Why High Achievers Check Out Early

Dan Sullivan [00:00:00]: For the happy person, you set a goal, you achieve the goal, and then you measure backwards to where you started and you notice you've made a great deal of progress and that makes you feel good. Do it the other way. You set a goal, you achieve the goal, but then you measure against the ideal that you're supposed to live up to. And it seems to you that you've achieved nothing. And you get depressed and you get disappointed. In some cases, you can get suicidal. Mike Koenigs [00:00:26]: I fear for those who believe that sitting in the boxes of yesterday will bring you success, because my prediction is it will not. Dan Sullivan [00:00:37]: I came to several personal decisions that from now on to the end of my life, I'm completely responsible for my own confidence. Your mastery of yourself gives you no mastery over your understanding of other people, but it tells you what questions to ask before you make a judgment. Mike Koenigs [00:01:07]: So a little while ago, Dan, you talked about how it's always the high performers that check out first. That's where the high suicide rates are. And I was mentioning to you that I was speaking at Richard Rossi's event, 6000 plus kids in the room. And I did a presentation about AI. And they were very interested. They were very intrigued. But the number one area of focus was, is AI cheating? And I told you that one of the things that I believed, it took me a little while thinking after it is AI really threatens the smart kids, the ones who are working their butts off and have been figured out the system to get ahead and to stay ahead. And suddenly there's this tool that could make them less valuable and less effective. Mike Koenigs [00:01:55]: So what are your views on that? And let's just talk about this fair versus not fair, getting ahead and realizing the game is already rigged or there isn't a way to win the game. Game. Dan Sullivan [00:02:10]: Yeah. Well, it came to my attention, I think, around, I think it was 1997 and we introduced a concept into the program which was called the Gap in the gain. Okay. And what it basically says, the concept is that your brain needs measurement. It needs something to bounce off. When, when you have a goal and you achieve the goal, how do you measure whether you've done a good job or not a good job? We need measurement to have a sense of personal progress and growth. The way that I figured it out is that there's two ways of doing this. One of them makes you happy and the other one makes you very unhappy. Dan Sullivan [00:03:07]: For the happy person. You set a goal, you achieve the goal, and then you measure backwards to where you started and you notice you've made a great deal of progress, and that makes you feel good. Whereas if you do it the other way, you set a goal, you achieve the goal, but then you measure against the ideal that you're supposed to live up to, and it seems to you that you've achieved nothing. And you get depressed and you get disappointed, and in some cases, you can get suicidal over it. Okay? So I was getting a lot of feedback from our clients who were talking about their children. And one of the big things with females was eating disorders, anorexia, bulimia, and that these were straight a students. These were people who had always been in the leadership class, you know, regarding their peers. They were always number one, number two. Dan Sullivan [00:04:05]: And they would one day, without warning, they'd commit suicide. And I began looking because you would think that it's the kids who are losers who might commit suicide, okay? And the losing kids tune out, but they don't check out. The smart kids, when they feel that they can't win the game, they check out. They commit suicide, okay? And there's fast suicide and slow suicide. So there's different ways of killing yourself. But what it is, they're so smart that they think at 18, they know the game, or 18, 1920, but they know how the game, and they project for the rest of their life. And the game they've been playing, usually with a lot of pressure from their parents since they were four years old. They were told they were the winners, and they're suddenly discovering that winning doesn't make them happy. Dan Sullivan [00:05:14]: And they project for the rest of their life and said, I'm not going to be happy for the rest of my life, so I'm just going to check out right now. And it's the high school star, high school athlete, it's the Valde Victorian, it's the SAt, you know, perfect sats and everything like that. And in their mind, this is not a game I can win. So just the way they measure. Mike Koenigs [00:05:41]: So if you had 30 minutes or 3 hours or three days with each one of these kids, what would your message be? How would you rectify their mindset and their thinking? Dan Sullivan [00:05:54]: Well, actually, the model that we have, I've gotten positive reports back from our entrepreneurs who are the parents, and they say that they're so smart that they get the distinction that I'm making in the gap in the game. And they say, oh, and so. But what they find is that the parents are accomplished. It's the parents who are making these outstanding demands. It's almost like the parent that the children are leading the parents life, almost like they're being required to shine where their parents didn't shine and everything else. And that's a terrible pressure to have. I mean, quite apart from, you know, your own pressures of going through the hormone wars and going through the uncertainty wars, being a teenager or your early twenties, you're actually being asked to live the life of your parents that their parents wish to have. You know, and I remember there was a Stanford athlete, she was a star goalie, and she was in a cafeteria, and somebody made a sexist remark. Dan Sullivan [00:07:10]: It was a male athlete. And she went over and she poured her cup of coffee in his lap. Okay? And he protested. And he complained to the administration that this athlete, you know, I mean, it's assault. So they're, you know, it's. I mean, it's a legitimate complaint. I mean, he's a jerk, but you don't necessarily have to pour hot coffee on him. So anyway, the administration said to her that she was under investigation and that she wouldn't graduate on time from the university. Dan Sullivan [00:07:49]: So she got the notice from the administration, went to the second level in her dormitory, put a rope around her neck and hanged herself. She topped top grades. She was a star athlete. She was on the all american team for soccer. She was a soccer player, and she committed suicide. Mike Koenigs [00:08:15]: And what did she believe that she couldn't overcome or. Why do you think she ran out of hope? Like, what happened there? Dan Sullivan [00:08:26]: Well, she had perfect marks in life up until then, and this was a dark mark on her record. I see. And