Inside Strategic Coach: Connecting Entrepreneurs With What Really Matters

Every great entrepreneur wants (and deserves) to have a dependable team around them so they can be freed up to develop new ideas and focus on growing their business. But how do you get one? After all, the first question most entrepreneurs ask when they join The StrategicⓇ Program is, “Where do you find such great team members?” In this episode of Inside Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller finally answer this question in-depth. From identifying and nurturing your team’s areas of Unique AbilityⓇ and creating a positive and collaborative work culture to investing in team members’ growth, Dan and Shannon share everything that makes Strategic CoachⓇ a magnet for skilled and passionate talent—and how your business can become one too.

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

• The number one tool necessary for building and maintaining a great team.
• How to determine if an activity is right for an individual.
• Why Strategic Coach team members don’t really need to be managed, monitored, or motivated.
• How Strategic Coach creates an incredible sense of safety for its team members.
• The two things that team members are looking for.
• Why you should think of hiring someone as an investment, not a cost.

Show Notes:

At Strategic Coach, you’re always either winning or learning.

There are a lot of Coach tools that support having a great team.

Everybody's on their own unique growth path in terms of who they are and the kind of work they’re most likely to enjoy and excel at.

Strategic Coach team members can continually focus their time at work on doing what they’re excited about.

The moment someone is hired, Coach invests in learning about who that person is and how they can grow their skills.

At Strategic Coach, if something doesn’t work, the system gets blamed, not the individual.

The four core values of Strategic Coach (PAGE) are: positive and collaborative teamwork; being alert, curious, responsive, and resourceful; getting results; and providing an excellent first-class experience.

Strategic Coach has uniformly very helpful and very positive team members.

Some Coach clients have been with the company for 15, 20, 25 years, and so have some team members.

The educational system generally disparages successful business people.

Almost all Coach team members are directly in contact on a person-to-person level with the company’s clients.

A team member can’t be at their best if they don’t feel safe.

If you want great team members, you have to be a great entrepreneur. And that also includes being a great person.

Great team members who want a bigger future aren't interested in being with someone who doesn't have any future.

If you're going to be able to attract and retain the best people out there, you can’t have an entitled attitude.

Resources:

Unique AbilityⓇ

Article: Your Business Is a Theater Production: Your Back Stage Shouldn’t Show On The Front Stage

The Team Success Handbook by Shannon Waller

Everyone And Everything Grows by Dan Sullivan

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

When things need to get done, it doesn’t mean that you, as the entrepreneur, need to do them yourself. In fact, for the best kinds of business growth and business success, you need to do as little as possible. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller share the three rules for having a friction-free future.

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

• The way to achieve more by actually doing less.
• Why you need to be clear about what you want to be doing.
• How to determine the minimum you need to do for a goal to be achieved.
• Why things getting done without your doing them yourself means you’re growing.

Show Notes:

Strategic Coach has a lot of tools for creating teamwork where other people do work that you don't like doing.

For every task, there’s someone who’s great at it, loves doing it, and finds it energizing to do.

There are times in your past where you’ve done a lot, but someone else would have done it if you’d done nothing.

Friction is where you’re moving, but you’re being resisted by forces.

When a new thing has to be done, ask yourself three questions: Is there any way this can be achieved by me doing nothing? What’s the minimum I have to do for this to be achieved? Is there anyone else who can do my minimum?

The more you stick to the three rules, the more gets achieved by things you instigate.

Rather than having pride about the things that get done, some entrepreneurs have pride about doing the things that get things done.

An entrepreneur is only required for the activities they love doing.

Resources:

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Impact Filter™

Unique Ability®

Article: Your Productivity At Its Best With This Guaranteed Hack

Everything that humans create is done with tools. But the skill level people have for using tools varies drastically. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller discuss why it’s essential to be good at using the tool of language for both thinking and communicating, and share the thinking tools that all entrepreneurs can use for both business success and business growth.

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

• Why Dan vowed years ago to never again operate his business with receivables.
• Why you’re never starting from zero.
• How entrepreneurs can learn what to do in the future by looking at their past.
• How Strategic Coach® thinking tools improve clients’ lives.
• Dan’s process for developing and introducing new Strategic Coach thinking tools.

Show Notes:

One of the reasons to get really good at language is because it gives you the tools for thinking and communicating.

If you don’t have the language to think about things, you’re trapped by your emotions.

If your language skills aren’t good enough, people can only respond to your emotions.

A lot of small businesses stay small because they never really comprehended what entrepreneurship really was.

Some things that are impossible can become possible if you change your thinking.

Strategic Coach currently has roughly 250 thinking tools in the company’s 35th year.

Every quarter, Dan creates three or four new thinking tools.

New thinking tools address new things that are happening to entrepreneurs where there isn't a structure for thinking about it.

Questions about the future are tools for instigating a thinking process.

You always have to have a bigger and better future to bounce your present off of.

In today’s world, ideas and processes have tremendous value.

