Making Dreams Come True

Welcome to Capability Amplifier, the show for business owners and entrepreneurs who want high performance upgrades for their brains, bodies and bank accounts. Hello and welcome to another episode of Capability Amplifier. My name is Mike Koenigs. I'm here today with the one and only genius, Dan Sullivan. Hi, Dan.

Hi, Mike. You and I all are in the same category. We're both an exception of one.

Yeah, there we go. The old category of one. No doubt about it. I love that. That's a good one. And today we have an interesting idea we're shuffling around with, and it's about making dreams come true. You are genuinely a dream maker, and you've been in the business of making dreams come true for 30 years now. That's one amazing thing about strategic coach. It's 30 years old, and you've been working with thousands and thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs do the same. But you've also been a dream maker for yourself and for Babs and the people who work at Strategic Coach. But I thought what we'd do today is talk about making dreams come true. And we've got a couple case studies. Someone, you just brought this up, so why don't you frame things a little bit through your perspective, and I'll tell a story and we'll talk about actually constructing and making visions become reality really, really quickly.

Yeah, well, I've got a client who is into my workshops just a day or two ago by the name of Charlie Epstein. And Charlie is from Massachusetts. I think he's close to Springfield, Massachusetts. And I've known him ever since he got into the program. And there are certain clients who make sure the very first workshop, they make a connection with me and then they get all sorts of special treatment, you know, I mean, if. If you go out of your way to make a special, I can guarantee you I'll give you special treatment.

Dan's special pet. I like that.

Yeah. And you always did that with me, Mike. And, you know, a lot of people say, well, you know, Dan's really busy. And I said, look, if you want to really make a connection with me, I'll tell you, I'm totally open to it. But there's got to be something there. You got to have an idea, you got to have a vision, you've got to have something. I mean, I'm in the vision business and I'm in the idea business, so don't come and fawn over me like I'm a celebrity, because at first I don't see myself that way. But I'm really, really interested in new Ideas, you know, especially new ideas for entrepreneurs to excel. And Charlie is really bright. I mean, first of all, he's really, really bright. But the other thing about him, he's really funny. And what emerged as I got to know him is that he's a frustrated entertainer, and he had been an entertainer. But, you know, it's a tough business. You know, 90% of entrepreneurs in the entertain spend 90% of their career unemployed. It's very, very tough. And it's a bit like the fashion industry. I mean, in some industries, if you just follow the steps and you go through the procedures, you'll be successful. But the entertainment industry isn't like that. There's timing, there's luck, there's public trends, public fashions. You know, a lot of things have to come together. But actually, humor is a really interesting one because funny is funny and not funny is not funny, you know, and actually, in the entertainment industry, funny is probably one of the more predictable entertainment because there are so few people who are actually funny in front of strangers. You know, I remember Jackie Mason. I saw an interview with Jackie Mason, and he said, have you met people who aren't in the profession that are funnier than you? He says, oh, yeah, bar mitzvahs. He says, I go to bar mitzvahs. And everybody at the bar mitzvah comes because they want to show that they're funnier than Jackie Mason. And he says, to tell you the truth, they are funnier, but they can only do it with friends. He said, the secret of a professional is you can be funny with strangers. He says, it's a whole thing.

It's what every great comedian says, right? If you can make a room of total strangers laugh, you're funny.

Yeah, better if you can do it on the spot. There are people who can just take what the audience is giving them, and they can actually create fun out of the unpredictable conversation or give and take between them and an audience. So Charlie had this, and, you know, I always encouraged him in it, you know, because everybody's got to make a living. And the God of cash flow really gives us commands at certain point to do things we don't like to do just because we have bills to pay and we have people to pay for. But I always encouraged him to do this, and I always had good conversations, and I thought his material was terrific, but I'm not the person to actually develop this type of career. And then I was so happy because Charlie came in. He was so happy because he had spent a day with you and he had flown out to see you, I guess he had come out to San Diego and you're in the talent pool where there's comedians. And he wants to put together a show, not just a one man show, but he wants to put together almost like a play, a very, very funny play. And of course you're right Nearby another grade 10 times participant, Joel Zadak, whose actual business is to be a manager of comedic talent in Hollywood. And he's very successful and he's got some great, great talent that he's really helped turn their natural talents into business success. So anyway, you know Joel very well, right?