her parents, you know, whatever her internal relationship was with the parents, her parents and everything else, I mean, it's really interesting. But the losers don't do this. Losers aren't smart enough to kill themselves. They just take drugs and tune out. And anyway, well, here's the thing. You can go into the twenties, the thirties, forties and fifties, but you hear top Hollywood celebrities commit them. Dan Sullivan [00:09:08]: You know, commit suicide. Top Wall street bankers commit suicide. And they're the smartest, the best. They're rich, they're wealthy, they're famous and everything, that's suicide. So it's just an interesting thing that, you know, we. Our assessment of ourselves is in relationship to where the pressures come from in our, you know, our local situation, you know. And, you know, I mean, just compare that with the environment in strategic coach or the environment in the community that you're creating in Mexico on the baja where you have great people who are really smart and everything else, and everybody just applauds everybody else and everybody. Everybody just thinks this is really, really great. Dan Sullivan [00:10:00]: It's a totally different kind of feedback you're getting from your surroundings, and we're not infinite in the amount of input that we can take. I mean, each of us, I'm pretty broad minded. I have a real good sense of self assurance, but I can remember being put up against the wall by certain situations or feeling everything like that. You know, I'm pretty self assured, and I'm pretty self confident. I've never thought of suicide. I have to tell you. I've never thought of suicide, you know, but I have felt kind of defeated. Mike Koenigs [00:10:38]: Yeah. And that leads me to. I have two pathways I want to go down, and I have decided, as I was listening to you, to choose the path of belief and then the path of the tool. Because what I really hear you say is just how for you, in your observation, like a community like, strategic coach that lives and breathes in positivity. And I only tell a couple people this story. I believe there have been two instances where I perturbed you, and it's because I did not enter into an environment with a positive mindset. I pushed your buttons. And so I've had people ask me for you, like, what do you think the key is to having a long term relationship with Dan Sullivan? I said positive focus, an ongoing, positive, moving future, which is, Dan has no time for a lack of positivity. Mike Koenigs [00:11:41]: And it's not a shallow lack of positivity. It is genuinely living into the best of what's possible all the time. And I've learned that programming, and I've applied it. Like, if I open an environment, open up a meeting, and we start out with the equivalent of a positive focus, you know what's great? The whole environment energetically shifts. That's how you lead a group now. But there's. I'm going to call it the belief gap, and then there's the tools to use. So if we're deconstructing Dan's brain for a moment, and, like, I remember the first time you brought up the living to be 156, I thought, oh, that sounds delusional. Mike Koenigs [00:12:34]: What the hell is this? However, I'm old enough right now, and I, you know, I have fewer in front of me than behind me, at least statistically. And Vivian and I just returned back from a trip together where we were in. And there's a two parter in this show. One of them was, we were in France and Spain. There are elections going on. And the whole mood of these countries were very interesting, to say the least. Like I say, that's a whole episode on itself. But I realized that how important it is to maintain a positive belief. Mike Koenigs [00:13:18]: And like this has been written about by gurus for hundreds of years, it's biblical in nature. But the gap that I'm curious about, and the question for you is, Dan. Okay, there's the establishing. I choose to give myself twice as many years, I'm going to live to be 156. And really living in that mindset and giving yourself more potential, more possibility, versus focusing on what you don't have. But how do you bridge the gap from someone saying, well, that's delusional thinking. How can that possibly be to truly adopting it as a mindset? And instead of it just being positive focus, it's actually real in your brain. How do you resolve that mentally and make it true and make it real and also even create that movement in and around the people you're with? Because it's not just you. Mike Koenigs [00:14:20]: You actually have gotten a whole tribe of people to believe and adopt your belief system. Dan Sullivan [00:14:29]: Well, first of all, thanks for the compliment. Mike Koenigs [00:14:32]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:14:35]: Well, it's just as, and I was divorced and bankrupt on the same day in 1978, August 15, which, if you raise Catholic, is the feast of the assumption. And it was a lot of assumptions that got me to my divorce in bankruptcy. And I had about three months after that, the fall and the early winter of 1978. And I said, you know, I'm at a point where how I handle what just happened is going to determine the rest of my life. Okay. Okay. I mean, it was kind of like a real juncture. You know, you just got a feeling, you know, this is serious business, you know, and I came to a several personal decisions that from now on to the end of my life, I'm completely responsible for my own confidence. Dan Sullivan [00:15:34]: I can't look to the outside for confidence. I have to develop an internal capability. And what I learned from that, you can only be, when you're going through your daily activities and everything else, you can only measure backwards to where you were before you started so that, you know, I mean, you. I mean, we've talked about cancer. We both have had cancer operations. It gets your mind real clear that if you don't handle this, you're going to die. Well, there's different ways of dying, but, I mean, there's. There's physical, which is the ultimate, but there's also psychological and emotional. Dan Sullivan [00:16:25]: Okay. And I just had a sense that if you don't go 100% in a new direction, you're done for life. I mean, you'll just lead a sad life and you'll have other bankruptcies, you'll have other setbacks like this, and there's going to be, you know, it wasn't like I was 18 or 25. I was in my mid thirties. And, you know, you're running out of change room, you know, at a certain point, you don't have a lot of room for maneuvering. So, you know, and I've told this story before. I realized that the reason I had the two setbacks, one in my personal life and one in my financial life, was I wasn't telling myself what I really wanted to. And I said, I've been depending on other people to give me direction on what I'm supposed to do, marriage and business partners, anyway. Dan Sullivan [00:17:32]: And I said, you're just not