How To Know When You Need a WHO that isn’t YOU | Capability Amplifier #112

Will this person place your thing create more than 5% aggravation. In my life, I've been finding more and more how little is necessary to be happy, content, successful, and to provide great value.

Part of the picking the right who is that they can grow into what you're looking for. They'll take it on because they're excited about the challenge. And no matter if it gets really difficult or not, they'll.

They'll come out fine in deep, deep water. If you take on an extraordinary goal with a suspicion that you don't have the capability to do it, you need somebody here.

Who can pull this up.

Hi, this is Dan Sullivan, and we're here for the next episode of Capability Amplifier. And I'm very honored and privileged to have as a team member Mike Knigs, who, living in San Diego today is operating at a lower outside temperature than I am in Toronto. We have officially 95 degrees today in Toronto.

I'll tell you what, not fair.

Not fair.

I'll let you have it, though, because you've got humidity and probably mosquitoes, too, is my guess.

Yes. And we have June, July, and August and winter. So this is just the beginning.

So, anyway, Mike, you brought up an idea that relates to a central concept of strategic coach, which is who, not how. And you asked a startling question which I hadn't thought about.

Well, here's what it is. And this has come up because so many entrepreneurs struggle, and they really struggle with the same thing over and over again. And so the primary question that we're going to answer today is how do you know when you need a who that isn't you? And this is really understanding what your unique ability is. Your upper limits, your superpowers, are when to just cut off the box and know when you are holding yourself back and you need to get the right who. So we want to explore that in detail. And there's a few different areas that I think would be worth pursuing. One of them is just get you to do a brain dump on what shows up for you right away, but also.

Building, finding, getting team members. So I wouldn't mind going through and describing a list for everyone who's in strategic Coach of tools that'll help you get past this, Humphrey, but it's also an incentive if you're not a strategic coach member. Well, now would be a good time to learn a little bit more. So that'll be the shameless embedded plug here to get some more members. Dan, I'm sure you won't mind that, but let's begin Well, I think first.

Of all, and I'm strictly going on personal experience here, that if you are looking for a great who just to continue doing what you're already doing.

I don't think you'll find that person. Okay. In other words, my feeling is that great new who's are driven by great new goals that are much bigger and much more challenging than any goal you have before. And you know right up front when you set the goal that you're not the one to pull off the key part of the goal, that it requires skills that you don't have. And that's got two pluses to it. One is that you're not going to interfere with what somebody else is doing because you're no good at it. And the other thing is that really great who's are really attracted to great challenges. So that would be my first response to that.

I just want to go a little bit deeper into that because it requires skills that you don't have. I think part of this is knowing when that's happening. I mean that, that I think is being so self aware and self conscious where you set up a guidepost. So for example, this is really, really simple, but it's made a massive difference in my life. I have a new test for everything as to whether or not I'm going to do it or not. And that is, I ask myself, will this person place your thing create more than 5% aggravation in my life. In a way, it's kind of like when you talk about being bothered. But for me, aggravation is the foundation of resentment and ongoing anger. And I really explore that to decide if this is necessary or not. I've been finding more and more how little is necessary to be happy, content, successful and to provide great value. In fact, I think when I started practicing this, I saw immediate increase in the quality of clients I was working with and the amount of revenue literally just in my bank account. And the work felt even more effortless. So that's a simple example, but I'd like to know like through your lens, how do you. What's your trigger for knowing that or observing it in other people or where you just like know it and you and you know what to do next? Yeah, this is one of those simple, simple concepts, but I just don't think a lot of people are great at it.

Well, I think I'll give you an example of something that really worked terrifically for me. And this was around 10 years ago, it was 2012 and I.

Had just joined Genius Network And Joe started off my first workshop with saying that if you're paying 25,000 a year for your year in Genius Network and if a year from now you haven't turned that into $250,000 worth of value, then you shouldn't really be here.

Yeah, you can't join again is what he used to say.

And I just thought about that. And we had in Strategic Coach an exercise that had been sitting there for 20 years called the 10 times mind expander. And it was where you were going to set a goal of something in your company that was going to go 10 times. It wasn't necessarily the company, the whole company, but something that was going to go 10 times. And you started the exercise by going backwards where you started something, where now you're 10 times bigger than you were when you started it. Revenue is a good one because entrepreneurs have the experience of going 10 times in revenue from this time they start their entrepreneurial career. They do it once, they do it twice. We're on our third time right now. And.

