Unconventional Leadership Strategies (feat. Shawn Dill)

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Hi, I'm Susan Drum. And welcome to the Enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance. Go to meritageleadership.com to learn more. Today we're talking about thinking outside the box, and we have a very successful entrepreneur, Dr. Shawn Dill, to tell us a bit about how this was the key to his success. Dr. Dill is the CEO of the specific Chiropractic Centers, a franchise of chiropractic offices throughout the United States, and is a chiropractor himself. He also runs the Black Diamond Club, where a group of more than 700 service providers come together to mastermind and grow. In 2019, he, along with his wife, published the book none of youf Business, A Winning Approach to Turn Service Providers into Entrepreneurs. And he's been featured in Forbes and Entrepreneur magazine. So welcome, Dr. Dill.

Thank you so much. What a pleasure to be here with you. And thank you so much for, for sharing your influence and your audience with me. I'm super excited for our time together today.

Me too. So tell me a little bit about your journey and what were some of the biggest lessons that you've learned in entrepreneurship and how you grew your business.

So my entrepreneurial and business journey starts out, you know, in 1995. I graduated chiropractic college and I then moved to Costa Rica to practice. I was 24 years old. And if we all hearken back to when you're 24, you know, everything. I didn't, I didn't need a plan. I was just like, I'm going to go to Costa Rica. One major problem, I didn't speak Spanish. I don't recommend that. So I go to a Spanish speaking country to practice a healing art that they don't have, that they don't understand, and I can't really explain it to them. So needless to say, my first year was absolutely, absolutely dismal. Like, I ended my first year honestly thinking that I should probably throw in the towel. And thankfully I didn't. I really sort of cut my teeth on the school of hard knocks. I think that in order to teach, you have to fail a lot because that you learn those lessons and those life lessons, if you don't learn them, they just repeat, right? The laws of Sanskrit tell us that life will give us lessons and if we don't learn Them, the lessons will repeat. So I'm super happy that I was able to learn these lessons and now have shared these lessons into so many other verticals in other business areas. And it's really great to see business really follows sort of the laws of nature and especially in the service world. In the service world, if you can help to solve people's problems, then you will be compensated, you will be rewarded. And, you know, my wife and I have been tremendously blessed just living by those laws.

Well, what are some of those lessons that you learned that follow the laws of nature? Which sounds really fascinating. Fascinating like, huh, Business following the laws of nature's least first service provider.

Yeah, I think that what happens a lot in business is that we. We do a thing. I mean, no matter everybody who's listening, like, we do a thing. You're an accountant, you're a dentist, you manufacture erasers, whatever. The thing is, like, we do this thing that we do and we're passionate about it, and we want to share that thing because we're like, listen, I hear this all the time, Sean. If more people understood the power of podcast, if more people understood that they should write a book, if more people understood that they could clean up their taxes and not. And they could, you know, cash flow better if they didn't pay as much in tax and they put money away, they could create long legacy wealth. If we believe that this thing that we do could literally change the world, then we get excited and we want to tell people about it. But here's the thing. Not everybody right now woke up today and, and says, hey, I need that thing. And we have to learn that getting into business somebody is an awful lot like a relationship. So we don't lead with the thing. We don't lead with marriage. A law of nature is we develop trust. We develop a relationship over time. That leads to somebody asking us, hey, I see that you are trustworthy. Hey, could you help me buy? And this is very important because could you help me buy? Leads to the law of reciprocity. So if you said, could you help me by making a recommendation for a restaurant in Naples? We were talking earlier, and if I said, yeah, I would go to this place and maybe I call that place because I have a relationship with the restaurant, with the owner or the general manager, I said, please take care of Susan. They give you a wonderful experience. You will call back to me and say, hey, thank you. That way was so great. You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to go out of your way. And that opens the door for me to say, whoa, and Susan, could you help me buy. And now, and this is not like buy, buy my thing. I'm not going to say that. But now we begin to develop this law of reciprocity. Develop and deepening the relationship, which will eventually lead to both of us actually doing business with each other. And if not doing business with each other, because maybe I don't have that need or you don't have that need, I will still send you everyone that I know who needs the thing that you provide once I 1 know you and to understand what it is that you provide.

