Inside Strategic Coach: Connecting Entrepreneurs With What Really Matters

Latest Episodes:

Do You Have What It Takes To Be A 10x Entrepreneur? Sep 19, 2023

Show notes

There are major differences between regular entrepreneurs and 10x entrepreneurs. Do you know which type you are? In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain what makes someone a 10x entrepreneur and reveal the best things you can do if you are one.

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Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

What you can tell about an entrepreneur by how they talk about their goals.
The best types of goals for entrepreneurs to have.
What makes an entrepreneur a good fit for The Strategic Coach® Program.
The entrepreneur motivation and growth mindset that mean you’ll never stop growing.
The question that gives an entrepreneur a bigger future.
How to surround yourself with other constantly growing people.

Show Notes:

Dreams and wishes aren’t measurable, but goals are.

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10x entrepreneurs constantly think, “What we have now is great, but what does it look like when it’s 10x?”

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The reward for going 10x is that you get to do it again.

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10x entrepreneurs aren’t looking for quick fixes; they’re looking to put in the work and time to get to a higher level.

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Over time, you get better at recognizing what’s worth your time and what isn’t.

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Only one out of every 400 entrepreneurs would be a good fit for The Strategic Coach Program.

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Status is a byproduct of capability.

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You only know you have greater capability if you’re getting greater results.

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People who are always striving for greater capability never stop growing.

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A person who is growth-minded might worry about outgrowing someone who isn’t growing.

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What makes a business complicated is the social pressure from outside of you.

Resources:

The 4 C’s Formula by Dan Sullivan

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The Entrepreneur’s Guide To 10x Growth

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The Multiplier Mindset® Podcast

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Business Lessons Learned From Both Good And Bad Surprises Sep 05, 2023

Show notes

Every entrepreneur should expect surprises because surprises are a part of reality. How you respond to them is key to whether you’re a happy, successful entrepreneur. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller discuss how entrepreneurs can use both good and bad surprises for business success and business growth.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

Why really successful entrepreneurs don’t care if a surprise is good or bad.
How bad surprises can turn into good surprises.
What happens to people who try to make the future free of surprises.
The best way to respond to good surprises.
The best mindset to have when it comes to bad surprises.

Show Notes:

Being taken by surprise means nothing you were preparing for, or nothing you expected to happen, actually happened.

You can do different things with a good surprise than you can with a bad surprise, and vice versa.

More clearly than almost anything else, surprises tell you what kind of person you are.

With bad surprises, you have no choice about how you have to respond because your survival may be at stake.

You can decide that whenever you’re inconvenienced, you’ll get a much bigger result instead of just getting back to where you were.

People who are entrepreneurial take greater advantage of bad surprises than good surprises.

Good surprises can help you up your level of ambition.

You have very, very little control over events outside of yourself.

Resources:

The Front Stage/Back Stage Model® article

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Experience Transformer® tool

Scary Times Success Manual by Dan Sullivan

Seeing Beyond The Myth Of Fairness: Your Key To Business Leadership Success Aug 22, 2023

Show notes

The world has become more competitive, and many people are focused on the concept of fairness. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain what fairness really means and what every entrepreneur needs to understand to avoid certain dangers.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

The different definitions of “fairness.”
Why you shouldn’t compare yourself to others.
How there’s a touch of envy in talking about fairness.
How to recognize your uniqueness and avoid false comparisons.

Show Notes:

No one knows what it’s like to be someone else.

Who you are can be modified by who other people are.

Reactive and creative are opposites.

The word “fairness” is a fairly recent creation.

The present understanding of fairness touches on equality.

Fairness is a social term, not a descriptive term.

A lot in our world supports the fact that things should be fair.

Uniqueness means looking inside and knowing who you are.

If you’re looking for fairness, you can’t find out who you are.

Resources:

“Geometry” For Staying Cool & Calm by Dan Sullivan

CliftonStrengths®

ENVY: A Theory of Social Behaviour by Helmut Schoeck

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Unique Ability®

Unique Ability® 2.0: Discovery by Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller

The Kolbe A™ Index

How Your Role Models Relate To Your Business Motivation Aug 08, 2023

Show notes

Every entrepreneur needs to be careful about who they choose as their role models. Your choices speak to your mindset, your business motivation, and your business success. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannan Waller talk about why each of Dan’s five role models made the list.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

The three categories that all five role models fit into.
How Euclid’s principles are timeless.
How the qualities of Dan’s role models influence his creation of Strategic Coach® thinking tools.
Things most people don’t know about Shakespeare.
The uniqueness and intelligence evident in Bach’s music.
The ways in which all five of Dan’s role models were entrepreneurs.