telling yourself what you really want. So I set a goal in the end of 78. And the other realization, just to explain the decision, the goal that I set was the day I was divorced and bankrupt was a really bright, sunny day in Toronto. And I was walking around and what I noticed was that no one else was really depressed by my divorce and bankruptcy. People were in restaurants. Do they not know I'm going through a divorce and bankruptcy? I mean, what's going on here? Can you not feel my pain? Can you not feel my distress? And I said, wow, nobody else knows about this. This is strictly my own deal. So one thing I did, Mike, was that I said, my former wife, I'm relieving her of all responsibility for what happened to me. Dan Sullivan [00:18:47]: And then there were business individuals. I said, I'm relieving everybody. I'm taking 100% responsibility for this. And from now on, I'm responsible for determining what I want. And I'm responsible for keeping my confidence up every day. And it's my job every day to measure my activities in such a way that I go to bed happy. Mike Koenigs [00:19:11]: So, so it really made some decisions, which is okay. So I have two little sub directions to go down on here, which is, and you said I wasn't telling myself what I really wanted. I'm not telling myself what I really want. And that, of course, leads to, I would suspect, the majority of humanity doesn't know what they really want, and they don't really know what is true, what is true for them, or what truly would make them happy. Now, I've known you long enough to know that you seem to have a very, you always have a very strong sense of self, because your sense of self came from within. And the fact that you grew up around adults, so you got to observe the foolishness of adulthood through the lens of a young man. And you knew how to engage your. Dan Sullivan [00:20:13]: People actually as a child. Mike Koenigs [00:20:15]: Yes. Dan Sullivan [00:20:16]: Right. Mike Koenigs [00:20:17]: So let's just say you're a rare bird altogether, but you're wise enough to know how to determine what people really want. And you're really, really good at asking people questions that help them determine what they really want and what is true true for them, or at least evolve to that state. So how would you resolve this gigantic question of how do you tell yourself what you really want and get to that? How to determine what you really want, determine what you know to be true about yourself while you give yourself forgiveness to evolve past that? In other words, it's true for now, and it's what you want for now. And that's okay for that to change later on in life. But what shows up for you? What, what would be your first principles? Dan Sullivan [00:21:16]: Thinking, well, I'm going to return back to what the goal was that I said at the end of night. So I said, so one is, nobody else cares really, whether I'm happy or unhappy, okay? So I've got complete freedom to do anything with myself that I want. Nobody's expecting anything out of me. And if I don't do anything, it won't make any difference to them. So I've got, so I've just got this project called Daniel that I can work on. And, you know, it's not really important to anyone else, so I'm clear and free. Okay. And what it got me past was the, you know what I would say, the feeling sorry for yourself stage as a result of the divorce and you feeling sorry for yourself and everything else. Dan Sullivan [00:22:11]: And I got through that early. I got through that not completely, but I would say by the end of the year, I was through that particular issue. And then I said, I'm just going to journal for 25 years. I'm going to keep a journal every day for 25 years because I was at that point, 34, and I said, it's what I've done over the last 25 years to get me to where I was there. And now I'll just use another 25 years. And every day in a journal, I have to write something I want. It can be one sentence or it can be a whole page, but every day I have to do this. And in 25 years, there's 9131 days. Dan Sullivan [00:22:57]: And except for twelve of them, I did it for the next 25 years. And over that time, I just got to be a really good wanter. And I'm a very powerful wanter. You know, I mean, if you do push ups every day for 25 years and add a new one every day, you're pretty strong after a certain way. Well, it's the same thing with wanting. It's like a push up, but then after you did it for a year, you could look back, and the direction of your wanting becomes really, really clear. Okay. And one of the. Dan Sullivan [00:23:36]: So, going back to the two setbacks, the divorce and bankruptcy, I realized I wasn't looking for a certain type of person. I was looking for a certain type of relationship. And so, three years after, in Canada, in those days, it wasn't an actual divorce. When you separated, it was a separation, and it was a three year period before you got the official divorce. Okay. And on the day 1981, August 13, I remember the day I got the notice that I was now completely divorced. I hadn't seen her at all. I haven't actually seen her. Dan Sullivan [00:24:20]: I've seen her once in the last 42 years. Okay. Okay. And because it wasn't about her, so why should I see her, you know, I mean. I mean, it was pretty clear she was going in a different direction, and I was. So I don't revisit. I'm not a big, chill type guy going back and trying to get back in touch with an earlier memory. And so I said, that's done, anyway. Dan Sullivan [00:24:52]: But I sat down and I said, the next relationship isn't a relationship you have to work at. It's a relationship that works. Right from the start, the relationship works. And I said, there's no competition in it. We're both totally supportive of each other, and we give each other a lot of freedom, and we give each other a lot of support, and everything, you know, check went through. And on August 13, the next year, I was at a business conference weekend. Business conference. Got there late, one seat left. Dan Sullivan [00:25:27]: I sat in the seat and looked up to my left, and there's this tall redhead, and she says to me, what are you looking at? And I said, I'm looking at you. And she says, and. And so we're in our 42nd year of. And, yeah, ta da. Mike Koenigs [00:25:45]: It's such a great love story. Dan Sullivan [00:25:49]: And what I noticed is how easy the relationship was, and we just slid into it. It was just brands. And we go for lunch, we go for dinner, and meanwhile, I had my eight point checklist, and I said, check, check, check. I know. I didn't tell her about it for five years, that I had put in a specification list. And what was interesting, she had just gotten out of a relationship, and I just got out of a relationship. And both of us said, if we don't have another relationship for the rest of our life, that's. So there wasn't a big need. Dan Sullivan [00:26:30]: It