Well, I'll give you a little more backstory on this because here's what happened. It was about a year ago, I was with Charlie and we were at Abundance360 and we were at a table together. And he had known me from probably 10 years ago, he was an old client and he said, we're gonna work together. I don't know what it is, but sometime we're gonna work together. And I said, well, why don't we just talk a little bit. Tell me what you wanna do. And he goes on, he tells me all about his 401k coaching business, et cetera, et cetera. And eventually after we went through this, I said, well, I've got an idea for you. First of all, you are funny, you've got great material and you've got all this money material and you're a good entertainer. And at one point he had a one man show. Like 30 years ago. He did do some comedy, but he hasn't touched it. And he'd be fully open and flat out say, I just haven't had the courage to do this up until now. And I said, here's my idea for you. It turns out I have a guy who worked for me for 10 years who is a stand up comedian. And through Joel, I had been talking to him about some ideas a couple times and I reached out to my network and I found three comedians and I first of all made sure that they'd be available because comedians in general want to work on their platform and on their own message. And the idea of doing corporate comedy to a lot of them is flat out offensive. But the way I framed it as I said, this guy A is really funny, baby. You'd get paid well. And I'm going to make this really fun for you to do and I'm going to make it really fun for the client as well. The bottom line was we arranged to get together and we created the Equivalent of a one man show in two days, end to end, based upon Charlie's life and his money stories and then five core lessons, but by having comedians there. If you've ever seen how television gets made, you have a room full of comedians and you just start throwing around jokes. And it ended up being one of the funnest experiences and most creative. And by the time it was done floor to ceiling, we were drawing on those gigantic post its. The walls and the windows in my condo in La Jolla were covered and we had organized this whole show and Charlie got to perform it and get feedback from the comedians. Everyone was laughing, it was aghast. And it turned out one of the guys was actually performing on the second night. So we took Charlie out for dinner and drinks and to watch a comedy show. And we came back and it was one of those things you just couldn't believe it happened like it was. But as a result, this is one of those things I've thought about for 20 years. You know, it's like if I could create the perfect profession for myself, it is and always has been to make dreams come true and to be able to co create and innovate with really smart, interesting people and build blockbuster teams. But you were just going to say something, Dan, so I wanted you to kick in here. What was that?

To me, it was such a pleasure because to the degree that you could do it before he actually goes live with us, you really filled a hole. You helped him fill a hole and you know, it's kind of interesting to have that in your life all the time. To know that with, you know, he calls it courage. But you know, if I tell the truth on Charlie's part, he had some issues in his personal life he really, really had to handle before he could be successful. One of the biggest barriers that I've seen with people who could go 10 times, 20 times, the next jump from 10 times is 100 times, it's not 20 times. And I'll say I'm not quite getting the picture here. There's something you're not telling me. I'll dig. And frequently it has to do with their home situation, you know, and they could jump to a whole different level of success, but they don't want to give away 50% of it.

Yes. And you know what, what was great is Charlie was totally open and this became part of the core story. So we were able to utilize the classic phrases mess to success, but he was really transparent about his great pain. So not only is this a great creative venture, it's exceptionally therapeutic as well. It's good therapy.

I don't know if, you know, and there's probably a good routine that I could do, but there's marriage breakups that happen when people come into Strategic Coach.

Yeah.

You know, and one of the questions, you know, I say to people is, and I have a book, one of my quarterly books. You know, it's in the lineup. It's like O'. Hare. It's number 17 for takeoff. The name of the book is when's a good time to tell the Truth.

I love that.

