How to Be Relatable and Build Trust

Yeah, Mike, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the term authentic as it relates to presentation, marketing, presentations. Are you authentic? And it seems to me that.

As I hear people telling me that what I did was authentic, it comes back to actually my just comfort with who I am in sharing my experiences and telling my story. What's your, what's your take on this? Because, you know.

Marketing is requiring more and more skill these days. And my sense is that rather than pretending that you're someone that you're not as your basis for marketing, maybe just revealing who you actually are is a better strategy as we go forward.

Yes. And what we're doing in this episode, it's a ton of fun. We've actually pre recorded it. So we're talking about something that I call the Relatability grid. It's how you can create relatable mini stories that are true and authentic, that make people want you, trust you, believe you. And, and there's also a really, really fun story in this episode about Alice Cooper and an extremely profound thing he said about why he, at 73, is alive and why a lot of rockers are not. So all that and more in this episode of Capability Amplify.

Hi, this is Dan Sullivan and this is our next episode. Dan Sullivan and Mike Koenix of Capability Amplifier. And Mike, you brought up a very interesting.

Little formula. You had it up on the screen and it was about relatability. And I would say that after a couple years of steady zoom, I know the difference between people who are relatable and people who aren't relatable. And it would be interesting for you to kind of take that apart for us just to see, because some people.

Come across on zoom as not relatable and others, you're kind of right there with them. You feel instantly connected to what they're talking about and who they are.

All right, so this comes from a love of storytelling. Right. And paying attention to what I've learned over time to be the hero's journey. So for the sake of this, for anyone who's watching this versus listening to it, I'm going to show the same screen that I showed you, Dan, which is, I call it the Relatability grid. And anytime I'm working with someone to build a platform, I always try to find the best way to stack all their stories so they're relatable and you feel a connection with them. So for example, many people have a near death experience, so they'll open up with that. It's a great way to Grab attention or going through menopause or andropause. It's like your midlife crisis, divorce or palimony. Dan Sullivan has his starter marriage story and then moves on to his relationship without Babs, there is no strategic coach. No Babs, no strategic coach. Empty nest. Something I'm going through. I found that having that story of what it's like or losing everything, discovering a secret, a shortcut or a superpower so it never happens again.

I like this one. This is more of a starter question is what's your big hook? That answers why should I know you or mine? One of mine is being unemployable. No college education. Growing up in a town of 763. My dad's a poor farm kid or small town farm community in Minnesota. Felt like an alien. That's a relatable story. My first business cost me my first marriage, just like you. Here's one that I've used recently. My second and third business almost cost my life. Cost me my life from cancer. My second marriage and relationship with my only child.

I lost my purpose. I outdrew who I was, what I did, why I did it and who I did it for. Or another one is a question we all ask ourselves. How do I get my message out to the world? How do I go big? How do I become known? These are all relatable stories. And by echoing what's going on inside your head, you craft a perfect journey, which now is the Joseph Campbell, the hero with a thousand faces. But it's all of us at some point in our lives reach a point where we want something more and we have that call to adventure again. It could be something happens, a sense of loss. And the journey of the Joseph Campbell journey is we have. We get some kind of supernatural aid after we fail. We try and we fail. It's Star Wars. It's also the Christ myth, which has been told for many thousands of years. But we meet a problem. We face a big problem. We meet our mentor, our Yoda, our Gandalf, and then we go through challenges, temptations.

We slay the dragon, we rescue the princess or meet the prince and also atone for our sins, meaning we meet the biggest thing standing in our way, which is our own internal problems. So that's basically the framework. But ever since I started showing this off and teaching it, it's helped me think about stories so much better. And I know you had some great observations too, Dan, in Reflections before we started recording about observing your reaction and how you experience reality.

Well, I've had a lot of time on my own over the last two years, more than normal, simply because of no travel and then not being in person inside our company, in person with our clients and customers. So a lot of dan time. And I was just noticing.

