Dan Sullivan’s Biggest Mistakes

Entire way of making a living was taken away from us because Strategic Coach is based entirely on in person workshops. And whenever there's a disruption, and usually it shows up economically, there's something that goes wonky with the economy because of some political issue. And in the case of COVID it was a pandemic, so a disease thing. It disrupted economic affairs. Double the amount of contact that you have with your clients.

Okay. Hi, everybody. This is Dan Sullivan, and I'm here with Mike Koenix, and we're doing our training Capability Amplifier podcast. And this is at the request of a great entrepreneurial pioneer by the name of Darren Hardy. And Darren, every once in a while puts together, he whispers in your ear. Here's four or five questions and topics I'd like the two of you to talk about on your program. So here we go. And I think we actually covered more than five. I think we covered, especially in the last two minutes. I think we covered three in the last two minutes.

We did seven big questions, but there were some sub questions. So what you're gonna get out of this is, first of all, at a minimum, if you just pay attention to the kind of questions Darren asked that I'm asking Dan, that's a great learning lesson. But also, Dan's responses are fantastic. I think you're gonna be able to see yourself, your own organization, your own personal growth in here through the lens of someone else. And that, by the way, is one of the big takeaways from this episode. So we both hope you enj.

Enjoy it.

Let's take it away. All right. Every once in a while, I have the good fortune of going out for long walks with my friend Darren Hardy, who wrote the books the Compound Effect, the Entrepreneurial Roller Coaster. And for years, he was the editor in chief and publisher of Success magazine. And Darren has interviewed some of the wisest and most fascinating people in the world who are also some of the most successful. And I said to Darren, hey, do you have some cool questions that I should ask Dan? And he's always giving me cool questions. So first of all, I'm going to give a big shout out to my friend Darren Hardy, and then just dive right into it, Dan, because these are some good thinkers, and I think this will be some incredibly valuable information for everyone who listens, who wants to know not just how you think, but we're going to get into some of the biggest challenges that you may have experienced yourself over the past couple of years. Are you ready to rock?

Yes, I am. All right. And the last two Years is a vivid memory for me.

Yeah.

When I saw these, I was like, of course. These are awesome. So here's the first one is, Dan, what's the biggest mistake you've made in the last two years?

Boy, that'd be a really interesting thing because we've had some great breakthroughs over the last two years.

Zoom being great new capability that I think that we've really aced it in both backstage with teamwork and also front stage with workshops. And that's been really great.

We were so at it for the last two years. I'm not sure I had time for mistakes.

And what I mean by that is within about a week in March of 2020, our entire way of making a living.

We have 130 team members. So our entire way of making a living was taken away from us because Strategic Coach is based entirely on in person workshops where people travel to Los Angeles or Chicago or Toronto or London and the uk. And that was all taken away from us. We didn't realize how long it was going to be taken away, but we knew at least a quarter probably we weren't going to be able to do it. And so we just, you know, we flipped really quickly. We're three country companies, so we're used to operating with Zoom Backstage. But we had never done it front stage. We had never actually done workshops. And within about two weeks, we had taken a product of ours.

Which is called the Scary Times Success Manual, and.

We turned it into a book.

Shannon Waller, who does all my interviewing, and then have the cartoonist. So we were already doing our quarterly books, so we just said, we'll just do a book on this. And then that led to an audio audible series and led to video series. And then we just started sending out these modules to our clients to keep them engaged. And because we went through that process, we said, well, let's take one of the thinking exercises and let's turn it into a two hour workshop where we have people answer questions in relationship to one of the scary Time success strategies. And we'll, you know, and we'll see where it goes. We'll have a worksheet and everything like that. And within about a month, we had gotten a feel for what a two hour period would look like. And then the whole question is, by June, we had to put together a six hour workshop, not an eight hour in person workshop on Zoom. We would do six hours with a lunch break. Yeah, and.

We had a pretty down pat within the beginning of the next quarter. And it took off like a rocket. So Much so that it's turned into another entire market for us. So now for every 10 people signing up for the program here in 2022, 44 of the 10 are signing up for a virtual only part of the program. So we've created this whole multiplier, global multiplier because they come from all over the world. And so we were so busy at that for two years. I don't want to.

Ignored Darren's question here, but the whole thing is literally we did not have time to make mistakes or we certainly didn't have time to spend any time on mistakes. So I think that I'm sure we made the mistakes, it's just that we didn't have time to think about them.

That's great. Well, that leads into the next question, which is.

What key lessons will you take from the past two years that you'll carry on for the rest of your business life? Because clearly a lot of those lessons apply. But is there anything else that shows up for you when you hear that question? What key lessons will you take from the past two years that you'll carry forth for the rest of your business life?

Yeah, well, it was a lesson that got reinforced. And that is.