Yeah, when's a good time? I said, you know, two years from now, five years from now, a good time to tell the truth. Or maybe six. Six years ago. When's a good time to be on the other side of the truth? But I've been named as the other person in a marriage breakup.

You know, you're a bad person, Dan Sullivan. You're a bad person.

Everything was good until you went off to see that obscenity Dan Sullivan. Until you attended that obscenity Strategic Coach. That's when I realized that Dan is actually my second name. There's another word before Dan.

It might even rhyme with trucking.

Right?

Trucking.

Yeah. So anyway. But what I'm really realizing is that to lead a whole future, you got to start with a whole present. And you can't do that if you have a half past. You know, you have to go back and complete something from the past before you will have confidence to create an entirely new future. And I know the story that Charlie's actually done that. So the difference between Charlie when he said he didn't have courage, well, it wasn't courage. He had complexity that couldn't be carried forward. You couldn't multiply this complexity into a new simplicity.

How interesting. That's fascinating, because as you were describing, this part of what happened when we sat down. And the truth of the matter is, I wasn't exactly sure how all this stuff was going to come together in the first place. We walked into this a little bit blind because Charlie is by his nature a performer and a collaborator. He is not the kind of guy who just sits down and has a whole bunch of notes and gets prepped ahead of time like most really good visionary entrepreneur types. Right. You know, we think on our feet, et cetera, et cetera. But we came in and the secret to making this work was creating a massive inventory of life lessons. So it was the personal lessons. It was the money lessons. It's figuring out the myths. And he Said something really profound. He said, because I asked him, I always ask this at the very beginning of every session. I said, I want you to describe to me the feelings and emotions you want to experience every day. And as you go through the process together in a way that would make you really happy and experience joy, very frequently, people say clarity and confidence or courage and confidence. For him, he said, this is my ministry. He said, this is my legacy. And that's what's really important. This is how I'm going to give back. It's also how I'm going to feel complete. But the mistake so many people make when they're thinking about writing a book, for example, or creating what I would consider their legacy work is they end up creating a memoir, which is not entertaining or interesting for anyone. It's basically, I always call it a form of public masturbation.

Yeah. That or it's a lightweight tombstone, in other words.

Yeah. At the top of that tombstone reads, nobody cares. Yeah.

The two things I'd like to counter here, because I want to create a little tension in this podcast. I said, legacy is a deadly idea. And there's a very famous marketer, and you know who I'm talking about, but I'm not going to mention it on the podcast. But he's had a hard time getting in touch with me because he approached me wrongly in the first place, and I just would not allow him to get in touch with me.

Does he steal content?

No, it's not that one. It's not that one. But he finally got to me, and I says, well, where are you now? And he says, well, you know, I've kind of wrapped up, and I'm starting to create my legacy. And I said, you're five years younger than I am. Why are you talking about legacy? I said, you know, your brain takes this stuff seriously. Your body takes that stuff seriously. When you start using the word legacy, it says, oh, the future is now, will not be bigger than your past. I said, don't say that word. You know, legacy is something that people who have died have, you know.

Yeah. Let other people say legacy. That would be another great way to frame it. Right?

Yeah. And quite frankly, after I'm gone, I don't really care what it looks like to anyone else, you know, it's their problem. I mean, I said, I want to die in the middle of five messes, you know, so that they remember me, you know, with, you know, huge emotion, you know, for a while.

And some fireworks, too.

Right.

Okay.

The other one is give back. I am a complete disbeliever that entrepreneurs especially and uniquely are the least people in the world who have anything to give back because they didn't take anything in the first place. Now, civil servants, if you line up civil servants, I can see at least a 50% give back, because first of all, they didn't create anything. And for the amount of reward that they've had in their career, they really deserve to give a rebate to the public.

Oh, man. I'll tell you what, maybe there's some people listening to this right now saying his name really is Dan Trucking Sullivan. That'll be the catchphrase.

No, no, it's the other way. It's Trucking Dan Sullivan, you know.