I call this thinking about my thinking that I don't actually experience reality directly. What I experience is a reaction that I've had with what's going on outside of me.

Lots of things are happening outside of me, but I'm reacting, and I'm not reacting to everything. I'm reacting to very specific things. Okay. So it's not like I'm taking in all of what's happening outside of me, because I'm not.

And then I notice that that's just kind of raw material. I'm reacting and that's raw material. And that.

I can become more skillful at taking the raw material of my reactions and then kind of coming up with a strategy. When you're in a situation like this and you have your reaction like this, then here's the way to think about it. Strategy. And then the other thing is here's how to communicate about it and here's how to take action and. Or decide things about it, you know. And so I was just pondering that. And my sense is.

That.

It'S a way of actually.

Coming to grips with yourself.

When you're going through a big change, period. And I think what we're going through right now in the world right now is a big change in the world, period. And because of the pandemic and economic dislocation that's happened, there's political disruption and, you know, all sorts of frothing that's taking place politically everywhere, not just locally. And so I'm reacting to that. And then I say, yeah, but that's just your reactions, you know, doesn't have really anything to do with what's actually happening out there. It's just the way that you're reacting to it. And therefore it's what I would say. It's raw material for thinking, you know, okay.

That'S an interesting thing that happened there. Now, how do in the future, if I come up against this again, how do I rather being shocked by it or just made uncomfortable by it. How do I handle it so that. Handle it so that it's useful? I'm going to have this type of situation happen. How do I make it useful for myself so that as my thought. So I call it reaction response. The response being the creative part of it, conscious creative part of it. And then that's the reality that you're actually dealing with. We're not actually dealing with real reality. We're dealing with.

Our creative responses to our own reactions. So, and that, that's the first part of it. And I said, you know, if I got really good at that, let's say I spend a year just quietly doing it for myself, maybe three things a week. Where I took three things a week and simply said, if this ever happens again, this is how I'm going to respond. Times 52, it's 150 new responses. I said, I bet I'd be cooler and calmer and more.

Constructive as a result of that. And then the second stage of that is I think it would.

Improve.

My experience of being with other people when they're reacting, you know, and they're, they're kind of, you know, going through fear, discomfort or anxiety and everything. It would give me a sense of understanding what was going on, that I could talk to them, you know, I could kind of talk them off the ledge if you, if you, if you want and know, just had a constructive conversation, but not be, not be reacting to their reaction, but actually just kind of understanding what they're going through.

So first of all, that's very Buddhist of you, you know, that it's like paying attention to the.

The drama or the story or the illusion and seeing it as such. And I started doing an exercise recently, whenever. So I like to say that every limitation we have, every challenge that we face is an internal one, first of all, and it's a lack of self knowledge and learning to become a great observer of ourselves makes us better teachers, better humans, and less reactionary or less reactive. And what I started doing with myself and with other people is I say, learn to see the clown. And I started buying people, remember the Punchy the Clown, the inflatable clown doll? I'd say every time you notice a reaction, go punch the clown. Put it in a box and call the clown the clown. But then you'll own it or at least you'll notice your reaction. So it's not an unconscious one. And so now I've just got little boxes of clowns in them. And. But I also, I did this as a joke with a client. I started sending him a clown a day just as a reminder because he had an old identity that I think was standing in his way. And so just call that like number one. The other one about this, you know, you always talk about not being bothered and which again is tied to reaction.

And then the last big idea So I was with Kim White today. I did a clearing with him, and he dialed into.

Some old shame that I've carried around and some old reactivity that I've had around money and a perception of where I think I need to be versus where I am. So it's an area of living in the Gap and why I think I've got a story about how I should be farther along than I am and how I have in the past had a story about that. And it's. It's an old loop that goes way back to.

Probably when I was at my most desperate and destitute.