Yeah. Well, it starts with some of these small ways in which we build trust that you go an extra mile. You didn't just say in that example, oh, you should check out this restaurant. You went ahead and used your personal clout, helped make a reservation, whatever that may be. You kind of went above and beyond in doing that.

Well, what's interesting thing is it's. And I think that's a great thing that we have to kind of condition our minds. I will tell you one thing to the listeners and viewers of your show, One thing that in my life experience I've seen is that all successful people are hyper responsive. Right? So when, once the relationship is created, so I'm not talking about, you know, those cold DMs that come in, but once a relationship is established, all successful people are very accessible and very responsive. I think that that should become the norm. And so when, you know, there's so many people that in my journey, I was always sort of taken aback. I was like, why are they being so nice? Why are they helping me? I wonder what they want. And then I began to realize that in certain circles, it's just the way that we need to be. We need to be abundant in our giving so that we could be abundant in our receiving. And then I just began to model myself after those individuals. And I realized, like, again, here is a law of nature. If you water the seeds, then the seeds will grow and you will bear fruit. You don't have to have anything special about it. You don't need to read special books. You water good seed, you get good fruit. And so if we could shift to. I went over and above even like telling ourselves that, like, oh, I went over and above for Susan. How about I just treated Susan how I would want to be treated. And then Susan began to reciprocate because it's a law of nature. And the relationship begins to bear fruit and we are both winning at that point.

Yeah. And I think. But also it. You can't necessarily have a specific expectation of it because you don't know just when you water the plants, which plants are actually going to bear more fruit than others. Right. And you can't necessarily go into it with that expectation, because I think people can feel that as well. Right.

Yeah. I love that. I love that. That's a great word, expectation. One of the things that we talk a lot about in our teachings is you do reap what you sow. So that's a law. Right. Another law of nature. You reap what you sow. However, you do not always reap where you sow. And so that is the expectation part. So if I'm doing things and I'm helping Susan, and I'm looking at Susan saying, hey, are you going to give back to me? See, that's very transactional. But once we begin to trust. And maybe this is. Maybe we've shifted the podcast topic, the laws of nature. But once we. Once we begin to trust these laws, we understand that I do get reciprocated. I get reciprocated, but maybe not from the person, because it's not transactional. It's universal. So somewhere else, someone else might say, hey, I want to help you out, or, hey, I want to create, form a partnership, or send you this business for no reason other than maybe they heard me on a podcast, or maybe you told them and then they came and they were like, hey, let's do business together. I could really easily miss that if I'm only looking at the individual saying, hey, this is tit for tat. You need to repay me. But that's not really how the universe repays us. It pays us in other ways.

Yes, yes. And imagine, yeah, it could come in another form. I love what you said about to give. It will come back. And you don't know exactly how it will come back or how long, but if you keep showing up and giving, then eventually it will return. Well, one of the things we talked about prior to us taping was you like to really give people some counterintuitive thoughts or ways in which to think outside the box. What are some of those recommendations that you have for people in business or entrepreneurs?

