Why Reinventing Yourself Is A Good Thing

Mike Koenigs [00:00:02]: Welcome to Capability Amplifier, the show for business owners and entrepreneurs who want high performance upgrades for their brains, bodies and bank accounts. This is Mike Koenigs, and welcome to another episode of Capability Amplifier. I'm here today with my good friend Dan Sullivan, and we're going to talk about what the distinction is between when it's time to. To quit and reinvent and what happens when you know you're done and ready for your next evolution in your business. We're also going to talk about the longevity of a business because Dan and I have very different backgrounds. I've been a constant reinventer. In my sixth reinvention, from a business perspective, he's still doing the same thing, which is strategic coach. So, Dan, first of all, welcome. Dan Sullivan [00:00:49]: Thank you. Thank you, Mike. One of my underlying, I guess, first principles of life is that I like things that last forever. And one of the things that I hit upon, first of all, a little background. My first entry into the marketplace after college was as a copywriter with BBDO Big Ad Agency, which I was at for three years. And in the course of the three years, I came up with an idea in 1974 that coaching was going to be a major activity in the future because I had a feeling that the world was going entrepreneurial because of a little thing which was in 1973, 1974, it was called the integrated circuit, but they started calling it the microchip. And I had a feeling that there was a microchip future that would expand entrepreneurism and that I might be a good coach in that world. So that's really the beginning of the whole strategic coach idea. Mike Koenigs [00:01:52]: Very good. And what you were able to do is first of all, partner up with Babs, your partner and wife, and also build an organization built around your values, some rule sets, and not only be able to create an organization based on that, but be able to bring in other business owners, teach these principles. And they, of course, became subscribers, members, customers, who pay you on an ongoing basis. 35,000 business owners later, 3,000 and some active. Right now, they show up every quarter to go through this process. I'm one of them. And use these principles to build, grow, expand not only themselves and achieve the four freedoms, as you would like to say, but bring these processes and principles into their business, and you're constantly expanding, constantly being inspired to create new stuff. So first of all, anything that I may have left out there that you think is important to the story? Dan Sullivan [00:02:56]: Yeah. Well, I think that the thing that I twigged on, and it came as a Result of a process called the strategy circle, that the product that we were actually selling and the service that we were actually selling was enabling other people to get to their own future. Okay, So I could keep that as a constant because the thing that was changing in my business was other people's futures. So they were changing their lives and they were changing their vision of their future. But I could keep a constant process. I mean, we constantly added new dimensions to it, but we're not that much different 35 years later than we were when I first had the process called the strategy circle. So it's basically, you have a vision of where you want to be, you put some numbers to that, you have to put measurements to the vision, you have to put deadlines to the vision, then you're confronted by the obstacles that prevent you from getting there. So our process helps you actually identify the vision, allows you to engage with the obstacles, and you transform the obstacles into the actual actions. Dan Sullivan [00:04:07]: And more and more, this means taking advantage of other people's capabilities, not relying on your own. So as your vision gets bigger, your network of other people's capabilities gets bigger, and that's how you grow as an entrepreneur. I think we implicitly had this understanding in the 1980s, but as we got into the actual workshops, so initially we were one on one with our coaching service, and then in the late 80s, 89, so 30 years, this year we went into a workshop format. And the workshop format was the real magic wand because we found that entrepreneurs really wanted to compare their creation of a new future with the new futures of other entrepreneurs. So they were able to tap into the thinking of other entrepreneurs. And we keep refining it. You know, we keep looking for giving them reasons why they'd want to stay with us forever. I would say that that's our number one strategic activity is constantly creating new concepts and tools that would encourage people to think about staying in this process forever. Mike Koenigs [00:05:21]: I would agree there's an important distinction, and it's relevant to continuing this conversation, which is all about when is it time to stop? Or when is it time to continue and grow. What you've been able to do is reinvent inside your own rule set. Producing a book every quarter, for example, you're inspired constantly, which has you create new content because you're always in a conversation with the customer about what their challenges are and what's next. And you really are, much like me, a performer, an entertainer, and a creator. I remember Tony Robbins once said this. I remember he said, I'm 80% entertainment, 20% content. Or