The 19-Year Collaboration Plan: Ai + IP + Patents (with Dan Sullivan & Mike Koenigs)

Hi, this is Dan Sullivan, and I'm here for the next episode of Capability Amplifier, and I'm with Mike Koenigs. And today we've been going steady, but now we're going— now we're making it. We're making a commitment. We're making a commitment on Capability Amplifier, and we're taking it way, way big.

Here's what happened. We were at a Genius Network event, and you said, I've got an idea to make our collaboration even better for the next 19 years because we've been working together 6 years. That turned into a a tool that you use called your Fast Filter. You gave it to me today and I saw a better version of my future that I've been dreaming of for a long time, but I couldn't articulate. And the big idea here is we're gonna demonstrate and show you how to create 10x or 100x collaborations, what Dan calls the free zone style of collaboration. And we're combining intellectual property and IP and AI in a way that we're both going to win in a huge way and we're gonna learn from each other. And I think Many, many business owners could use this model to protect your IP, amplify its value, and AI-ify it at the same time. So I think it's going to be a super fun episode to listen to, to watch. You get front row seats. See you inside. Well, Dan Sullivan, we just came back from the Genius Network annual event. You walked up to me and you said, We've been working together for 6 years. I have a plan for our next 19 years together. I had to do a triple take. I was like, "Well, that's intriguing." Then it was the end of the event. We weren't able to talk. What's your big idea that you have for our collaboration that also could be modeled for anyone who's doing long-term free zone-style collaborations?

Yeah, well, my notion of collaboration is where you have two completely different unique abilities and they're useful to each other. So my, my, you've been in Coach for a decade or so and, you know, and we've been talking, we met, I remember we met at the Fountain Blue. Eben Pagan had a at a, you know, a big event and at the Fountain Blue, and I met you poolside. I, I remember. Yep. And, um, and then you came into 10x. You came into the 10x program. Yep. And then, um, um, you did your cancer and I did my cancer, just to bring, bring some variety to the relationship.

Yeah.

And And, but then, you know, we just talked and talked and we would talk and we said, well, why don't we, you know, why don't we turn our normal talking into a podcast? Yeah. Okay. And we've, we've done a lot of podcasts and it's really good because neither of us rehearses for anything.

No.

And, and we just make it up as we go along. And I was thinking that AI is here. So it's been especially interesting since November 30th of '22. And we're approaching that. We're almost at the third anniversary of ChatGPT. And I said to myself, you know, I get, I really get along with Mike. We like each other and we, you know, we trigger each other's thinking. Why don't we turn it into a collaboration where you bring everything that you have in your company that you've created and I bring everything that I've created in my company and we put it together in a collaboration? And it really works because you're an extreme multiplier and I'm an extreme simplifier. So we would be working on producing patentable output and everything technological would be your patent and everything conceptual that would be my patent, which we're both doing anyway.

Yep.

But why don't we just feed off each other? So that's my talk. And I think we're, you know, we're down the road 3 years with patents and we've gotten 78 patents as of this morning. I check the number every morning., and we've got 75 pending, and we do 5 new ones every, every, every month. We submit 5 new patents with Keegan Caldwell, with Keegan in Boston. And, and you've been thinking about patents and you've done patents, but we could show you the process. I could bring to you the process of creating patents. And, you know, I can structure them and I can lay them out. And I know how Keegan has firmed how they like to see the information presented to them. And at the same time, you could be testing your new AI packaging techniques and marketing techniques on Strategic Coach. Yep.

So I love that.

So you'll modify me and I'll simplify you.

And I need that. I desperately need that because right now I live in a world where I'm inventing, exposed to so many things so fast, and the speed by which I'm creating and solving problems, sometimes it's faster than my own teams, my own clients, or the market can absorb. And I know you said something to me not long ago. You said, okay, You've done enough. Now just do that one thing for the next 6 months. And that level of discipline's hard.

That was our last podcast.

Yes, that's what it was. I couldn't remember if it was a conversation at college or a podcast.

And it was that podcast that really gave me the idea. And I said, you know, we should go deeper with the, you know, what each of us is doing. And we should just be, combining it as you go along, because AI is going to be the world for every entrepreneur from now on. And so why don't we create conceptual tools for staying simple and focused in an AI world?

Yes, I, I freaking love it. And, um, I would love to know, um, let's just explore this a little bit, because something that I've been finding is increasingly easy to do is taking intellectual property or problems and making tools that do a really good job really fast. And so I'm going to give you one idea, an example, and I'd love to come up with if we were— yeah, I like, I like bringing it down to, okay, what's a measurable successful product or program we could build or create that would have that would benefit you directly, personally. It would benefit the brand Strategic Coach, and it would create technological opportunity that would be worth 10 or an order of magnitude greater from a market perspective. So, um, it's going to create—

well, here's the thing, we would be modeling the collaboration all the time. Yes. So we're creating— I mean, this is the start of the official collaboration, what we're doing right now. Yes. And my thought is that one of the things, the first sort of intellectual property that you would work on from a technological standpoint and I would work on from a thinking tool standpoint would be our collaboration.