And I was at the time living on a Super America credit card. I was buying cheese and crackers at a gas station when I owned my agency, Digital Cafe. And the perception was, oh, you guys are so successful, you're doing business with Hollywood. We had Sony and 20th Century Fox. What people didn't know is they didn't pay. They just didn't pay their damn bills. It take, like, six months to get paid, and we had to grow or we die. You know, we were in this really difficult cycle, and.

So we'd go out and take bad jobs to cover our bills, knowing that they were going to be a bad gig that wouldn't be. No one would win. It was just like a bad deal. And I got into this habit of coping and compromising and hiding behind this illusion of success, even though I felt like a failure. And that just. I know it traumatized a dark, dark part of me. So I'm telling you this story because the clown still shows up once in a while, and I can recognize the clown. It doesn't own me, but it still can just pop up now and again. And it shows up in different ways. But it also is one of the relatability stories, because I know I've told a variation of the story before, and it would create a deep connection of trust with someone, and they'd say, I have the same challenge. I know it's preventing me from earning more or solving something. Can you help me with it? So.

That'S my reaction to your reaction.

The thing that really strikes me about this, and I had you mentioned Kim White because we had dinner with him a couple times in Phoenix two weeks ago, and he was talking about the book, one of our quarterly books, which was you Attention, you, Property.

He was talking about the.

Point that's made in very early chapters that there's a point when you're a baby and you're becoming a toddler where one day you notice There's a real difference between you and everybody else.

And.

I think people accept that or don't accept it to varying degrees of emotional response.

That.

When people don't behave like you, you can view that negatively, you know, that and then, you know, probably maturity or you know, becoming more aware in that you begin to realize, well, of course there, if you grant yourself that you're kind of like an independent universe, you got to sort of grant other people the same.

The same status that are independent universes do, and you don't understand them. But why don't you spend some time just trying to understand yourself rather than, you know, trying to enter too much into their world. Why don't you actually investigate what your own world is? And what I find is that my knowledge of other people is fairly consistent with improvements of my own self knowledge.

You know, so as you begin to understand how you operate, there's probably 20% of it that's just completely unique. You know, it's Minnesota farm town and it's, you know, it's what I did in the garage and with stolen electronics and you know, and everything like that. And that's 20% unique. But we're, you know, we're.

You know, we're a creature that's got a 300,000 year history. And there's got to be sort of a common ground just being human and how you respond to all experience. You know, there's a common ground and.

The.

Hero'S journey that you showed, the diagram that you showed on the screen and then your own experience related to money in the very early days of being an entrepreneur. That's a very understandable experience. You know, that's a very.

You know.

And humans are clever because they can take something that's not quite what they experience and relate it completely to something they have experienced. We can actually take something and we can see that there's a pattern that is the same for you as the pattern for me. Even though the circumstances were different, the situations were different, we can understand this pattern of.

Really being up against it.

When we look one way and we have to look one way on the outside, but on the inside we're actually experiencing something very, very different. And we like that peek behind the curtain. People who can pull the curtain aside and let other people peek behind and saying, you know, I was trying to show up this way, but backstage this is what was actually happening. You used the word trust and intimacy with the diagram to begin with. And I think that you're demonstrating trust by pulling the curtain back and you're demonstrating intimacy because they're getting to see something that not many other people get to see.

Yes. And again, as I'm listening to you, I'm teaching Zach right now, my son, who's 19, he's in college. He needs to make some money. And we're not going to give him money. He has to earn it. But I started training him in the business and teaching him some skills that I think are going to be great. Life skills, but also useful to him with me as well. I told him, here's how I will value your time. Here are the KPIs.

But in order to teach him, I have to be relatable and tell him stories about his own transformation to inspire him to want to learn this stuff. So I took him on a little hero's journey. This is the way I was working with him yesterday, and I said, who do you trust right now? Who does your generation trust.

And why? What makes you trust someone? And he told me about this YouTuber that he trusts right now. He's got 10 million followers. His name is Critical. I've never heard of him before. And if he got 10 million followers, clearly he's trusted by a lot of people. And just having a name like Critical, and I'm like, well, what makes you trust him? What makes you believe him? And he goes, well, first of all, he's interesting, he's unique.