quality. And I was offended by that. Mike Koenigs [00:06:06]: I was like, what the hell are you talking about? That's offensive. And now I understand how important that is. And I talked about this in a previous episode with the Berkshire Hathaway meeting with Buffett and Munger. They're entertainers. They're good at what they're good at, but they're interesting people. They make the process of investing and doing what they do interesting. And that's what people are going to come back to. Dan Sullivan [00:06:28]: Well, it's the first rule of human nature is that entertainment always trumps significance. Mike Koenigs [00:06:33]: Yeah. Ain't that interesting? Dan Sullivan [00:06:35]: You know, significance is a nice flavoring, but the entree you really want is entertainment. Do humans like being entertained? Mike Koenigs [00:06:44]: Yes. And if they're entertained and they can get educated and see a way to get their other needs met, whether it's significance, freedom, you know, love and connection, it's gonna be around people who are attracted to a certain flavor of the entertainment, the comedy, the outcome and like mindedness and feel like there's a tribal connection. And brands do that. That's what great brands do. So I'll give you a little contrast here, because what you've done, again is you created this rule set, you operate within it, you've got a tribe that follows you. And there is something interesting in the strategic coach land. And anyone who's listened to our podcast knows that you have a language structure, a framework, and like, even the term capability amplifier isn't really a mainstream title. And you need to kind of understand the notion what that means to really get some of what we talk about and certainly to make use of what you and I do here. Mike Koenigs [00:07:41]: You need to be a fellow alien, an entrepreneur who gets what this means and how it's useful. And you'll either feel a tribal connection to it or not. And we need to be relatable to our audience, which again, a good brand does. So I look at it and I was thinking, because the reason why we decided to do this episode in the first place is you said, well, what's the difference? What's the distinction? And maybe just why don't you position this? Because I remember you had a great question, and then I'm going to answer that question in the context of what's different and how our audience can use this to further their four freedoms. Dan Sullivan [00:08:21]: Yeah, well, I guess it's sort of what's your own personal operating style? And one of the things is that I'm more of an innovator than I am an entrepreneur. Okay. In other words, I'M not a classic entrepreneur at all, but I am a classic innovator. And what I mean by that is that the sheer enjoyment of creating new concepts and new thinking tools is primary over maximizing the profitability value of what I'm creating. Okay, so my greatest need is for people who have interesting entrepreneurial experiences. And you are in the AAA category there, Mike, because you've been at really the frontier of what you can do with digital communications. Before we even thought in those terms, you were already into this. And you're probably, in my experience, you're probably the purest example of that in Strategic Coach history of identifying very, very early that there was a new universe out there called the digital universe. Dan Sullivan [00:09:31]: And you've tried out various things and to a certain, you created entirely new value creation models, and then you move down to another one, and then you move down to another one, then you moved on to another one. And from my standpoint, I find that enormously stimulating because I'm trying to think, well, what's the concepts that pull this whole thing together? Is there a way you can actually translate this entrepreneurial experience of one Mike Koenigs? Can you actually transform this into useful thinking tools that other people could actually try? So that's my daily passion. I'm constantly being confronted by new entrepreneurial models. And I said, well, if I was Euclid and I was trying to, you know, back 2,500 years ago, and I'm trying to create the basic geometry of the entrepreneurial universe, what have I just learned that's repeatable by someone else? So I would say that that's my driving passion. And I can't have a whole bunch of different entrepreneurial models for myself. I have to have an entrepreneurial model that can accommodate being constantly surprised by other people's entrepreneurial models. If I can talk about that, I've got to be fixed at the center so my mind can be open to all the new stuff that's happening out in the entrepreneurial world. Mike Koenigs [00:10:53]: Good. Well, I think I can answer that. And again, I think there's two tracks we can go down. One of them is what's the underlying thought process? And the driver here. And the other one is how can that translate into a business model that, first of all is interesting and stimulating. Right. It appeals to our desire and our need to innovate, create. The next one is it needs to be financially successful and it needs to have enough appeal that there's an audience that you can access and create a story for, so they'll want to buy it. Mike Koenigs [00:11:31]: Right. Dan Sullivan [00:11:32]: Also an audience that multiplies itself. Mike Koenigs [00:11:35]: Yes, precisely. Self replication for sure. Those are the ingredients of a great