Dan Sullivan’s The Gap and The Gain

All right, welcome to Capability Amplifier, and this episode is all about the gap and the Gain the High Achievers Guide to Happiness, Confidence and success. Of course, it correlates with the upcoming book and one of the big takeaways in this episode, what you can really look forward to is how to think about a positive movement, how to direct your employees that way, also your kids, and stay positive all the time and get other people enrolled in a positive, moving future as well. How about you, Dan? Any big takeaways that you can think of?

Yeah, and I don't think I'm being unrealistic here, Mike, but I think that just grasping a certain.

Concept about how you measure your daily progress.

Can. Starting right away, it'll start today and it'll start even more so tomorrow. You will expand a positive zone around yourself and that will include everybody who works with you, everybody who lives with you. And it's been tried out by more than 20,000 highly successful entrepreneurs in the world. Their families, their teams, their clients. And it's a very remarkable way of just thinking about what you do every day that sends you off to bed at night, happy, looking forward to an even better tomorrow.

All right, so this is a 27 year old concept. One of the most powerful exercises that exists inside Strategic Coach. You're going to get it today and it could just change your life. It definitely will make you a happier, more productive person.

Hi, this is Dan Sullivan and this is another very, very exciting. I always look forward to my podcast conversations on the Capability Amplifier. This is with Mike Koenix. And Mike and I are farm boys from the Midwest who went far afield from our origins. And we were just talking a little bit about, you know.

Start with cold. Both of us started with cold. You went to warm and I went to colder and, you know. Yeah, but I've always, I've always. Well, I like the Four Seasons. I'm a Four Seasons guy, but I've always, I've always really enjoyed, you know, winter and we get, you know, we get pretty cold winters. I'm in Toronto, Mike is in San Diego. Very different, very different experience going through the year. But, yeah, it's no problem with me. I mean, you have to, you have to stay warm. You have to know how to stay warm and everything. But I kind of like it. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what, I don't know what's wrong with you, Dan, but I still like you anyway. But I'm into one season now. I figured I used up all of my four seasons in about 30 years. And then I was like, and I don't mind going into the winter, but then I want to be able to fly out.

So. Yeah. And, you know.

I think that what makes up our liking for, you know, where to spend most of our time is as unique as our entrepreneurial careers. I mean, why we like something and why we don't, you know, it can't be explained. It's a million different things that settle on one place or not. But, Mike, you very graciously agreed that we could spend a few minutes on the new book that Ben Hardy and I and Tucker Max have collaborated on with Hay House and their great publisher, Reed Tracy. And Hay House is just up the road from you.

That's right. I. And Reed is a fascinating guy.

He's a. He's a great guy. Because Louise Hay, who started Hay House, had a office on the same floor as where Reid started off as a cpa, you know, accountant. And she was good at marketing, she was good at promoting, she was good at getting good authors. But as is the case with entrepreneurs, period, she. She wasn't good at what she wasn't good at. And so one day she just walked across to the accounting firm and said, do you have anybody can just come over and kind of clean things up and put things in order? And Reed was the person chosen. And he went over, and two years later, he quit the accounting firm and became the, you know, the CFO for her. And when Louise saw the end coming, she said, you're the person to run this. So Reid has been in charge of Hay House, and they're going through a transformation now because they were.

Really personal improvement niche. As a matter of fact, they were the great niche for personal improvement. Wayne Dyer being one of their, you know, they're, you know, the great authors that they had. But just when I encountered Reid, and then Ben and Tucker really did the. Were the intermediaries, he had made a real shift of going into the entrepreneurial market. And, you know, and I met him at, you know, at Genius Network, where. And most people in this world I meet at Genius Network. And.

That just coincided. It was a perfect. Yeah. And Ben and Tucker went out to dinner that night, and they more or less agreed to a contract for our first book. And of course, unusual contract because I'm the author but not the writer. And that was new in their experience because Ben is the writer and Tucker's the strategist. And so we did, you know, who. Not how as the first book, it's been, by their standards, a great runaway Bestseller. And in just a few weeks now, we're going to Release book number two. We have a 10 book, you know, a 10 book, 10 year agreement with him, you know, based on success. And so the one that I'm really excited about because this has been probably along with the Lifetime Extender, this has been one of the.