Show Notes:

Your role models should have qualities you aspire to.

The one law that really governs everything is that gravity respects no angle except a 90-degree angle.

Our entire physical world has been based on one book by Euclid.

You need to understand each one of Euclid’s principles before you can understand the next.

Being exploited with food is better than dying from no food.

The vast majority of great people are not widely recognized as great during their own time.

Nobody in particular is in charge of the U.S. The rules are in charge.

The pursuit of happiness is not the same as happiness.

Being inspired by someone doesn’t mean trying to imitate them.

Edison created the model for how to systematically invent new things.

Mindsets create habits, and habits are things that work that have become automatic.

Resources:

“Geometry” For Staying Cool & Calm by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

The Strategic Coach® Signature Program

Why Your Business Strategy Should Include Exceptional Hospitality Jul 25, 2023

Show notes

If you want business success, you have to take good care of your clientele. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller discuss the difference between customer service and hospitality and reveal the right way to treat clients and customers to keep them coming back.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

Why customers should be treated like human beings, not transactions.
The difference a personal touch makes.
The importance of being interested, not just interesting.
Why there’s a big opportunity right now to make people feel at home.
Ways you can show people you’re paying attention.

Show Notes:

Hospitality means making people feel at home.

There’s a movement where people are trying to make human beings more like machines.

The more dependence there is on technology, the less there’s a sense of personal connection.

If you have to write out customer service rules, the rules aren’t a habit.

The point of hospitality is showing appreciation for your clientele.

Remembering small details about your clients can make a huge impact.

There’s a lot of competition to be interesting, but there’s almost no competition to be interested.

Every person is smart in their own way.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

Anything And Everything Podcast with Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff

Extraordinary Business Lessons In Three Simple Rules Jul 11, 2023

Show notes

How do you stand firm in a world that seems to be in flux? It’s easier than you might think. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain the three rules for staying cool and calm so you can achieve business success and business growth no matter what’s happening in the world.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

Why entrepreneurs don’t need to ask permission to create.
The importance of company ground rules.
Why it’s helpful for entrepreneurs to recognize that life isn’t fair.
Why some people need to be controlled by other people’s laws
The real definition of creativity.
The five “credibility rules.”

Show Notes:

If you want somebody to be in charge, you have to be the one in charge.

If we aren’t enforcing the rules, the rules don’t matter.

All the knowledge that we have was made up by someone.

After you make something up, you have to communicate it in such a way that other people will find it useful.

Entrepreneurs are the masters of making up new things.

Political leaders aren’t in charge; they’re fulfilling a role according to a set of rules.

Your new ideas will advantage some people and disadvantage others.

There used to be so much scarcity in the world that you couldn’t think about things like fairness and equality.

Freedom is maximizing being inside of restrictions.

Nothing you come up with has any value until somebody is willing to write you a check for it.

Economic breakdown usually comes from government mismanagement.

Rules allow you to have your attention on the main thing rather than on the small things.

Resources:

“Geometry” For Staying Cool & Calm by Dan Sullivan

The Impact Filter™

Don’t Let Uncertainty Get In The Way Of Business Growth Jun 27, 2023

Show notes

Every so often, there are major world events that affect things economically and can lead to people feeling a lot of uncertainty. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller talk about the best business strategy an entrepreneur can take to make sure their business not only survives, but thrives while other people are feeling uncertain about the future.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

How Strategic Coach® acquired a whole new capability during COVID lockdowns.
The advice Dan gave clients after 9/11.
What a lot of people’s futures depend on.
The single question that will renew clients’ sense of their future.
Things clients can work on while cash flow is an issue.
Why it’s really easy to compete during an economic downturns.
Why Dan predicts scary times for most of the world over the coming decades.

Show Notes:

Big companies and corporations make all their gains and market share during bad times.

Economic downturns are always going to happen, so it makes sense to develop a skill around them.

Instead of worrying about yourself, you have to give other people a chance to be clear about their future.

As the leader of the company, your number one daily job during uncertain times is to keep everybody's confidence high.

Everybody is coming from different worlds when they come into work.

You should come out of a period of uncertainty with the same team you went into it with in terms of numbers and in terms of the power of your team.

When uncertainty happens, most people lose their ability to take action.

You haven’t solved a problem until you can laugh about it.

Your job during uncertain times is to go out and create new futures for all of your clients and prospects.

A client’s money is frozen when their brain is frozen.

Resistance and uncertainty are normal for entrepreneurs.