So I started this program and.

It was actually transitioning an existing group of people who were in a special programming. It was a programming and packaging part of the program and I didn't really like the results. Okay. It had been going for about three years and there was some neat stuff and there were some neat conversations. But anyway. And so I had this Monday where I did the new group and it was spectacular. The new 10 times group. And then on the Tuesday I had clients who were the people who didn't join Monday. In other words, they didn't want to go 10 times. It was Monday and it was like hitting a brick wall at 60 miles an hour going from Monday till Tuesday. And I said, oh, no, I can't. I mean, I won't survive this. I won't survive this. So I put together an impact filter for Kathy Davis who has at that time, she was about a 10 year team member and just had showed herself in every situation as just extraordinarily dependable and capable. And I said, one year from today you are going to completely take over all my coaching workshops except this new one. So we're going to announce, you know, I put out the steps that we will announce that there's going to be a one year period where I'm going to be the coach and then I'm not going to be the coach and there is all the other coaches. You're going to have a chance to be with one of the other coaches, which at that time we had a Dozen or so. So there was back up there, but that Kathy was going to be working with the other coaches to design the ongoing program. And I wasn't going to have any part of that, either the coaching or the preparation of new materials.

And I said, you got a year to get ready for this new job, and you have to think it through. But you're from. We picked a date a year from that date. After that, I don't do. And.

It represented 80% of the client base that I was.

No, it represented about 40% of the client base and the revenues of the company that I was walking away from. And I said, but you're going to, you know, you're going to figure out how you're going to handle it, and then a year from now, you're in charge of that whole part of the program. And right now represents 80% of the clients that she's in charge of. And that's been going for 10 years. And I had two conditions. One is, she couldn't tell me anything she was doing. I would check by looking at the renewal rates. And I said, the renewal rates will tell me whether you're doing a good job or not. And I said, the other thing is, but you got to be in every one of my new workshops to see what I'm doing, because it'll give you ideas about what you want to do in your own. And I've not. I've been true to my word for 10 years, and she's done a fantastic job. And I told her, I said, this is about five years in. And I said, you may not take this as a compliment, but it's intended as a compliment. I never think about you at all and whether you're doing a good job. Yeah, I mean, she has her moments, you know, I mean, she has her moments and everything else. And I said, yeah, suck it up.

Yeah, yeah. But I had a sense that she could. I wouldn't have asked her to do this or, you know, or presented it if I didn't have a feeling that she couldn't grow into it. And so I think that part of the picking the right who is. Is that they can grow into what you're looking for. You know, it's not just that they are already that way. And what I knew about her already is that she liked challenges, and she always grew to meet the challenge. And I was absolutely certain about that ability in this new role. And, you know, and she's just a major, major team member in our company. But I never give any thought to Whether she's doing a good job or not.

Okay, so that's one answer.

How do you know if it's the right who? One of my thing is that I have a sense of what.

Challenged the most. I know that they're going to meet the challenge. So that's one of the things that I look for in people, is that they.

They'Ll take it on because they're excited about the challenge. And no matter if it gets really difficult or not, they'll, they'll, they'll come out fine.

And that's.

So if we're going to unpack this.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just giving you that as one example. I have other example buddies listening and I don't want to talk about that.

Okay.

All right.

We got Gord.

Yeah, but I felt the same way about Gord, is that, you know, he, you know, he hasn't done this before, but he did radio before and he mastered that part of his life. And I said, he'll master this part of his life.

But for you, you had.

Like, you've got a pretty darn high score of.

Team members who've stuck around a long time and did.

Rise to the challenge.

Clearly you know how to motivate them, find them, cultivate them, keep them around, but also know when you need the help, which it really again comes back to. And I put this down in our resources for this episode, the 10 times mind expander. And.

When I was looking at that on the Strategic Coach website, your quote on here is, if you can imagine 10x, you're smart enough to achieve it.

Again, for anyone who's listening, watching, you can actually get the book for free on the website. I put the link in the show notes.

So just starting out to imagine, but then.

Going back to. I just want to make sure we're answering this question how to know when you need a who that isn't you. Now, clearly Dan Sullivan knows what he wants to do and what he doesn't want to do. That's not hard. You've already imagined 10x and you've got a particular challenge you want to solve, an outcome you want to accomplish, which for you, the majority is for you to. At least I'm at a point I'm going to project on you for a moment. But I've listened to you say variations of this in the past, which is make sure you've got a constant stream of high quality new entrepreneurs joining Strategic Coach to continue building the free zone, which is a $15 trillion economy by your hundredth birthday. And there are other smaller things inside there, too, but those are two of the big, big ones that not only require, but they invite participation amongst other people.