I tell everybody that all great advice is always counterintuitive. Most times we're not attuned to that. Like, we're looking for someone to come on and affirm our previous beliefs. But your previous beliefs and your intuition are what have gotten you exactly to where you are. And so every time if you're listening to the show in the future that you're listening to the show, anytime somebody says something that you're like, I don't know about that, that's, that's gold. That's the stuff you write down, you revisit it later and you're like, I need to revisit that and see what do I think about it. We were just talking about the value of relationships. Like, you can't get there all by yourself or even if you're like, hey, but that's why I have this great team. That's even not going to be enough. And there's so many people in the world that fill in these gaps. One of the things I realized too is that so many people were sent into my life to fill gaps. Opportunity. We miss so many opportunities because we're not looking for them. Maybe I'll, I'll, I'll wrap up with, you know, an exercise that we can do to help us to identify that. But opportunity comes along and because we're not attuned to that, we don't take advantage of it. So one thing that we could do is to really begin to value and place a heavy, heavy emphasis in cultivating and growing relationships. Even when we think, like, why would I do that? There's nothing in it for me. How could they help me? How can. And I have to tell you, I could sit here and tell you story on story of all of these relationships that have come into my life that frankly, five years ago, I probably wouldn't even allowed them into my life. And all of the blessings that those relationships, because I did allow them have brought into my world. And so I think having one. So, so the action item here, everybody creates, you know, at the end of the year, they create their marketing plan, their, their goals and projections. One thing we can all do is create a relationship plan for 2024. So forecasting out ahead the next 365 days, a list of anywhere between, I would say, five and 20 individuals with whom I would like to become in better relationship with. And then the plan part of it is, how am I going to do that? Right? I have to commit to investing time, energy, effort, potentially even resource strategic gifting. Because I'm committed to being in better relationship with these five to 10, maybe even up to 20 individuals. Doing so, I know adds a ton of value to your top line and ultimately, of course, to your bottom.

And would you suggest that these are relationships that you already have, that you're looking to deepen or would you also Add in, I want to make, you know, five new relationships in a specific area.

There's basically three buckets of relationships. The first one is called your network of 90. 90 individuals of people who you actually know. So if I were to say, hey, do you know Susan? They would be like, oh, yeah, and I love her podcast, I love working with her, or I met her at an event through eo. They know you. If, if the answer would be no, I'm not sure they don't qualify for this particular list. So a network of 90. So the strategy here on the network of 90 is every single day, as part of my discipline, I should reach out to one person in my network. Now, if you think about it, this is going to put me on a 90 day rotation. So every quarter I have a touch point with everyone in my network. Nobody gets dropped behind or forgotten about those relationships. Stay top of mind and they're maintained. The next list is called Your list of 20. This is a list of 20 individuals with whom you are not yet in relationship with, but if you were in relationship with, it could really impact your business. So the same strategy, I'm going to reach out to one of them every day. But the, the, the way that I do, this is going to be different because they don't know me. So this is not a cold dm and it could be as simple as commenting. And so listen everybody who's listening? I want you all to understand this if you want to be in better relationship with Susan. I've never met a creator who has a book or a podcast who is not acutely aware of their reviews. So if you think like, I am just a sideliner and Susan doesn't know me, one thing you could do is leave a positive review for her podcast. This is going to get you on her radar. She's going to read it and she's going to say, wow, who said such nice things about me? And for a moment, your name goes into her consciousness. Now, now you are temporarily relevant and you need to continue to nurture that so that she begins to say, hey, who is this person? One way we could do that is to follow her on social media and maybe begin to send her strategic gifts. We begin to find out what she likes. And I'm not talking over the top gifts by just I hit the mark. I get the exact right gift. I send it to her and she's going to say, who sent me this? And her team is going to say, shawn Dill sent you this. And she's going to say, I think I recognize that name. And then all I have to do there, follow up. Hey, Susan, it's Sean. Did you get the gift I sent you? I guarantee you this. I guarantee you she will take that call. Now we are beginning the process of creating and deepening our relationship. The last list is called your gang of five. This is you and four other people who service your same ideal client but in different areas. These are your best friends in the world. And for me, accountants, financial planners, they work with people who are doing well in business but that need help in certain areas. They can send me tons of business. And. And when they do, they don't lose the client. Vice versa. My clients begin to excel. They financially have new horizons that they're hitting. I can send them to an accountant, a financial planner. I don't lose the client. So if you could find a network of people for other people who service the client in different ways, now we can begin to share our own clientele, our best clients, with each other. And your business grows. This is not just strictly referrals, because this is looking out for the best interest of the people that you're servicing. So you know that those are sort of the three buckets. And so if everybody. I think if you worked on Your list of 20, this is that list of 20 people that you're committed to next year. And then the last part is that plan. How am I going to get into relationship? I've got to become relevant. I've got to provide them great information and value. And maybe I might need either an introduction or a strategic gift to get me on their radar.