Most impactful books and most impactful ideas for strategic coach clients who are number now around 21,000 who have been in the program average of three years. So a lot of entrepreneurial experience. But it's called the Gap and the Gain. And we just got off an interview that goes out to a hundred thousand Hay House readers. So that'll go out this week or the next week and we're really looking forward to it. There's a lot of enthusiasm for this book right now.

Well, I think first of all, I got a early pre release. I've gotten a couple pre releases of the book and the moment I got it, I read it very quickly and I wrote to Ben and I said, this is even better than who not how and who not how is a masterpiece. And I think one of the reasons it's so good is because it's one of those things that's non obvious like a lot of your teachings, a lot of your creations, Dan. And yet it's so relevant. And once you hear it, once you see it, once you understand what it is, you see that everyone who's around you, who's unhappy lives in the gap and people who are future focused. And one thing that I always say about Dan Sullivan is there's only been a couple of times when I know I've ruffled your feathers. And it's, and it's gap conversations. And when you are your happiest and most engaged, it's positive focus, future focus. That's where Dan lives always in the future. So for the sake of the conversation and to get us rolling, why don't you give.

I'd like to hear you pitch what the gap in the Gain is in the fewest number of words. So we'll use our Civitas moment here to create followers and buyers of the book. And then I also want to tell everyone where to go right away to get it.

Right after that. So let's, let's begin.

Yeah. Well, there's two kinds of human achievers in the world, really. Successful achievers.

Happy successful achievers and unhappy successful achievers. Okay. And, and they do 99% of the same things to be successful. They're skilled, they're talented, they're Ambitious. They have a nose for creating value that hasn't been created in a particular way, and they create new value. And they're super fast to spot opportunity. They're super fast to take advantage of opportunity. But there's a crucial difference that makes one of these successful achievers happy and makes the other person. And this is lifetime. Generally, the happy people are happy for a lifetime and the unhappy people are unhappy for a lifetime. And it has to do with measurement. Okay, how do you measure what you've achieved? And I'll give you the unhappy version. And it's almost virtually the same as the happy version, but we have ideals. So we have pictures of the future. And it's usually a picture of ourselves in the future operating at a much higher and with much better results. But it's just a picture. It's just a feeling that we have about the future. And.

We use the ideal. We all have ideals, and we all use the ideals. And the proper use of an ideal is for illumination. It kind of illuminates the future ahead of you so that you can set really good goals to make progress. So here's what the unhappy person does. They. They use their ideals, picture of the future, very emotional, very motivating. And they pick an achievement. And usually, you know, it's something that can be knocked off in a, you know, in a quarter or something like that. And they make the achievement, they make progress. They get to the achievement they start and everything else. And when they get to the achievement, they make a mistake. They measure against the ideal. And ideals are not measurable. Ideals are not achievable. Okay? The other thing that can tell you what an ideal is is the horizon. When we're outside.

We look out and we see where the earth meets the sky. And we said, I'm going to go there. And true enough, we can make progress and we can actually pick a spot between the horizon and where we are and we get there. But when we get to that spot, we. We measure against the horizon, and we didn't make any progress. We're just as far away from the horizon. And when you achieve a goal based on and measure against the ideal, you're just as far away from the ideal as you were when you started. So other people look at you and you say, you just made incredible progress. And you say, no, I didn't make any progress at all. Okay. And that usually starts at around 4 years old. And by the time you're 14, you've really got it down pat. You know that you're going to get smarter, you're going to get better, and you're going to achieve the ideal. And one day you're really going to achieve the ideal, and then you'll be happy. And you're not happy until you achieve the ideal. You have enormous progress. You make. You achieve enormous goals, but none of the goals matter because they're not the ideal. So that's the unhappy achiever. Okay, let's go over to the happy side. Happy side does everything the unhappy person does, has the ideal, shines light where they go, gets to the goal, achieves the goal, and then turns around, looks back where they started and measures where they started. And anytime you measure progress from where you started, you're happy. Anytime you measure progress based on the ideal, you're unhappy. Whole world does it every day, both sides. But some people do it all the time. And when you do it, you're very, very unhappy. And when you're really unhappy with yourself and you never let yourself be happy, generally speaking, you don't let other people be happy either for their achievements.