Trucking Dan. But the whole point is that what it is, Charlie had to get himself. But here's the thing. You created a unique set of circumstances, a unique focus, and it's because of what you're doing, you know, I mean, this is your new stage, you know, this is stage six, version 6.0 of Mike Koenigs, you know, and you've now gotten to the point where all your 30 years of experience and skill has focused on creating one situation where someone with a big dream can come in and get the total support, 360 degree support with total focus on them, and have something incredibly great to package them that happens in probably an unprecedented short period of time. So there you go. You can actually use that in your copy lines.

I appreciate it.

This all gets transcribed and you can just use that.

Nicely done. Well, I want to deconstruct a couple things because again, I can't help but think about how does Dan make dreams come true also. But I'll again add a couple little comments here. One of them is we're both in.

The same business, just with totally different methodologies and totally different frameworks. You know, I mean, we do frameworks, but we're totally in the same business. You and I are.

Yeah. So it just so happens. I just talked to Charlie yesterday. I said, well, here's the vision I have moving forward, because he's so committed to this that he wants to have a show. So we'll have a show ready that he can not only do publicly and rent a theater and bring in people, but he has a vision of bringing it to like an Amazon prime or a Netflix, even making it that entertaining. And it's got the potential. So we're about to get original music created, the posters. I mean, it's gonna look like a real movie as far as the outside World is concerned. I mean, I want that. You know, it's like, it's so fun to sit down and be able to manufacture an experience that turns into something living like this and know that the writers. So one of the writers I found for this, he's written a bunch of viral video commercials online that have gotten over a hundred million views. And this guy was so excited to work on this, and he said, this has been the most productive writing session of my career. We got more.

Can I tell you another question?

Yeah.

Let's get Nick Nanton involved and have him actually record this right from where you are right now and actually even recreate the first day and actually take it through right to the opening night. Nick's 36 and he's already won 11 Emmys for his documentaries.

It's so interesting. We talked about doing a documentary, so I'll reach out to him. That's a great idea.

I don't know if you know this, but Nick every month goes to Nashville and from morning till night actually produces a new recorded song. And they have a workshop, they have a get together and they have writers and they have musicians and everything else. And they walk in in the morning and the assignment is by the time we leave tonight, we've got a singer, we've got music ensemble, and we've got a recorded song. So this would just totally appeal to him and the speed with which it happens, that's the key. You know, this is something. And he's won four Grammy awards too, for his jingles. So I think if you just chatted with Nick on this, it would be fantastic. Nick is just unbelievable. I think you're more add than I am, but I think Nick is more add than you are.

I would agree with that. And I've actually known Nick for a while, and I attended the Grammys with him. So we've got a long history. And I'll reach out to him. It's a great idea.

He would love this one. He would tell you and Charlie. I mean, Charlie would just eat it up, you know, I mean, you could turn this into just how you're creating the show would actually be a show itself.

You're absolutely right. And part of the way we even approached the creation of this was as a performance. I did grab some footage while we were doing it, but again, it was like one of those, you know, every little thing aligned all at once. It was super fascinating. And then I've had a similar experience with another coach member, Brett Kaufman.

Oh, yes.

Where another dream come true experience where Brett is a very successful real estate developer, a true visionary, super fascinating guy. And he had a message, but he's like, how am I going to get this out and what should I do? And in the case of him, we've been working on his personal brand, a book. I hooked him up with some great writers, an agent, most likely one or two publishers. His podcast launches now in a couple of weeks. But all the branding, and here's the interesting thing with him, he was struggling a little bit, trying to figure out, like, what is my platform? What is my platform? And his greatest creation to date is this thing called the Gravity Project. It's this incredible facility that has affordable housing.

That's a suburb of Columbus. Yeah, yeah. He's an Ohio boy. I'm Ohio boy. You know, I was born about, you know, 100 miles north of him. You know, Ohio people, I guess they're like Minnesota people. You live in a no bullshit, no hype structure all your life, and then you get out of that and you've learned to keep your lantern under a bushel and everything like that. You know, don't get above yourself. But I have to tell you, there's a certain point where you're destroying yourself with that original attitude. You know, the only thing that's stopping you is your hardwiring from a location that you did not choose to be in, but you had to grow up with a talent inside of a situation.