So inside of that, you know, you need a bunch of who's to make that happen. And some of them are getting specific on what they are, what the who's are, and then picking the right ones, motivating them and keeping them busy. So I don't know where you want to tear into this.

I think the big thing. And you know, that.

That decision just based on a challenge that Joe put out. At the beginning of my first workshop at.

Genius Network, I went up to him after the first hour and I said, I just got my $250,000. I just want to tell you. And it turned out that in the first five years, it was $16 million, okay? That was the revenues of a program that, when he said it to me, that program didn't exist. It was a program that got created.

But what I'm saying is that it's much easier to find the right who if you're going for something that is way, way bigger than you've ever achieved before, because it forces you to tell the truth about your own capabilities. And, you know, and you're in deep, deep, deep water if you take on an extraordinary goal with a suspicion that you don't have the capability to do it. So it forces your brain outside of your own capabilities. And you have to say, I need somebody here who can. Who can, you know, who can pull this out. Because I couldn't even tell the person how to do it. You know, I mean, I've given Kathy Davis absolutely no instruction on how she was supposed to pull off the last 10 years. But I knew she had the.

Right Colby. She's a mediator.

She's like.

A 6, 5, 5. Colby means that she can work with anybody. She can work with people with short Colbys or long Colbys. I mean, she has the ability to just get people together. She's like an enzyme, you know, she can pull.

She can pull things together. And I knew that she could work with anybody to do this. And I knew that the coaches we had would pitch in and would actually be enormously motivated by being kind of co creators with the program. They had lots and lots of experience. And so it was just an assessment that the people who would be centrally involved in pulling off the bigger goal was to actually free me up, you know, and not cost the company lost revenues and, you know, lost opportunities. So how do you pull it off where I could produce a Much bigger result. Knowing what I did know how to do by freeing myself up from, you know, a whole area that I would never be able to manage. I'd never be able to think about it. That doesn't really fall within my toolkit.

Yeah. I mean, what about yourself? You know, real success where you've, you know, you've pulled off the right. Who and. Yeah, no. And.

You know, and it wasn't within your. Wasn't within your skill. Skill kit.

Yeah. Well, I'm going to deconstruct it a little bit because what we've been doing has changed and I've gotten a lot clearer. So I'd say step one was I really, really got clear on a couple key things. So back when I asked you is right after I'd sold the last company, I had a kind of a dead space. I turned to you and I said, hey, Dan, I'm not really sure what I want to do next. And you had told me, go.

Have DOS conversations with like 10 to 20 entrepreneurs. Don't sell them anything, just listen and it'll become abundant, what you should do next. And that really became the foundation for the Superpower accelerator. And it went through many iterations. I mean that's. It's going on five years now. And what it evolved into is in general, we've been doing one of three things, which is, number one, to work with an organization that knows they've outgrown their current customer. In other words, they need a customer upgrade, they need a messaging upgrade, they need an offer upgrade. So it's like, how do they scale and make more money in the company? Or it'll be a founder who's ready for their third or fourth act.

They want to do something different, but they first have to sell their business before they can reinvent. But creating a strong personal brand will help and enable that. And then the third would be someone who sold their business and wants to do something new. So it's sort of like, what's my offer, what's my message? And what that evolved into is a three day workshop where we produce what I call a category of one brand. So it's something that's unique, a great offer and a great pitch deck. The messaging to sell it.

Collateral. So sales tools and then credibility in the form of articles and interviews, and then a mechanism, usually a lead generation and a sales mechanism to do that. And our promise is we'll get that done in three days, which is technically impossible. But I like the challenge, it's a lot of fun. And what I Realized is I haven't even told you this before, but I love starting companies, I love launching businesses, I hate running them. There's nothing about running them I enjoy.

Yeah.