Well done. Well done. And that's it.

And you're a prime candidate, Michael. You're a prime candidate. I'm a prime candidate because we have this great ability to see a future that feels real.

Yes. And if I tie this, I think.

You have to have grown up with vast fields around you. You have to grow up where amber.

Golden waves There is.

There's nothing but possibility because the reality is incredibly boring.

That is so true. I can remember looking out at snow and snow and slush and slush, and I'm like, well, got to make the best of this.

So here's what shows up for me. And it ties back to another episode we did not that long ago.

And it's about people who create purpose for other people, which is an incredibly rare and valuable skill to have. And positive, moving future is oftentimes the way I describe Dan Sullivan. When people say, well, tell me about Dan, I'll go. Positive, moving future. Let me explain. And if you can do that for someone else and give them a positive, moving future, it creates so much happiness. Because hope is probably the greatest gift and service you can provide to another person and also a meaningful, compelling future for themselves. And I think what I love about the concept, and while you were chatting, I was grabbing a couple nuggets online, and one of them is just the subtitle of this, which is the High Achiever's Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success.

What I'd like to talk about is some of the tools that you've created over the years that help identify the gap, living in the gap, and also how to visualize your positive, moving future. So talk a little bit about that. And when we get introduced as a coach member to the gap in the gain, what's most effective and what do you see when you.

Show this off the first time and you can see the lights turning on in the room and the aha. Occur.

Yeah, I think the, the big thing that I want to get across right off the bat, that this is a concept that, you know, I drew out the first time 28 years ago. So it was in a workshop.

Oh man, I didn't know it was that long ago.

I did it on, you know, I did on, you know, kind of a flip chart or a whiteboard, whatever it was. And I said, and there was somebody who just made me mad because he was extraordinarily talented. He was a movie maker in those days, you know, you know, so it was video, you know, it was video and had extensive experience work with Roger Ailes who, you know, really put Fox Fox News on the, you know, in the, in the mainstream. And Mike, Mike Douglas, he worked with Mike Douglas show and everything. So I had a tremendous experience, professional experience. And he made videos basically for corporations and for product launches and things like that. And the thing about him was that he was very hard. He was a very hard person. I mean, if you worked with him, I remember once I tried to do a five minute video with him and it was 27 takes. He made me go through 27 takes. And, you know, and the one thing about us, Mike, you don't rehearse either of us to get a good result. You just start. And he said, no, no, no, you have to memorize this and everything like that. And he was just mean to me. I mean, he was just very mean. But people who are mean to other people are start off by practicing on themselves. And the way he was and the way he was mean was that he was very successful but refused to accept any of the evidence that he was successful. And he's very, very unhappy. So I just got angry one day and I said, chuck, I'm going to show you what you're doing right here. And right at the beginning of the book that we're publishing in three weeks is the diagram actually that I did that first day. And I just nailed it. I mean, I just nailed. I mean, I don't think I've ever done a diagram for a coach concept where I just haven't altered it since the first time I put it up there. And, and I said, you're measuring, Ron. You're measuring yourself, Ron, and you're measuring other people, Ron. And I'm just going to show you it's just a little switch in your brain. And I just went through the explanation and I drew up the ideal, the achieved goal, the start. And he did it. And you measure against the ideal and it's bad, and you do it the other way. Ideal, goal, start, complete turn around, measure backwards, it's happy. And I said, all you have to do is do a switch here. And the one thing I want to get across to Mike, it's a bit. If anyone has sailed, there's a line called the plumb line that you draw between where you are. And it's like a straight line that you measure from one destination to another. You're never on that line. You're always going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And the, the gap in the gain is like this. So people say, well, you know, you must never go in the gap at all. And I said, no, not more than five times a day. And, and this is the interesting. They said, what? And I said, yeah. I said, you know, I notice, I tighten up. I said, one of the biggest things that I've learned, it's a body sensation and that I feel myself, my muscles start straining and I start thinking stressful thoughts. Okay? And I said, I've just, you know, trained myself. Anytime you feel like that, you're measuring against the ideal, okay, and. And so I just say, okay, where did you start? And I measure backwards and I relax like that and I'm good for an hour or two hours and then I do it again about something else. And so that's the biggest thing. I said, this is not about perfection. This is about progress. And it's every day having achievable progress that you give yourself credit for and you go to bed happy.