When there's any kind of disruption in the world. And I'll tell you a little story about disruption in the world.

And whenever there's a disruption, and usually it shows up economically, there's something that goes wonky with the economy because of some political issue. And in the case of COVID it was a pandemic, so a disease thing, it disrupted economic affairs. Double the amount of contact that you have with your clients.

I would say that we tripled the amount of regularity that we're in contact with our clients. And that's a permanent feature now going forward. Like we'll never go back to pre Covid.

Frequency of contact. We tripled it during the two years and we'll just keep tripling it. I mean we'll just keep it at the triple level. And the two hour we had these two hour connect. I have one this afternoon, I have one.

Later this afternoon, a 10 times connector. And I have six of those every quarter. And I have six 10 times free zone connectors. And so the whole point is use the.

You know, the zoom. Say zoom because other people have other, you know, other companies that they use. But zoom, use zoom to the maximum to increase creative contact with your clients. In other words, don't just contact them to say hello, say I got. We got an interesting thinking tool for you here today. Like to try it out. You up to it for an hour or so, think something through. And I think that the fact that it was frequent contact but it was always bringing them something new that is a permanent lesson that we'll keep doing.

Forever. You had to do it out of emergency, but we turned the emergency into standard operating procedure. Yeah.

That is.

So it really is a combination of triple the time plus introduce new tools. And in the case of coach, what I really have enjoyed.

I've mentioned this to you before, I've always loved the in persons. The only but is when I am at an in person, I usually have time to go deep with maybe two people per one day meeting, meaning one person before.

Lunch and one person after if I'm changing places or switching around. Whereas.

I'm able to have little sub conversations and the breakouts for example.

And it's just more efficient through a zoom.

I mean, here's the thing.

I've tried to not have my team and to the degree that I can be persuasive, I've tried to tell the clients don't compare in person with zoom. They're totally different realms.

Yes.

And how do you use both of them effectively?

Yes.

In coordination with each other. I said we're doing far more coaching than we ever did before because we were limited by people's travel time and the hassle of travel. And there's a part of their engagement with us where travel doesn't even play a part. Just add that to what you're already creating with the in person service. Just add some of this extra dimension on top of the dimension that you already had. Don't compare them and say which is better?

They're each great in their own realm, but just combine them as value added. Right?

Yeah. There's one thing that I'll add to that that has made all the difference for me, which is.

I think it's really important that you create a fun zoom room environment for your meeting. So I have found there's a piece of gear from Logitech, it's called a rally. So you can get. One of them has a pan tilt zoom camera that follows your face. So like if it's just you, you can move around place to place and if you're drawing on a whiteboard, it'll find your face and follow you. And it also follows the speakers. You could be in a room of 10 people.

And it sounds great, it looks great.

And have a big, big tv. So if you create the feeling that you're with people, the feeling of being on Zoom is a lot better than anyone who's staring at a. With their crooked neck. At a laptop, for example, and having great speakers and a great microphone. It makes the whole experience so much more immersive.

I think that, you know, the two years that we just went through is just. It's kind of like other mediums just getting off the ground. It was. Yeah, you know, telephone or, you know, radio or television, that there was something that was disruptive.

And it forced you to actually use something.

And then it became a major capability.

As a result of you being forced to use it. You began to see the possibilities. Yeah, I want to talk about disruption. So I asked a very interesting question. One quarter of my two hour connector calls, I said to people, everybody keeps talking about when things get back to normal. You know, this is.

And I said.

What if these two years. I was talking about it, that we had already had like two years experience under our belt with responding to the lockdown, responding to, you know, the medical. You know, the medical issues. And I said, what if these two years are just the beginning of.

An entire 25 years where there's going to be another totally unexpected disruptive event in the world.

And it's felt on a global basis.

You, as an entrepreneur, would you be okay with that? Would you be okay with that? Okay. Because you wouldn't have any control over it any more than you had any control over the last two. Are you up to living a life where you would actually respond in a very creative way to anything that came along?

And what kind of person would you become if you were just okay with any kind of disruption, just to see how well that you can respond to that disruption? And it was so funny because I said that. I remember the last time I said it was In December of 2000, last year, 2021, and two months later, Russia invaded.

Ukraine and worldwide sanctions went on. It disrupted the oil and gas industry, it disrupted the food industry because both Russia and the Ukraine are big food producers and it sent inflation right through the roof. And I said, well. And somebody said, is that kind of one of the disruptions that you were talking about? And I said, yeah, except this is just the third year. I'm talking about 25 years.

Hey, this is Mike Koenigs. Sorry to interrupt the podcast, but if you're an action taker and ready to transform and reinvent yourself and your business, go to connecttomike.com to learn more and book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode when you're asked that first of All I happen to love the disruption. It was great.