wasn't very needy, but we just got along, really. And then it grew. It was a positive growth. And then the other thing about it was I began realizing that I was arranging, and the business has all sorts of aspects about it, things you're doing wrong, which aren't as emotionally challenging to change. But I began realizing that just because someone's a successful entrepreneur doesn't mean that they have any ambition. And so I began really checking out, were these people going to be people who wanted to grow a bigger future for themselves, and so somebody could be 45 and really wealthy, and you assume that they have bigger goals. But a lot of people at 45 who are really successful, they've reached the top, and they don't go anywhere. They don't go anywhere. Dan Sullivan [00:27:36]: They're more what I would call status entrepreneurs than growth entrepreneurs. They've gotten enough to have a nice house. They belong to the right club, their children are going to the right schools, and that's all they ever wanted. But that's not the sort of person I want. And so I began to realize it's the really, it's the people who, from the moment they're born, it's all about growth. And that's then they're only entrepreneurs because they wanted to grow, but as entrepreneurs, they want to keep growing. And I just decided, so you have that type of personal relationship that I have with babs, and then you have. And you're one of those, Mike. Dan Sullivan [00:28:16]: There's always a next step that's more exciting than all the steps before. And that, you know, and that's the way I feel. And I really resonate with that. Mike Koenigs [00:28:26]: Yes. Yeah. That I do. And that leads me to the tool, because we've gone through the mindset. But, you know, you came to this. I have a project called Dan that I'm going to work on, and I'm going to give myself freedom to only work on me. You got past your feelings. Sorry for yourself. Mike Koenigs [00:28:47]: So that's a really good tool. And the realization I'm going to journal for 25 more years and becoming a powerful wanter. So you created a relationship that became the manifestation, and you said something, which is, there were eight key points or attributes for the relationship, and one of them was that it'd be effortless and easy. But here's what I'm curious about. So let's just imagine we're creating the Dan manifestation want tool. And now you've got a journal for doing this. And I assume that there's. You got a book, and you go in there and you write down all the things you want. Dan Sullivan [00:29:27]: At any given time, there is actually 60 notebooks. Mike Koenigs [00:29:32]: Okay. That's what I was going to ask. How many? Dan Sullivan [00:29:35]: About that thick. 60 notebooks. And you know what was interesting? We had a major flood. And all the notebooks they stored away. And when was it? I'm just trying to think now. It was in April 23. We had a major flood, it was called, caused by a city water main in Toronto, old water main. And it flooded the entire record section of our company, and all the notebooks were beyond repair. Dan Sullivan [00:30:07]: And, you know, when I found that out, I felt really good. It was like that part of my past just got washed away and. Yeah, you know, because I would say to myself, I'm going to go back and read those notebooks, and. Mike Koenigs [00:30:24]: But now you don't have to. Dan Sullivan [00:30:27]: Now I don't have to? Mike Koenigs [00:30:28]: Yeah. Well, I. You know, it's so interesting you say that, because. And I don't want to make this about me. I will just tell you that when I sold my last company six years ago, at that point, I had a gigantic studio. It was this big warehouse, and I had seven sets in it, and I had been accumulating for 25 years. I had a massive library of books, huge old copywriting books, the Robert Collier book, and some antique books. Now, on one hand, they represented a certain amount of status, because anyone would walk in, they'd see all these books, and they'd go, oh, man, you've studied so much, and you know, so many things. Mike Koenigs [00:31:12]: The truth was, I hated moving them. To me, the worst thing in the world, I do not like moving. And I had reached a point where I didn't care about one thing I owned any longer. And I often say I can survive just fine with a bag with a couple of laptops in it. And my course, because I know I could always make a minimum of a million dollars in 30 to 90 days with nothing more than a couple of tools. And I could land anywhere in the world and meet someone and create value. And that's good enough. It's sort of like. Mike Koenigs [00:31:50]: And I like the feeling of that freedom and just being able to manifest something. Now, there's other programming that I've realized that's super useful, but it doesn't always build long term value. It creates short term value. But back to the losing stuff, what I told my team is, I said, I'm going to get up and I'm going to pay you money to get rid of everything that's here. I don't want to hear about where it goes or what happens to it. Don't care. I just divorced myself, and they ended up getting rid of all of it. Some of it got sold and I've never thought about it since. Mike Koenigs [00:32:32]: And I also did one other thing. Years ago, I started a rule, and this is after I went through my divorce. When I went through it, the short version is, one day I came home, the locks were changed on the door, and that's the last time I ever saw my ex wife. So the next time I saw her, we had to sign over the house. Let's say it's six, seven, eight months later. And I just had to sign something. And there was a bunch of boxes of stuff all packed up, nicely organized, and I didn't even know what was in it, and I didn't even want to find out because I might be attached to it. So I just said, throw it all away, which I did do. Mike Koenigs [00:33:10]: Now, in there, there are plenty of keepsakes and things from my past and that kind of thing. They would have been childhood memorabilia. But I just, you know, I have a rule, which is if I put something in a box and it's taped up and I don't look in it for six months, then I don't even care. I'm not going to create an attachment to it. And it may or may not be a healthy good thing, but it works for me. So that. Dan Sullivan [00:33:34]: Well, pardon me, that's the only criteria, is that you feel good about it. Yep, yep, yep. Mike Koenigs [00:33:41]: I don't have any attachment regrets. Dan Sullivan [00:33:43]: So. Funny. I can bring a third example in here. And Joe Polish and I have talked about this on air, so it's not secret knowledge, but Joe, when I started working with him, he joined the program. I knew Joe was a special person. I knew that he was a really interesting person. And I kind of just go for interestingness in my choice of people I like to work with. And Joe's just. Dan Sullivan [00:34:14]: He's just