Well, I think the other thing that it takes into account, which is very much Dan personality, is.

Being able to improvise and change.

No matter what, for any reason. It can be arbitrary and realize that. And I think so many great products start out this way. You gotta get something, create a minimum viable product, an mvp, throw it into the marketplace and see if you get on one hand, if you think like a Google, it's, where's the maximum engagement? You're giving a product away and you are the product, or you're testing it out on check writers again.

Another.

Person who, if it really promises something Great for them. They'll write you a check for it. You know, that's the only person to check on, you know, and guess what? If it's the right audience, the audience is always right.

Yep, yep.

So. So if that's one of the things, I want to go back in time a little bit. So 27 years ago, you draw this thing. It stayed the same. I'm curious, what was the seed, the motivation, or the person that sparked this? Were you around someone?

That was fine. It was this video maker that really triggered. And, you know, and I.

It was just that. Yeah.

And the interesting thing about it, he didn't get it. He dropped out, you know, probably about six months later. And. But the rest of the room got it, and they said, oh, my. Oh, oh, oh. This changed my whole view of my entrepreneurial career. Oh, my God. Oh, I'm doing this to my kids. I'm doing this to my, you know, I'm doing this to my. My, My employees. I'm doing this. And I think that's the big thing, is that if you get real good at beating yourself up, you start exporting.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And. But everybody. You know what I'm getting across here, Mike? I think it's human to do this. And I think that every human being, probably every day, not about the same things, but about something that you're in that gap. And somebody said, well, you still do it, though, like five minutes, you say, five times a day. And I said, yeah, but I stay in it maybe a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and I'm out of it. And I said, before I actually came up with the concept, I could spend three months in there. You know, I just go in a deep dive and, you know, I'd be miserable for three months. And people say, well, why? You're, you know, you're successful, you're talented, when you're happy, you're funny, you know, and, you know, and everything like that. But what I came across is everybody does it. And I think high achievers are more prone to it than not so high achievers. I think the high achievers make extraordinary.

What I would say, unrealistic expectations of their future or.

How fast a big result is actually going to happen. If it doesn't happen exactly as fast as you want, then you beat yourself up because you failed. And.

You know, and it drives people. And a lot of people say, yeah, I am that way, but if I didn't drive myself that way, I wouldn't achieve anything. And it's not true that people who do the measuring the other way are just as successful. But I will tell you this, that the happy achievers who really learned how to do this never retire. But at a certain point, the unhappy achievers stopped or they have a heart attack or somebody kills them or, you know, you know, I mean, I mean, they, they. The end is never good for unsuccessful high achievers, you know.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

So a couple things popped into my head while you're describing this. One of them is what I think, the unhappy high achiever who's living in the Gap. What they have in common is they're constantly comparing themselves to others or this unattainable goal. So it's comparison, comparison that is a certain recipe for misery. And on the other side, one thing I've noticed about happy gain high achievers is very frequently they're meditators. And the nature of, of meditation is living in the infinite expanse. You know, like I, I just did a meditation today where it was a guided one with Dr. Joe Dispenza, who I find very fascinating. But a tremendous amount of his work is imagining yourself in a space of infinity. So he does these little exercises where it's think about how much space your body is taking up, how much space the space between your ears are taking up. And again, the whole idea is just to live in this infinite domain. And that is gain thinking. I think the nature of it is it opens yourself up to things just working out the way they need to work out and being open to whatever that is. And it also sensitizes you to.

Opportunity and potential that you wouldn't see if you're living in Gap land.

Yeah. And I think the big thing being a meditator, it'll be 50 years next March. And I just learned TM, you know, transcendental meditation 50 years ago. And you know, it's one of those things that if you get their product but you never have any further relationship with them, it works better.

Well, you know, what they do is they'll charge you five grand for a new word that you can repeat to yourself. Now you can get it for free on YouTube.

