How To Change With The Changing Economy | Capability Amplifier

Welcome to another episode of Capability Amplifier. My name is Mike Koenigs. I'm here with the incredibly bright and interesting Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, and we are here to help you increase and improve your capabilities so that you can give more, live more, and earn more. All right, Dan, while we're here for another episode of Capability Amplifier, I'm excited as usual, and I can't wait to dive into this next episode. What's going on, my friend?

Well, here's something, Mike. You have added a capability to my life through this podcast series because I have a lot of really incredibly intelligent people. I have a lot of very, very interesting people that I do podcasts with, but I don't have a lot of people who are incredibly intelligent, interesting, and crazy. So this fulfills a whole dimension that I've been searching, because being intelligent, interesting, and crazy isn't an easy trick to pull off of. And you're also very successful.

You know what? I don't know if I should interpret that as a great gift, but I will accept that gift from you. And I'll tell you what, here's what I believe to be true. And I'm not saying this about myself, but I know from the past, people who I'd consider a little crazy also brought a certain degree of genius to every conversation and were able to think outside of boxes and barriers and borders. And to me, that is a very, very necessary part of living in our next era of whatever this human evolution we're existing in is as we become more virtualized.

It's very interesting. I was in London for two weeks, and I just came back, and one of my great treats in London is that they still have massive bookstore in London. And my favorite is a place called Waterstones, which is right on Piccadilly. It's about two blocks from Piccadilly Circus, and it's five floors, and every floor has 20 or 30 sofas and chairs that you can sit down. And you could literally go in there all day and read books and leave in the evening without actually buying anything. But I always do because my belief is that there creating value for me, so I should actually reward them for creating value. But I picked up three books. One of them was called America, and it was by a French philosopher by the name of Jean Belliard, who I think is dead now. It was a book written in 1985, very short book, maybe 110 pages. And he's just talking about his experience for the first time of actually being in America. You know the other great book by a Frenchman About America was written in the 18th century. De Tocqueville. Alexis de Tocqueville. He was a 28 year old aristocrat. He wrote two volumes called Democracy in America when he got back. And to this day it's probably the most accurate depiction of who Americans are. But this book was an addition to that. And he's a bit crazy and that's what I really liked about it. And he said that essentially he said two things. One is America owns the future, because anytime's a good time to start over in America.

That is absolutely true.

And he said other places are trying to hold on to the past, but in America you're basically respected and you're rewarded for starting over again.

There's something interesting about that and it revolves even around our bankruptcy laws. The fact that in America you're forgiven, where in most parts of the world you are destroyed. And not only does it bring shame upon you, but shame upon your entire family. Family for generations. I not only completely agree with that, one of the things that I've been doing lately at my events is I ask people, I say, how many of you are here to reinvent yourself? I've gone so far as I'm creating something I call Reinvention Masterclass with that very intent. And here's what I've been noticing. I used to ask that question. Half to maybe 60% of a room would raise their hands and in less than five years I'd say 95%. And these are entrepreneurs who have either recently sold their businesses and still carry with them imposter syndrome, Meaning I'm not sure if I could ever do it again. Was it just luck? Was it just timing? Was it that I was young and stupid and I didn't know any better? And now that I know better, I probably wouldn't put up with the bullshit that I would now, you know, et cetera, et cetera, or some variation on that theme. But I've noticed a massive desire for total reinvention. And I do believe that as we've been living in this, I think, an increasingly unstable world where our perception of what is real and what isn't real and what fake news is and what it isn't, and the tests and pressures upon media and what Facebook and social media have done and the fact that what we define as reality can be created and recreated and we can't perceive it with our senses, ultimately that has led me to something that I've been sharing more and more, which is the basis of what I call being versus doing and I can't remember if we spent time on that in the last episode or not.

No, I will tell you this. I believe that there's 180 degree spectrum between absolute order and absolute chaos. And there's a line somewhere that separates the borderland between chaos and order. And I think we're closer. And a lot of people are in the borderland where 20 years ago they were much more in order. But I will say this. I was born in the year before World War II ended. Actually, I was born two weeks before D Day. So my birthday was a week ago. 10 days ago.