And I feel like he's telling me the truth.

Right.

So obviously authenticity enters into the fray here.

Well, usefulness too. That would be part of it, yes.

Yeah, exactly. Where's the shortcut, to use a Dan Sullivan term? And what I realized as I'm observing this and listening and also listening to you is I think, isn't it Socrates who always taught using parables? He was known for that.

Well, well, he had stories. I don't know if they called them.

Yeah, we'll call them stories. Yeah, parables. I was going to bridge the Jesus thing here as well. Right.

Sort of like, I mean, I think parables is attributed to Jesus.

Yep. Yes. So, pardon the distinct, but part of the reason I wanted to blend these, because obviously the greatest teachers told authentic parables. And when it comes from a source of shame or pain, where you know the teller of the story, like, there's nothing worse than seeing someone who's miserable and still stuck in their problem to be telling a story about themselves when you're looking at them and you're like, yeah, that's the reason why you're screwed up. You're stuck in that Story or whatever, right? You want to hear about that? What happened after? It's like, give, give me. I want to see the baby after it's born. I don't want to watch it being born and I don't want to try to look in. You know, that's all bad.

But it led me to think about how.

Great storytellers not only tell the transformational story in a way that's relatable, ideally it comes from a place of authentic personal transformation. That's what builds the hero or the guru.

But also.

Being able to give someone an opportunity to take on different qualities and create a new identity for themselves. I like to say the thing that's preventing you from achieving and experiencing what you want right now is a new identity and an operating system upgrade.

The current lab experiment that I've been running now for several years and I've told you this before, but you were the inspiration for it, Dan. So I'm going to tell a leading story and then where it led to.

Which was three years ago after I had sold you everywhere. Now I came to you and I said, I'm not exactly sure what I should do. And he goes, and you said, well that's easy. Go out and just talk to like 20 business owners, don't have anything to sell, there's no offer. Just ask them the dos, what are the dangers, opportunities and strengths. And you told me it will be absolutely obvious what the next thing should be. And so first of all, you said earlier, what are you blind to?

Right?

And your ability to see truth and future and transformation is really.

Dependent upon what you are blind to and what you see, right? And so if you're going to grow and adapt, you've got to get that operating system upgrade which is modeling people you trust but also opening up your awareness. And so what I found that's worked. When I do what I call vision day, which now is three days long, it's day one is effectively where do you want to be. So I say what mindsets do you have? What values do you have that are absolutely non negotiable that you and your business, in other words your brand and the people you want to work with must have. Okay. The second is what markets do you want to focus on and be a hero to? Again, to use, I'm using coach language here.

So that's the demographic psychographic. But if you don't start with the values, you're screwed already. If you market based on demographic psychographic, you're screwed. The third is what's your model, how are you going to make money? The fourth is the message. What story do you need to tell to attract them? And then the fifth is the media that you need to deliver in, if it's a video or a speech or whatever. And then the sixth are multipliers. What are the tactics that you want to embody?

But what I found that helps people the furthest, fastest is once you've created the clarity.

And you devise a new message, all you have to do is perform and practice. In other words, role play in a new identity. And within usually two to three hours of practicing a speech where you're talking about this new thing that could have been invented minutes before. But if you do that within this new identity that you're just modeling, it becomes so natural so quickly. In other words, the plasticity of the brain will adopt a new identity so quickly. And you can literally build a brand in a day by performing inside that new identity. And anyone can do it. So just curious what your reflection or observation with that would be.

Yeah. Well, again.

You know.

The people who did this with you, because I know that you've taken people through the vision, vision exercise as sort of visioning and packaging and marketing that you do. You have to realize that they're a very special group of people, one who can be committed to a different future even though they don't quite know what that future is.

That's true. Yeah. You've got to.

Fairly small percentage of people. And the other one is that they've been successful already and they're looking for a shift. You're not dealing with people.