So, yeah, yeah, I don't have any problem with it. It worked the first time I did it, and that was good enough. And you know, they say, well, you know, you know, in about 10 years when you do it, your butt's not even touching the ground. You're actually. And I said, no, no, I don't need that. No, just the. Nope, don't have any need for levitation. But I do. You Know, I do like the meditation, but. But it has had a big impact, and a lot of things, you know, have, you know, gone for the good in my life. My partnership with Babs is terrific. And, you know, and, you know, the idea that we had as a business model really works. And it's worked and Zoom has been great. And I mean, just a lot of things and, you know, having sort of the free zone category of entrepreneurs, yourself included, Mike, you know, has just made life just really fascinating, really stimulating, and I'm very happy. But one thing is. And this year, I.

Just finished 50 years in Toronto, so I moved here 50 years ago, and if I take all my years, I'm 77 right now, and I take them, you know, and I'm a big. You know, the more I'm in Canada, the more I realize I'm an American. And, you know, and I've had this view of America. You know, I'm very, very interested in America, and I think America is just extraordinary. And. But I've. Two thirds of my lifetime have actually been living outside of the States, you know, so I've had this sort of little bit of a perspective and a view on it. And this gap thing, I think, is responsible for all the craziness in the United States. And we're seeing a full dose of it in the current setting right now, I mean, and everything else. And it goes back to that Jefferson thing with the Declaration. So three people got together, they said, you know, we got to have some copy for tomorrow. And it was Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were there, and they had to get out a Declaration of Independence, you know, as a product launch. You know, the product was a country, and we're going to launch a new country, and we have to get, you know, we have to get a message out to the people. And so he starts off, and there's a very interesting story. Why the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, why it got in there?

Because I think.

It was a mistake for a good reason, because the phrase actually came from British philosophy, which was life, liberty and the pursuit of property. Because the British have always based all law on the right to personal property. So to pursue property and get property, they considered the, you know, the real foundation stone for leading a very productive and enjoyable life. But they couldn't do it with the colonies because 5 of the colonies, 5, 6 of the colonies were slave states. And in the slave states, slaves were property. And they said to themselves, we can't put this in here because it'll come back to bite us. So what should we have? Thomas? You're good with words, Thomas. And Ben and Jeff. John said, pursuit of.

Pursuit of better fries. You know, life, liberty and the pursuit of fries. And. Oh, I got it. You know, they'll never pin us down on this one. Happiness. We'll just say pursuit of happiness. And what does that mean? Well, whatever, you know, whatever you want it to mean. But one of the things that pursuit of happiness means is that you never achieve happiness.

So that was 76. 76. So it's 24 years, 235 years. Life. I understand. Really good. You know, you want to have life, you want to protect life, liberty. Got that Clean. Pursuit of happiness creates the biggest, wildest, batshit country in the history of the world. Right on. Yep. Huh. You know, and everybody's pursuing it. And, you know, I mean, you have your likes and dislikes among Americans. You know, everybody does. So, you know, I mean, for example, I think, you know, Bill Clinton was pursuing happiness. You know, Hillary Clinton was pursuing happiness. You know, George Bush Jr. Senior Obama, you know, Donald Trump was pursuing, you know, happiness, and Joe Biden pursuing happiness. And you like. And you dislike. And then like, real, you know, packaging stars like aoc. She's. People said, you know, she's awful. She's. I said, she's as American as Amber hot dogs, you know, an apple pie. I said, she's packaging. She's already merchandising herself. Tax the rich. It's. Now, I said, this is American as it possibly can be. She's reinventing herself and everything else. But. But with all of them, I don't know if it adds up to happiness.

Yeah.

And you live close to Silicon Valley and Hollywood and everything else, and enormous pursuit of happiness. But I don't know. I don't know too many of them that I would give them credit for actually achieving happiness. Because the pursuit of happiness pursued over 40 years just gives you a habit of always pursuing, of always not being there. Yeah. But not being there. Yeah. And so that's it. And that's the gap and the gain. That it's a gap concept because it's an ideal. Okay. But it's not measurement from where you came from. I mean, America based on where it came from is the greatest success story in the history of the world, but based on achieving the ideal, not successful at all.