Not one thing. And in doing that, this came from like, if I were going to start another company right now, what do I know I'd need? And I kind of, I created that list of seven deliverables. It'd be like, I know if I had a great pitch deck, a great offer, and a great sales process, I had the leads and I had credibility. Meaning someone searches for me or that business name and found something that legitimized you, it'd be pretty easy to sell something. And it doesn't matter what it is, what industry, what business, any part of the world. And I thought, what do I need to have a team capable of doing that? So this is where I'm going to answer your question now, Dan, which is I've had now a total of three unicorns who keep all this crazy together. Because if we're meeting with a founder or an entrepreneur, they're usually going to be high quick start, low follow through.

Mid to low fact finder, and low implementer. Okay. That's pretty much the typical scorecard of the people who. Yeah, exactly. It'd be like you and they don't want to do anything. And for them, if they have something like, we could talk about a whole bunch of good ideas. And if it doesn't get done, it'll never get done because they don't have the right team members, they don't have the right team implementers, and they won't have the ability to communicate what really needs to happen. So we have to do it. So now I've got a unicorn. That's what I call the position, which is someone who. Your equivalent of a Cathy Davis, managing, sorting, organizing, all in real time. Because when we're working together, we're in person, whiteboarding, talking, dialoguing, inventing this stuff. And we have to throw out a bunch of ideas, capture them. And in the background, I have a deck designer, a graphic artist, and then a book writer, article writer, all working simultaneously. So we come and then someone who's doing.

Lookups to make sure that a brand name hasn't been taken. So we got to do trademark searches, we're negotiating domain name purchases in real time, some of that kind of stuff. So this thing will be done. And then I've got a webpage designer working and someone who's throwing collateral together. So that's what's happening in the background. All in real time. So by day one, we know what the business is, what the content's going to be, how this person's going to be framed and packaged. And then on day two, we're working on the deck and the offer, the messaging and putting together the articles. And then day three, we're in the studio recording content. And yeah, there's some post production, but it's like done done and it's ha. There have been people who go out and they'll pitch this new idea within a day to a month from the time we meet. And they're closing substantial things. And you know, when the content gets delivered, money's made, I told you a lot of stuff there. But the bottom line is it all starts with a organized unicorn who.

Knows how to listen to what's important and structure it and organize it in real time. Then in the background, use technology and tools to communicate with the team members who are basically watching the real time videos, decoding all that with structured data in building stuff in real time. So even while we're dialoguing, I mean in a way, think of like a strategic coach meeting. What if every meeting became a book, became a podcast, became some curriculum that's effectively what's going on or a mini business.

Yeah.

And so I knew that I needed that unicorn. I needed an experienced deck designer. And they also know that we are playing war games. So.

When this is happening on that three times a month, you gotta be willing to stay up all night to get stuff done. Right. So I need warriors. And if you're the kind of like if you're a 9 to 5 clock punch and you know, check your watch, wrong person. Right.

So that. Fortunately, my unicorn worked in an agency. And one thing I've noticed about agency workers is they're usually unappreciated. They don't really, they're not engaged by the clients they're working with. It's kind of boring and it's hard to move somewhere. It's just a matter of time before you burn yourself out. And this to them, being involved in a creation that has what I call a small container short tail is exciting. So in three days we get something done and then the tail afterwards is there isn't a lot of stuff left to do because the deliverable happens so quickly.

So I think the architecture of this came down to just the delivery. And the business model is just as important as the tasks and the activities and the skills required which drive the who's. So you can probably decode this better than I Can. Because it's been a constant evolution.

Yeah. Well, I think the secret here is to have a structure that can be.

Repeated over and over again with a new challenge. So every time you have an entirely new challenge. So.

The person that you're dealing with is unique.

And you have to.

Basically package them in a new form within a three day period in a way that does justice to who they actually are. In other words, it has to, to actually fit. So my sense is that every time you go through it, that your mind will go to somebody else that you want to add to the process, either during the three days or a natural handoff to somebody else in the world. And that's really how coach. I mean the entire coach organization with 130 people, with 18 coaches, with operating.

In three different countries and now globally with zoom. The central structure is the strategic coach workshop.

It's a one day workshop.

And it's for people.

Who have.

A very, very low boredom level. Yeah, a very boredom level. And you have to make sure that if they're there for eight hours, the eight hours is actually about them. It's not about you. It's not theory. It's things that they can think through, clearly make decisions and put together an action plan. And the day after they, or even that day, they can start moving their team towards.

New projects.

And so it all started with just people going through the strategy circle and then the strategy circle became a one day workshop and then it spawned out 500 other tools that you have to create because they like some oldies and goldies, but they want new stuff all the time. So.

Yes.