Well, happy birthday, sir.

Yeah, yeah. Yep, 156. Things are still moving in the right direction.

Fabulous.

And what I mean is I'm closer to 156 now. But what I noticed is that there was the period from the end of the Second World War till I think, probably the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was about 46 years. It's an abnormal period of American history. Okay. And what I mean by that is that people went through the Great Depression, they went through the Second World War and they came back and all they wanted was order, structure and predictability. And the society was big corporations, big government and big unions. So people just wanted to get away from war. They wanted to go from the uncertainty of the Depression. So there was a period and this standoff between these two world powers kind of created a stability where first of all, they both had nukes and you had to really keep things tightly controlled and everything. But once the Soviet Union collapsed, my feeling is that things went back to kind of a normal state of affairs, namely that things got unpredictable again. And they were unpredictable before the Great Depression and they're unpredictable now. So a lot of Americans who grew up the biggest generation we ever had. Are you a boomer?

I am just on the cusp. So I was born in 66, so I am a non anything.

You know, see, you're not a boomer. You're 64, I think is the cutoff. I'm sorry, Mike, but no, it's all right.

Because the funny thing is I've never identified with a Jewish generation and even Gen Xers. Technically, I'm a little too old to be a Gen Xer, even though by definition I am. But I don't really identify with any group. You know, I married a baby boomer. My wife is actually older than me. And there is a distinct difference in our makeup. Also, interestingly, I would say more of my. A lot of my clients, customers, my mentor, advisor, partner, clients are boomers. More so than younger. Although lately I've been attracting a lot more women who are younger who, again, just over the past few months, I've really figured out the reason why and what the brand attraction and the promise attraction is. But just to echo what you're saying, Dan, right now, where war was the great thing that created the unpredictability, now it is media, social media, and then unrest amongst us that I think more people can feel now, but they don't even know what it is. And I think that what we're going to spot, see and notice over the next three to 10 years is the basis of fundamental society. And all things in it are going to be rocked and shaken by AI as it enters into the workplace and creates the single largest division amongst humans. And it'll be an invisible force that just simply makes jobs disappear so quickly now. It's going to create incredible abundance and opportunity at the same time. I always have an infinite amount of faith in humanity to adapt. And at the same time, what we think is stable and normal simply will not be. And you're going to be rewarded for reinvention and innovation more so than ever before.

So you're getting ready and getting other people ready for this.

That's what I'd like to say. You know, I mean, we all do.

I mean, that's how we make our living. You know, first of all, I'm two years before the boomers. So 46 is the beginning of the boomers, and I was born in 44. And there's just an incredible difference in my approach to life. And part of it is my generation is the first US Generation that was smaller than the generation before. Okay. And your experience, also, you're a generation smaller than the generation before, and that means that there was a lot of opportunity. When I went to the schools, they had overbuilt for the generation before. So you got a lot of personal time from the teachers. When I got into the job market, a job was there for, you know, you could have a job, there was no problem with it. And I remember going to Outward Bound started off as a British program. It's worldwide now, but it's outdoor testing yourself in the wild and its teamwork and its leadership. I was one American among 71 Brits. And the Brits really didn't recover from the Second World War till actually the Beatles came along. You know, the mid-60s, when the Beatles really hit big, that was the first time since the Second World War that there was an upward trend in British society. So they said so who sent you? And I said, well, nobody sent me. And they said, well, you know, a corporation sends you here, or the legal system, in some cases, the legal system sent people to straighten themselves out. And I says, no. I read an article about 10 years ago when I was 10 years old, sports Illustrated. It was about Outward Bound. I cut out the article. I said, you know, I'm going to go there. And I did two years at university. And they said, you did two years of university? And I said, yeah, but I got tired, so I just dropped out for a year or so. And they said, well, how could you go back to university? And I said, well, I'll go back and get a job. And they said, well, how can you get a job? And I said, well, you go back, get a job, save some money, and you go back to university. Well, how do you get back in? And I said, you write them a check. I was just so struck by the freedom as being an American, especially my generation of American, you do what you want to do. I mean, you have to have the money. You have to pay at the door and everything like that. But generations really make a difference. And it's kind of funny. They're talking about the millennials. I mean, that's probably next to the boomers, probably the most famous generation. They're saying that the upper reaches of the millennials are showing the same behavior as the generation before them, except 10 years later, they're moving to the suburbs, they're trying to get a foothold in real estate, they're getting married, they're having kids, but it's 10 years later because they got blindsided in 0809, two things they got blindsided. One was the financial downturn. The other one was the fact that the contract, more or less a social contract that Americans have had since the Second World War, that it doesn't matter how much money you spend on higher education, the future is going to pay it back. And that's not true anymore. It's just not true. And this is the first generation that's living with the broken contract. They're living with a lot of debt, and they don't have the payback opportunity. You know, I'm. I was in the Army. I had the GI Bill. It paid for my living expenses, but I borrowed the equivalent in today's dollars of around $75,000 to go to college. And I paid it back in about six, seven years. You know, I paid the whole thing back in six, seven years. And I expected to the money would be there the Job would be there. So let's talk about the unsettled world, because that's how you kick the subject off. Mike, go back to what's unique about the unsettling right now, because first of all, you're. I think you personally and I do, because we're both add. We experience unsettling when we get up every morning. And then what the day is about is restoring some sort of sense of personal order.