Yes. So let's do. One of the things that I wanted to know then is. And you began this last.

Bit about how we raise our kids, but also think about it in terms of how we operate our businesses. So I'm curious, think through the lens of managing in the gain versus the gap. If we're. And as a business owner and a founder, I'll give you an example of a really great thing that Dan Sullivan does. Even before dinner, which is everyone at the table, we do a positive focus, and it's something fantastic that excites you every day that happened personally or professionally. And everyone goes around Robin. And what I know it does is it aligns us energetically and we all feel a positivity, and the focus of every conversation stays in that mode. And it's also fascinating. It's a way to break the ice and create a deeper connection with people.

And also each person when they arrive. I mean, we're, you know, we. We haven't done it since COVID because, you know, nobody's traveling and, you know, we're not having the workshops. But the moment we go back to workshops, we'll go back to having, you know, you arrive on Sunday, and Sunday night we have dinner at our Chicago house, and next morning we have a 10 times workshop. And then the next day we have the free zone workshop. But when you realize, I mean.

We.

Now see each other more often because of the 10 times, you know, the connector calls. But nowadays you won't see the other person for 90 days. So they come in, and when they walk in the door, they're more attached to where they're coming from than they are where they've arrived. So what I do is I say, you know, we can talk, you know, and we talk very, very nicely and everything. Everybody fills everybody in. But when we sit down to dinner, I say, let's everybody go around now and say something they're really happy or excited about from the last 90 days. And you can just feel the energy come into alignment as we go, you know, and sometimes it lasts an hour and a half, two hours, you know, as we go through and, you know, we're eating good food and we're drinking good wine and, you know, everything like that. But I have a rule, you know, and it's just a. I don't have much management role in our company because Babs probably runs the company. But I do have this rule. No meeting starts without a positive focus of getting everybody in the room. And no meeting ends without a positive focus of what people were happy about the meeting. And I said, that's, you know, that's 20, 25 years. You're not. If. If you didn't do that. Dan wasn't in the Room because Dan would have insisted on it, you know, and what it does is it just kind of protects the space from other things that are happening to people outside. In the last year has been, you know, especially on zoom. I do it on zoom because people are in all sorts of different places related to the shutdowns and the pandemics and the. Some people have really taken to remote work and other people, it's not been a good thing. But you got to get them in the room. They're there for a half hour and you can't be dealing with everything that's not working in their lifetime. And the energy in there. So how he's doing it, it really works. It really works.

Yeah, it, it does. And even when we're doing remote.

Strategic coach meetings, you know, you're always there a few minutes before bantering and creating conversation. You start at the top of the hour and then the last chunk. What you're exceptional at is creating relevance, connection, and a sense of ownership of every meeting. But I'm curious both inside of coach and outside, what you've seen. I'm, you know, again, managing in the gain. What are some other techniques we as founders and business owners can use that, frankly, it carries over into our family life as well? You know, one of my goals is always how can I be a great dad? I have less influence now that I'm an empty nester. And, you know, it really starts with asking empowering questions that don't put another person in the defense, but keeps them in a gain mindset, keeps them inspired and motivated to want to come back. You know, that is, you know, you want your kids around as long as possible, you know, hopefully anyway. But the same is true with your team members. So what other strategies do you choose?

The part of your life that's going to give you either the best scorecard or the worst scorecard at the end of your life. And family, I think, is at the top of the list. Your relationships and your family. I think that's the number one issue. I mean, you can go to Mars, but if you screw up, you screw up the relationships. Nobody remembers Mars. They remember, you know, that you didn't do what.

Was required given the importance of a family. And so one of the things that's really fortunate about this is that it's quickly learned. Okay, so the way you learn the difference between the gap and the gain is by.