Well, I like that you kind of identified a certain number and you have a target. Right. And you said five of those because they require more nurturing. Right. Than let's say, because you. You're trying to get off into their field of consciousness. So that requires some effort and time. And setting some of these types of goals could be incredibly powerful for people. Now, I can imagine on the other side, they might be saying, well, who starts this? I'm so busy, right? What does everybody say?

How are you doing?

Busy. So busy. Everybody's busy, right?

How.

How do you help people get past that sort of thinking that, you know, gosh, I need to say no to more things versus, yes, how can I help you?

First and foremost, I do agree we do need to be really good at saying no. Like, we have to be good. We can't say yes to everything. We put out a guide on how to make decisions. There's sort of a process that we utilize But I would say the highlights of that, when I look at opportunity, I want to first and foremost make sure that the opportunity will assist me in getting closer to a pre existing goal. I think that's super, super important. A lot of times what happens is opportunity shows up. I didn't really ever have the plan of owning a home in Scottsdale. Susan starts telling me, like, sean, there's great opportunity here. And then I start saying like, well, maybe I should look at it. My first thing is if I wasn't looking for real estate investment opportunities in Scottsdale and somebody walks up to me and says, this is what you should do, it's easy for me to say no, because that wasn't on my radar. It's not on my, my plan, on my, my priorities, my list of priorities for today. The second piece of this though is exactly that. Prioritization and reprioritization. You know, we have to have a list of our priorities of what we are currently working on. And so in our book none of youf Business, we lay out sort of a strategy that we utilize. Two books. A lot of times, if you see me, I have to what appear to be like agendas, little, little books. One of them is called the Book of Yet. So this is all the things, like listening to a podcast, somebody says something, I'm like, that's great. That would be very useful. Network of 90, list of 20, gang of five. But I can't do that yet. So I'll put it in my Book of Yet. I'm not going to do something that I don't have the knowledge base to do. And then the next agenda or book that I'm carrying is my calendar. What's in the calendar gets done. If it's not in the calendar, we're not doing it. And we are absolutely maniacal. We review this every week. We with our team. Every single person on my team has access to both mine and my wife's calendar. I have access to her calendar. Everything gets planned. Personal time, playtime, everything gets planned. That's how we get most things done. Now the last thing that I'll share there is, I think it depends where you are in business as well. So when we have a lot of different people that listen to your shows, if you are in what I would consider an early stage of business, early, almost every business problem that presents itself can be solved by working harder. Hey, just bite down and work harder. We can get through it, but in middle to late stages. And this is sort of one of the things that, that hinders Growth is that we get to where we get by working really hard and then we kind of plateau because there's only so many hours in a day. So in middle to late stage businesses, almost every business problem can be solved by people. So this is a hiring issue. I've got to bring on the right people on the. And so I am looking for where I am in my life, efficiencies, whereas someone else might be just looking for answers, solutions and execution. But I only have a certain number of hours. I'm trying to figure out how I get double production and maintain the amount of workload that I have. And so it just kind of depends on where you're at in that journey.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And also I've seen it from a coaching perspective how the mindset of, let's say a founder CEO needs to shift once they go public or they're in a series C at this point. And it's really about scale and operational efficiency. Whereas before it was, you know, very different skill sets. And some never make that transition and they don't want to because, you know, they want to go back to what they're good at. But some do because they want the variety or they want to feel like they've, they've watched this business grow through the entire life cycle. They don't want to give up their baby, let's say. But to do that, wow, what a fundamental mind shift has to take place to be able to then run a company that's public or run a company that's now about operational efficiency, not so much about just taking market share.

You know, it's what we call startup mode. And a lot of visionaries really thrive in that startup mode. And what happens, the second thing that happens, what you're describing is when we reach that point where we need more organizational efficiency, typically we have to bring in some other people. We know that we need people. So we bring in systems and process oriented people and systems and process oriented people. They like rules because that's in effect what a system or process is. It's the rules of how we do it. Visionaries hate rules. And visionaries that operate strongly in startup mode, that's why they leave at that point because the business starts to get over processed. And so the visionary is like, I can't do this. What happened to the days of staying up until 2am and we just rolled up our snack leaves and we got a, we got a pizza and we got it done and everybody else is like, hey man, like I'm I'm here from, I, I gotta leave at 5. I've got a family and there's rules to how this works. That's exactly the, the cycle that we see a lot, and I'm sure that you deal with this a ton, is that some people don't realize that they're just, they're better suited for startup. And what's sad about that though is that they never get to really reap the fruits of their labor because they get out right before it gets really good and they go to something else that's, you know, back in the, in the pizza box days that might feel.

