers on social. They've got a substantial database. But I've got an opportunity that'll mean our podcast, yours and mine is going to be all over the place, major visibility. So just like what Matt Lehrer did by leveraging someone else's platform, Citi platforms, sports teams platforms, giving them Amazon's platform. Right. Multi billion. I mean who could possibly warehouse and deal with the shipping And Amazon's at the point now where they're building their own airports, they're going to be able to deliver products. And their goal, Amazon prime is going to be 24 hours, not 48 hours. It already is happening. And that is again this way of thinking right now is the infrastructure is so commoditized, it in itself has no value.

Yeah.

Getting back to what I call the big five. Creativity, innovation, co creativity, leadership and community. And what teamwork does is they're creating community through logos.

Yeah, that's great.

And leveraging that, that is a perfect business. And now I have a brand new filter that I'M installing in my brain to ask, you know, where are there highly engaged communities who had raised their hand to a partnership? So I love the direction here. So where else? I know one of the things that you often say, Dan, is never leave Dan alone. And you and I have a very similar creative process, which is always give me an audience and an opportunity to solve someone's problem. And I can solve a lot of problems very, very quickly and innovate that way. You are very much a co creator who surrounds yourself with team and as you say, never be alone. So why don't you talk a little bit about what goes on inside your mind to create, to be inspired, to be creative and create a product. So, for example, in Strategic Coach, you're always coming up with a new tool. You've got a new book every quarter now you got 10 podcasts simultaneously. Talk about inspiration, creativity in your process.

Well, you know, we share a lot of psychological characteristics, emotional characteristics, and one of mine is that I'm clinically diagnosed as significantly add. And I went to Daniel.

No, that's impossible.

The only thing I have to tell you, doing a podcast with you, it's the first time that I've ever had the experience where I felt like I was the stable one.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It's like I have to put a little bookmark here. This is something that Joe Polish does to me all the time. Every time he introduces me, he'll go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, nice thing, nice thing, nice thing. And then he'll go, andy's batshit crazy. And I'm like, come on, Joe, what are you doing here? But anyway, keep on going. Thank you for that.

Well, quite frankly, I think you're completely normal. It's just that there's a lot of people in the world who are really slow responding.

Anyway, so I'm clinically diagnosed as add, which means that left to my own device, I'm highly distractible. I'm highly distractible. I'll think about almost anything except the thing that I'm supposed to be doing that moment. But I find that when I'm in teamwork with other people, I'm actually hyper focused. So I go from really significantly distracted to hyper focus just by the addition that I'm working with someone in teamwork, and I'm a great team member, you know, and I want to be a real hero to the other person. Like, when we're on here, you know, I'm really, really focused on what you're saying, and I'm seeing You know, is there a question there that kind of expands it? And is there an experience I have that supports Mike's thing? And I'm not add at all on podcasts. People say, why are you doing 10 podcasts? Because I. It's 10 opportunities for me to be completely in teamwork and actually really focused. And each of them has a separate idea development. So each of my podcast series is like an R and D lab for checking out ideas, hearing your ideas, listening to your ideas, and they trigger ideas on my own. So I've got this way of developing. But if you ask me to go off by myself and come up with new ideas, it wouldn't work. The workshops are the same thing. So I just started a new workshop, and this is a real great change for us. We're leading with this quarter's books, which is who do youo Want to Be a Hero To? And then the first four hours of the workshop is you going real deep in your life about who you might want to most be a hero to. And then we say, well, who are the seven different individuals or groups that right now, in 2019, that you want to be a hero to? So you begin to see that, you know, really, this is where my time should be going right now. And then I ask the question, 25 years from now, does this change who you want to be a hero to now? And who makes the complete journey for 25 years? That's the most important person in your life. You know, I'm just saying, anybody that you think is really important right now and think the same or Even more so, 25 years from now, that person is more important than probably anyone else you're meeting. So that's it. But now I've kind of got the workshop down pat. I've got it structured, the time works and everything else. You know, you have riffs that you do on things and, you know, conversations and stories. And I kind of got it down. I've done five out of 10 this quarter. Now I'm listening for what's next. So now I'm in a position. What issues are the entrepreneurs bringing up? And now I start the next workshop production, and I'm already starting to create the next workshop. So all mine are closed loop idea production processes. Podcasts are the same, books are the same, videos are the same. So I've got everything closed loop. But nowhere in any of those processes am I alone.