And it was so creatively sparking. And in a lot of ways, I changed everything and changed nothing simultaneously.

And I look at the connection that I had with everyone around me, it's deeper and more meaningful. And relationships that were unnecessary or not happy or pleasant went away.

So, yeah, I'm up for more. Dan.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting to sort of reverse engineer.

You know, what kind of person you have to be, where anything that happened externally that you have no control over, you had an internal ability just to.

Get back on your feet right away and do something new that you've never done before. I said, what kind of person do you have to be to do that? And the reason is because.

It happens to represent the truth. We have no control. We have no. I was talking to Ben Hardy before the we're working on our number three book for Hay House, which is 10 times is easier than two times. Okay. And so we're, you know, we're in the thick of it right now.

Usually comes out at the end of the year, but next year it's going to come out in February or March because of the paper shortages. And they had commitments that are just getting a hold of paper. Can you imagine that? You know, what kind of world we live in where they can't get a hold of paper?

Well, we're living in a disruptive world, and that's one of the things that can happen to you. But anyway, we were just talking about.

Just.

What do you have control of? And I said, you know, I've been looking at Peter Zion's new book came out, and I'm an addict of reading Peter Zion. For those of you, he's on the bestseller. He made the New York Times bestseller. He was number seven or eight last week. But for those who are listening, if you don't know the name, it's Peter, and it sounds like Zion national park, but it's spelled Z, E, I H A N. And.

It's a great book. I'm trying to think. It's got a kind of a convoluted title. It's like.

The beginning of the end of the world or something or something like that. It's very, very fascinating book. And so I was talking to Ben about this, and we were just talking about how little control we have of external events. And I said, as near as I figure, I only have direct access to one human being.

My entire lifetime. I only have access to one direct access to one human being. So you've really got to maximize the control that you have there. Because you don't have any control outside of that one person, right? Yeah. Yeah. So one thing is, you don't want things to be complicated with that one person. You just want them as simple as can be. So I. I try to have my relationship with myself. Really simple.

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh, that's good. That's good. Okay, next one that I have here is. He wants to know what are the greatest lessons you've learned as a leader that spur the profitable growth of your company? I know the answers, at least some of the answers to this. But I'm curious now.

Post lockdown, what's showing up?

Everybody and their unique ability.

So it's a central concept in Coach unique ability. And our whole attitude is that every person is born with a unique ability which.

Predisposes them to doing extremely well just in a small number of activities.

They love doing those activities. They keep getting better at those activities. And there's all sorts of tests from the outside that you can use. Colby as one strength finder is another one. The new print one that we use is terrific. And what it does is it kind of tells you you're in the area that you're hiring this person because they kind of have this unique ability, and that's where you need them. And then once you get them, you do a lot of fine tuning to see if it's true. The one thing there's no test for is character.

Oh, I've never come across a test for character.

But you can kind of tell kind of what. If you put person in this position, they'll naturally go about it and get their results in that area. So what we did is we made sure that everybody got even more in touch. Just speaking of the disruptive two years that we are still in, which is in year three, that.

We just put an emphasis. And the reason is that people are in their unique ability. You don't have to manage them, you don't have to monitor them, and you don't have to motivate them.

They just naturally, every day, do the work that they do. And that's especially important that they do extremely well and that they love doing. And that takes care of morale problems. It takes care of confidence problems.

If they're doing their unique ability, they're in teamwork with other people's unique abilities. So it's taking care of integration that's taking place in the company. Nobody feels isolated, nobody feels left out, and everybody just has to do.

What they're part of. It is so I think that's my greatest leadership. Darren's asking specifically about leadership. My leadership is just get everybody doing what they love doing, that they're really great at, that really contributes to the greatest profitability of the company.

To handle those three things.

People think you're a great leader.

Yeah. I think.

I want to pin this as a topic for another interview or conversation with you, which is.

Hiring for unique ability versus developing it. And because there's always going to be a gap there. And then there's the evolving.

Capability, which is something that I've run into before. I'd be like, yeah, I'd have someone, I develop them. And.

It'S, it's the gap between when someone you're working with quits evolving.

And either they. And, you know, it's taking responsibility for your evolution. And is that something that you look for in a unique ability? Because sometimes you just need someone who loves being a bean counter and wants to be bean counter for the rest of their lives. Or I call it ant sorting. You know, it's sort of like just keep all the ants on the table and put them in a straight line as best you can. And they love, love working with the ants and.

Yeah, well, first, first of all.

You know, you and I share a particular spectrum of the, you know, performance, you know, the performance territory. I mean, we're, you know, we're add. Both of us are add. We're quick starts. We love new things.