Okay. Awesome. So, so let's, let's explore what that looks like. And, you know, what you and I do really well is, um, we make stuff up, we make it real. It, um, you know, we're good at lighting the fire. And I love to say, let's start with the story, um, and a story that inspires. It might be a 60-second pitch. Yeah. Um, so our, our buyers say, hell yeah, I want a piece of this. Yeah. And then you're great at simplifying and creating the thinking tool that brings someone past the line and can see a better moving future for themselves and also scorecard it. So we got KPIs and wins. And then what I know I could do is build an automated AI that will do it for them, do it with them, and make it real. So I'm going to just start there. So let's, let's talk about how we can, you know, like you're really good at writing books and collaborating with authors and making the books real. But this is something that can happen a lot faster. We can build on the fly and meet and say, okay, we've got 90 or 120 minutes or whatever. We literally set a timer. What's the challenge? What's the opportunity? And build something that even builds the thing. Yeah. So play with me here.

I thought of, I wrote the Fast Filter, a code tool, and I outlined the project, our collaboration project with the Fast Filter. And this is a tool, this is a patented tool that we have, but I just put the project together. This is the best result. This is the worst. If we do it really well, this is the best result. If we do it really badly, this is the worst result. But from the standpoint of the best result, here are 5 success criteria as we go along. So my sense is the first content that you would actually turn into AI would be our collaboration project. And we keep telling the story of how we're collaborating each other, but using AI tools. To bring it out.

Great.

So the idea, just first of all, 19 years. Yeah, it's 19 years because I'm 81 and this gives me a real project for the next 19 years that keeps getting better and better as we go forward. And it comes out in conceptual form, which turns into our patents, and it comes out in technological form, which are your patents.

Great. So let's— so we've got the, the collaboration is the first product. So help me—

it's a continuous project, so we keep adding to this one central product, and then we show other entrepreneurs how they can put their collaborations together. Okay, so this is— so this, uh, and, and you're collaborating with other people, you know, I mean, you're you're taking on really huge projects with really major players. Yeah. And there's— but you have a tendency, if I might say, to do it once. To do it once. So we both can make it up. We can both make it real. Yes. But one of the things I'd like to bring to the collaboration, how you can make it recur.

Yes, I love that.

And you get paid for the recurrent, you get paid for the recurrence.

So do you see this potentially becoming a, um, a series of tools that have your licensed IP in them that people use to create collaborations with and accelerate what that is? Or is this completely separated where it's just IP and then there's tools or imagine through this because when I listen to this, I can't help but think, huh, could build a tool that is a capture tool, for example, and then generates output and also perhaps matchmakes with capabilities. I've been noodling that for quite a while and I've created a version of that recently for a private equity firm. That did some pretty, pretty cool matchmaking. But imagine if I throw this back in your hands of creating productive collaborations that have metrics. There's a tool for that. There's a process for it. But just keep on telling, talking to me about the the problem that we'd solve.

What I see is that we apply it to ourselves first. In other words, what are Mike and Dan doing?

Okay.

And where it is, and this is an ongoing series. This is the two biggest rascals you ever saw. So it's like the— it's the Little Rascals, the continuing Saturday afternoon serial of the The two rascals and what are they up to next? And my sense is that if you go back to the Little Rascals from the, I don't know, 1930s, 1940s, guess it was, but I'm sure it was mostly improv, you know, that they had a bunch of kids, you know, and they had to keep the kids interested. They had to keep the kids together and they have new adventures. They have new adventures. And my sense is we don't want to get too, too far ahead of our skis here. Yep. You know, and that we do the next thing that seems really interesting and exciting. That's both conceptual and it's also technological.

I like that. So let's, let's just say we've now got a basic framework and an idea. And I would guess that, um, we'll have a tool that you'll build that'll progress this forward. I'll find a way to express it technically through AI and build as close to a working prototype as possible, as quickly as possible. And I happen to believe that we lead with the story So it's got to have a good pitch, it's got to have a good name. And we will probably talk about it and then we've got to protect it. So do we— you have a tendency, for example, of inventing a tool a week. And I know from the time you have made something and it even is public, you've got a year to file and protect it, correct?

Yeah, well, what we do is that we've got a lineup. So we have a really good IT team, IP team, and strategic coach. So all of the tools are on one sheet of paper because we, in the workshops, we work with paper and there's an advantage to that. And, but when I'm working with my computer artist at strategic coach, I've got Peggy as my main tool artist, and sometimes I'll just do a sketch, and I'll say, this is how the information is laid out. And then I send it in, and she sends me back the artwork for the tool, and then I fill in all the content, and I always use my content. So I that it has to work for me first, okay? And when I went to Daniel Amen's ADD clinic right up the coast from you.

Yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say Javier's School for the Gifted.