And then the thing is to get them to sign up forever.

Hey, action taker, Mike Koenig's here and I just wanted to interrupt for a second and let you know that if you're ready to reinvent yourself and your business, go to connecttomike.com to learn more and book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode.

So how do you get them back? So I've got 40 people in this two year period. 22 and 24. I've got 40 people who are entering into their 30 year mark of being in the program. I've seen them every quarter. I've seen them every quarter or they've seen somebody every quarter because not all of them are mine. And the reason is that that's what I wanted, you know, and it doesn't really compete with anybody else because nobody's put the structure together that we put together. You wouldn't even know where to Begin how to put your structure together. You wouldn't even know where to begin. How to create the structure that we put. You're a one off and we're a one off, but they're expandable. One offs. They're expandable. The amount of money that can be earned is expandable.

Your participation in the success is expandable. The word of mouth is terrific.

And you get to live the life you want to live when you're not doing this. Yes.

Well, I think as I was listening to you, I really realized something that you've known for a long time, which is if you're a founder, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're an owner, you already got a ton of things to do. And usually your brain type is such that you learn the most and make the biggest progress by having structured conversations and dialogues, which is really what Strategic Coach is all about. When we get together for a quarterly meeting, it's beautiful because it's a day, right? You fly in, you do your thing, and then you can leave on the same day. You are a precise timepiece. Dan Sullivan starts and ends on time every time. Everything happens like clockwork. And there's a structure to everything. And you walk out with reviewing your past 90 days, planning your next 90 days, and getting exposed to a new thinking, a new mindset or thinking about thinking that is a. There's. It's so nuanced and powerful. It is indescribable until you've done it and you learn to think what I would say, the Dan Sullivan Strategic Coach way. Right as I was.

But it's trans, it's transferable because it's based on my unique ability. And you can create an equal kind of structure based on your unique ability, your experience and your unique ability. And, you know, one of the things that we probably share in common is, you know, I started my work career in an agency.

And it was terrific. As long as you don't make it a career, it's a terrific school. And the reason is because.

It'S feast and famine. You can go a week and there's nothing going. And then you have nothing but overnight overnighters, where you have to do overnighter work to meet deadlines. And everything is brakes and accelerator. The whole life is. And the other thing is that.

It'S only pleasant if you have really great teamwork with other people in the agency. It's a killer life if you think that you can do things on your own. And yeah, I mean, this was in Canada, and this was the second largest agency in Canada when I worked there. But the other thing is what you did yesterday doesn't matter. It's only what you're going to do today and tomorrow that really matters. And I found that really mastering the concentration of new stuff is a wonderful skill if you have the right structure and you have the right clientele to do that.

Yes, yes, that is very good.

That's what you're doing. I mean, you know, I mean you could take my structure and your structure and put them together and you'd find far more in common than was different.

Yeah, that is really part of the realization I had while I was sitting here getting back to the who we work with, which are again, in my experience, the majority of Strategic Coach members are lower fact finders, mid to low follow through, high quick start, lower implementation scores. It seems that way anyway. And that is in general what I would consider the right fit entrepreneur. And what they really need help with is structuring their thoughts, understanding and realizing additional value and then building great teams around them or structures or mechanisms or technology to get those visions and make them real and be able to monetize them well.

And the ability to continually scale while making things simpler.

Yes, and improving your life quality in a measurable way. Because if that's not happening, you'll have a very frustrated entrepreneur very quickly who will just quit.

Or escape or do bad things to themselves unintentionally most of.

The time or take on self destructive distractions.

Yes, absolutely.

So with that I have found that doing these workshops and I do them as well again when I'm working with someone, we'll do the one off at first to get it going and create the momentum. And then I'll either do quarterly or semiannual with check ins, you know, and again, structurally it's very similar to Strategic Coach. I didn't even really realize how similar it was because it just evolved. But engaging a founder for one to three days is manageable. They'll see the value, especially when they can walk away. And I've had people walk away who have been at their business for 10 to 20 years and they will say I got more done in three days than I have in seven years. Because it all happened all at once. And it can be anywhere from I did more in three days than in six months all the way to, I've heard seven years before. Because there's nothing more frustrating for a founder to have a vision, an inkling of something. So if you think of it as your 10x mind expander, that's where Your brain always is. And you don't have the foggiest idea of how to get started, who you need, what structure you need in place, because it's a vision. And you might not even know that the technology to make it happen doesn't exist. Or.