More, I guess, energetically rewarding to them.

Right, right.

All depends on what you're, what you're going for there.

I always talk about. Sean Parker is the, is the epitome of that in the entrepreneurial world. Right. With Napster, he was the, A lot of people forget that he was the president of Facebook, but this guy is, I mean he's done very well financially, but this is the guy that always gets out right before it gets super big.

Well, tell us what is, what's the most counterintuitive thing that you coach on or suggest for people talking about thinking outside the box? I want to hear like what, what's something that might blow my mind?

I don't know if this is like the, I mean there's, there's a lot of things that I think that we do that are pretty dang outside the box. Obviously too, from the healthcare perspective, I'm big on the peptides and the cold therapy and the infrared saunas and I think that that can give us a tremendous unfair advantage against the field. I also think like in terms of marketing, I love marketing. That takes a long time to develop. Not so excited about shiny object, quick hitter type marketing. I'm anti steep discounting. I'm a very big proponent of value add. Very rarely would you see us running discounts. I don't do black. I would if I were best buyer if I was in retail. But I, I'm in, in the service industry and from a sales perspective, I'm super big on pre selling, something that I call FOMO selling. So rather than trying to sell the individual, if I could sell the community, that becomes easier because everybody just starts doing it because that's just, you know, hey, we all use Joe, he's our accountant. All of a sudden everyone at the country club, they want to use Joe. And if we understood that the way that we sell changes and. But I'll give you this exercise That I think is. Is slightly counterintuitive, but it's not really. Once you understand how it works, contemplate your biggest question, concern, obstacle, or opportunity. And if you just write that down on a daily basis, put this as part of your morning routine, this will literally take 60 seconds. You just think to yourself, what is my biggest question, concern, obstacle, or opportunity in front of me today? And you need to write it down. Now. I just put it in my phone in. In the notes application. I just write down what it is. But this is why this might be counterintuitive, is that I need for everyone to hear that you cannot find what you're not looking for. So everybody listening right now. You're. You're. You're deep into this podcast. If we create a daily habit of contemplating question, concern, obstacle, opportunity, it brings it into our consciousness. And I think you'll find, and you'll be surprised that, listen, at the end of the day, those answers revealed themselves to us. So that's the second part of the exercise. Every night, I revisit my notes. If the. If what I wrote down in the morning has been resolved, I simply delete it. If not. And so this is another thing that I find, and I think this will be very useful for your listeners if you ever have the opportunity to meet Susan in person. You're at an event and you meet her, and she's like, hey, you know, I'm Susan. You're like, I know. I listen to the podcast. And she's like, oh, well, you know, is there anything I can do to help you? This happens a lot, right? People say, how can I help? Right? Then what I do is I have always a list of things that I'm working on that are unresolved in my head. And I go, I'll say, susan, can I ask you a question? I have a couple of things that I think you might be able to help me with. But I am always amazed at how many times I am around people. Like, I might be with Susan, and she might meet you and say, hey, how can I help you? Maybe Susan's on a panel and somebody says, hey, let's open it up for Q and A. And no one has a question. I'm like, how is that possible? So is everybody. All your questions are answered. You are all exactly where you want to be. And what that does for me is it's a great reminder that most of us are tuning into the podcast, and we have no expectations. We're like, I wonder who's on today? And I wonder what they're going to tell us, which is sad, because what happens is then you become a victim of Susan and my agenda. I want you to have your own agenda coming into something and say, I hope that today Susan's guest will deliver me the answer to one of my questions that I've been contemplating. And I guarantee you this, if you start doing this exercise, you will start to see that those answers start to appear. But we may have dropped answers to things today that you didn't even know that you were contemplating. And because you weren't looking for them, they just went right by and they were missed. My greatest advice I could give to you is you will grow your business if you start to contemplate and recognize what you're looking for. And then back to the laws of nature, because when we talked about, you will reap what you sow. And. But it's not just like financial or one to one transactional. That's another thing. I'm very gracious and open to receiving. So I am not one of those people that's like, oh, no, no, no. Let me give you this one. Just real quick. When we go out, we are trained to reject blessings. So you and I, Susan, we go to, to lunch together. The bill comes, I say, susan, let me get it. What do you say?