You're right. So I've been thinking a lot about this very thing, and I've made a point lately of changing how I approach the chaos and how much permission I give it in my mind and in my body.

That's an interesting concept, giving chaos permission. Yes, that's an interesting thought, because most people would not think about chaos as connected to concept of permission.

Well, here's what I'll tell you about that part of it is I've been doing a lot of deep work with what I call a high performance acceleration team who've been forcing me to operate and behave differently. And they really brought it to light how addicted to chaos most people are. One of the tools that I see society grounding, which actually does the exact opposite, but it appears that way is our use of mobile phones. We walk around and think that that's a grounding mechanism, that we're somehow connected to some greater force. And the truth is all it does is creates even more chaos and even more addiction. So why don't you re ask the question? Because I want to frame it within one other piece here.

Yeah, yeah. Because the whole topic, first of all, I mean, you got on that, you know, you've rebranded probably a proven process, but also an entirely new process called the reinvention Masterclass. And what you're saying is that, you know, there's a real measurable shift from five to 10 years ago in the number of people who are seeking in some way, in some part of their life to actually reinvent themselves. Some people, their whole life, they're trying to reinvent themselves. I kicked it off by saying that the French philosopher said that this is America, and this is why America owns the future. Because reinventing yourself is first of all something that's always possible, and it's generally seen as a good thing.