chock full of interestingness and. Anyway. But he was telling me. But we would do a strategy circle. So for the listeners, this is a primary fundamental tool in strategic coach. And I would do a strategy circle with him and review it every quarter. And it helped. I mean, it actually did a lot of good for Joe. Mike Koenigs [00:34:36]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:34:36]: But he had item of obstacle, and that is that he had an off site storage compartment with all his notes for 20 years. And every quarter, he would write down, I've got to go into the storage and organize all those notes, because there's gold in those notes. There's gold in those notes. So I learned as a coach, if somebody writes something down three times and they don't do anything about it, it's not to be done. And in your case, it was not done by you. It was done. You bribed your staff to relieve yourself of a burden. Okay, Joe's case. Dan Sullivan [00:35:22]: I said, joe, I just want to talk about the storage unit and all the golden notes that are inside there. I've never seen this in Phoenix, but suppose there's a freak lightning storm in Phoenix, and there's just this massive bolt that comes down, and it hits only your storage, and it just fries everything to a frazzle. All the notes are, you know, are just destroyed. How would you feel? And he said, I would really feel freed up. Mike Koenigs [00:36:03]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:36:03]: And I said, see what it is. You know, when they build a building, they put a lot of scaffolding up. So the building's finished, and five years later, they still have the scaffolding up. Well, you know, you're kind of missing the point of the scaffolding. The scaffolding shouldn't be the building. The building's inside. Get rid of the scaffolding. Well, notes from the past, memory from the past, or a form of scaffolding. Dan Sullivan [00:36:28]: But don't you take the scaffolding down when the building is built? Mike Koenigs [00:36:33]: The way I would frame it also is. So I've known Joe now about 20 years, and for 15 of it, he's been talking about how he's got all this copy and sales pages and notes and how he wants to do something with it. And it's possible now to do something with aihdem. But what I've told him multiple times is, Joe, you're so far past that that the amount of energy you put into thinking about maybe doing something with it versus the amount of value you could possibly create. It's like it is a burden, a tax. Dan Sullivan [00:37:17]: So, yeah, why don't you do something crazy like going out and buying it? Buying a ghost town or something like that? Mike Koenigs [00:37:23]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No doubt. Okay, so here I have my next question, which is related to this. So it's Dan's want book. It's a tool. Now, right now, Dan writes something down every day, and you're a good wanter. So you write something you want. How? Detail. Mike Koenigs [00:37:49]: If you're going to create a framework or a structure, do you follow a model, or is it just a list of wants? Or how detailed do you get and how close to the how and the who do you get inside there? Or is it just a list of wants? Like, what's this book look like? And if you were going to create a tool that might be part of the strategic coach framework so you could teach other people how to think about wanting and manifest their wants like you have and do, what would that look like? Dan Sullivan [00:38:20]: Well, I think the journal, I mean, just a plain journal book is the mayan tool. But there's two stages to what's happened to me. So this was 1978 to 2003. Okay, so then now there's 2000. Not so much 2003 to 2024, but more what happened probably about five or six years into the whining journal. So I was pretty good. You know, I mean, I'm pretty. I'm pretty good about locking onto a project, and I'll stay with the project. Dan Sullivan [00:38:56]: I'm pretty good at that. So. But around five or six years into this process, we're into the 1980s. Now, all of a sudden, the wanting starts to take on another form outside of the journaling, and it's thinking tools, okay? And so the strategy circle comes along, and all of a sudden, my wanting takes the form of strategy circles. And now in where I am right now, and I'm 50 years a coach in August, 50 years I've been coaching, and we build a company. The company's good size. We have 130 team members. We're in three countries. Dan Sullivan [00:39:41]: We have lots and dimensions to what's been created out of this. But now I have thinking tools, and the wanting has all taken the form of the thinking tools that are in the strategic coach. So every time when you do a thinking tool and strategic coach, it requires you, in the form of completing the tool, to say something you totally want. Now, about your entrepreneurial life, your personal life, personal lives that surround you. So strategy circles, impact filters, experience, transformers, certainty and uncertainty, the triple play, and all of them, what comes out is what you really want to happen in the future. So that's what's happened, is that all the wanting has created all the thinking. Mike Koenigs [00:40:37]: Tools now for someone, and now the. Dan Sullivan [00:40:41]: Thinking tools have become patents. So that shows you from the journal to a patent, it's quite a long journey. Mike Koenigs [00:40:49]: Yes. So for someone who is not familiar with the strategy circle conceptually, what does that mean? And how does that relate to making what you want real? Dan Sullivan [00:41:02]: Yeah. Well, it's really funny. And if you look at where's the heart of all the thinking tools we've done on is the strategy circle, and there's actually a formula in the strategy circle that actually you can see it in all the other tools. And it wasn't, I didn't identify the formula. One of my great team members who went off and started her own business, we were in Carmel, I was giving a presentation in Carmel and she went with me, and afterwards it was a nice day, and we just walked on the Pacific beach there in Carmel. And she says, I've been thinking about your tools, and by that time we had about 15 of them. And she said there's something that's fundamental to all these tools. And she says there's a formula, and she said it always requires you stating a vision in the future of something that's bigger and better than what you're doing now. Dan Sullivan [00:42:06]: She says everything you do is a vision of, it's sort of a vision of yourself in the future operating at a higher level. And I said, that's true, and she says, and they all involve some sort of obstacle that's in the way of you getting there. So it's vision obstacles, and then you have to take the obstacles and you have to transform them into actions that lead to the vision. So it's a vision obstacle transformation action, and it runs pretty well. True