Who have been failures by the standards of society. You're dealing with people who have been successful. It's just that it's not enough for them to continue doing what they've been doing.

They don't get any buzz anymore out of what they have been doing. And they're feeling confined, they're feeling restricted with what they've been doing. And the third thing is they can write the check and they have the time. So you've probably gotten it.

When we were.

Talking about target market for a coach and I said it's about one out of every 4,000 entrepreneurs worldwide. First of all, they have to be making $200,000. Well.

You'Re down to a majority. And then they have to have.

Clearly determined that there has to be a new stage to their growth as an entrepreneur. They're not trying to get out of being an entrepreneur. They're trying to become.

A better entrepreneur with bigger results and more satisfaction. With it and everything like that. So every time you put a new criteria like that in, the number of people you do is really. So the big thing is who are the people that. With your message, who you know.

And one out of 4,000 isn't bad. I mean, one out of 4,000, there's tens of millions of entrepreneurs in the world. So divide by 4,000, you're still left with a number that's about 100 times bigger than our client base or a thousand times bigger than our client base. So anyway, there's a lot there. But it's useful that you're not talking to everybody. You're just talking to a particular type of person. And back probably 30 years ago, in coach, I just came up with a little phrase.

The word.

Niche in English is niche in French, and it sounds better. Canadians can get away with both. But the smaller the niche.

I say Nietzsche. No, I'm just kidding.

The smaller the niche, the bigger the market, in other words. And a lot of people just really can't get this, that talking to a few, but masterfully talking to a few is much more powerful from a marketing standpoint, because the few can identify the other few. They'll talk to the other few. And.

When you're willing to risk talking to a few, those few have friends.

That is so dead on. You know, the way I've been articulating it is narrow and deep, beats wide and shallow.

Yeah.

And you've got to have. You've got to nail that story so tightly that it's repeatable. Right. And you've got to guide someone. You know, you have to lead everyone to the promised land and give them the message that also reflects the experience along the way. That's easily to repeat, but it feels like they're the ones who made it up. You know, that's how you create a cult following. It's like, what great bands? How does a great band grow? It's because people go to concerts and talk about the experience. They talk about that journey and.

Yeah, well, the other thing is that there's a differentiation of people who are looking for the transaction.

That saves them having to make any changes.

I mean, there's all sorts of things. Perfume, cosmetic, wardrobe things. It's a transaction that you do that you can sort of fake, actually having transformed yourself. Okay, Money is a good one. Money is a real good. Money itself is a really good capability to fake transformation. Okay, But I think what you're talking about and what I'm motivated by is actual transformation. And that is where you do Some deep digging and get in touch with some of things inside yourself that have always been there. And giving them more room to operate. Giving them more room to operate in the future. I think the differentiation between transaction and transformation is very important. And I don't associate trust and intimacy with transaction.

Absolutely, I agree. And build on your language.

At Genius Network, Jesse Cole spoke the yellow tux. Jesse guy who's got the Atlanta Bananas. Yes. The Banana Savannah. Yeah, the Savannah Bananas. There we go. And first of all, I loved his stories. He was fun and interesting, but he talked about creating the you wouldn't believe moment. That's really what someone would say, is, God, you wouldn't believe what I saw there. These guys have googly eyes on their butts and the players are running around. You see these eyes or whatever. It's like they've got something funny happens at every.

Game, which is entertainment. But the distinction between a transformation is when there is an identity shift that I think is that when there is a noticeable shift in consciousness. And what you had said a little while ago that I really picked up on, Dan, this is really big. Is.

The. What are you blind to? For you to walk away with an extra eye. That is a true transformation, a new level of awareness.

Yeah. Well.

You know, there's a point where we receive lots and lots of support from being among other people. And there's a line where you cross where you're on your own with yourself, you know.