Yes, I'll add on to this. So here's what I believe to be true, is our ability now to reinvent and create massive value for oneself is a process of recognizing and realizing that society as a whole is addicted to chaos and that chaos is the enemy of innovation and peace. And the new form of prosperity. In other words, I think those who recognize and realize that extraordinary addiction that takes place and learn how to do a few things, which is massive personal and internal reinvention, recognizing that transitioning is a skill set to be mastered and that there is a shift that is occurring. So we entered into not long ago what I call the influencer economy. Other people have talked about it, and it's the value of a personal brand. And there are people like Gary Vaynerchuk, Tony Robbins, the Kardashians, for example, even Donald Trump, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, became a massive influencer and figured out how to control a channel of communication in such a way to create an incredible amount of awareness outside of the traditional media world and be able to dominate and own an audience and control them enough to cause either some form of an economic shift to occur, a political shift, or be able to effectively name a product and make it popular virtually overnight. Tim Ferriss is another one who's done that. Now I believe that we are about to enter into something that I've coined and I call it the being economy. In other words, the process. And even when you're talking about in your generation and in the generation before, before the broken contract occurred, you could do things. You could fill out a line item, you could be a good boy and girl in school and in college, you could get your gold stars and the world would take care of you. And now that is no longer the case. You are simply becoming a drone and a commodity. And the world does not value commodities at all. In fact, every form of commoditization, when we started outsourcing and creating outsourced labor was an example, that the technology, accounting, et cetera, AI is about to commoditize another entire generation of workers. And so in the being economy extends beyond the influencer economy. When you able to have a skill set that is so fast moving, but you're also able to be prized. So this notion of prizing oneself and being prized by a category, and that can either be by creating a category of one for yourself that you own and dominate, that can be in the form of whether it's books or media or a show or a podcast or whatever, but it's become necessary now to, in order to be prized and to be part of the being economy, when you show up in, your value is intrinsic. Your value is inherent. People recognize that. And it has to do with personal branding. CEOs of corporations who are properly prized can create a multiplier of value. For their own brand over and over again. Again, Elon Musk, whether you buy into it or not, you can say, well, he's $4 billion in the hole and this and this and this. That guy creates so much media, so much attention, and you could say value by being prized. And even if what he's doing turns to rubble and ash, I'd bet on the guy to be able to reinvent himself in a short period of time because he embodies being ness. You know, a Tim Cook, for example, does not. He did a fine job of replacing Warren Buffet is invested in Apple, and Apple is arguably one of, if not the most profitable and valuable corporations in the world. But their pricing doesn't have to do with the individual. They move beyond that. So some of what I'm talking about I know is mushy because I'm still trying to figure it out, but I just know it to be true. I can observe it and I can feel it. So I don't know if I answered the question, but I.

Well, here's the thing. Let me just throw out another topic that I'm noticing more and more. The telling of stories is crucial to reinventing yourself, first of all, because it can be done really quite quickly. You could be telling one story one day and the ground changes under your feet. And if you're quick on your feet and quick minded, you can tell another story.

So for those of you who can't see what we're doing here, he just showed me a program that he's created which is called Creating a Story Brand.

Here's what I'll say. I didn't actually create this, but I've been using it as the basis of a lot of my work lately. And it's by Donald Miller called Building a Story Brand. Although I've kind of capitalized and built on top of it. When I talk about prizing and being. So we'll come back to it because it's worth talking about, but keep on going. Keep on going.

Yeah, well, I use a lot of Aristotle, you know, so I didn't create all this stuff. Aristotle for his time was just as smart as anybody else was smart for their time. You know, that's what a lot of people don't realize, that people in the old days were really smart and they were just as smart in relationship to their circumstances as the smartest people today.

They just didn't have the benefit of a channel of media that allowed collaborative multiplication of knowledge and capabilities like we have now. It's just this massive acceleration and A single word, a meme these days can take the place of an hour's worth of a conversation and a couple days of history.

Yeah. But fortunately they didn't know they were missing. That true that. You know, I mean, I grew up on a farm as you did. I grew up on a farm and I made friends when I was 8 years old with a 78 year old woman who lived next to us. And I asked her, you know, she was born in the 1870s and I'm a history buff, so I went and consulted the encyclopedia and as nurse, I can figure she didn't have electricity, she didn't have cars, she didn't have phones. Everything that we consider normal now. So I asked her, what was life like before that? And you know something? It was a full life. It had a lot of different dimensions. Normal was normal. You know, we only think it's odd because we compare our normal to someone in the past and it just seems like they're missing a lot. But maybe they had things that were missing and one of them is certainty. She had a lot of certainty. She has far more certainty than a farmer today. You know, so talk about the story. First of all, is the storytelling. When people reinvent themselves fundamentally, they have to tell a different story, don't they?

Precisely. And in fact, I've got a couple clients I'm working with right now. And first of all, the way I've attracted a whole new class of higher quality partner clients in my life is by telling a different story. I didn't change, but I created something much more attractive to them. And it really had to do with this being able to communicate very succinctly the benefits of being part of the being economy and being able to rapidly reinvent yourself and, and create a category of one. All of which increases your prizing.

So I'm going to ask you a question about this, Mike, because when I first met you, you were diagnosed with cancer. I remember talking to you at Genius Network and you had come into Strategic Coach and then you had to drop out of the program just because you had to go through the cancer thing. So that's a reinvention afterwards because I remember you, you were the 800 pound gorilla in the early.