Well, here's what I hear, because I'm going to deconstruct your process, which, again, we're very, very Similar. There's a coup. Tiny nuanced differences and also the distinction with what many entrepreneurs wish they had. And they might not see the hard to replicate genius and process in between. So when you talk about teamwork and how you've used your adhd, and when you were talking about that, the visualization I had was, you know, some people talk about lobster herding, cat herding, or ant herding, but instead of a whole bunch of other people, you have a bunch of ants in your brain and usually they're squirming out of your ears and every orifice you have. In this particular case, containment equals with you and me, an audience of one with a larger audience in mind. So, you know, I might represent a muse, which is a larger representative of our bigger audience. Okay. And I think that's very, very important in the creative process, which I've always said, always perform for an audience of one. When I create a book, for example, I actually speak it to a camera as if I'm speaking to the person I am going to be or I am a hero to. It's not going to be. It's am. And you also talked about the Mindset Scorecard, which is who have you loved working with in the past? To me, that's a combination of values. So you know the values, you know the language patterns, the conversion you need to have and who that audience is. And it's easy to have a conversation, to be fully engaged with one person. So that's the first one. And then you're also locked into performance. And this is again, a very important distinction that I've learned after I've helped over 1800 people write their books and become bestsellers. And the secret is you've got to think of content creation as a performance, and that allows you to get stuff done so much faster.

Totally, totally agree.

Right.

You know, it's all front stage whenever I'm doing anything. What's the front stage impact of this? But it's really interesting you should talk about the audience of one because we have people involved in technology, you know, and I think Silicon Valley's becoming Las Vegas North. They're making all their money on the raising of the money, not of a new value creation that's creating significant. I mean, it's become brand new Wall Street. Yeah. And there hasn't been a major, really major breakthrough since the iPhone. You. There really hasn't been. It's 10 years. It's been a long dry stretch between major breakthroughs, you know, and it's coming near the 50 year, period. And most big breakthroughs in technology have about 50 years, and then they start becoming normal. Profit margins drop down, bureaucracy builds up about things, and it's somewhere else. And people say, well, you know, it's in artificial intelligence. And I said, well, you know, maybe, maybe not. But that just seems like an extension of what we already know. But here's the thing. And I always say to people, you know, there's going to be a billion customers for this. This is going to be a billion customers. And I said, okay, you know, that may be there are some products, you know, and breakthroughs that do have a billion people. But I said, let me ask you a question. Does it work with one person? And they say, well, no, no, you can't think in those terms. You got to think in a billion. No, I said, no, but actually on a sheet of paper, could you kind of draw out the kind of. What the thing does. You're here. This is what we do. And this is what you get at. Could you kind of do that on a sheet of paper and actually, you know, design a little thinking? You'll turn it into software sometime or you'll digitize it, but can you do it on paper? And you could have a bigger piece of paper? And then you say, and this is very, very important. If we could do that with you, with what we're doing, how much would you pay for it? And the person said, well, the way you have it designed right now, I don't think I would pay for it. And I says, okay, in order for you to pay what I'm doing right now, how would I have to improve it so that it was a solution for you? Okay? And then you go off and do that, and you come back and you're still on paper, and you say, we do this and do this. And he says, yeah, Yeah, I paid 500 for that. I paid 1,000. Great, great, great. Now you can test it on 10 people, and then you're going to have another learning curve to get to 10. And if you got 10, you can go to 100. And I said, you know, if you keep improving it, I don't know if you're going to get to a billion, but you're going to get to a large number and everything. But no, they start with a billion, and they don't have anything to show you until they've raised 500 million, you know, but they don't have any proof that it actually works on one person.

And that man is so interesting that you bring this up. This is to Me. First of all, the value of prototyping, Right. And every single product that I've created over the past 15 years has been done this way, where I had an existing audience of some nature and I test flew it, which is the way I rolled a brand new product would be I'd have an event, I have a bunch of people in a room, and I'd create a presentation that lasted about an hour. And the opportunity would be, I am going to create this brand new product. Here are all the benefits, here's the results, here's the outcome you're going to experience. And you get to be part of the creation process and in the product and you get to engage in the performance. So you not only get to be the first one with access to this new stuff, I'm going to create a special experience that no one else will ever have and you get to participate in it. And what would happen is if the thing were a dud and I didn't sell enough, well, I'd just kill it.

Yeah, but they loved the experience.

They did, because the performance and the community was just as valuable as the product itself. And I think that's something that often gets lost.

Oh, yeah.

I think the way to look at this, it's the same way again. Creating a book, creating a video, creating whatever is test it out. As you often say on Check Writers. The way my variation of that is, no one's vote matters except the ones who pay for it. And those are the only people you ever listen to.

But I notice there's a fear of the marketplace and that's why I think you're attracted to stand up comedy. Because I have to tell you, you ain't funny until the audience thinks you're funny. I mean, you can think you're the funniest person in the world, but I have to tell you, until somebody else laughs, you're not funny. Jackie Mason had great line. He was, you know, Johnny Carson or something. And Johnny Carson said, have you met people who are funnier than you? And he said, oh yeah, I made them private parties. He says, picnics, bar mitzvahs. I said, I've met 100 people who are funnier than I am, but they're only funny with their friends. He says, I'm funny with strangers.