Resources:

Total Cash Confidence by Dan Sullivan

Article: This Tool Will Help You Make Sense Of The Past AND Take Charge Of Your Future

The Impact Filter™

Your Life As A Strategy Circle by Dan Sullivan

The Transformation Trilogy by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Article: The Four Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Everyone And Everything Grows by Dan Sullivan

The Positive Focus®

The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management

Description:

Since 1989, Strategic Coach®has been helping entrepreneurs find greater happiness and business success. In this episode, Gord Vickman and business coach Dan Sullivan talk about how the company has grown over nearly 35 years and how they’re catering to the needs of successful, collaborative entrepreneurs with growth mindsets.

Here's some of what you'll learn in thisepisode

• What entrepreneurs get out of each of the three Strategic Coach program levels.
• Why additional program levels were created
• Why there’s no competition for entrepreneurs in the “Free Zone.”
• Why Dan considers himself only 50% of the creative team when it comes to innovating new thinking tools.
• How entrepreneurism is like jazz music.
• The future of The Free Zone Frontier®Program.

Show Notes:

Thinking tools enable structured thinking.

Strategic Coach thinking tools are all about entrepreneurs thinking about their thinking.

Strategic Coach has 240 trademarked thinking tools. And by this time next year, they’ll have 50 patents.

A Self-Managing Company®is one where team members manage what already exists, and the entrepreneur creates what's higher, better, and bigger.

A Self-Multiplying Company™is where individual team members create new productivity, creativity, and profitability in the world.

For entrepreneurs in the “Free Zone,” their competition wants to be their customers.

Sometimes, your mistakes are your biggest breakthroughs.

Strategic Coach’s ideas come from ongoing experimentation with entrepreneurs.

All entrepreneurs are outliers.

The more thinking tools you have, the more flexible an entrepreneur you are.

Intellectual property—copyrights, trademarks, and patents—is backed up by major governments.

Resources:

The Self-Managing Company by Dan Sullivan

Exciting advances are being made in the area of life extension. Business coach Dan Sullivan, having set a goal for himself in 1987 to live to the age of 156, has been keeping close track of the trends. In this episode, he and Shannon Waller talk about what people should know if they’re interested in living a great life as long as possible.

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

• Why Dan chose age 156 as his goal.
• The profound impact Dan’s growth mindset has had on his thinking.
• The simple thinking exercise that can add decades to your life.
• Major breakthroughs that have happened in the longevity field.
• Why longevity is going to be an area of great inequality.

Show Notes:

The body really pays attention to what your mind is thinking.

The majority of Strategic Coach® clients are planning to live to at least 100.

Human progress is created out of human aspiration.

People’s longevity goals are having an impact on medicine, science, and technology.

All the longevity breakthroughs have happened within the last ten years.

All of our cells are specialized cells, but they all come from a kind of universal cell.

AI can turn one kind of information into another kind of information.

There's a profound mindset change going on in medicine, that all disease is just an aspect of aging.

Your chronological age and your biological age can be different.

Regeneration is taking what's healthy and keeping it healthy. Repair is taking what's damaged and making it healthy again.

If enough people want to live longer, as a whole, we’re going to live longer.

Resources:

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

While some people think it’s a good idea to take neutral positions, Dan Sullivan says entrepreneurs need to avoid this. In this episode, he and fellow business coach Shannon Waller discuss the business motivation for always choosing a side.

Here's some of what you'll learn in thisepisode:

• Why trying to be neutral doesn’t teach you anything or get you anywhere
• How to know your own standards.
• How Strategic Coach®clients learn about themselves.
• The way to strengthen your position using opposing views.

Show Notes:

When you pick a side, you immediately begin learning an enormous amount about the side you’ve chosen and why you’ve chosen it.

If you try to be a neutral person, you just disappear because you’re notforanything.

A lot of people have very strong opinions about their thinking but have no real foundation or basis for their thinking.

The most successful entrepreneurs bet on themselves 100%.

You only become successful by making increasingly more successful judgments.

Obstacles are the raw material for achieving your goals.

Every person is a complete universe of experience and learning.

Other people do things for their reasons, not your reasons.

You can only have a conversation if you show respect for who the other person is.

It’s only if you respect other people’s opinions that you can reverse your own.

Emotions come before our thinking.

You don’t pick a side out of thinking; you pick a side out of feeling.

Resources:

The Impact Filter

Your Life As A StrategyCircle

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Time Management

The Communist Manifesto

At most companies, when something goes wrong, an individual gets the blame. At Strategic Coach®, on the other hand, we ask whether the individual could have been better set up for success. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain how the Coach environment is set up so that everyone at the company has the best shot of performing at their best and contributing the greatest value.

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

• The positive change that new Strategic Coach team members can take advantage of.
• What will cause a new Coach team member to be rejected.
• Why envy shouldn’t be tolerated in a company culture.
• The importance of congruency in a company.
• Why Dan doesn’t want to think about how any of his team members are interacting with clients.
• Dan’s growth mindset toward his position at Coach.

Show Notes:

A company can create the structures and the processes where any good person can decide to be a great person.

If you trust in your team members, you’ll save yourself a lot of worry.