First of all, very first was at the Fontainebleau in Miami beach at the Green Room. And I remember just chatting with you and I said, God, this is one of the real movers and shakers on the planet. And then you got blindsided. And then what I've experienced from you is a constant series of Reinvention. So what was the question that you were asking yourself when you really got blindsided? That has produced some spectacular answers since then. So what was the question that you were asking yourself? Because you know, a lot of people don't recover from that kind of blindside. They were in the sun and now they're in the shadows. So what was going through your thinking at that time?

I haven't thought about this in a little while, but I'll tell you exactly what it was. And I actually ended up writing a book about it. My 13th book revolves around answering that question. And it is simply how can I turn my transformation and survival into a movie that I know I would love to watch? And people who had also came a process of non judgmental observation. So I became a forward movement towards a transformation. What I realized, it forced me to really examine what may have caused that to occur in the first place. And honestly, I believe my addiction to chaos and busyness turned into an enormous amount of stress that manifested as a disease. And when I meet other entrepreneurs who go down for the count and either don't survive or go through a giant wake up call like I did, very often it's a series of of addictions, whatever they may happen to be. So in my case it was this constant movement. It was actually anger and rage and anxiety that was swirling around me all the time. So cancer forced a re examiner and an examination of that. It also forced me to completely bop out of the business. And my own team filled in the gaps and took over. And the company actually became more profitable while I was away. Now it didn't make more money. I'm always good at making a lot of money, but I'm also very good at spending it on the wrong people and the wrong things and listening to the wrong advice. You know, I'm better now as a 50 some year old than I certainly was in my 20s, 30s and 40s. So I think again, going back to the answer and this is going back to the process of storytelling. You know, if you look at the hero's journey and for that matter any kind of Jungian work as well, which then is going to go back to Aristotle is certainly one of the foundations creators of storytelling. At least understanding it. I think story drives humanity, it drives our evolution, it drives language, it drives progress. And I think it also creates evolution of mind, body and spirit as well. So I think I became very conscious of it and I made an effort every single day. And I would be like, even though my body said you can't get up today. I said, but I've got to make a movie. I've got to make a movie that I'd be proud to watch. And I know that by watching that movie it would make me stronger. So it basically came into this momentum creator, and I think you and I both love that word, momentum and progress. And ultimately, in your new book, capableism, becoming more capable. And it requires an enormous amount of force pressing against us to compress that spring and create potential.

Yeah, well, it's an option, you know, I mean, life is elective, it's not compulsory. The thing that I feel is that you can choose to become more capable, but you don't have to. You don't have to. But if you choose not to become more capable, you've also lost your vote. I mean, you can complain and everything else, but nobody pays any attention to you because you lost your vote. And I was thinking, you know, because one of the most powerful books that we've given out to all of our coach clients in the program is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Very, very small book. And if you haven't read this, please read it. He was a psychiatrist in Vienna when the Nazis came in. He was Jewish. He was put on a boxcar with his wife when they got to Auschwitz, which was the big killer camp for the Nazis, the first day, within hours, his wife was killed. She was immediately taken off the train and gassed. And what do you do? What do you do? You know what he did? He took off his wedding ring and he said, she's gone out there, but now she's in here. And I'm going to get rid of the ring because the ring is connected to her being out there and she's not there. And he said, I Before they kill your body here, they want to kill you, who you are. He said, they want to kill your meaning. Before they kill your body, they want to kill your meaning. So he said, they're not going to do it. So he created a daily structure for himself where he found something funny, he did something useful, he helped someone and he remembered a name, and he remembered prisoners names and he remembered guards names. And he found something beautiful. It was a tree. He could look out a window on a hill above Auschwitz. And he said, every day I'm going to just deepen my understanding how beautiful that tree is. And here's the other thing. When I get out, I'm going to write a book by my entire experience. And I was an okay psychiatrist before, but this experience is going to Turn me into a world changing thinker. And he just locked in and he reinvented himself. I didn't realize that until you brought up the topic today, Mike. But he saved himself to the degree that he could because it was still a huge chance. I mean, somebody just might decide to kill him one day. But he said, I'm not going to contribute to the bad luck that's going to get me killed. If there's a chance of me surviving, I'm going to contribute to the chance of surviving. You know, I've just talked through that. I'm not talking about the actual experience. I'm just talking about the pattern. Was what I just described. Was the pattern pretty similar? Yeah, because that might be a good book for your reinvention masterclass. Because talk about tough conditions to reinvent yourself. I doubt if anyone has experienced worse.