for everything I do. So there's a thing there that a lot of people interpret obstacle as an impossibility. So they have a vision. They said, yeah, but there's an obstacle. Dan Sullivan [00:42:53]: Well, that means I can't get to my vision. And what I did is I changed the meaning of obstacle. That obstacle is simply the raw material that your brain gives you to work on. Because in order to get to the vision, you have to eliminate the obstacles and you do it. And so going back to the thing, the checking out thing that we started the podcast with, these young people who commit suicide, they've never had an obstacle in their life because they had a life created for them by their parents, by their teachers, by everyone else. And like the woman who committed suicide because she poured coffee, she had an obstacle. Now she was everything she had done, that pouring the coffee and being reported to the authorities was an obstacle that she couldn't overcome and she might not graduate on time. That was, she had no, everything was laid out for her to be successful and she had just screwed up her whole life by pouring coffee into somebody's lap. Dan Sullivan [00:44:04]: That just eliminated all the good that she had done for her 1st 21 years. And it's wrong thinking, but that would have happened to her with something somewhere along the line yeah, she just had her sense of reality totally constructed in such a way that it couldn't tolerate setbacks. Well, setbacks, you don't get any breakthroughs unless you get setbacks. There's a segment of young population today who have been trained to be very fragile. Mike Koenigs [00:44:43]: Welcome to the world of three second attention spans and fewer than 20 seconds to get a prospect's attention. Engage them. Get to know like and trust you, and say, I want and need what you have. Let's make a deal. Introducing digital cafe AI, a relationship building AI that will take your hard earned leads and make them feel like you're sitting down with them for a cup of coffee, listening to their needs and responding to them with a personalized, useful, resourceful solution. It's the perfect AI team. A digital cafe AI does hours or days of work that normally requires an expensive team of specialists in minutes. It's the fastest, easiest, automated way to get attention, engagement, and trust to close bigger deals faster. Mike Koenigs [00:45:32]: A digital cafe AI is a done for you service that can be adapted to any B, two B, or B, two C business. A. Money, love, speed, and time kills deals. So visit digital cafe AI to see how it will work for you. Mm hmm. Dan Sullivan [00:45:53]: Say you had 300 who say, I'm really worried about that. I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be cheated of my accomplishments so far. Yeah, but probably there were 300 who didn't come to conference or the ones who were doing the cheating. Yeah. They're the sort of people says, hey, you got a job for me, Mike? Mike Koenigs [00:46:14]: Yeah. And I had a, I had a. Dan Sullivan [00:46:16]: Bunch of, I think knowing you, Mike's going to be my next unfair advantage in life. Mike Koenigs [00:46:22]: I had a, I had, so here's, here's what happened. So just imagine there's 6000 or so in the room and a yemenite. A large percentage really participated. And you could tell from the energy and the feedback and the cheers. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the room and I was surprised. I did a hand raising exercise. Raise your hand if you're not using AI at all. And it was small, it was like 20% or so. Mike Koenigs [00:47:00]: It was still a chunk. And then how many are playing with it? It was called like 40%. The two totals didnt seem quite like half. And then how many of you are using it actively? It felt like more than half. Okay, so that was interesting and good, but I could tell because of what I did next, because part of what I demonstrated is I really wanted to demonstrate to the audience that, and I told them one of the hardest things you'll ever do. And one thing's the really hard thing I had to do is find a way to connect with you. So the way I was going to do it is I made you a song, and what I'd like you to do is pick. I'm going to play two songs for you. Mike Koenigs [00:47:43]: I want you to pick the one you like the most. So what they didn't know that I did is, and I told them this later on, but I used AI to help me create a presentation that would really be appealing to an audience of high school kids. And then I interviewed Richard Rossi and asked him a lot of questions about who's in the audience, what do they really want to know? What are they afraid of? A lot of the people in the audience are parents. So I had to make it kid friendly, parent friendly, and I knew they were going to be worried about the cheating part because I also interviewed my son, Zach, and he had some really good insight. I knew if I could win them with music first and music that genuinely resonated with their generation. So I had to find out who are the top musicians and emulate that sound. And then I had them vote so they felt like they were part of something they were creating. And then I showed them video, and the theme was, I'm going to show you how to use AI as an unfair advantage and never be boring, because the first song I played them was called Never be boring because that's the worst sin you can commit, is you can't be treated like a piece of meat. Mike Koenigs [00:49:00]: You got to know how to get attention, grab an audience, get them engaged, and you can make anything happen if you're that person, being a great communicator. And I could tell a lot of them got it. And I think my projection is that, or my hallucination is that they've gotten so far by being the smartest and being studying hard, but that doesn't matter anymore. Now you've got to be a great entertainer, and you got to be a great communicator. So what I'm going to use this tool to show you is how you can communicate in different languages to different cultures, to different age groups. And I stacked all that, and I could tell afterwards that the ones who didn't get it, and I only really got attacked by three haters, someone who walked up to me afterwards and said, what you're doing is wrong and evil, and had a big gruff, you just tell her. And another one had to have a camera on, and she did an attack piece. And she was trying to get a reaction out of me, you know, hold this. Mike Koenigs [00:50:11]: And she started saying something. It was just a bunch of bar feet. It was like a political ad. And I said, well, it's very interesting that your interpretation of what you think you heard me say is such. And do you think it's possible that your hallucination and your interpretation of what you think you heard me say isn't accurate or wrong? And she's like, no, it's not. I'm right. You know, it was like one of those snippy, snippy. And what I didn't do, but