Newport Beach. And so they were struck by the fact that all my questions to the, all the answers that they asked me, they asked me about 200 questions that I had to answer online. And, you know, and I lead an orderly life, you know, I have tremendous structure. I managed every step of along the way. I have managers, Gord is my podcast manager, and I have 5 other managers. You know, I have a book manager, I have a, I have the podcast manager, I have new tool manager and everything like that. So I'm the strangest ADD person because it looks like I'm utterly a fact finder and I have tremendous follow-through, but I don't. I just have project managers and they're all project managers. So we're always working on the next new thing. So anyway, long story short, I went through 3 days of brain scans and testing for memory, testing for attention, testing for response time. And we got to the end of the 3 days and I had an hour-long wrap-up conversation with a psychiatrist there. And she says, you know, you're really weird. She said, I find it really, really weird because all your answers to our questions indicated that you're not ADD. But all of our tests indicated that you have a 10-ring circus going on inside. And I said, yeah, yeah, I've actually self-medicated here. I create these thinking tools. So if I get in a situation, it throws me off track, I get bothered by it, I'll say, what will get me focused here? And I create a tool. And so I just lay it out and then I put all my content in to see if it actually works for the content of the entrepreneurs that we have in the program. And they get real clear, they get real focused, their energy jumps up and they say, this is, I said, this is really good. And then Peggy does the final version on it. And then 2 hours after the artwork is, completed, the copyright has already been launched with the government, both in the US and Canada. And then if it's got a really snappy name to it, we put the trademark in, you know, for the trademark. And these are both filed before it's actually used. So we've got the— there's defensive IP. So copyright and trademarks are defensive. You're protecting yourself against theft. And then we met Keegan Caldwell, who's just the brightest IP lawyer I've ever met in my life. And I said, do you think that we can get this patented? He says, absolutely, you can get it patented. So we started the process and we've, we're in this theme now that every month 5, 5 tools will go in. And then we watch how it goes through their system and everything else and out pops a patent., you know, on a frequent basis. So, but the other thing is that when I'm working with my clients, I can see the patents that they're talking about. They've got this solution, they've got that solution. And I said, that's a patent. That's a patent. Yeah, we had somebody, we had Jerry Browder on today. And I met him, he just jumped up to 10 times. I met him in one of our 2-hour Zoom sessions. Yep. And he's got this incredibly great process that really impacts on the medical system. And I said, do you have a lot of processes? I bet you have a lot of processes. And he said, yeah, we have about 300 processes. And I said, I think every one of them is a patent. And he says, really? Yeah, right. So I introduced Jerry to Keegan Caldwell. And since last year, they put in 56 patents. Applications, and they have half of them back already. And so, so now I've been through the process so, so frequently that I can spot a patent right off the bat, and I know how to structure it so that the firm, the firm can do it. And then I can see it with your stuff. I mean, your stuff is really great. And all of our patents are protected for machine learning. Yeah, yeah. I mean, because AI had already come on the scene before we started the patent process, so they're automatically putting everything to protect if somebody tries to use your stuff for AI and everything that's already protected. So that's what I see. But meanwhile, I'll be understanding AI, I'll be understanding how you think about AI And you'll be thinking in how things become thinking tools. Yes. So there'll be trading capabilities as we go through the— And I think it'll be a great example, you know, for all of our FreeZone clients to see what we mean by a collaboration.

Yeah.

But we're creating something that doesn't exist yet.

Yes. I'm— so let's talk a little bit about—

this is like our first date.

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm sitting here in an open field saying, okay, my programmer engineer implementer is thinking about, okay, so we're going to make the first thing. And I'm paying close attention to my mind, which is jump in and the quick start takes over instead of being strategic and saying, okay, this really deserves to not only be a conceptual framework but also a platform. So I can imagine a platform of tools and something that creates community and connection, which Coach already does. A shared common language. And freedom is that which we all seek, right? It's all these things need to lead to more intellectual excitement. And again, I like to think through examples because you're good at hearing this and then saying, okay, here's what this means to me. So I'll give you an interesting example. You remember when we did the Yield of Dreams play with Charlie Epstein? He came up to me and he said, I have a problem, I want to do something. He told the story about how he did theater and he played music. And I said, you need a show. And that turned into this collaboration that turned into the Yield of Dreams show. And it took a couple of years. It was— and he put a substantial amount of money into that. And not too long ago, meaning a week ago, we were talking to— well, just, I'll tell you, and it's a great show. It's a great— it's fantastic. It's so good and entertaining and it's appropriate for all ages. So I was working with someone else who I first met through A360, but then he's in FreeZone as well, Karthik Seshan. And he happens, he happens to be a really good vocal performer who's in a band who's also had an exit in medtech. And we were brainstorming the other day and when he was at A360, I, Peter and a bunch of other people were hanging out at a little bar at the end of the event. And I said, Karthik, why don't you sing? And I put some karaoke up on the TV and he did a whole performance for the entire bar. It just lit everyone up. So we were talking to him a few days ago and I said, Karthik, and we built a platform for him called The Win Is Within. It's sort of an integration of all the work he's done and how he's grown as an entrepreneur. I said, this really deserves to be a show. He goes, really? I go, a musical performance show. And it turns out I know Roger Love really well, who's, he's the guy who taught Bradley Cooper how to sing in A Star Is Born. He taught Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix to sing in the Johnny Cash movie. Many, he's worked with tons and tons of artists. And I said, I think I could pitch him on doing basically musical theater but for business. And he's like, that's a great idea. So anyway, We're having meetings right now and it's back to how do you do something that's utterly unique, attention grabbing, takes advantage of your greatest capabilities, even your latent desires and your unexpressed self. And use these tools to make it up and make it real and make it fun. So I throw that back into your hands 'cause, If you think into the future, what would inspire and excite you more than anything right now, Dan, that you know would be echoed and reflected inside the community that would provide massive benefit?