What I've learned over and over again is someone may.

Think they know who their customer is, but the biggest gap is they don't know what the non negotiable values of their perfect buyer should be. In other words, what you call a mindset, I've been calling non negotiable values. They're pretty darn simple. But I found that, like, that's what drives everything in an organization. It's the culture of a company, it's who you attract, it's how you keep them, it's how you vibe with them. And I think marketing, you have to be mind setting before you start marketing.

Well, I think the other thing is that in both of our cases, the models are very.

I'll use the word.

It's a word that means. It doesn't mean eccentric, but idiosyncratic. And that is that it could only put together. Your model could only been put together by one person. Because what you were.

Essentially saying is, I just want to do one thing and I want a team of everybody that does everything else. That's a natural spillover from what I do, you know, in other words. And I don't think strategic coach could have been created by anyone. It's actually two, you know, it's a team, Babs and I, because there was a front stage that got created by me and a backstage that was created by her because we wanted it to be lifetime. And if you have a front stage, but you don't have a good backstage stage, it's not going to last very long. And if you have a backstage without a front stage, it's going to last even less. So my sense is that the best.

Entrepreneurial companies are very, very idiosyncratic.

They're unique to the person who created it. And everything that's part of that system is unique to that person's unique abilities.

Yes.

And this is something I can tell you, Dan, that again, in the evolution of this.

If you would have said, what can you commit 25 years to? Because that's permanently embedded.

In my head now. I look at it like, if I'm not committed basically for what I'll call for now, the rest of my professional career, that's the way I'm framing it anyway.

I don't want to do It. And the trouble I had, the conflict I was experiencing was the thought of building something short term and being stuck in it. And I didn't want to run another business. That's what it felt like. And I realized that if I just shifted my mindset a little bit to realize I get to start companies with really interesting people and launch them, that I never have to run. That's when I felt the touchdown pass moment. I'm like, my God, that's perfect. It's like I could do that forever. It's play for me. And I could also reframe when someone say, well, what do you do? I'll say, I create rich playmates.

That turned this into a game. And I gamified it, you know, in a way that appealed to that. That kid in the playbox or in the sandbox again. And. And I think.

There'S kind of a Navy SEAL quality to what you're doing too, because it's. The three days are like Hell Week, you know, and after that, everybody's a community of the people who survived Hell Week, you know, and my, my feeling is that anybody who's not actually committed to transforming themselves wouldn't be willing to go through your three days, because it's going to be. First of all, you have to have something of value for other people to work on.

And if you have a suspicion that you're fluffy in what you're thinking about the future, my sense is that you wouldn't invest in either the money that it's going to take to pay for the three days or the actual sheer amount of energy and focus and concentration. Because if they're not sleeping, you're probably not sleeping.

No.

Yeah.

I think that's back to client selection, which starts and ends with values and mindsets. Right. They just have to have some really specific ones.

But they have to have a big ambition, too. I mean, they have to see everything they've done up until now as stage one, and now they're getting to create stage two. Yes.

Yep. And so even that, the messaging you just used, which is, are you ready for your act? Three, four or five. Yeah.

Or whatever.

A meaningful reinvention. And that's a whistle for sure.

But the interesting thing is, you know, I mean, just give me a rough estimate of the numbers of people who have successfully gone through the three days. I mean, just, I'd say.

Well, they get better every single time. Now we're nailing it at present.

Is it dozens?

Dozens?

Well, you've got a unique community that has further usefulness because one is they become marketers for your process.

And the other thing is that they have something in common that very few people have. It's like Outward Bound. I went through Outward Bound.

58 years ago. I went through Outward Bound, and I meet somebody who's been to Outward Bound, the lawn course. So the full course is about 26 days. And you just talk and talk and talk about what that month in your life when you were late teen or you were 20 years old, what that did for your thinking. And I've done a lot of very interesting educational.

Processes in my life, including the Great Books program and everything else. But I have to tell you, the one that I think about most often is the 26 days I spent in Scotland in 1964. And what I learned about myself in those 26 days. You know, I think you've created, I think, strategic coaches like that. You can spot another coach person. I ask people, you know, I think I did it at the Summit in Palm Beach. I said, when you meet somebody who's in coach, how long does it take you before you figure out they're in coach? And people said three minutes, five minutes. And there's just something that you pick up. And I think you pick it up.