Yesterday's things are old things. So we tend to like new things all the time. And there are people that your organization requires who have to be exactly the opposite of you if the organization's going to work. Okay, so I'll give you an example. Eleanora Mancini, who is my overall coordinator for the Free Zone program.

She'S eight fact finder, a seven follow through, and she has a two quick start.

And according to Kathy Colby, I should be in open warfare with her on just about everything. I should be open with warfare. And it's true that we shouldn't be working alongside of each other every day, but if.

We break all of our projects down to her part of the project and my part of the project and we just compare results of each of us developing our product though our project, it totally works. And she's absolutely dependable. She has a list every day and she doesn't go to bed until the list is finished and she'll have another list tomorrow. And her life is about getting her list done and hitting her goals. And.

If she has a full list, anything new has to go on tomorrow's list or the list the day after it can't go on today's list. Me, my greatest enjoyment is something that was scheduled today, didn't happen the way it was scheduled. And I say, oh, that's really, really great. I was feeling a bit constricted by the fact that. And my greatest love about a new workshop is that it didn't go the way I thought it was going to go.

That's.

Your greatest love?

Yeah. Yeah. It didn't turn out the way I thought it was. It was totally different. And isn't that exciting?

Yeah. Well, it goes back to your basic philosophy of ask questions that you don't know the answers to. So a little bit of stumbling, creative stumbling, creates new opportunities.

The other thing is that any company needs someone like me. Any company needs someone like you. Okay. But you need people who aren't like you, too.

Yeah.

And they grow. We have one woman, 25 years, she's in charge of the quality control of the database.

Every day she comes in, and if I was watching her for 25 years, I would swear she did exactly the same thing every day for 25 years.

Yeah.

But for her, she says, man, it's amazing the new improvements we're making here. You know, I'm thinking it's a black and white film, but it's actually in Technicolor. It's in. From her perspective, it's virtual reality. We have a bookkeeper for 25 years, and as far as I can tell, she's done the same thing, same way every day for 25 years. But I talked to her, I said, you really like this, don't you, Mary Beth? And she said, dan, from one day to another, you never know what's going to happen.

Yeah.

We can't see the world through other people's eyes.

Yeah, very true, very true. That's good. All right.

What I'd appreciate is people have totally different takes on things. And as many takes as you can include creatively in one company, the better the company.

Yes. That's fantastic. All right, I've got a couple more rapid fire questions here for you. Yep. I know one thing you've done as a leader to move from good to.

Great every three or four years, I say, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to do something brand new. It goes in the calendar. It unsettles the whole company. It perturbs the whole company. People say, well, how are we going to handle that? And I said, not my problem, your problem.

I love that awesome. Next one. Greatest failure you've made as a leader. And the lesson learned.

Thinking that the 5% of the clients who wanted a new software tool represented 100% of the clients.

Okay, that's good.

$500,000 in. You realize that it was a total mistake.

That's great. All right, all right. Last one challenge you had this year that you didn't expect or see coming and how you resolved it.

That.

Figuring out how people were going to work after Covid was 10 times more complicated than getting people to switch from in person to remote in two days. It's incredibly more complicated afterwards than it was before. Wow.

Did not expect that. That's fantastic.

Because people say, why do I have to come to the office?

So we have a rule. If there's a workshop going on in our office. Toronto, Chicago. If there's a workshop going in, everybody's in the office. And they said, well, I'm not in the workshop. And we said, yeah, I understand that, but the rule is when we're having a workshop in the office that day, everybody's in the office. Yeah, but, you know, and. Yeah, no, no, you're misunderstanding here. There's a rule, and the rule is when we have a workshop, everybody's in the office.

That's very good.

Very good.

All right, any other final thoughts as we wrap this one up or.

Loose ends that you might have?

Yeah, I think things are actually. I feel 10 times more confident in 2022 than I did at the end of 2019 about the future of coach and.

Where we're going with code. Chad. I just feel an enormous growth of capability in the company and excitement about what we're doing and how this fits in with what's happening in the outside world.

Clarity, confidence.

It's really a big jump.

Well, I think we can finish this episode off. It was great. I hope Darren is happy, but I'm also glad I asked these questions because he really knows how to drill down into the simple stuff that really matters. I love the way he thinks.

So there you go, Darren. That's my gift to you. Dan, thank you, as usual, for another fantastic episode. It's good to put you on the spot once in a while.

Oh, on the spot is where it's at.

Yeah. Did you notice the last part here? We had constraints and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We went through a bunch of questions really quickly. So I like doing these little timed, sometimes expansive, sometimes compressed.

Questioning is really good. Creative compression. All right, well, this is it. Another episode of Capability Amplifier. This is Mike Knigs I'm here with Dan Sullivan. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. And make sure you share this with someone who you think will benefit from it. Bye.

Bye.