God, that's good. And the same is true with product, baby. You know, here's the trap I see so many entrepreneurs get into. They get hypnotized and locked into the easy thing, which is creating. And they'll create and create and create. And I'll say, yeah, but who have you sold it for? Oh, no customers yet, but I'm going to create. And then I'm like, nothing matters until you've got not one customer, but you've got to have, I think, again, 1012, 100. It depends on the price point. My goal always was anytime I'd ever write a book, for example, I'd write a book to create a product launch and encapsulate the story that was necessary to get someone to want the product. And the goal was a million dollars in 100 days, which, over the course of 12 years or so, I got about 16 or 17 variations of those, where every book or every version of the book resulted in a million dollars in 100 days. Which is very tiring, by the way. It became not sustainable over time and not as much fun as it used to. I'd rather build something that, again, build a movement, not a product. So that, I think, is the other filter I look through.

I just give you a little story. I have a doctor, and he's ranked worldwide as perhaps one of the number one IVF doctors in the world, where IVF is in vitro fertilization. He says, I help other men's wives get pregnant. He says, that's my business.

That's hilarious. That's a punchline.

Yeah. He says, sometimes five times before breakfast. But anyway, he creates this technology because he wants to talk to all the other IVF doctors in the world. So he creates a platform that does data analysis and everything. Not telling you the whole technology, but I said, you got to go to see John Farrell in Silicon Valley and get the IP on this. So he goes out there and you know the law firm, they have all their people in there, you know, and they know all the angel investors and everything. John is just one of the great IP lawyers, thinkers, but he's got investment partners, you know, people who would bring in the investors. So anyway, he gets to the point and one of the partners says, well, how soon are you close to having a prototype? And he said, oh, no, it works. He says, I've been using it for a year. He says, it completely works. Everything I've described here already works. We've checked it out. And the partner says, well, that's going to be hard to sell.

It works. Can't raise any money on something that works.

Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Hadn't thought about that before.

You can't exaggerate with something that works. It works.

Yeah. What's the future value of that?

What dreams can you Build around something that works, you know.

Yeah. Way too late for money.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's an interesting world we live in, but I have a rule. Everything has to pay for itself in the first 90 days. You know, whatever costs we put out, they're completely paid for. You know, I'm a little bit more modest in my ambitions than you are. Mind you, if you spend a million and a half to get the million, that's not a good business model.

No, mine is. I want to do it for almost free, you know, so some effort. Right.

Me too.

My investment is usually a couple of performances and I think that comes back to what our creative process is, which I think at this point this is a good place to maybe wrap up this episode because I came up with an idea and a challenge for our audience right now, which is this. I am curious what kind of ideas you had or breakthroughs you may have had while you listen to Dan and I today. And what Dan and I would love is if you'd head over to capabilityamplifier.com and leave us a voice message there, because there's a place on the site to do that. And what I'm interested in doing is potentially playing back a couple comments on one of our upcoming episodes. Dan and I can actually talk about.

Comment on their comments.

That's right. So this becomes self replicating. We'll call it the self.

Why don't we give a prize for the five best? They would be co partners on one or two feature podcasts.

Yes. So here's what we'll do. We'll call it the Self Licking Ice Cream Cone Contest so we can comment on your comments. And it's the dragon that continues to eat itself. So here's the big idea, the breakthrough you have from this conversation about inspiration, creativity and having a breakthrough from the obstacles. Leave that for us. Whatever it is, Dan and I will not only comment on it and look for the top five and give you a prize, we will also give you feedback on your big idea as well. Because why the hell not? So what we will do in terms of.

Here's what I'll offer as, okay, go for it. For the five we select, I will send them copies of my last five quarterly books.

I love that. Here's how I'm going to stack the value. I've got a course. It's called the Reinvention Masterclass. It's every tip I have on how I've reinvented myself and I work with my clients on reinventing them. It was a $5,000 event. I will send you a copy of that absolutely free. So top five, submit them. Just head over to capabilityamplifier.com and we're going to listen to your ideas, give you feedback, and award some prizes as well.

Well, not only that, but we'll put the comments on our podcast so everybody can listen to them. We'll have like a virtual conversation with the person when they put in their ideas.

Awesome. So that's the challenge for this episode. And in the meantime, go out, be creative, experience some breakthroughs. Use the inspiration you've used from this podcast. And thank you so much for listening, Dan.

You know, there's some things we say and then we say, you know, I should formalize that a little bit, you know, and I'll write one of my quarterly books on my processes, how I actually create things. I think people would actually be interested in that.

You're going to be very interested in a comment that I have for you that I'm going to take offline in just a moment, Dan. So I'm with you 100%. I think we have the exact same idea at the exact same time. So for you, our listener, thank you again. And we will see you in the next episode of Capability Amplifier. So long. Will you head over to itunes right now to rate the Capability Amplifier show? Every rating and review helps spread the message and create more empowered entrepreneurs like you. And if you've already done that, please share this episode with a friend who you know can benefit from Capability Amplifier. And if you have any questions or suggestions, head over to capabilityamplifier.com there you can leave us an audio message and Dan and I listen to every single one of them. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you soon.