Yeah.

And I think that's what you break people out of. Mike, if you think of all the dream maker projects that you've had that you've described since we started the podcast series, it's this hard wiring of don't get above yourself and everything. You know, maybe there was a prudence to it, and I think maybe. Charlie, I have to tell you, going crazy with stand up humor in a 401k conference probably just doesn't get a standing ovation. You know, insurance companies, you know, and the CEO of an insurance company, probably not your most appreciative audience for standup humor. So, I mean, we all have situations in life that, you know, it's kind of prudent that you just keep your head down, you know, here, because you could really be set back in a way that you shouldn't have to put that energy into it.

Well, and these days, the universe and the planet at this time does not reward that level of thinking. When we live in a, everyone can be a celebrity with the phone in their pocket economy. And the way I've framed this for a lot of folks recently is I say, well, tell me, who's the CEO of 3M or Honeywell? And most people would be not only I don't know, but they also would say, I don't care.

Well, not only that, they would say, what's 3M?

Yeah, there.

What's Honeywell? Ouch. Ouch.

Yeah. But then if I say, who's the CEO of Tesla? Of course, everyone knows it's Elon Musk. What I like to say is, while Elon's never had to pay for advertising or marketing ever, he can completely shift the behavior of a market and the expectation of a market and the rules of a market with his Twitter account. And he's one of these guys who's built an interesting platform. Now, he is a unicorn. But I would suggest that anyone can create a category of one for them in any industry and own the way people think.

Yeah, I think the big thing here, and I've really followed comedy just as an appreciative consumer over the years, and you develop incredibly loyal, true fans in the comedy world. You know, it's one of those entertainment. You know, it's not your last movie or anything, because everybody wants to share the humor with someone else. So you can start with a very, very small audience, and you're not really fighting anyone for that audience. You know, it's like podcasts. Gord Vickman, my partner on the podcast payoff, I said, you know, we were just talking before we came on. People said, well, there's 760,000 or 800,000 podcast series out there, so, you know, it's just too crowded. How could I actually do that? And I said, yeah, but you're not in competition with any of them. I said, there could be 8 billion out there and wouldn't make any difference. If you've got someone who thinks you're funny and they want to tell their friends about you funny. You're not in competition with anybody for that appreciative audience. So you can just draw it. But the other thing is that the audience will continually feedback new material. You know, they're check writers, and they will tell you which part of your act they most appreciated writing a next check for. So I think you're really onto something with this, and I think you're creating a new kind of school. You're creating a new kind of school, you know, and a proper school, because just taking the talent that already exists and creating an entirely new form around the talent, not making the talent conform to an existing form.

Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about it through that lens. But I was talking to my wife about this two days ago and I said I would have been a good student if I would have had someone who understood how I think. Right. And how I performed. And I would say that about most people I know who are miserable. I like you too.

Right.

We're miserable failures. I barely passed high school. I never went to college, and I am incapable of staying awake in a classroom environment. I need to teach in order to stay awake or be really engaged with activities. Like I don't fall asleep in Strategic Coach, for example, because performance is appreciated.

Yeah. And the other thing is I made the lesson material all about you and you never get bored with you.

Yeah. Everyone's favorite subject. Right on.

Yeah. Yeah.

And the same is true in this evolution of what's your greatest potential and when's the last time as a 40, 50 or 60 year old, or for that matter, a 20 or 30 year old, where you get to invent a compelling future for yourself that you've always dreamed you wanted to be and could be. And there's a mechanism to actually make it happen and make it possible. And these are the kinds of things that you can't do by yourself. We're all our own worst coaches. And to turn your life into an entertaining performance and an engaging movie that you'd not only want to watch, but even participate or perform in as the audience is pretty compelling. And so that's the thinking I've had in this. But I never thought of it as a new form of education. Can you go a little bit deeper on that? Because what you're tapping into is something really genius here. And I'm not sure I fully comprehend it.