Invisibly before you pick it up visibly. I mean, it's words that they say, but I think even before words, you're just picking up on a mindset that has an energy wave to it.

Yeah.

It seems to me that you're creating something really extraordinary and unique with this that'll get richer as you get more. More of a community who've had the experience.

Yeah, that is what's happening. I mean, I'm turning it. Some of it into events because, well.

You'Ve got your Mexican. You've got your Mexican retreat now.

Yeah, yeah, there's that.

And they would show up just to meet the other people who've been through the experience.

Yes, that's precisely what's been happening. And they do deals with each other for the same reasons. So back to the stack language patterns. I think you and I have talked about this before. You can spot someone who's recently come out of Landmark, for example, out of the.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, they want to get you to.

They're doing free marketing for an organization that never charged, that was always afraid to actually charge what they were worth.

Yeah, yeah. Proselytizing is definitely a byproduct. But even just, there's a certain level of precision to the language patterns that are very noticeable.

And an Intolerance. They have sort of an intolerance.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's a new religion. It's definitely a new religion. But I, I love the, you know, getting back to coach. It's a non, it's, it's a non religious organization that's got a, it does have its own language and it has an ethos.

There's a, there's an ethos to it. And, you know, I mean, you can name dozens. Harley owners, Harley owners have a, you know, is it the best motorcycle in the world? No. Is it the most famous motorcycle in the world? Yes. You know, is it the most culturally based motorcycle in the world? Yes. Kawasaki has motorcycles better. But.

Accountants and accountants in Japan, when they let loose, they don't let loose on a Kawasaki, they let loose on a Harley Davidson.

Yeah, you're right. And you don't see a lot of other brands where the owners tattoo their logo on their bodies. So. Yeah, you're right. You're right about that.

Yeah. Well, so I think that there's a, you know, a membership model. I mean, I think this has always existed. It's just that it gets publicized more right now. But there's a.

You know, as things get a bit fragmented in the world, because things are fragmented in the world, fragmenting in the world, I think that people seek member membership in things that can have the possibility of lasting forever, forever being the rest of your lifetime.

And I really noticed that.

And I've been Outward bound as one St. John's where the great Books College is another one.

And.

I mean, both of us have, you know, religion as a common. I mean, we both have the experience. I have the experience. And I can almost always tell somebody who has spent years in. I'm very Catholic. I mean, I mean.

You know, I mean, the, that you, there's fundamental things that you believe in at the center of your life. That was part of the experience, you know, and transcendent. I used to love, you know, going to mass when it was in Latin, you know, it was like, it was like grand opera. You know, it was like grand opera. You know, you couldn't understand a word that was being said. And it was beautiful. You know, it was when they switched to English that I realized, you know, I don't know if this is for me or not. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, and I've got that being American is very definitely. People say you have dual citizenship, don't you? You're both a Canadian and American. I said, yeah. And they said, how do you compare? And I Said, well, being a Canadian is like having a really good mall card. You get better parking, you get early notice of special deals, you get discounts, you know. You know.

It'S really convenient. You get home delivery. They. And everything like that. And so I said, that's what Canadian citizenship feels like to me. It's like having a real good mall card, you know. And they said, well, what about the United States? I said, oh, it's a religion you belong to. It's a religion that you belong to forever.

That's true.

You wouldn't die for your mall card, but you'd die for your religion.

Yes, you're.

Well, I.

Anyway, this has been fascinating. I don't. Yeah, I think this started with a question about who's.

I think, yeah, it did, but I.

Think you got to be doing the best way to get great. Who's. Is to be doing something great.

Yes, for sure.

I think that's new and different and unique, you know.

Yeah, exactly. I think that that's variety. You think about, what will someone hang their hat on? It kind of brings it all back. So I was looking at our transcript while you were kind of wrapping up there, and I was thinking, what's the common thread here? And it just is, if you're going to inspire someone, you need to create the equivalent of a little bit of a religion, you know, something that has a language and its value system and believers, and it's got to be unique and have adventure built in. And.

Coach definitely has that. I mean, if there ever was a place filled with fascinating people, now, I think entrepreneurs are fascinating to other entrepreneurs. I'm sure you go to the wrong party and you're going to be like, who the hell are these people? But we know what we like, and we like what we like, and that's just fine.

So, I mean, the one in Palm beach was interesting. It's the first time.

We'Ve had an entrepreneur who's two, essentially team members, were both billionaires before they joined his company. Yeah.