I wanted to, I just didn't engage with it, is, wow, you must be a really fantastic human being to be around. Mike Koenigs [00:50:46]: I'll bet you people just love being around your energy. I wasn't going to go there, but overall, with only a few exceptions, I could feel that skeptical energy. But the thematic message I came back with, all of the skepticism is just because one of them, because I had one of my models speak in French and then Chinese, all these different languages, and this girl tested me, parlez vous francaise? She wanted to find out if I could speak. And I said, I'm not great at languages. I'm really good at helping other people collaborate and create, and I want to spend all my time there, and I'll let the AI do that. And you could just see that that model of the world of not being the best at everything all the time broke her brain. And I said, just imagine if you had a tool that just made you smarter and more effective so you could create more stuff quickly and collaborate better. And the final messages of the show, what I gave them at the very end, was, nothing great will ever happen to you from behind a screen. Mike Koenigs [00:51:58]: So the two big messages I ended up with is, you're going to change the world with AI as a tool, but don't be AI's tool. So that was number one. And the second was great. Lives are made with real in person relationships and collaborations, not from behind a screen. So if there's one thing I want to end with here, it's like, all this is as a tool so you can be a better collaborator, and all the greatest things that'll ever happen to you are going to happen in person with real people. And I did that just as much for the parents. So I know that was a little bit off from the theme of this conversation today, but if I brought it back to checking out early, suicide is not an option. And people who feel like they're fragile and can't solve a problem. Mike Koenigs [00:53:00]: Back to one of the most important things you talked about is being around a group, being around a community, you know, is, is the solution for all these beings and having a strategy circle of humans. Dan Sullivan [00:53:13]: You know, there's just a couple things. When you're born, it's important to discover as early as possible that none of this was designed with you in mind. There's nothing in the world was created with you in mind. So you got, you gotta, you gotta kind of negotiate with the world. You know, you got to work out a value creation relationship with world. I'll create value. You give me opportunity and everything like that. Now, I will say one thing, and I've been in the exact situation. Dan Sullivan [00:53:47]: I've been on stage in front of Richard's group. They're very bright, they're very, very imaginative. 18, 1920 years old, but by 40, they're going to look like where they came from, except for about 5% of them. Yeah, there's going to be 300. The 5% would be 300 of them. And 300 of them will be innovative, you know, creating all sorts of new things. And I say that because in 1974, when I started coaching entrepreneurs, I checked out, and there's a way of figuring this out with tax records, with the government, that about 5% of the working population actually is creating their own opportunity. They're self employed, they're self directed. Dan Sullivan [00:54:41]: And last year I checked it out again, and it's 50 years later and it's 5% of the population. So there's all this going thing in the future, everybody's going to be an entrepreneur. The big tech companies say, if you use our tool, you're going to be a creative center. But, you know, but in terms of how things actually work about, by the time those kids are 40, they're going to just be like the parents that were living their lives for them. And I suspect that there were some people who didn't come forward who were sitting in their seats, and they're saying, this guy is really cool. This is really code. He hasn't liked the teachers we've had up until now. I need a new kind of teacher. Dan Sullivan [00:55:31]: I think Mike Koenigse is my new type of teacher. And they may never meet you in the future, but you've just given them a direction in life that they've never had before. And the reason is they got the kind of brain who can take in and own what you gave them. Mike Koenigs [00:55:49]: Well, it's. I'll give you one last thing on that. And then I have one final question for you, which was one of the things that Richard allowed me to do is put up an opportunity to give all these kids a follow up webinar. And so I'm going to teach them how to do what I did. And out of 6000 or so, we got about 600 to opt in to get all the notes and the presentation. So call it 10%, which is lower than I expected. In a typical audience, I usually get about half. And then out of that, I haven't checked the latest stats, but it's probably only 100, maybe 200 who signed up to do the webinar. Mike Koenigs [00:56:35]: And it's so interesting. Again, it all comes down to I'll take full responsibility. It doesn't mean I'm right, but a lot fewer seem to be willing to learn a skill that could forever change every facet of their life and prevent them from being in debt or doing things the hard way. And I feel that a lot of them don't want to exit the comfortable zone of the old hard work methodology they've been sold, which is do good in school, be a great rule follower, be the 4.0, get rewarded for being that way, and then go in and get your college education, because that's the good way and the right way. And I fear for those who believe that sitting in the boxes of yesterday will bring you success. Because my prediction is it will not. I do not see through my lens right now. I do not see a great future following a model that doesn't know how obsolete it already is. Dan Sullivan [00:58:07]: Well, it's obsolete for as long as. I mean, it works for as long as you can. But I've mentioned this, and I won't push this too much longer, but there's a statistic that I keep track of, and it has to do with Toronto and Chicago, which are our two main coach centers, and that this year an 18 year old who graduates from high school doesn't matter, the grades doesn't actually even have to graduate from high school, but goes to a community college course because you don't need a high school degree to go to community college. And you take a welders industry ten week course on basic welding and you pass it, within twelve months you'll be making $60,000 a year and within five years you'll make 150,000 and you'll never make less. And you put it against an 18 year old who's done everything they can to get into the best college. They aren't going to accumulate any income while they're in college, they may accumulate a really big debt. And you compare them five years from now, who was the winner? It was the kid who didn't think that education was the formal. Education was the key to