Yeah, well, Viktor Frankl's book is one of my favorites. It's also one of Tony Robbins favorites. He said he reads it at least once a year. And I have a story. I'll make it short, but it has to do with the process. So here's what I did. I went through surgery, chemotherapy, where I had a port in my chest, which is just really sucks. It's like sleeping on a giant bolt in your chest. I mean, you feel it all the time and it is a foreign body. Right. But I ended up going to Duke Medical to be treated and I spent about six weeks there. That's where I had a combination of chemo plus radiation therapy every day. And I chose it because I met a doctor who gave me more hope than any other doctor I spoke to. And I felt a, a real intense spiritual connection with the guy, an energetic connection. He actually reminds me a lot of you, now that I think about it. Of all the crazy things, I never realized that until just this moment. So what happened is he took me in just like he treated me like a son, which was unusual for a doctor. He'd invite me to his home and he was this very well known radiologist and he had Nobel laureates at his house on a regular basis. And it was during the holidays. I was there during the Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's where I was being treated away from my family, which of course we're in San Diego and as I remember, it's 2,521 miles away. But I made a decision as part of the movie I wanted to watch to write my first book. Because I had worked with many, many New York Times best selling authors. Some of my clients Were Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer and Ariel Ford, who was one of the people who made this happen. And my wife was a twice published author. And I always felt like a kind of like a zero, because I hadn't. And I had produced a lot of products and done a lot of things, but I hadn't written my book. So I decided I was gonna write a book about writing a book. I figured, why the hell not? And I documented my process. So part of the process was I wrote, published, promoted, and became a number one best selling author in less than 30 days, with less than an hour of strength a day. Because I was waking up in a pile of my own hair and watching my body decay. But I made that connection. I realized my body is not me and I exist outside of it. So very, very similar to Victor's story. It was sort of like in order to survive Auschwitz, you have got to survive outside of the flesh and know that your body is not you. And that is part of the cancer survival process that many other survivors have described. So while I was there, I had done work with Tony Robbins before that, and I connected with one of his coaches who I wrote to. And I said, hey, I've got this book that I'm working on, and I'd love to give it away to all of Tony's coaches. And this guy said that would be the greatest gift. And in the process, I also was asked to speak at a business master event, which is one of Tony's big events. The timing of it, unfortunately, was two days before my last radiation treatment. So what I did is I said scheduled. I talked to my doctor, and he allowed me to do double radiation treatments on two days. So I left from Duke, and at the time, I weighed less than 150 pounds. My normal weight at the time was probably about a buck 90. I had lost a fair amount of hair. I was extremely skinny and emaciated. I traveled to Las Vegas where this event was taking place. I got as good of a haircut as I could get with what was left. I got a spray on tan. And I can remember I was getting. The only way I could get a spray on tan was like a real person spraying it on me, which was very unsettling for a nice catholic boy from Minnesota to have a man spraying you while you're buck naked. But I remember standing there apologizing for my appearance, and he says, man, you survived. Thank God, you know?

Well, you know, if you're gonna do that treatment, Las Vegas is the place to do.