Well, the center of coach is really unique ability. You know, that everybody lives in a world of activities. And most of the activity, you know, and you were at the recent workshop. I say I break your activities into two categories and it's binary. If you're not doing the one, you're doing the other. And it's your unique ability. And there's only one of you on the planet. And the rest of the activities you're involved in is called crappy stuff. I went a little further. I had a workshop after you were there because you were there last week. I said, we're just going to start off today and I want you to write on a sheet of paper in two words and then I want you to underline the crappy stuff and I want you to write down everything that comes to mind that you're facing over the next quarter that falls under the category of crappy stuff. Okay? And I said when you get to 15, that'll be enough. And so they write, you know, and everybody writes and writes and writes and writes. I said, okay, remember 15, you can't go beyond 15. You know, we have this contest and we're showing leaderboard of people who free themselves up from what they're doing. So they're freeing up time. So here's the thing with Charlie. Right off the bat, he's doing a lot of crappy stuff now that when he gets his one man show, he, he's going to have to free himself up from the crappy stuff. And this is going to be the real courage when he frees himself up from highly paid crappy stuff to take a risk on his new career. And that's real courage and that's entrepreneurial courage. Very few individuals do this, but anyway. And I said now does this crappy stuff fill up all your activity time? And they said no. And I said, well, just by definition I'm going to call everything you didn't write down up to three is your unique ability. I said, so a lot of people say I don't know what my unique ability is. And I said, well, let's approach it from the negative. Let's just identify what isn't your unique ability. And everybody's great at that. And I said probably 80% of what you're doing when you're not doing this crappy stuff is the potentially very powerful unique ability. So what I'm saying in your school, you're not interested in spending two days with someone getting a better handle on their crappy stuff.

Nope.

And the person brings in a passion that they've been, you know, it's like a candle that they keep making sure it stays lit from one candle to another. In Charlie's case, for 30 years he kept taking the candle of his entertainment career and when it got looked like it was running out, he'd light a new candle. But it wasn't shining any light out in the world. He was just keeping the flame alive. And what you're doing now is let's just talk about that candle and let's get a big candle and let's get mirrors and let's get the whole universe so we can get this. That's a school. I mean, it's a school as good as any other school. The only thing is that you're not taking something that pre exists as the structure of the framework. You're allowing the Talent to determine what the framework and structure is. But you have a lot of capabilities that you know about for amplifying capability. There's a name for a podcast series.

Well, diddly ding, that was well done, sir. That's called a callback in the comedy world. It really is. That was good.

That's what I mean about what you're doing. You know, I try to create structures and processes so all the people who are involved in kind of amplifying their unique ability have a community where they feel normal. So Charlie will still be in coach, you know, when he goes on and this becomes really big, I still expect him to show up every quarter and be around other people who are doing this in other industries and. But they're all misfits. They're all outliers and they're misfits. But I said, you know, there's gotta be someplace in the world where you're just normal. I mean, Mike, you're an oddball. You know, I'm an oddball and everything else, but there's gotta be a place where, you know, who we are as an oddball is just normal. And you're appreciated for being an oddball. And that's another kind of school. So I have another kind of school.

I like it the way I've been describing it. Instead of oddballs, I say you're an alien. And everyone who's an alien knows they're an alien. And I also have another definition, which is orc and elf energy. You know who the orcs and the elves are around you? You know, the orcs are the low frequency human turds, the crappy stuff people. And the people who love bureaucracy and coal mining, for example, and who like.

Stifling other people's careers, you know, whatever other people are achieving, they would like to see them lose it.