Yeah, well, first of all, for Strategic Coach itself, the company that Babs and I have put together, and yesterday, by the way, was our 36th anniversary of our very first workshop. Wow. Okay, so November 13th, 1989. Wow. And I had gone from one-on-one coaching to doing it in a workshop with, you know, with a whole room full of entrepreneurs. And my first one, November 13th, 1989, I had 6. I had 6 people who showed up for the workshop. And I thought I had died and gone to heaven because we were charging them basically 80% of what I would charge for one person times 6, and it was 480%. And within a year, we were up to 30 in a room. And in '94, 5 years later, I had a room with 144 in, and we had raised our prices. So I'd gone, you know, I'd gone, I mean, I'm not gonna do the numbers here, but it was a big number and everything like that. So my sense is, I'll tell you what the problem that I think that what I'm proposing here is solving, the problem that this is solving. And what it's solving is the problem of the isolation and distractibility of really genius entrepreneurs. And the reason is because they can't do everything to make themselves a success. They have one thing that'll make them a success. But then they have to go and get vendors who don't really understand them. And they're not partners and they're not collaborators. They just want a check to do what they do on you. Yeah.

Yeah.

But they don't add anything to the creativity of what you're doing. They're not collaborators. They're not creative collaborators. And you think about everybody who's a real genius. And I think I am. I mean, I think if you gave the 10 boxes of qualifying for a genius, I would check off at least 9 of them. Same thing for you. And there's a tendency to get sidetracked. There's a tendency to get distracted and your life gets complicated. Yeah.

Okay.

Like I hear offers all the time. You know, we can, yeah, I mean, you have 2,500 strategic coach clients. We can take it to 25,000 over the next year. Yeah. If you just allow us to take your unique content and turn it into McDonald's meat patties.

Yes.

And I don't want to do that. I want to keep learning and creating, but I'm getting rewarded financially, but I'm also getting rewarded creatively. And so I think that there's this problem. And then there's the problem of people are stealing your stuff. You know, they do it.. And I think that if we have AI and IP as fundamental building blocks of what we're doing, yeah, I think it, uh, it lets us sleep at night.

We're not worried.

Yeah.

So if we have— part of this is we've got a mechanism for combining, capturing, and, and rapidly protecting the intellectual property, but also monetizing it. So that's one of the byproducts of this collaboration is we're going to explore this, this unknown world that's frankly crazy to negotiate. So having this conversation alone is, is part of the stop. The other one is what I hear and I can see happening is as we're working together, When we were doing the Superpower Accelerator in, on one of our last episodes, I told you about this experience I had with the private equity guy who had managed billions of dollars, came and said, I live in a broken world and a broken system. I'm tired of it. I want to disrupt it with combination of blockchain. And what we did is we took his IP, his ideas, and prototyped and built a software platform in a day and less than just a little over half a day through, showed it to one of his super connectors who raised his hand, said, I want part of this. I want to invest in it and be part of it. He, he pre-sold with a prototype, but also we had made stories. We had a 1-minute video that told the story, and it really came from a day's worth of conversations from a previous meeting. I— there's something magical about that that's very, very fun to do and it creates alignment. So, you know, the process of thinking you can guess ahead what a market wants, building, prototyping and doing something and then having to wait months and months for your teams who aren't invested as collaborators, as you said earlier, That's magical. What you've been doing for a long, long time is you live inside a living laboratory. You build it for you, you get to test it out on paying customers, and then patent and protect. So there's magic inside of that. I think everyone needs to learn that free zone collaborative methodology. And then if there's mechanisms to get there faster, So I can show you a little tool if you'd like that I built a couple of weeks ago. I'd like to see it. Yeah. So this might get you rolling because you might go, I know exactly what one of these, what we can do. Because one of them is the collaboration identifier. I think I can take our conversation today and turn it into a tool. So at our last event, the setup for this is it was John Kissel, who's been in Coach. He's awesome. And he said, I'm surrounded with $100,000 problems and million-dollar opportunities. And million-dollar opportunities. Yes, exactly. It's all about—