And I find that people, you know, that gradually, over decades, people who. The relationship with them keeps getting bigger is the people who are comfortable crossing the line and being by themselves and having as interesting a life by themselves across the line as they have with other people on the other side of the line and everything like that. And they're comfortable moving back and forth across the line where other people. I mean, you know, I've been in conversations, you know, I'll be at a party or something, and we'll start talking about something that's interesting me. Interesting to me, that actually requires thinking. And somebody will say, whoa, this is really getting deep. This is really getting deep. I said, you know, and I'm struck by it. And I said, I wonder what that person's experiencing. And I think it's fear. We're getting close to a topic where danger lurks. Danger lurks around the corner. If we go another 50ft down this hallway, we're going to be in real trouble. And so the one thing that I have associated with that type of comment is that they're not comfortable being by themselves and thinking their own thoughts.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's probably.

Something.

What if I actually find out who I actually am?

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's again, you're gonna meet one of your clowns.

Well, gonna be a straight clown. Yeah. And maybe, you know, and maybe, you know.

One thing that struck me about Jesse and I don't know, you know, I don't know him at all. And I found his, his presentation wonderful, you know.

Because he transformed an organization in a certain sense. He transformed his sport. And, you know, his goal is to be able to have the Savannah Bananas play to a sold out Fenway park in Boston. And Bob Castellini, who was in the room, his father is the principal owner of the Cincinnati Reds. Right. And my sense is it's probably going to be the sold out crowd is actually going to be the.

Cincinnati Reds. But.

We had a series of speakers. I think there were about four of them. And there was this woman who runs 13 companies and she has this thing. If you want to talk to me, we just link our little thing.

Pinky promise.

Pinky promise. And that was him. And then the guy who is scared shitless about China and wanted to.

That's Casey.

Yep. Make us scared. And then there was Greg who was the comedian, the stand up Craig stand up comedian. And then there was Jesse. And.

I was talking to Ben Hardy. Ben was sitting with us at our table at Genius Network. And I said, you know.

I wonder if any of the four of them can actually turn this off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I said, I just wonder if this is a shtick where they feel very, very comfortable and it's sort of their vehicle for living. And I just wonder if they can actually, can they take a vacation? Can they take a free day from this? Or is it 24, 7, 365, you know, and I didn't have an answer for it, but it just begs the question, I wonder if they can do this all the time.

Wow.

Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

The reason I'm saying that there was a great.

It was a documentary about 25 years ago and it was on female standup comics. And I remember Paula Poundstone was one of them and I really liked her. And then she got into.

Yeah, she was funny.

Yep, they got into all. And she was, you know, very much to, you know, her whole story was just her unfitness to be human. You know, her sheer lack of competence and being a, you know, and being a successful human being, you know, being a successful child, being a success. And, and it just got funnier and funnier as she talked, you know, and, and, and anyway, but she was talking, you know, just straight pala. She was just talking as a person. And she said, you know, the biggest difference between the male standup and the female stand up. She says we turn it off when we come off stage. They don't turn it off. I just found that I'm bringing that up because whenever I see a real powerful presentation that someone has, I said, is this just a presentation or is this basically your mode of living that you've learned to make money?

You're not doing this to make money, you're doing this to survive.

Yeah, that's.

You know, and I'm not.

Saying I know the truth about any of the four of those, but it always brings me up when someone is always on.

Yes, well, that's.

You know, professional speakers.

Are the ones that scare me the most because they're so timing dependent on their shtick. And I've met plenty of actors and actresses who seem like empty shells when they're not in their characters. Like Jennifer Aniston is considered.

One of the big ones. People say she'll just sit and stare. She's not a very interesting person. I don't know if that's true or not. She might be an absolutely wonderful human being. But I have met, been around enough professionals who are.

They're not their character. And other ones who, like you say they're either in that character all the time or there's not a lot there.

All roads lead back to the same place.

Another insight into this is through Joe. Joe Polish. Babs and I had the opportunity to spend an evening with Alice Cooper and his wife in.

Scottsdale, Imperial Valley. And.