brand. Now one of the things that I've, I look back historically, one of my businesses was a digital marketing agency that was in the early days of like, let's just make stuff that promotes businesses, can tell stories and is new and innovative enough to attract attention. So just the geegaw effect is high enough that a message can be embedded and then people take action. The next incarnation was what effectively was early search engines. So that was early Internet and at the time it was a new place to publish. Right. Mike Koenigs [00:12:16]: I figured out a way to manipulate search engines in a way that we could take advantage of the medium. I gamed the system. Basically you could own and dominate multiple search engines within minutes before they caught on. The next version of that was mechanized. It was called Traffic Geyser, which again did it with video, which again was a brand new format. Everyone wanted to watch videos. Being able to watch video on your computer was cool. And I figured out how to combine search engine optimization to that. Mike Koenigs [00:12:47]: Now the next incarnation was mobile text marketing. That was instant customer at the time. I figured out how to use mobile phones which people were starting to use. It had a high geegaw effect and I automated two way interactive mobile text with voice recognition, email and video. So it was audio, video, podcasts, it was like this, all in one communications platform. Put it in one place and again, hi gee gaw. At that point mobile text wasn't spam yet and it was new enough that was like you'd welcome the conversation, welcome getting stuff on your phone. So it was a new portal. Mike Koenigs [00:13:26]: From there the personal branding movement started to come up and Amazon was the next platform. So what we did is we hacked publishing writing books in days or hours or weeks, publishing on Amazon, taking advantage of free distribution. Books have high value and we could embed content that was personalized, enhanced the value of you, the business owner, you publish free and leverage a multi billion dollar network. So here again are the similarities. Create once, publish everywhere, take advantage of a high geega effect and increase the value of the business or the individual doing it. And even what we're doing right now. Podcasting has been around for over 10 years, but it hit a point in time where we've got momentum now. Again, what I experimented with a few years ago after I sold the last business is I decided I'm going to create a show and I'm going to broadcast it. Mike Koenigs [00:14:27]: So here was the idea. It was insane. And it took up enormous amount of energy and it couldn't be done by everyone. It wasn't like a mass producible thing. But I created a big studio with multiple sets that look like TV and had a live audience. We did a live show, broadcast it live, and took advantage, like YouTube Live. So we webcast it and then turned it into a video podcast and audio podcast, had it transcribed, turn it into book or online content. So create once distributed everywhere, but it turned into a low paying job. Mike Koenigs [00:14:58]: But I learned a lot from the experience and also got it on TV, on Amazon, on YouTube, on Facebook and all that. And now the current compression cycle that I'm in is online to me is so icky and fake. I hate social media. It's turned into a toilet. Every part of it smells to me. It's corrupt. Facebook squeezing every dime out of it. Everyone's on it. Mike Koenigs [00:15:22]: You see the same offers, the same strategy. It's just noise, noise, noise, noise, noise and crap. And it's been Kardashianized, meaning I think the worst examples of human beings are benefiting from it in a noisy, yucky way. And it's time for it to blow up again. It's time for the compression cycle to take over. That's sort of why I decided I wanted to get out of all of it. Because I think there's an opportunity for a new level of transparency, a new level of real, a new level of authenticity. And those words are thrown around. Mike Koenigs [00:15:59]: But again, we live in a fake world where news is fake, media is fake, government's fake, money's fake, business. A lot of it is fake. You can't distinguish between the noise. So the next opportunity that we have is intimate, curated, and something that really resembles real. That's where my head's at right now. And I know I went through a long epiphany of blah there, but wherever the masses are moving, it's time to run in the exact opposite direction and just break everything and create a new category and a new conversation where people go, yeah, that's right. You've got to make a logical statement that creates a motion and a movement. And I think now is the perfect time for that. Mike Koenigs [00:16:45]: So, any commentary, Dan? Dan Sullivan [00:16:46]: Yeah, well, the thing that I think of, and you were very admiring of Berkshire Hathaway on a previous podcast. And I think that one of the telltale signs or the check the box of something that's authentic is that you can stay with it for a long time in a changing world. Okay. And my sense is that superficial and Shallow are associated with things that are constantly changing and they're making a promise that they're going to be around forever, but they don't last. And my sense is, because they're not really principle based, and everything I know about Berkshire Hathaway is that they're fundamentally principle