That's right. That's right. Get my Hoo Hoo sprayed on. You know, it's like no one needs to see that, but they were spraying it. So I get up on stage the next day and I got to tell my story for the first time and I hadn't even been home yet and I gave away my book and I told the story about how I wrote the book and the place went freaking nuts. You know, standing ovation that lasted for 10 minutes. It just didn't stop. You know, I look at the pictures now and it did feel like a hell of a journey. And in a way I realized at that moment I got to watch the movie I made. You know, it was like it was a survivors movie. So I can't say I survived Auschwitz by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a journey that was worth taking. It certainly changed my life and refocused and that became a product, that became a franchise. And even as we are speaking, it turns out as of right now, in four days I'm doing our next publish and profit event where 100 people become best selling authors and I've helped 1700 people write best selling books now as a result of that kind of weird accident that happened in the hospital six years ago.

Yeah, you know the interesting thing, and this is just a little tag on that I want to mention, but right at the end of man's search for meaning, Viktor Frankl said that the commander of his particular division, because Auschwitz was a vast complex, they had a lot of smaller camps inside of a massive complex. But the particular commandant who was in charge, you know, kind of like the movie Schindler's List, he was a very evil person, you know.

Yes, yes.

That guy was actually hanged by the Russians almost immediately when the Russians took over the camp. But he talks about this man and he had knowledge that he was captured because he was freed. I think the Russians actually freed that particular camp. It wasn't coming from the Brits and the Americans and the Canadians. But anyway, for some reason he tried to wonder what happened to this camp commander, this evil, nasty, brutal person. And sometime later, I don't remember the exact, he actually got a report from somebody who had been in the camp with the commander, the Nazi commander. And he said, what was he like? And he said he was like an angel. He said he got up every day, he just helped everybody. He was kind and he said he was like an angel. Viktor Frankl, it's a really great line. He said, you know, when it comes to human beings, you never know. And the guy died in the camp. But he said, you know, this thing of. He doesn't use the word reinvention, but this whole thing he said, you never know with humans. Their capacity to transform themselves. That little comment about the camp commander at the end was almost like a little trick within the trick for Viktor Frankl. Because people say, well, why did you care about this camp commander and everything else? Because his very philosophy is anytime people choose to transform themselves, they can transform themselves. Even a person who is evil in one setting, if there's any humanity in them, they can choose to actually transform themselves. I just found that little add on that he did in the book was almost the proof of concept because he was a good person. He was a good person. And so we tend to think, well, of course a good person would transform themselves, but what about an evil person? Can an evil person transform themselves? I mean, that commander deserved to be executed. I mean, he was just a nasty. I mean the whole regime was criminal from top to bottom. But it's kind of interesting that he had room in his mind and this was the man who ordered his wife's death. And he had room in his mind to say, well, you never. He didn't say it was fake. He didn't say, you know, he was just acting or anything like that. He said, yeah, you never know.

I'll tell you this is probably opening up a giant can of worms. But I'd go so far as to say this is a strong argument for a complete re evaluation of our prison systems because I believe that circumstance often drives you there. It's been pretty much proven by folks like Daniel Amen that a lot of people wind up in prisons have strange chemical thing up a giant can of worms. But I'd go so far as to say this is a strong argument for a complete re evaluation of our prison systems because I believe that circumstance often drives you there. It's been pretty much proven by folks like Daniel Amen that a lot of people wind up in prisons have strange chemical imbalances caused by nutrition and ultimately the transformation that can take place and also the wasted resources. Because anytime I see a human being on the street holding a cardboard sign, where my mind goes is just think of the unbelievable human potential that's lying dormant. I was going to say to imbalances caused by nutrition and ultimately the transformation that can take place and also the wasted resources. Because anytime I see a human being on the street holding a cardboard sign, where my mind goes is just think of the unbelievable human potential that's lying dormant. I was going to say to waste, but that seems even overly harsh. And the notion of deserve to die, I think is conveniently move a temporary problem out of the way because it represents either an embarrassment, some shame, or some other. Some other. Some other. To me, you know, again, it's easy to apply a label, but to apply it to a waste, but that seems even overly harsh. And the notion of deserve to die, I think is conveniently move a temporary problem out of the way because it represents either an embarrassment, some shame, or some other. Some other. Some other. To me, you know, again, it's easy to apply a label, but to apply it to an entire human over the course of an entire lifetime, I think is absurd to the furthest degree. Because the distinction, I mean, I would go so far as to say every one of us is one stupid mistake of passion away from going to prison for the rest of our lives.