You know, that was, you know, Scott, Donald. I mean, both those guys, you know, that he had with him, they were already proven billionaires before they joined his company. And they did it surely out of interest. They didn't. You know, it was just, boy, what you're doing is really fascinating. I think that's a great. I think Scott's a really great example. You know, he, you know, he just comes up with these ideas and he attracts.

Talent that you couldn't pay for.

Yeah.

You'Re right about that. Yeah, he's Definitely, Yeah.

And then Friedrich, who just joined Free Zone, he's got a consulting company with 1400 consultants in 35 countries. And he said, for the first time in my life, I'm not lonely with my own ideas.

And it really shows you that you get past the issue of money very, very fast when you are looking for what you really want.

Yeah. And.

You really get past it when instead of looking for someone else's scraps, you're building your own church, you know, your own.

Self.

Yeah. You're not. Yeah. It's basically the difference between being a parasite and being a leader when you're building a real business. And that's a really. That's a very important distinction here, so.

Well, you know, I often think it's like in sports, if money's the issue, you don't have anything else to offer.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

That's a great quote. All right. That's a keeper for sure. Well, I think we can wrap this up. I mean, we started out with how to know when you need a who that isn't you. But I learned a lot and I really changed the way I'm thinking about my thinking in this episode, which to me is a big success. So hopefully viewer feels the same way. Yeah.

But I think it's an infinitely.

Expanded.

What you've created is an infinitely deepening and expanding model. And 25 years from now, you'd still be doing it, but it would have been a very enjoyable 25 years.

Yeah, yeah. It's. I just bringing this back and this is a good wrap up point from. From my point of view, one of the things I did recently is I celebrated my birthday and I brought a bunch of clients down to Mexico to celebrate with me, which I've always had really good relationships. A lot of my customers, clients are friends, but this was on a completely different level. And in fact, just yesterday we were up in Los Angeles with some new clients who are celebrating. They celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary and.

It was wonderful. It was like, again, when you attract people who are further down the journey than you are, they're better than you are. I mean, and again, this is in relative terms, of course, but more successful, more wealthier.

That's wonderful. Because I know I spent a lot of time as a different kind of a mini guru, I guess. And.

Part of what drove me out and caused me to quit doing what I was doing is I'd outgrown the audience I was working with. And now it's a completely different thing. It's something I'm super excited about is to work with people who are.

Decades ahead of where I am, and I aspire to learn what they do. And there's a lot more sharing going on, value sharing.

Well, it's fascinating. And I think that.

One thing I'd reflect on about both the conversations that we had in this particular.

Recording session was that I think that whereas when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, entrepreneurism was.

Marginal to the corporate center. There was a big corporate center to everything. And then you had these interesting sort of entrepreneurial ventures that were kind of affected, you know, to the sideline, and they took more or less conventional forms. You know, it was stores or, you know, service businesses and everything. What really strikes me today is how central and at the center that entrepreneurial activity is, and almost that corporations are becoming.

More marginal in the sense that there's an enormous amount of.

Unpredictable predictability and disruptiveness about corporate life that entrepreneurs bypass. That entrepreneurs can basically create their own adventure in life and just scale it. It can scale their adventure.

I'm really surprised at how you went to work because you had job security, and that's the last place you'd go to work for job security these days would be in a corporation that.

Yeah, for sure. And without all the perks. I mean, the troubles they're having.

We won't talk about the benefits because we don't have any benefits.

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, it's really interesting, and I think it's the function of the impact of.

Technological networks just bypassing corporate pyramids.

If you want to be not in the know, be inside of a corporation, you won't know anything.

For sure. For sure. Well, I have no idea how to wrap this one up, other than it's been a fascinating experiment and going down a fun rabbit hole. And I'm looking forward to the next one.

All right. All right.

Okay. So, of course you can share this with some friends, anyone who you think would enjoy the experience. And in the show notes, when you go to capabilityamplifier.com you can go there for links to the 10x mind expander that Dan talked about. And your life is a strategy circle that includes a free book. It includes videos, content, and the worksheets themselves that Dan walks you through. They're really, really good. If you haven't been exposed to them before or even if you are a coach member, now would be a good time to review them again because what you did a couple years ago will be very different from what you're going to do next and how you think. And I think that's really what this podcast is all about. So like, share, comment all these get back. I pay close attention to all the feedback and pass them along to Dan. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.