Right, right. Who don't understand the infinite abundance truth. Right. So this could be the alien University. We'll have to come up with a catchy title for it. But I like using alien because people know, you know, like, I grew up in Eagle Lake, Minnesota, and from the moment I can remember, which was around five, I felt like an absolute alien. I used to think I was born at the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong people in the wrong part of the world. And I knew exactly what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. So for me, Until I was 18 years old, I lived in a state of moderate hell. Most of the time, I just knew I didn't want to be there. I had a Backpack packed, ready to go work for Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and write code for Apple. That was my goal growing up. And when I tell that story, I have a lot of people raise their hand and go, that's exactly how I felt too. So I like the oddball thing. That's good. It's got legs.

Well, I'm different because I had a happy oddball existence, you know, I mean, it was just a function of birth order and who might be.

Yeah, you're the baby boy. Yeah. And you knew how to engage and entertain adults.

I'm the fifth child of two fifth children. And they really knew the required freedom for someone who was in that position. The biggest complaint that my siblings, and they're in their 60s, 70s and 80s right now, biggest complaint is that my parents didn't give them any direction. I said that was the reward. I said that wasn't a handicap, that was a reward. But they just gave me a lot of freedom to figure out things for myself. And the other thing is I grew up two miles from the birthplace of Thomas Edison, you know, and I was always drawn to. He was an oddball because he was born deaf. I think he had a childhood accident and he lost his hearing and his mother trained him. I mean, he was homeschooled. Everybody was kind of homeschooled. But they did have school houses and church schools and everything like that. But he was so odd. But he was a tinkerer, you know, and very interesting. I'll try to tell this in a minute, but when he was born, he was about six years old, the town he was in near Lake Erie was the second largest wheat port in the world behind Vladivostok, Russia. Vladivostok, Russia is a huge wheat port. You know, the whole east coast of Russia is a big wheat parts of Siberia. It's not all ice, there's big wheat fields there. But because of the canal system that had been through Erie Canal and other canals, you could have all the farmers bring their wheat to this little town. And then there was an eight mile canal that went to Lake Erie, which crossed over into Lake Ontario, which crossed the Erie Canal to the Hudson River. But for about 10 years, Milan, Ohio, spelled like Milan, Italy, but pronounced Milan was the second largest sweet part. And he grew up in this town. But it's a very interesting story about it. The railroads just started. So the canals were rather a short period. There was like a 30 year period where canal digging was really a big deal. And then the railroads came in and they came to the town fathers of Milan, and they said, you know, why don't we just have all the railroads come to Milan, Ohio? Because water Transportation is only 1/20 the cost of land. I don't care what kind. And the book the Absent Superpower really talks about. I never realized the significance of water transportation and how America is just unique. Half the navigable rivers in the world are in the US probably in the Mississippi Valley, which you were part of growing up in Minnesota. I'm in Ohio. You have the Ohio River. But the whole thing about it was they said, you know, this is a natural. We'll just connect our new. And they said, nah, this railroad thing is never going to go. So they moved four miles to the south and that's where the three railroads came into this one town. And Milan as a town was dead within 10 years. And then who's born in Milan, Ohio, but the guy who created the entire electric age? A lot of people talk about the light bulb. It's not the light bulb. He showed how you can take whole cities and electrify whole cities. That's what he's famous for, you know, and everything like that. But he was an oddball. You know, one of the things you have to think about here, Mike, and it's probably a topic for a whole discussion on another topic, but I think the public school system is designed to take six year olds who have an enormous amount of talent and they're bright and they're curious and they're alert and through a process of 12 years of education, you can take all that creativity away by the time they're 18 years old. And I said, you know, it's just the opposite of entrepreneurism. Entrepreneurism is taking a resource from a lower level of productivity to a higher. But the school system is designed to take an already high level of productivity and take it down to a low level of productivity.

I don't know where I heard this, but it wasn't long ago someone said it's really curious and that's why civil.

Servants should give back massively. For there are unjust rewards.

Man, I don't want to go there. I hear you. So here's this little thing I heard.

But Michael, we are going to go there.

It's fine, it's fine. But I'm going to.

But not what you're saying.