You're just a great person to talk to, you know, because the entire human.

Over the course of an entire lifetime, I think is absurd to the furthest degree. Because the distinction, I mean, I would go so far as to say every one of us is one stupid mistake of passion away from going to prison for the rest of our lives.

You're just a great person to talk to, you know, because, you know. Steve crying. You probably know Steve.

Yes.

Yeah. And Steve had just spoken in the Vatican. He was at a conference that they have every two years. I think it's called Life United or something like that. And it's an attempt to create synergies and collaboration of people who are normally in silos as regards, you know, Steve Krane. You probably know Steve.

Yes.

Yeah. And Steve had just spoken in the Vatican. He was at a conference that they have every two years. I think it's called Life United or something like that. And it's an attempt to create synergies and collaboration of people who are normally in silos as regards to healthcare, especially healthcare. And Steve is way out there, he's in the game changer program and he's, you know, a lot of my game changers, they're great people and they've done 10 times and they've been super successful. But they're kind of creatures coming out of the ocean and they're becoming land creatures through collaboration. But Steve is to healthcare, especially healthcare. And Steve is way out there, he's in the game changer program and he's, you know, a lot of my game changers, they're great people and they've done 10 times and they've Been super successful, but they're kind of creatures coming like 10 miles inland and you know, he's climbing trees and he's swinging from vines because he's really created this amazing network of entrepreneurial game changers. But he's got a whole network and he's got a funding mechanism for them and he's got a coming out of the ocean and they're becoming land creatures through collaboration. But Steve is coaching program for them. We got into the topic of conversation and I said that conversation is never driven by people's answers like 10 miles inland and you know, he's climbing trees and he's swinging from vines because it's always driven by people's questions and not any kind of question. It's all. He's really created this amazing network of entrepreneurial game changers but he's got a whole network and he's got a funding mechanism for them and he's got always an open ended question where you're asking a person to think about their thinking. And that's why I asked you the question about the moment when you were really, really blindsided. Because it's an open ended question where you ask people to do a time shift of some point in their past where they compare themselves either with that point and what was happening before or with that point and what's happened afterwards. So I said, Steve, I said what's an nice Jewish boy like you actually doing hanging out with the Pope? What's that all about? I mean, you know, and he laughed and he said, oh, it was a great event and everything else. So at the end he talked about, I said how much conversation was there during the four days? And he says there wasn't any. It was just everybody giving their talk about what they're doing. And I said, well, if there's no conversation then how can there be collaboration? How can there be transformation or progress? Or progress? I mean it was a great event and you know, it's better than some other events that have happened at the Vatican probably. But you know, we're both Catholic farm boys, you know, so we can talk about this. But the whole point is that great conversations really aren't based on answers, they're really based on more and more comprehensive questions. And I suspect your reinvention is totally based on open ended questions and where people do time shifts.

That is absolutely true. I know one thing that my wife said, and it's the way she won my heart, is she said if you want to be interesting, then be interested. And that forces questions to be asked collaboration to occur, conversations to happen. And also, like I've been teaching people how to do speaking for a long time, how to write books, how to create compelling book titles and headlines. And I've always said, if you want to be boring, then teach. If you want to be interesting, tell stories. I go so far as to say, I don't care what your book is. Teach everything you're going to teach by telling a transformational story that overcomes a primary objection that your perfect reader would have that's limiting their belief system and limiting who they think they are. There's a phrase I often use when I hear someone say, well, I don't like being on camera. My response to them is, when right now would be a good time to stop that belief system that no longer serves who you wish to become and who you are and who you wish to serve from this moment forward. And that is, in my mind, a game changer. And that can cause a change to occur and a transformation to occur in a moment, in a mix.

Yeah. So, Mike, Capability amplifier. It seems to me that a fundamental part of experiencing an amplification of your capabilities is a regular process, some of it scheduled, some of it not scheduled. Of being able to reinvent yourself.

Absolutely. And that means being able to create a new story, that becoming the script of your new life.