yeah, it's—

you get to decide where the zero goes. So, but I built this tool through a series of conversations has helped me identify $100,000 problems in my business that AI could solve. Or I could click and say, help me find million-dollar or larger opportunities in business that AI can help or solve. And then you put in your website. So, you know, you put in— I'd put in Strategic Coach and Dan Sullivan. And, and for you, I'm going to put in $10 million or larger opportunities. Yeah, because that's going to excite you a lot more than a million. And what it does is it's going to ask you a few questions. So it goes out and researches you. It'll start finding your entire body of work. And this tool also, I've got another one that does super deep research and it'll find all of your competitors and give you a really great scorecard. On your website and tell you specifically what copy should be changed and adjusted. So I built that for Michael Rosbrock and his teams. And these are like— we can create an infinite number of these really, really quickly and have a, a toolkit. And we have to find out how do we filter, because it's right now the challenge that we have as founders is we're overwhelmed with half-finished content that AI generates. Okay, so let's see what it came up with. So it says, I've already identified 12 potential $10 million opportunities for my research. Your answers help me prioritize. So AI-powered expansion, IP productization, coach multiplication, data intelligence, corporate enterprise adapting your methodology for corporate entrepreneurs, industry-specific vertical specialization, your core methodology. So Basically, is— do any of these look interesting to you?

Oh, sure, sure.

Okay, I'll do it.

Yeah.

All right, so, um, what's the— what's the first one that looks the most interesting?

Yeah, I think the, um, the, um, I'm just talking about the $50K to $200K entrepreneurial market. What could the numbers, the dollar signs, represent there? Okay.

Yeah, $50K.

Wow.

Okay. Yeah.

Let's see.

I want you to give me more details on number 1 and what that money represents. So is that the revenue of that market or the income or what specifically are we talking about? And give me 3 specific examples of how this could be true for Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach. And, uh, all right, so let's go into town. But this would be an opportunity, Dan, um, again, I'm just going to think out loud for a moment, but one of the things that could be possible inside of the coach environment is if we took a tool and we AI-ified it. And here, I'll slow this down for you.

But what we're looking for is individuals who are already at a minimum, they're at $200,000. Yes. And we're looking for, we're looking for $200,000, probably up to $10 million in personal income on a yearly basis. Yep. Yep. So that I would say for them to be really attracted, let's just say it's $200,000 to $2 million.

Mm-hmm. Yep. So we'll just say, yeah, because that's just too many people. I totally agree. So we'd just say we're looking for business owners and founders who are in the $200,000 to $2 million income level. This is too small and uninteresting for us. So think a lot bigger. And get more detailed for me. Ask clarifying questions if necessary. So it just becomes a resource. And this is, this is a relatively dumb tool compared to a couple of the other ones. But now these days, Dan, we could take either a new tool or an existing one and build the visuals, you know, based upon your designs to output, um, so they become little companions. I just have to know, like, what interests you and what you think would interest the coach members.

Yeah, well, the big thing is that, uh, I, I would say that probably just the one that working on right now, this would be a valuable tool to everybody in the Strategic Coach program.

Okay.

Okay. So this would be, you know, I know there's more rooms in the house and I know there's more dimensions, but for them to get clear who they want to be a hero to. Oh yeah. That's a tool of ours called Who Do You Want to Be a Hero To? That's patent. We already have that patent. And so the big thing is that, but they're not dealing with real numbers. They have a feel, they have sort of an anecdotal feel, you know, but they've never actually analyzed it. Okay, they've never actually analyzed it. They go in the direction where they're being successful. Yeah. Yeah, but it's more of a, There's not a real conceptual model that allows them to understand that. So for example, for our starting in the very first workshop, we have two types of people. We have workshops for $200,000 to $500,000 and $500,000 and above. And by far the biggest one over the last 12 months has been the $500,000 and above. Yes. Okay. So the big thing is, you know, you establish that this is the type of person. And then what we can do is actually look at, do they have any characteristics that are really interesting? Are they growth at that stage, or is they're basically holding the line at that level? Maybe they got to $200,000 and that was enough. But what we're, looking for is ambitious and growth-minded entrepreneurs. Yeah, but to get in the room, to, you know, to get in the casino and play at the right tables here, they have to have these chips to begin with.

Yep, yep. Right buy-in, right mindset, right language patterns. That's why you potty train them first.

Yeah, and they're ambitious, and we're really screening for ambition, you know. We're screening for, um, And they're not destination entrepreneurs. They're perpetual growth entrepreneurs that once they get to one level of revenue, then they say, okay, now where can I go? And then they go to the next level. We have a tool called the largest check.

And usually what is the true— Yep. I'm finding a tool for you.

Yes. Uh-huh. They have a dream for a check. And, you know, let's say the biggest check they ever got from a client was $100,000 and they have a dream check of $1 million. I'd like to know what they do. And then they start reorienting themselves, changing their habits, changing the networks that they're operating in, and then understanding what a million-dollar check would really require on their part. And what does it say about the check writer? Mm-hmm. Does it actually say it? And the thing is that people tend to have networks of people who are like them. So once you establish one check writer who's $1 million, you're immediately introduced to a whole new level of networks of people who are million-dollar check writers. Yes. Okay, so that's what I would see there. But this is, infinitely interesting. Okay, infinitely interesting to our entrepreneurs and strategic coach.

Good. So let's pretend, um, you know, one of the filters that you have is an ambition filter, and, uh, there's an ambition multiplier. I could see there being a quiz, a test, something to be simple and applicable We could give it away as a lead generator that would lead to indoctrinating a potential customer and, um, distribute it and share it. Okay, so it'd be a shareable resource.