It was really enjoyable. We were at dinner for like two hours and I was seated next to her and he was right on the other side, to my right. And I just got talking to them, you know, how they met and you know, what the experience was. And then we got into his present day career and he's over 70 and last year he did over 100 concerts and live concerts.

I know, it's completely insane.

Yeah. And then, you know, he has a serious FM nighttime show, Nighttime with Alice Cooper, where he, you know, gives stories about the history of rock and roll. And he just dropped a line there and he says. I said, how is that? And he says, well, he says, I'm completely free. He says, I can say anything I want because the rest of them are dead. And.

It was a big laugh. And I said, well, why is that? Why are the Rest of them dead. And he said. Yeah, he says a good question. He says a really good question. He said.

I'm not the character on stage.

Yeah.

That is.

So interesting, Dan.

Because.

If I'm really, really authentic, I think one of my unconscious terrors, it's not an unconscious one anymore. My last reinvention cured this. But how I can relate to that is I couldn't articulate it at the time, but my soul hurt so bad, and I had outgrown who I was, what I did, why I did it, who I did it for.

And it had to do with, I think, a lot of unconscious childhood trauma I had been running away from in pursuit of. I was running away from. Not running towards. There was just a lot of accumulated pain. And I don't think I got.

That's a good line.

Tell me what you. What you heard.

No, you were running away from running towards.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah, we'll use that one.

And what I found is when I tell that story, I've got it. It's one of my relatability grid stories. It didn't start out that way. I was just telling one guy, one day, I'm with a gentleman. I was in Mexico, and he ran a very successful business, had hundreds of employees, lots of money, and all the winnings. And he's playing the role of Mr. Macho CEO, and he turns to me and he starts sobbing, and he goes, I'm ready to kill myself. He said, you just described exactly where I am. And this is what's been going on for 20 years. And when I uncovered what was behind it, it was like, whoa. He had been through some hellacious stuff and, you know, put on a happy face during the day. And in the background, you know, he had a hole in his heart, and he was suffering from all sorts of health issues that he said cost him probably 10 or 15 years of his life or his longevity, rather. And I do think, relating back to what you said about.

Damn it.

What's our Alice Cooper?

Alice Cooper taking on? Being able to take off the identity of that character who really. When. When Shep Gordon created the character Alice and he was anti school and anti parents, it was the perfect rebellion character for the 70s, you know.

And they keep. They keep producing children and students, you know. Yes, it's an endless. It's an endless.

It's like AC dc, you know, or Kiss, you know, these identity bands. And then you meet them and they're just sweethearts off stage. You know, they're, you know, not all of Them.

But I found Alice, what impressed me most, or whatever his name is, you know, I mean, because that's a stage name. But what impressed me was.

He'S really smart. I mean, he's a really smart person. And I was talking.

I think you're really. You're really, you know, a great entrepreneur. And he said, well, you know, he said, I don't really think of myself. He said, I'm in the entertainment business. And I said, yeah, but, you know, it's a resource, and you've made it bigger, and that's entrepreneurism.

But anyway, you know, on weekends, I mean, he's channeled. He told the story about his addiction, which was beer, actually, and that he had a low fridge right next to the bed, and before his feet hit the ground in the morning, he had drained his first can of beer for the day. And then it went on, and his wife gave him a fork in the road. Decision to make between me or the beer, me or the beer. And, you know, and that's 43 years ago. And he had stuck to it, but he poured it all into golf. He's, you know, he's a scratch golfer and he golfs every morning. And I said, well, that's, you know, I mean, golf courses are destroying the planet, but I don't see any other problem with it. You know.

That's. Oh, my God.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't see.

I don't see any other significant issues with it. But anyway. And then he's a backup Sunday school teacher at his local church. Both he and his wife are the children of ministers, and they've remained connected, you know, throughout their life and everything like that, you know, And I found it really, because it wasn't my thing, you know.