based and who they'll deal with and who they won't deal with. You know, what they'll invest in and what they won't invest in. And the power of their brand is that they stick to their guns. So if I look at your experience and we could do this someday, although you've done six different things about all six of them have something fundamentally in common with each other. Dan Sullivan [00:17:57]: In other words, you could develop a series of common qualities that these all have. And I think your fundamental marketing philosophy, Mike, is that you don't have to outrun the bear. Mike Koenigs [00:18:08]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:18:08]: You just have to outrun whoever is competing with you. If they're filling up your room, you have to create a new room. You know, it's not discover a new room, because rooms aren't discovered. Rooms are actually created. But here's the thing. You're how old right now? Mike Koenigs [00:18:24]: 53. Just turned 53. Dan Sullivan [00:18:26]: 53. Well, I didn't hit upon this model in its present form until I was 45. So, in other words, it took me a lot of experimentation. And I actually hit on the idea when I was about 18 or 19 years old that you could create an educational system simply by taking people's raw experience and turning it into concepts and processes, actual thinking exercises. And, you know, I think my basic experience with school is very similar to yours. I knew pretty soon once I'd arrived on the planet here that nothing in my circumstances was actually designed for me and a lot of people, you know, and I'm talking about the 1950s now. So you could lay out a model of an adult 25 years further along in life with you, and you would pattern on an adult. I think one of the most confusing things for children right now is that all the adults are trying to be children and they have a hard time finding what an adult actually looks like. Mike Koenigs [00:19:36]: Explain that a little bit further. What does that mean? Dan Sullivan [00:19:38]: Well, it's very, very interesting. I did a class book in high school. You have yearbooks, and it usually features the fourth level, the seniors who are graduating. And so they have their pictures and they have little, you know, what their motto is and everything like that. And if you take a senior yearbook from 1959 and you compare it with a yearbook, if they still do them these days, I think they do. It's still a big business. So that's 60 years later. My class in 1959 looks about five or six years older than the 18 year olds today. Dan Sullivan [00:20:18]: Okay. From our first conscious moments, we had role models who were adults. So all along, as you were going through childhood and through the teen years and going through the school system, you were patterning yourself so that you could be actually an adult out in the world. And then there were examples. This is a generation that had gone through the Great Depression. I'm talking about the generation ahead of me. They'd gone through the Great Depression, the Second World War, and they had dealt with all sorts of life situations at very young ages and that had turned them into adults. So my sense is the enormous confusion on the part of children and their general not finding the educational system very, very satisfactory is the fact that there's no adulthood that they're actually being pointed towards. Dan Sullivan [00:21:06]: Because a lot of the teachers are actually trying to be children. They're trying to be friends. I had no misunderstanding when I was going through school that my teachers were my friends. Okay. I had no misunderstanding when I was growing up in my family that my parents were my friends, they were parents, they weren't friends. And today everybody's trying to be chummy with young people and I think it's very confusing for them. I mean, what's life worth if you're trying to go backwards? Mike Koenigs [00:21:35]: Super interesting. I definitely noticed that myself because I've got a 16 year old and I want to be in his life, but I've chosen. What I do is I'll say right now, I'm going to be your dad. Yeah, I'm going to be a father. And this is not going to feel good to you. And you don't have a vote right now. You know, there are times when there's time for a vote and a conversation and friendly and it's hard. I almost started going down that path and I remember I accidentally called my son brother one day and he's like, I don't like that. Mike Koenigs [00:22:06]: And I didn't mean it by that. And there is, there's like at some point you're just going to be the adult in the room and you can't pretend you're 20 in a bar when you're 50 years old. And guys who do that are creepy. That is really interesting. Dan Sullivan [00:22:21]: Yeah. And I think that in the entrepreneurial world there are many signs and if I can use the Berkshire Hathaway example one more time, these are actually Entrepreneurial adults. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are actually entrepreneurial adults. I mean, they have fun and they find entertainment, but they're actually laying out if you want to be an entrepreneurial adult, these are some things that you have to think about. This is how you have to operate in the world. This is the basis on which you can make really, really good decisions, and even your best decisions are going to turn out not to be good, and you have to build that in. So my feeling is that we've lost the concept of adulthood. And I think the Facebook world and the social media world is a great example that it has reduced the entire population who participate back to childhood. Dan Sullivan [00:23:18]: We're throwing things. We're throwing our food at each other, we're throwing things. And I think that if there's going to be a change, it won't be a change in social media. It has to be change in understanding that there's adulthood in the world. And adulthood is having principles that are good forever. Mike Koenigs [00:23:38]: I do. So I'm going to bring this back around philosophically. Really, what we're talking about here is messaging. We're talking about finding an audience, being a leader to them, finding an appropriate medium that appeals to them and being able to deliver it in a way that's entertaining first, to grab their attention, and then educationally second. Whether we're delivering that as a product, physical product, an information product, an educational product, and our flavor, how we like consuming and digesting that does change. You know, we talk about these changing times. You know, if you're going to stand out, you've got to make it special. It's got to have some sort of meaning, and it's got to get attention. Mike Koenigs [00:24:26]: And none of this, what I'm saying right now is particularly profound, but it's necessary. And you've got to stop and ask yourself if what I'm doing isn't working right, you know, what's my message? What's my medium? How am I doing it? How am I differentiating myself? And where am I being the adult in the room? Where am I really being the leader? And we are going through a time when, in my opinion, we have confused sexual messages. For example, you know, we're living in an era where the conversation about male and female roles and sexuality soul murky and mushy, and everyone's afraid to talk about it. You know, the politically correct climate. And there is the rebellion that's been going on, the political rebellion that's reflected in all this. To me, it's a ripe time for massive disruption and for someone to stand up and have the courage to communicate in a different way. And I'm not talking about the current political climate way because clearly that is. So it isn't working right. Mike Koenigs [00:25:32]: All it does is creates more dividend. But there is a great time for a unification message to show up and a great unifier. I think that is the greatest opportunity we live in right now. And no one has figured that out yet. It's going to be super fascinating to see who does. Dan Sullivan [00:25:48]: My great historical period to take a look at what's happening right now isn't industrialization or anything that's happened the last couple hundred years. It's actually the century and a half after Gutenberg, when a whole new way of communicating was introduced into the world. And I have to tell you, it was horrendously violent and brutal, uncertain. And you know that we've actually improved a lot as a species of being able to go through massive change without resorting to violence. Compared with the couple hundred years after Gutenberg when you shifted from an auditory population where most people knowledge was passed down by word of mouth. And then all of a sudden it can be written down and it can be disseminated exponentially throughout an entire population. And it totally turned society on its head. And the resort to violence was readily at hand. Dan Sullivan [00:26:54]: The thirty Years War in Europe. The European population lost a third of all their adults just in bloodshed. A third of the entire population of Europe died in 30 years war. Then there's disease and everything that went along with it. Starvation and everything. So I think our ability as a species to actually handle change has improved enormously. But I'll make a point about that, is that the leaders of this are people who create free zone frontiers. There are people who actually create new ways of taking existing resources and capabilities and making them much more productive. Dan Sullivan [00:27:34]: So this has been a favorite kind of morning for me. I've got the lead here because you started off in your day in San Diego much earlier than I did in Toronto. So I want to thank you for being so bright and cheerful at very early hour. Mike Koenigs [00:27:50]: Shoot. This is my favorite thing in the world to do, Dan, if all I did is sat around and got to create with you. Yeah, we have to do more of these. If I have a wish right now, it's more. So why don't we bring this home? So on behalf of myself and Dan, thank you again so much for listening. Dan, anything you'd like to add as we land this big airplane? Dan Sullivan [00:28:12]: Well, just send this podcast out to your 100 best friends. Mike Koenigs [00:28:17]: That is a great ask. Awesome. All right, well, for Capability Amplifier and for you, thanks so much for listening. Will you head over to itunes right now to rate the Capability Amplifier? Show every rating and review helps spread the message and create more empowered entrepreneurs like you. And if you've already done that, please share this episode with a friend who you know can benefit from Capability Amplifier. And if you have any questions or suggestions, head over to capabilityamplifier.com there you can leave us an audio message and Dan and I listen to every single one of them. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you soon.