Um, maybe there'd be— you could also create an AI tool for them.

That's what I'm saying. It'd be an AI tool that Um, would be we could give it away, we could build a, a, a tool, it'll have your IP, but it could also get customers. So it would, um, it could be a customer-getting tool. Um, and all I'm doing is I'm playing hot or cold with you right now.

So I could see like, yeah, go for it. Here's the thing, they, um, um virtually every tool that I created, formalized, named, packaged, and got the copyright, got the trademark, and got the— now getting the patents— is the kind of stuff that they do anyway, but badly. Yes. Yeah, they're forced to do this type of thinking, but it's sort of under duress, you know, and And the other thing is that they have to sell themselves on it because they're going to say, well, if it took this much work to get a $100,000 check, it's going to take 10 times more effort to get a million-dollar check. Actually, it's going to be 10 times easier. Yeah. So there's a psychological basis. And what happens to my company if all of a sudden we're getting million-dollar checks rather than $100,000 checks?

$10,000 checks. Great. So now what we want to do in this free zone collaboration is we've got to create some metrics for tools that we're going to invest in and think about them in terms of the result we want them to bring. So we know we want to— I'm just going to repeat what I just heard because this will help. So maybe we have the equivalent of our own 4x4. And we come up with what this thing needs to do and needs to be. So we determine if it's worth doing and the value we want it to bring to a coach member or someone who matches the profile, the ideal customer profile. So it's engaging, solves a problem they're doing badly, helps them add a zero to their income or revenue. What would be some other things? Again, I'm just guessing out loud here, but—

Well, what's it do to their lifestyle if they start having 10 times more money? And I would say that the obstacles to entrepreneurial growth for the most part aren't in their company and they're not in their marketplace. It's in their personal life. Yeah. I'll give you an idea. I recommend that people don't drive. I recommend that they be driven, okay? That you have a driver. You have a driver. I haven't driven in 20 years, you know, in Toronto or Chicago. I haven't driven in 20 years. And because I don't like to. I just don't like to. Yeah. Okay. And so a lot of our entrepreneurs don't come from big cities. They come from small towns and everybody drives in small towns, you know, but they drive from one small town to another. It's an hour. It's an hour there. It's an hour back. It's 2 hours of their time that they're driving. And I say, well, why don't you get a driver? And they said, do you know what that would do to our image in our small town that I had a driver? "Oh no, oh no, you don't have a driver in our small town." Or you get a housekeeper, you know, you have 2 or 3 kids, your wife is a parent, takes them to school, picks them up, packs lunches or whatever the routine is. And you get a housekeeper in and they don't clean house anymore. They don't, and do you know what that does to the image of us? And their wife doesn't do that anyway. This is her identity. This is her identity. I mean, this is who she is, is the housework. Cooking is the housework. Laundry is the, that's part of her image. So for everything that seems to be a straightforward marketplace problem to solution, there's a whole world of psychology that's around a decision to suddenly grow. Plus they come from a family where maybe they're the person who's the moneymaker in the family and their siblings aren't.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, so these are all part of our strategic coach. You know, I have 10 envy obstacles that I've just identified where other people's envy keeps you from growing or your concern about other people's envy keeps you from growing. Okay, so that's, that's an identifiable, um, but here's the thing, um, they can't explore all these psychological areas until they get real numbers. What I could with just what you did, well, how many of them, uh, million-dollar checks are within 60 miles of where I live?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, we could feed in ideal customer profiles and find—

You know, I grew up in a town of 1,500 people in Ohio. How many million dollar checks? How many people in that town can write million dollar checks? Zero. Yeah. No, I mean like write a million dollar check. I mean spend a billion dollars over 10 years. Yeah, you can do that. But I'm talking about a million-dollar check.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I don't have that. I don't have that much in ATM, in the ATM, but I can write you a check for $1 million.

Yeah, understood. We came from very similar towns. We did. We're both— Yeah. Well, as we've been talking, as I've been listening, Let me show you a little tool, Dan. I made another one. Okay. This is— it's an ambition amplifier. So it would be help me identify my true ambition level and what might be limiting it. So this is, you know, it's a chatbot, a dialog, but I can totally see measuring tools, metric tools, scorecarding. Um, let's see. So, uh, and again, this came from our podcast interview. I basically turned our podcast interview into an app while we were chatting here. And as I'm listening, so looking backward from today, 3 years ago, it's the biggest capability you've developed you're most proud of. Um, when you think about your biggest current goal or ambition, what feeling comes up? I told you that you'll definitely achieve your biggest goal within the next year. In the past month, has anyone led you to make a comment, even subtle, that made you feel you should slow down, be more realistic, or be grateful for what you have? And right now, are you measuring your progress by— and then identified the gap in the gain. So, um, and I could just talk into this.

And yeah, so there I go. Here's something that I'm spotting right away. Yes, I don't know that I don't know the answers to these questions.

Uh-huh.

Okay. And the nice is, so I never start with what they don't have. I already start with what they do have.