Having a ritual. You know, ritual, not formal, not a formal ritual, but it's just something you do every day that you could, like at dinner table. One of the things I've really encouraged people to do is to have dinner with their family. Okay? And that solves a lot of problems. One is, you're not at the office, because why are you at the office working when you could have had other people handle the things that you're doing? You know, so it actually, you know, just by saying, why don't you just have dinner every night? Unless there's an exceptional reason why not. And everybody at the, you know, you know, father, mother, husband, wife, they're equal partners. And then the children talk, and you just talk about the three wins for the day. And if kids are young enough, you just have one win. You know, they. They don't get it, but they get the habit really fast, and they like it. You know, mom and dad are saying good things or compliment it. You know, the best way to raise great children is love. The parents should love each other, and the children should have visible evidence every day that their mom and dad love each other. And kids will turn out great, because that's what the kids really want to know. Do mom and dad love each other? Because that gives me predictability about my future, you know, and. And also, also, if they're loving each other, the heat's off me, you know? You know, they're doing it. So what I. What I encourage, I said, just try it out. They'll resist. And I said, dad, this is another one of those corny things that you get from that guy that you, you know, yeah, we go on a trip, and all we do is hear that guy. So tired of him. But you say, no, no, you're going to go to bed tonight, and you're going to go to bed happy or not happy. Why don't we just design it so that every night you go to bed happy? So what happened today that was really great? And they said, well, nothing. It was just a lousy day at school. And I said, yeah, but what did you think about? What new thought did you have? Doesn't have anything to do with school. You know, it's actually a thought that you have a bypassing school so that you don't need school. Oh, and then they're off to the races, you know, and everything, and then say, tomorrow, what could you do that's kind of like that? Do you have something, you know, not the same thing, but something different that. And it takes about two or three weeks, I find. Generally, you have to stick with it. And then they want to do it for life, you know, and if you're on a Road trip. They'll say, you can be on the road trip, but you got to phone in and say what your wins are. Okay? And, you know.

Here'S the thing. A child, during the end of the day is going to have an experience that at the end of the day, their judgment is, it was a crappy day or it was a good day. So if you can give them a capability to actually design and create endless good days, that's a good lifetime skill to have.

And this does get back to.

I mean, the equation's so simple, which is, celebrate your successes. Acknowledge them. Acknowledge them.

But it's based on reality. You're measuring back to where you started, and, you know, it's actually based. It's not the problem with ideals. There's no reality to it. It's an imaginative thing, because that hasn't happened, and you can't measure against it anyway, you know, and, you know, and you know, when. When I become one of the first astronauts to walk on the moon, and then I can see the Earth, I will be a transformed human being. He said, no, in 30 minutes, you have to get back on. You got to get home and everything like that, and this part of the job's done. So go on back home, you know. Yeah, but I've been thinking about this for 30 or 40 years, you know, that I would be the first person. And certainly if I become one of the first human beings to land and I see the Earth, I will be a spiritually transformed human being. Said, no, no, no. First of all, you're going to feel really grimy because you haven't had a bath in three days. And, you know, and there's still some danger in getting back. So get back on. Go through the checklist, get back there. Expected in Houston next Thursday.

And they get home, and their wife says, now that you're home for a while, on the way home, could you pick up some ground beef? And they said, do you know who I am? And she says, yeah, you're an absent father and husband. You got some sucking up to do.

Yep. Yeah. What do I have to do around this place? Go to the moon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the big thing is we create a transformational moment in the future that if we achieve certain things, then we'll be a different person and. No, you'll achieve certain things. That's measurable, and it will represent real progress. But if you're asking for a transformation, I'm sorry, that's not a part of goal setting.

Yeah, transformation is actually being happy with what you actually do achieve. That's a big transformation for most people.

Yeah. Again, going back to one of the first things, as soon as you start comparing it to someone else or where you thought you'd be, that's where misery kicks in. I'll leave this at one other comment. We can start bringing this one home. But I met a guy, super successful, he had his FU number in the bank. He's about early 50s and met him at an event and he was just miserable, suicidal and.

He didn't feel valued. And you know, his, his point of reference was everything that I've worked for.

Doesn'T matter. And what I've noticed in a lot of successful people, so I'll just say a big batch of billionaires. So I'm measuring it by money and fame and celebrity and status. But what happened is when they were 17 or 21 or some age, they created this target that they wanted to get to. And along the way they hit their target and the problem is they didn't reevaluate what mattered. And I think that's. So if you have a static destination.