No, let me get it.

See, isn't that crazy? Starting today, for all of the listeners and viewers, you are now going to say, oh, my gosh, thank you. Because you realize that the universe is giving me free lunch because I helped other people, right? Let's be open to receiving all of the blessings that are coming our way in our business, and let's stop rejecting them. When people say, let me pick up the tab, let me help you, let's start saying, oh my gosh, thank you, I accept that. Bring it on. I'll take your tickets, your meal. The only thing that I got in trouble at a conference was I taught on that. And everybody was like, let me buy you a drink. And you already said that you can't say no. And I was like, that doesn't work.

Right. But that's my insights around thinking about, you know, what you look for, you find, and what's the question on your mind. The one distinction I might add to that is the energy by which you're asking the question. And what I mean by that is you can ask the question from a place of anxiety, or you can ask the question from a place of curiosity or passion or just kind of being open. What I've seen is when People start their day always starting with, what's the problem I'm facing? And here's my anxiety around it. They basically are living a life of anxiety or even writing down the problem brings on anxiety. And I think that's really important to. To highlight is can you even approach what would normally be a problem that could create anxiety in a way of, there's opportunity here. Or trust that by my asking, an answer may come today, it may come in three months, it may come in a year. But there's a little bit of what I also heard in yours is sort of trusting that. That you'll receive just the same way you're giving. You'll actually receive the answer. Like, what if we could have that belief?

I love that. That's. That is awesome. That is so great. Because, yes, our energy does determine the outcome. I will also say this to something counterintuitive. There's so many of these kind of cliche things that we say. One of them is always give with no expectation of anything in return. I think that's faulty because that would be like, I'm a farmer and I plant seeds with no expectation. Like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm planting seeds because these seeds bear fruit. Now, again, we talked about, it doesn't have to be reciprocal, right? An expectation that you are going to reciprocate, but it is an expectation that there are laws of the universe, that if I plant good seeds, I get them back. And so, yeah, I think a lot of times, too, like, you're saying people are. We live in a world right now that's very anxious, very nervous. And I think the other thing that I would add to that, because I. I love that, is our problems arise to teach us lessons. Like, we've mentioned that earlier. And so a lot of times, like, rather than being anxious about it also, too, there should be a positive energy around. This is great because obviously I have a lesson to learn. And if I can learn this lesson, especially in business, and if I can learn it fast, I think that's one of the things. Fail fast so that I can learn lessons fast, and then I swear myself to don't repeat those failures, because that's the mark of lunacy that I keep doing the same failures over and over. But I love to fail fast and learn fast, and that takes a little bit of that anxiety away because it's like, look, none of us have all the answers. So, you know, listening to podcasts, getting great mentorship and coaching, reaching out to Susan helps to short circuit that continuum. But it doesn't guarantee that we'll have no missteps. And so in those missteps, learn fast and don't repeat your mistakes.

Love your advice. Thank you Sean. Really appreciate your time being here. Where can people learn more about you and your work?

Well, first of all, a gift for every one of your listeners can be found at the website get hope today.com get hope today.com and then if anybody wants to plug in with me, Dr. Shondill.com Dr. Shawndill.com and on all the social media channels, same Same thing at Dr. Shondil, reach out to me. Like I said earlier, I try to hold myself to being very responsive. So if I can help you guys in any way whatsoever, please reach out. I am here for you as a resource.

Thank you. And if you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Liz Wiseman, who identifies how to be a multiplier leadership executive versus a diminisher. Let's all lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.