Yeah.

Okay. So for example, you were in this morning for our free zone, our Zoom call this morning. Yes. And I, you know, the name of the tool was Always Getting Smarter. Okay. Always Getting Smarter. And I know I can say this openly on a Zoom call. And the reason is because the It was created 2 weeks ago and the copyright and trademark have already been filed.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. And I know a lot of people say in the world of AI, there's not going to be any intellectual property. You know, everything, everybody's going to share everything, meaning that, that they're going to steal things. And, and I said, yeah, but If you take the largest corporations in the world, 80% of their valuation is based on copyrights, trademarks, and patents. So what you're saying the world is going to see as a step forward that we first of all wipe out the valuation of 80% of all the large corporations in the world. Is that what you're saying? Do you think that these people who run big corporations have lawyers? Do you think they have lawyers that protect them? You know, dude, do you think that, do you think they're going to let you steal what they did? Do you think you're a politician and you're going to make a decision that takes 80% of the valuation of a large corporation away? And you're also asking for a campaign contribution. I don't think we're going to, I don't think. So the whole point is property is property and property just gets more and more powerful as you, as you go by. A lot of entrepreneurs don't create because they feel if they create and show it in public, it's going to be stolen because they haven't protected. Yeah. And you're protected because you do your presentation so fast they don't remember what their name is after them.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that is the, uh, um, I'm not taking the time to, um, You know what I know for a fact, it'll be like I'll forget 100 of the things I've designed, developed that have already created impact for someone else. You know, I'll have— so I'm not proud of what I'm about to say, but it's the truth. I'll have someone walk up to me a year from now saying, you shared one thing on stage, I ran with that, I built a $10 million company from that one thing you shared and showed. Or a tool I gave away, and I'll be like, God, I don't even remember making it. So I know that what I'm looking forward to is—

that's okay before you're 60, but it's not, it's not good after you're 60.

I got about 5 months, 5 months if that. Yeah, April 27th. So it's, uh, we're pretty close. And I've been promising that I'd have a massive major mind shift in terms of how I was approaching this. So this is a This fits good.

Yeah, no, it's, it's fits in with the personal life plan.

Yeah. So, so let's talk about other than this was our first step, what's our next best step? Will you, do you want to give me a seed and say, here's a thing I'm thinking about?

Now we already know we can do an ambitious— my past elder, and I'll turn it into a story and I'll send you the story.

Great. So then what I'll do is I'll make a marketing story that's an animated, um, commercial. Yeah, promoting this. So we get total alignment. It'll be something appropriate for you to get you excited about.

Well, the first thing is we'll, we'll expand our, uh, capability and for higher audience by a factor of 10.

Yeah. Yes, this is super, super good. And then, uh, so we'll make I like, I like thinking of everything as a show, right? And, and we both have that in common. It's like at the end of the day, we've got to be in the entertainment business first to be given permission to do what we love to do.

Shakespeare said, I think Shakespeare's of life is the stage.

It is. It is. And then from there, I'll prototype something that solves a problem that you and I both have that we can experiment on checkwriters. And then determine based upon some kind of metrics, you know, if it deserves to see the next light of day. Yeah. So some of these just might be properties, intellectual or, you know, let's call it patentable properties. Some of them could be productized. And one thing I've learned is if it's far enough along, I'm smart enough to get the hell out of that way. But I do have a group of AI coders on my team now who can, you know, we've been able to take an idea that's functional into something that's releasable in weeks, not months. And that's exciting. And I think if we lead it with showbiz first, Which reminds me of an interesting thing I just— I watched last— listened to this yesterday on my ride home from LA. And by the way, yesterday at Rosbrook Studio, it's in— it's right across the street from Warner Brothers, and I stayed at Universal Studios. So I had— I was thinking while I was up there, you know, when I was a little boy in Minnesota, my dream was to someday work in Hollywood, and In my 20s, I had that opportunity. I did some work for Sony and 20th Century Fox, and it was the most exciting thing ever. But deep inside, I'd be like, ah, there's a part of my performance world that never got fulfilled quite the way I imagined it. And I thought, you know what? My instrument is my laptop. My compositions are the performances I get to do that are hours and days in length. How lucky am I? But there was an interview with Lionel Richie who's been performing for 50 years on Joe Rogan. And it is quite good 'cause he just wrote a book about his crazy history. And he talked about the idea that in the music business, the greatest, producers are the ones who didn't want to listen to a tape but said, hum your song for me and I'll tell you if it's a hit. And I was like, God dang, that is powerful stuff. So can— if we can make our audience hum and sing along with us, Dan, then we know we did it right.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I think, you know, it's going to— it's going to go show by show and then we'll do one show and we'll probably not look at our homework, but we'll remember our thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Remember our thinking. But one thing I think we should do is that every time we produce one of these podcasts, we should put it into Instant IP.

Okay.

Oh, that's a great idea. Okay. It goes into blockchain.

It goes into blockchain. I'll do it. I'll do it today, or unless you want to do it in your account.

So as soon as, you know, as soon as Gord is finished with the edits or anything like that.