the future, and that's the revolution that's going on. Dan Sullivan [00:59:40]: And these kids, without knowing it, are facing a future where the guarantee that their education is going to guarantee them a great life is broken. So they're checking out early. Mike Koenigs [00:59:53]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:59:53]: They're swindled. They were swindled, yes. Mike Koenigs [00:59:56]: Okay, so I have one last question to wrap this up. And you alluded to it, and we've seen it ourselves, to people who check out. So I'm not saying they kill themselves, but they check out. And I know in the. Dan Sullivan [01:00:15]: You can do it with drugs slowly. Mike Koenigs [01:00:17]: Yeah, yeah, it can be. Dan Sullivan [01:00:19]: You can do it with social media slowly. Mike Koenigs [01:00:22]: Yep. But I'm talking about shame as well, or a sense of failure. And I know you. And so I've been in many, many business groups for many years, and there's some people who I see who go through a real hard time in their life and they die of shame, meaning they have a major business failure, something occurs, maybe a major life event, and they disappear, and you don't see or hear from them again, and they end up having a hard life. And they might be depression of some nature, something goes off or wrong, and they could have been really good, successful people, or at least it seems like. And I mean, you never know, right? They're playing the game, they're showing up, they're participating, and then they disappear, and you might bump into them a few years later and they've aged, they look bad. And what do you think? What's the switch that got flipped? Or what's the. What you got anyway? Dan Sullivan [01:01:36]: I mean, it could be, you know, I mean, I've been educated enough by Joe, you know, Joe Polish, that their internal chemistry may be totally off. Mike Koenigs [01:01:49]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [01:01:49]: You know, I mean, I'm more and more leaving leeway that I was born with good internal chemistry and good internal wiring. And it could. And I think it's bad luck. I think, you know, a person just have bad luck. And less and less do I relate what I've done with my life to what other people can do with their life. All I do is create a set of tools, and the people who take to the tools find them useful. But more and more, I'm 80, so I've got a fair chunk of experience to do that. You know, there's a conversation that I've had with people, and they said, well, just put yourself in other people's shoes. Dan Sullivan [01:02:40]: And I said, well, if I was in their other shoes, I'd be a different person. I wouldn't be me. So it would be the same issue all over again. Okay. And I said, quite frankly, I mean, my divorce and bankruptcy, I could have gone another direction from it, but I didn't. And I didn't because who I am to, you know, and, you know. So, yeah, you know, I mean, your mastery of yourself gives you no mastery over your understanding of other people, but it tells you what questions to ask before you make a judgment. Mike Koenigs [01:03:16]: All right, well, this was really good. I enjoyed this. It was a lot of deep psychology, a lot of things to unpack here. Dan Sullivan [01:03:27]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [01:03:27]: And maybe what we can do is we'll just wrap it up with one of the big things that I'm going to do a better job of. I have notebooks. I don't really have a want notebook to speak of, and I'm going to actually keep one by my bed and. Dan Sullivan [01:03:49]: Journal it as suggestion. Yeah, can I make a suggestion? And you've heard this. You've heard this before when you say I want. Don't use the word because you just want it. Mike Koenigs [01:04:00]: Yeah. You want it because you want it. Dan Sullivan [01:04:01]: The reason why you want. The reason why you want it is because you want it. Not because of anything, because pulls you back to the past. So I have 25 years of notebooks. It's just, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want. It's like a jackhammer, you know? Mike Koenigs [01:04:22]: Okay. And right now, how many wants do you typically have per day on an entry? Dan Sullivan [01:04:32]: I don't know. Three or four new ones. Mike Koenigs [01:04:36]: That's good. All right. Dan Sullivan [01:04:38]: You know, so the days vary. Mike Koenigs [01:04:42]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [01:04:44]: Sometimes I'm on a wild streak. Mike Koenigs [01:04:46]: And are they consistent or are they different every time? Dan Sullivan [01:04:49]: Oh, no, they're different. I'm add. How could they be consistent? Mike Koenigs [01:04:59]: Yeah, well, the only way they'd be consistent is if you wanted them, and they didn't happen yet. Good. Okay. I think this is a super fun episode, and I'll do my version of the ending here, which is we originally started this out and I wrote down two title ideas. One of them was checking out early, and the second one was suicide is not an option. And it really had to do with the mindsets of whether or not the work you're doing, whether or not it matters, and feeling like you're out of control and you don't have control, or whether or not AI could be threatening your status. And this obviously got a lot bigger than just AI. It's anything that can threaten your status or what you believe to be true. Mike Koenigs [01:05:55]: And that evolved into a great tool you have, which is staying inside your wants and wanting what you want because you want them and being really clear on what those are. So how about you, Dan? What's your wrap up from this particular episode? Dan Sullivan [01:06:13]: Yeah, well, I get a lot of perspective when you asked me to kind of say how this all, where I am today, how this all got developed, I always get a lot of perspective out of this, but. Well, the one thing I realized for the first time is that I've got a nature. And I think it's pretty. It's been with me right from child that once I make a decision on something, then that past is cut off. You can't go back to that past. There's just the new future that's possible. And so I don't. I don't think I have an ounce of nostalgia or sentimentality in my body when I'm past something. Dan Sullivan [01:07:05]: That's it. I don't go back to it. Mike Koenigs [01:07:07]: Very good. Okay, well, we'll officially end this. This has been another fabulously interesting capability amplifier episode. And if you enjoyed it, if you like it, especially if you've got a young person or a person who struggles really wanting what they want and understanding why and how to gain clarity, I definitely would recommend that you send it off to them. And please, like, share comment no matter what platform you hear or watch this on. And Dan, it is always a pleasure. You definitely tickled my head to this episode. Dan Sullivan [01:07:40]: Thank you, Michael.