If you allow external forces to control your future, you’re not being an entrepreneur.

Resources:

The Positive Focus® tool

Scary Times Success Manual by Dan Sullivan

The Dan Sullivan Question by Dan Sullivan

Peter Zeihan’s YouTube channel

How Successful Entrepreneurs Turn Surprising Connections Into Business Strategy Jun 13, 2023

Show notes

Entrepreneurs innovate by drawing connections between things that haven’t been linked before. But how can you go about making such connections? In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain Dan’s latest breakthrough thinking tool, The Triple Play.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

How creativity is a method you can master.
How you can tell whether an activity is creative.
What types of connections get people excited.
Why Dan preferred to make his own toys as a child.

Show Notes:

We don’t discover connections; we make connections.

Creativity is connecting things where you didn’t see the connection before.

Not many people are creative enough to build an independent career in the marketplace.

You’re not really creative if you’re not surprising yourself.

Your brain can’t ignore a question.

Children play according to a method of connecting things that don’t belong together.

People's directed usefulness is achieved at the cost of creativity.

Imaginative thinkers make more money than people who are uniform and predictable.

Creating connections is how our brains get used to the world.

Resources:

Capitalism—And Everything Else by Dan Sullivan

Your Life As A Strategy Circle by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

Visual Thinking by Dr. Temple Grandin

The Foundation Of A Growth Mindset Is Just Guesses And Bets May 30, 2023

Show notes

Every entrepreneur would love to be able to predict the future, but of course it’s impossible. The future is always being created by every human being on the planet every day making guesses and bets about their individual future. There's no way of understanding or even detecting what kind of guesses and bets eight billion people are making today, when they weren’t even thinking about it yesterday. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain the importance of understanding why it’s all about guessing and betting, and how you can make the best guesses and bets for business success and business growth in your future.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

Why we’ll never get beyond technology just being reactive.
Why artificial intelligence is based on the past, not the future.
The big bet that Dan and Babs made before starting The Strategic Coach® Program in 1989.
How to find team members you don’t have to manage, monitor, or motivate.

Show Notes:

Humans have always had a desire to predict the future.

Technology can’t be superior to the human thinking that goes into it.

An entrepreneur betting on something means they commit their time, their activity, and in some cases, their money to a particular activity.

People have far more freedom on an individual basis now than they did a century ago.

Individual team members need to take themselves at least as seriously as management does.

Predictions are just guessing and betting based on what’s happened up until now.

You’re making a guess and a bet when you hire a team member.

If you look into how a technology is created, you know what to expect from it and what not to expect.

A great team member has to be great at what they do and great at playing with others.

Some people strive for a role they aren’t good at because in their minds it has higher status.

Resources:

Unique Ability

Capitalism—And Everything Else by Dan Sullivan

The Self-Managing Company by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability® 2.0: Discovery by Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller

Multiplication By Subtraction by Shannon Waller

Business Success Is Believing That Growing 10x Is Easier Than 2x May 16, 2023

Show notes

When asked if they think they’re able to 10x their current income, most entrepreneurs aren’t confident that they can. But when presented with a different way to think about it, it becomes clear that it’s actually easier to go 10x than it is to go 2x. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain how to change your thinking so you’re ready to 10x your company’s income.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

The mindset shift that happens when you realize you’ve gone 10x before.
Insights you can gain from your previous jumps in income.
Why your team members might try to prevent change at the company.
How Strategic Coach® has gone 10x more than once.
Why people have to make things up to scare themselves nowadays.
The difference between “status entrepreneurs” and “growth entrepreneurs.”

Show Notes:

Whenever someone goes 10x, they’ve gotten rid of a lot of activities they’d been doing.
Going 10x means hiring people to do activities they’re great at.
Growing your income means going after bigger and bigger check writers.
Entrepreneurs should be using technology to expand the power of their teamwork.
Growing your income might involve new collaborations with individuals outside of your company.
You make up the future, but you don’t make up your past.
The first time you go 10x, what you did couldn’t be predicted. The second time, you have a pattern to follow.
Most people want a bigger result without having to change themselves or what they’re doing.
10x is multidimensional thinking, while 2x is linear thinking.
How other people went 10x is meaningless information because it’s not the way you did it.
You won’t go 10x unless doing so will result in greater freedom.
A 10x quantitative jump is meaningless unless it’s also a 10x qualitative jump.
Entrepreneurial growth calls for constant transformation and change.

Resources:

The 10x Mind Expander by Dan Sullivan

The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Article: “The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs”

The Strategic Coach® Program