Great. And let's do it. That's a super idea. So we'll use, use the platforms and I like that a lot.

Well, first of all, it demonstrates a point of view. You know, it demonstrates an essential principle. So if you want to be creative and be confident about your creativity, make sure you protect your creativity.

Yeah. Great. And I think we should also think about how to amplify capability amplifier with this new messaging and this methodology and say, okay, this is, Yeah. So if I had a wish or a seed I wish to plant is how can we make every episode more exciting and more stickable and more functionally useful? And that might mean if there's a bit of IP that can be generated as a result of a show that could be generated, you know, it'd be is there a tool in every episode.

Yeah, well, yeah, well, we'll see that. But I think they— it'll— because we want it to come into existence, it will come into existence. Yeah, that's my— yeah, 3 rules. Everything's made up. Nobody's in charge.

And life's not fair. Yep. Got to use that one yesterday. Had dinner with Zach last night. I remind him of it all the time. Yeah. And he's getting— he's coming along. It's great. So, well, let's, let's wrap up this episode.

So, you know, I mean, we, we started this quite abruptly because I dropped a line in Phoenix last week and then I put a fast filter together just to lay out the structure. And then you read it at the beginning. So we got into this quite clearly. But it's an example of how I think a lot of what we're doing together, the two of us, is a great way to approach the future that more and more the technology of the world is gonna be artificial intelligence, okay? And the other thing is gonna be entrepreneurial that if, and really a little incident that happened, I just spotted in the paper, the head of AI for Meta just quit because he wants, do a startup. And my sense is, if you think you're going to use AI to create General Motors, you're mistaken. Yes. Because everybody who's bright and can see their future sees a bigger opportunity for them having their own corporation than working for your corporation.

Absolutely. Yeah, that is, um, uh, yeah, I, that is the frame, uh, a phrase that I use all the time is, uh, AI can be used to collapse the speed of trust, but the ones who are already winning are the ones who already have it. Um, and, um, yeah, this is, this is a longer, deeper conversation for sure.

So for you, if you're smart enough that somebody wants to have you as an employee, you're probably smart enough not to want to have an employer.

Yeah, that's— or different, different motivations. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

So let's do— let's wrap this up. How would you like to wrap it up with our next Next step, uh, next step plan. And if you were giving a prescription to a founder who got excited by this and saying, all right, um, this is the best way ever to create an amazing free zone collaboration, which is to create a 10x future in a conversation that's inspiring, motivating, and you walk away seeing that, that future clearly and, and, and, uh, and simply?

Yeah, I think the big interest for me is that my feeling is with every jump in AI that a certain kind of collaborative intelligence becomes more possible between two humans using their own brains, not AI. Okay. And I think that there's a possibility of an entirely kind of creative collaboration relationship going into the future where your money is your money, your company is your company, your property is your property, but you keep creating more revenue, you keep creating more intellectual property that is individually owned for one partner or another partner. And then maybe as we go along, there will be joint, joint IP.

Yeah, I'm going to be super curious about how that, the combination— I'm not sure. No, I— yeah, that's exciting. I like the idea of, you know, where are the multipliers there in multiplying the value of the IP segmenting, licensing, etc. And we may be super curious about how to think about that in a super expansive way. And these, these are questions that have to be answered. They're going to be answered either on the battlefield or collaboratively anyway.

So me, we look at our podcast, it's going to attract really bright people who say, have you ever thought about this? Have you ever thought about that? And they're going to start feeding us ideas from their specialty.

I like it a lot. Well, I think, um, what you've inspired me to do is I've got two AI events coming up, the next ones. This could be one of the core topics that gets discussed there or shared, and that can be an amplifier for that. Um, so we'll— we've got enough time to have a framework and, uh, some tools made Um, so we can test it out.

Um, the story. Okay, I'll write up my fast filter as a story and send it to you.

I love it, I love it. And I'll have it by Monday. Great. And I'll make, make it— I'll make it real as an animation and we'll have characters in it, so it will, it will be like a little mini movie trailer.

Yep.

Yeah. All right, I'm super excited. Now we're in the entertainment business.

Even more now. Your boyhood longing can come and come true. That's right. That's right. You, you dropped a line there and you said that, you know, there's something in me that really wants to be a performer. And but, you know, you're not hanging out in Hollywood. You've been to Hollywood, but you're not hanging out. I have to tell you, there's millions of people in Hollywood. Yeah. Whose job is to perform and they're not—

they're not performing. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I know I drove by some of that.

Well, this has been a space for a lot of space for rent in Hollywood.

Yes, there is. Oh, my God. A lot of blank— a lot of blank office space. So, well, let's keep on making more cool stuff. Yeah. Another great episode. All right. Well, I'll wrap it up really fast, which is this is Capability Amplifier. We just made a 19-year commitment here, and you get to go along for the ride, learn with us, make with us, and hopefully this will inspire you to build and create things with your ideas, um, and with people you genuinely like creating with that are 10 times or 100 times bigger than you ever imagined. I think it's great.

Awesome.

Me too. See you in the next episode. Bye-bye.