Envious people feel inferior from birth.

The ultimate proof that people aren't envious is that they innovate new things that everybody applauds them for.

The outlook that you’re born with is very much subject to the circumstances you’re born into.

In all your teamwork interactions, make sure everyone else knows where you’re coming from and what you’re trying to achieve.

Team members should be freed up to focus on what they’re uniquely good at and love doing.

People who are relaxed and confident can be more creative.

If your company does new things, you need people’s creativity.

In bureaucracies and large corporations, you’re expected to be very good at doing several things.

Resources:

Video:Tips For Exceptional Company Performance

The Positive Focus®

The Transformation Trilogyby Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Unique Ability®

The Impact Filter™

Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller cut through the predictions of unlimited business growth. They explain why the cost of four key elements crucial to business success are on the rise. It's a straightforward conversation about what entrepreneurs should anticipate, and practical steps you can take to navigate the changes ahead.

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

• Why we’re entering a working person’s market.
• Why energy is going to be cheap only in the United States.
• How the four crucial factors influence each other.

Show Notes:

90% of all transport happens on water. And the cost of water transportation is going through the roof right now.

Over the next 25 years, the only place where energy will be guaranteed to be cheap is the United States.

The four crucial MELT factors are money, energy, labor, and transportation.

The costs of the MELT factors are going to rise over the next 25 years.

It’s important to find a way to finance yourself that doesn’t involve debt.

You shouldn’t be giving up a lot of your company just to get your growth money or your survival money.

The U.S. is going to start using tariffs for foreign-produced goods.

We're now in a period where the whole world is going through the greatest loss of skilled knowledge and skilled know-how in history, and this period will probably continue for another decade.

It’s going to get more and more expensive to hire really great people.

The last three years have seen the fastest, biggest growth of new industry and new manufacturing in the history of the United States.

Entrepreneurs are successful to the degree that they solve the D.O.S.® issues (dangers, opportunities, and strengths) of their client base.

Automating what used to be strictly human work is a very slow process.

Resources:

Deep D.O.S. Innovationby Dan Sullivan

Your Life As A Strategy Circleby Dan Sullivan

Strategic Coach® has a unique company culture. Only the best team members stay there, and each has unique capabilities and a growth mindset. In this episode, business coaches Shannon Waller and Dan Sullivan explain how other entrepreneurs can go about creating a Coach-like culture in their own organizations.

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

• Why everyone at Strategic Coach must have a growth mindset.
• The main value Strategic Coach creates for its entrepreneurial clients.
• How Dan helps entrepreneurs focus on doing only what they love doing.
• How Strategic Coach clients get added value from comparing notes with one another.
• Why many entrepreneurs never get far beyond their own capabilities.
• A simple way to ensure every meeting is positive and productive.
• How you know you’re not in competition with anyone.

Show Notes:

Strategic Coach clients learn in a community where everyone is a successful, talented, and ambitious entrepreneur.

Nothing turns a person off more than someone not practicing what they preach.

All the thinking tools that Strategic Coach clients master are the same ones that Strategic Coach team members master.

Strategic Coach clients use Coach thinking tools to organize both their business and work lives.

Strategic Coach clients and Strategic Coach team members advance in their careers in the same way.

Strategic Coach clients learn how to have complete congruity between their behind-the-scenes activities and what clients see.

The obstacles to your goals are your raw material for achieving them.

Quantitative measurements really focus entrepreneurs’ brains.

In 2024, Dan Sullivan will have been coaching entrepreneurs for 50 years.

An entrepreneur in one part of the world totally understands an entrepreneur in another part of the world.

There’s a whole relationship that develops from a coach helping a client think more clearly.

Resources:

Everyone And Everything Growsby Dan Sullivan — coming December 2023!

Who Not Howby Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Your Life As A Strategy Circleby Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

The Positive Focus®

The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management

Entrepreneurs have more to be grateful for than most people who experience business success. In this episode, guest host Gord Vickman and business coach Dan Sullivan share entrepreneur ideas about all there is to appreciate about running your own business.

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

• How it benefits team members to free up the entrepreneur.
• A way to start fresh every day.
• Where all of Dan’s gratitude starts.
• How to ensure every meeting is positive.
• The only accurate way to measure progress.
• How AI has changed the podcast production process.

Show Notes:

Entrepreneurs tend to be a lot more grateful for their work lives than people who haven't created their own companies.

You can’t be complaining and grateful at the same time.

If you’re saying you’re excited about something, it’s implicit in that that you’re grateful for it.

Strategic Coach clients use Coach thinking tools in their personal lives as well as their work lives.

The entrepreneurial instinct starts before age ten.

Entrepreneurially minded people know that money is the key to gaining independence.

A lot of entrepreneurs are trying to escape from their beginnings.

Negative experiences can be uniquely valuable for you if they lead to course corrections.

Everything we're grateful for is because we appreciate the value of it.

If you measure your progress against the ideal, you eliminate all the value of what you’ve achieved.

Resources:

The Positive Focus®

Unique Ability®

The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan

Strategic Podcasts

The Impact Filter™