And you get there, you'll find out. You know, I think the best way I can describe it is, you know, when you're five years old, you might want a million gumballs. And finally, if that's what you're focused on and you have a million gumballs and you're, you know, whatever, 53 years old, you're like, what the hell did I want gumballs for? You know, they're completely irrelevant. So I think that's another part of this, that the psychology, as simple as it may seem, is so non obvious.

Yeah, well, happiness, happiness can only be measured backwards. It can never be measured forwards. I mean, it's a simple rule. And you know, and the people who we have liked the best in our life, you know, and these could be teachers, parents, you know, any position, friends and everything else. If it's long standing and you like them continuously. My sense is that they probably measure happiness backwards. And when you're with them, they get you to do that so that you actually appreciate. So one of the reasons why you like being with them is, is because they get you to measure happiness properly when you're with them. Okay. And, you know, and a lot of people are just intuitive about this because they don't actually, they don't have the diagram and the gap and the gain concept. But I find I'm really good at visualizing thoughts, I'm really good at graphically illustrating thoughts. And it just struck me that if there's 8 billion people on the planet, every one of them sometime during the next 24 hours is going to be both in the gap and the gain. The question is, when they go to bed at night, are they in the gap and the gain? Because your nighttime adventures are very, very influenced by your judgment about what kind of day you just went through and what kind of day you're going to go through tomorrow. So my sense is that your brain will do anything you tell it to do, but it needs direction. And if you keep saying, look for bad, hey, you know.

Bad, good, I don't care. I just want to do something.

Yeah, you're going to find it. Well, where should people go to get the book? Is there a specific website that we're sending people to?

Yeah, it's thegapinthegame.com and strategiccoach.com you know, and Amazon has it. Amazon, you know, Amazon, the.

Gap in the game.

Great.

Amazon is. Will do anything you want it to do just so that they have your credit card.

They love to sell you stuff. That's what I know. And their apps will listen to everything you talk about and put that up on the homepage of your website or your buying app anytime you'll want. And what I did do is I set up a shortcut link, so if you just want to get the book, you can head over to capabilityamplifier.com Gap and that'll send you right to the book and you can grab it there.

Yeah. And this is a bit of a viral book in the sense that.

When you're. First of all, Ben Hardy is just a fabulous writer. I mean, he's just a really. And Ben, I have to tell you, my ideas from my standpoint, I said, ben, the idea works. Just do it. And he said, no, I'm going to tear it apart. And he tears the idea apart. He does the same way with the unad how he tears it apart and he puts it back together and he adds a lot of wonderful context to the idea. So, you know, and I could never write the book that Ben writes. Ben is just. He's an amazing, amazing writer. And Tucker, Max threw in a lot of direction. And, you know, cover designs come from both books, come from Tucker's shop. He's got really. He's got a real sense for packaging, covers and everything.

They sure do.

Yeah.

You know, the thing is that you will immediately, when you read the book, you'll immediately think of 10 other people that it would be crucial to you that they understand this concept. Because you'll have much better discussions and you'll have much better teamwork as a result of this. So, you know, I'm predicting your. Your. Your future addiction to this book.

It's. It's. Well, I. I've made it a part of every conversation I have with professionals now. And I also.

Remind people without being a jerk about it, but I'm like, you're living in the gap. You're living in the gap. How do we get back in the gain? And how do we get back in the gain? I make it about us or them, whatever is more effective, and it's a very, very powerful anchor. And I. By the way, we've got the domain that we want to send people to. By the way, is gapandgainbook.com I had Gord correct us while we were on.

Great on here.

Awesome. Well, Dan, another great episode. This has been a lot of fun. It's always fun to wander around with you for a time or two. And I think we can wrap this up. And I just say if you've enjoyed this episode or you can think of anyone who could benefit from this type of thinking, employees, kids, other entrepreneurs, make sure you forward it to them. And we'd love your comments and feedback on itunes as well. Anything else you want to add, Dan?

Nope, I'm good to go with this. And, you know, we talk about amplifying your capability and how you measure your progress is one of the most crucial skills to amplifying your future capability.

You've got to take ownership and be happy with your past growth of capability to get new capability in the future.

I got nothing else. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching, everyone.