Yeah, all right. So all I'm going to do is just give you a plus, which I'm really agreeing with you. Which is from the time we are usually these days around three to four when you go to Preschool, you're institutionalized. Then you go to school where you're institutionalized, you'd go to college where you're institutionalized, you get a job where you're institutionalized. And then you retire so you can be institutionalized in your rest home, in your retirement home. And where is the peace in between? What is it you're working for? And that is the beauty of true entrepreneurial ism and the rebellion amongst the great thinkers and great entrepreneurs is this. It's not just a desire. It's a fight for freedom and independence and liberty. And it's what I love about being an entrepreneur. It's what I love about breaking systems and bureaucracies and finding the failure points. To me, every business I've ever made basically broke someone else's structured system or added it on top of it. It amplified what it could do without using it.

Yeah, but what I'm saying is there's a point where an entrepreneur has to stop seeking freedom from and put all their emphasis on freedom to. And I think that what you're doing with your dreaming. Yeah. Well, we all got sad stories to tell. And we all got. It's really kind of boring, you know, it's really boring after a while, you know, this person didn't understand me and everything I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the story, but why don't we talk about freedom too? And it seems to me that Charlie has had 50 years of freedom from, but now he needs to do freedom to. And I tell you, freedom from requires only a quarter of the courage than freedom to does. Because freedom from all it is is that you're reacting against something that somebody else created. But with freedom to, you got to create it from the inside and go out.

Bam. That's outstanding, Dan. You nailed it.

No, it takes a lot of courage to be who you imagine that you want to be. Other people are just telling you who you can't be and then you're reacting against them and then you have a long list of complaints an expensive therapy. I mean, Dave Chappelle is really great because he can go back and you know, I saw this thing he did. He said, I don't really believe in trying to imitate people, you know, doing imitation. He said, but I have two. You know, he says, these are the founding fathers. He says, hey, is that done yet? Let's get that constitution done. You know, he says, that's the founding fathers one. You've probably seen it. Yeah, and then he go, goes into this obscenity ridden thing, you know, it doesn't matter what happens. I'm going to trace you down. I'm going to do that. And he says, you know who that's an imitation of? He says, it's you, the audience. That's what you're thinking right now.

Oh, yeah, he was slamming social media and this politically correct and. And. And Stack. He's the best comedian alive right now, in my opinion.

Well, first of all, I've never seen a guy who feels so free. He cares nothing about what you think about anything, you know, as long as you fill the seats and he gets paid.

He is a smart, smart man. Well, let's do this. I think we've reached a good breakup point here. What do you say?

Well, this was very exciting. This is very exciting. I'd like to talk about the whole thing. And I think there's a natural segue between what we've done so far and a new concept I have. It's a new book called Always Be the Buyer.

And I love that. I can't wait to have your take on it, because I think that'll segue into another episode that ties directly into this as well, which is on the best pitch. So if we go from buyer to pitch, it seems to me that we've got a perfect lineup. So that's what we're going to cover in the next episode is Always Be the Buyer. I can't wait for more. Anything you want to add before we wrap this baby up?

Dan, first of all, I'm proud of you, and I'm really happy for Charlie.

It's been a blast to me. I know when I'm doing the right thing, when I experience what I call the tingles. And the tingles are, you know, when you get that great feeling that you're just like. You get little tingles in the top of your head when you're doing exactly what you're meant to do and the way you're supposed to do it, or when you have that just feeling of freedom, it's like this. It's almost a spiritual experience. It's really amazing. And those full two days, I was in a deep state of gratitude and feeling the tingles, and we all did together. It was pretty profound. When you see someone feel an evolution and when everything you've been up until that point actually makes sense and it has purpose, and it's like, this is the story I've had inside me, and I didn't know how to get it out. And I think everyone experiences that. At least everyone who's got something to say of purpose. So it was grand. So without further. Well, I don't know. Just to top this off, thank you for listening, Dan. It's always a pleasure spending time creating with you.

Thank you.

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