You know, that kind of music really wasn't my thing, that kind of entertainment. So I went home and I mean, his Wikipedia section must go on for pages and pages and pages. You know, I mean, he's a genre unto himself. Well, not really, but, you know, he's got. There's others who have, I think, borrowed more from him than he has from them. And.

I think you're right. By the way, Vincent Damon Fournier is his real name.

Yeah. He's from the Midwest, I think.

Yeah, I believe it's Detroit, Michigan. Yes. And he's 73 as of now.

The connection, Babs, because I think he grew up a couple miles from where Babs grew up. Right about the same time in Detroit.

Yeah, he was early 70s was really when he was getting.

Kicking it, I think. Yeah, they Turned and you know, the discussion was that it was really crowded. You know, rock and roll by that time was really crowded. The competition was fierce, but there was no villain. And that was. Shep Gordon said, there's no villains in rock and roll. And so they created a villain. That's a long spread. That's from the 70s till that's 50 years. That's a big spread.

Yeah. No, he's. I think what. When I look at him and when you talk about the Wikipedia again, I want to link back to the most important thing that I get out of this, which is I knew how to turn it off. You know, that is not my, it might be my stage identity. It's not my real life identity. And you look at some real rockers.

And I did. I. We used to do some work for Prince's studio, Paisley park. And it was during the heyday of Prince and what was going on. He had a crazy life, legendary. And I had friends who were partying with him and.

You know, that character was pretty consistent, really. And that is really profound, what you shared. I hadn't thought of it through that lens, but being multi dimensional and the connection I was going to make is when you look at his Wikipedia page, Ellis's. What he has is a rich set of relationships with a lot of people over time that he's created transformative impact on by his real life Persona, not his stage Persona. And I think that's. That to me is a marker of a very successful human being.

Yeah, well.

It'S the Harry Truman, President Truman. He said, I want to tell you why the truth is superior. He says it's much more efficient. You only have to remember one version.

And I think you know who you are. If you continually develop what you see as who you are and continually add knowledge to it and skill to it, amplify your capabilities. You amplify your capabilities. But it's a long term project that you've been working on all your life.

My, my, my sense is that people sense that. That, you know, and, you know, and I'm. I'm kind of in touch with who I was when I was six, you know, and. Yeah, yeah. And I think you do too. I think you do too.

Yeah. I think somewhere along the lines some of it got lost when the cruel world told you that wasn't okay to be your alien self. No.

You just.

Went into places that your parents told you not to go into.

And hang out with characters that honestly you wouldn't have brought home.

Everything like that. We experiment.

Yeah.

You're a risk taker. I'm a risk taker. I mean. Yeah, you have risk days. You know when you say, I don't care what I was working on.

Yep. No, once in a while it's fun to hang out with the naughty kids, that's for sure.

Well, so you make bets, you know, you make bets.

That's true.

Damn.

Well, let's.

It'll be interesting to have this conversation. The trust and intimacy.

And say, does this conflict at all with the notion of fake selves that's being avatars and fake selves that is being created? I wonder how these two connect with each other or conflict with each other as you go forward.

Yeah, well.

I think the distinction is, and this is what, going back to the first topic, which is the relatability grid, is the closer they are to.

Being.

Real and authentic. It's certainly powerful. Everyone can tell a Steve Jobs story, but that's not real and raw and authentic. I think that trust, that true trust, comes from a sense that the character who's telling the story is congruent with the transformative new identity. And that's what being real is, you know, and we can feel it. We can spot a fake. And so, yeah, I think that's. Well, I know we'll have variations of this conversation in the future, too. So what do you say we wrap this one up yet?

You do the wrap.

Okay. Well, so this has been another episode of Capability Amplifier here with Dan Sullivan. Always an interesting day when you get to talk to Dan Sullivan. And what we'd love you to do is if you have some comments, feedback, thoughts, make sure you leave them in comments. Share this if you know someone who could benefit from this conversation, share the episode with them, whether it's video or audio. So thanks a lot for listening, listening, watching, and we'll see you in the next one.

Thank you.