Is complaining holding you back from your full potential? In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller discuss the surprisingly simple choice between complaining and creating when facing obstacles. Discover how shifting to a creative mindset, embracing courage, and taking full responsibility can unlock new capabilities and exponential growth.

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

• How complaining allows you to avoid responsibility by justifying why you can't move forward.
• The Strategic Coach® thinking tool for transforming obstacles into capability and confidence.
• Why you need commitment and courage before you can gain capability and confidence.
• The kinds of people that give creativity a bad name.

Show Notes:

An obstacle feels like something is blocking your progress.

There are only two ways of dealing with obstacles: creating or complaining.

When you’re in creativity mode, you’re fully engaged with transforming or bypassing the obstacle.

To deal with an obstacle, you have to create something new.

Taking 100% responsibility is essential for creative problem-solving.

Complaining involves blaming external circumstances or people.

Committing fully to complaining offers a sense of freedom because you’ve absolved yourself of any responsibility for improving your situation.

Few people are entirely creative or entirely complainers. Most are a mix of both.

Creativity requires courage; complaining does not.

Creators are more likely to be honest with themselves.

You attract what you are: complainers attract complainers, and creators attract creators.

Resources:

The 4 C’s Formula by Dan Sullivan

Organizations have changed a lot over the past 50 years, and it’s vital for entrepreneurs to be aware of these changes if they want to achieve great business success. In this episode, Dan Sullivan, who has been coaching entrepreneurs for 50 years, talks to fellow business coach Shannon Waller all about the changes in companies that have taken place over the past half-century and the very different position that entrepreneurs are in today.

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

• What gave Dan confidence to become a business coach.
• How Dan’s desire to coach got married to entrepreneurism.
• How Strategic Coach® helps entrepreneurs thrive in the current economy.
• The way to give your team members roles, not just jobs.

Show Notes:

The invention of the microchip allowed entrepreneurs to have a lot of power and capability they’d never had before.

The introduction of the microchip meant large corporations would start to fracture and wouldn’t be as effective or useful.

It might take three months to get a decision from large organizations, but entrepreneurs can decide to hire you, and write you a check, in the moment.

About every 15 years, the number of employees required in an organization is about half of what it was 15 years previously.

Now that small companies with microchip power can be powerful economic forces, government has adjusted to make the process of incorporation faster and easier.

We’re partway through a 50-year period in which we’re shifting from large, pyramid-shaped organizations to network-based organizations.

Artificial intelligence can do work that used to require many people to do.

A lot more people can own companies and have leadership positions now than they used to.

Canada, especially Ontario, is one of the easier places in the world to incorporate.

Being a bureaucrat in a large pyramidal organization used to be the safest job in the economy, but is now among the riskiest.

Being an entrepreneur has become the safest role.

Resources:

The Great Crossover by Dan Sullivan

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

Unique Ability®

Do you believe in luck, or do you make your own success? In this episode, Dan Sullivan explores the concept of luck in entrepreneurship. Drawing from 50 years of coaching experience, he reveals how successful entrepreneurs create their own paths, often starting young by seeking opportunities to grow their wealth. Discover how self-made success intertwines with luck in the entrepreneurial journey.

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

• The top ways Dan has been lucky.
• Why it’s more difficult for someone born into wealth to become an entrepreneur.
• The new Strategic Coach® thinking tool that will help you recognize and increase your luck.
• Why being an entrepreneur requires a lot of courage.
• How Strategic Coach is run like a live theater company.

Show Notes:

50% of your success comes from luck, and 50% of it comes from the ability to take advantage of the luck you've had.

An entrepreneur’s success is an act of self-creation.

Entrepreneurs create their own income streams and their own capabilities.

Entrepreneurs understand intuitively that freedom requires money.

It’s difficult to separate luck from skill.

The U.S. is an entrepreneurial country created by entrepreneurs.

Even the challenges you’ve faced have shaped who you are today.

Recognizing the luck you’ve had keeps you centered and grounded.

Whether your capability drives your luck or vice versa depends on your perspective.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

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

Do you believe ambition fades with age, or can it actually grow stronger? In this episode, Shannon and Dan discuss how ambition evolves over time, share Dan's desire to be even more ambitious at 90, and reveal how transforming ambition into action can lead to growth and fulfillment at every age.

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

• How Dan’s strongest ambition relates to ambition itself.
• What you can gain by sticking to what you’re great at and love doing.
• How Dan came up with the goal of living to the age of 156.
• Ways you can lean into expanding your ambition.
• Why it’s easier to move forward than to maintain your position.
• Why some successful entrepreneurs get discouraged when they think about their ambition.
• The dire consequences of giving up your ambition.

Show Notes:

People begin to feel old when they stop making commitments—and stop prioritizing courage.

When entrepreneurs focus exclusively on doing what they’re great at and love doing, their impact multiplies. When combined with technology, the results are exponential.

Since your skills and capabilities will be much greater 10 years from now, your goals can be much bigger in 10 years too.

When you’re ambitious, all sorts of unexpected opportunities and experiences become available to you.

When you view ambition as an action, it becomes something you can invest your talent, skills, and time into.

Ambition is a skill made up of a number of subskills.

When your brain normalizes the idea that you’re going to live far longer than normal expectations, it changes your understanding of the present.

Time only speeds up when you think you’re running out of it.

Being unable to imagine yourself with more ambition in the future robs you of your power in the present.

No one’s interested in being in teamwork with someone who’s stopped growing.

Your real age has to do with what lies ahead of you—and your imagination.

What human beings most look for in other human beings is commitment and courage.

Commitment and courage create capability.

If you’re more committed and more courageous, it’s easy to be more ambitious.

Confidence is the reward for acquiring a new capability.

With a higher level of confidence, you can make greater commitments.

To make any significant improvement or change in your life, you have to be 100% committed to doing it.

You only truly start aging when you give up your ambition.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan

The 4 C’s Formula by Dan Sullivan

Entrepreneurs always want to be moving forward. What determines whether they’ll be able to is their understanding of the difference between cost and investment. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller talk about the growth mindset that lets you improve for the rest of your life—versus the mindset that means you’ll forever be stuck right where you are.

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

• The reason why small entrepreneurs are small entrepreneurs.
• Why you won’t get a return on investment if you think of team members as a cost.
• Why becoming a Strategic Coach® member isn’t a cost, but an investment in yourself.
• Why it’s dangerous for your team members if you think of them as a cost.
• How to switch from operating in costs to operating in investments.

Show Notes:

Some entrepreneurs have essentially only created a job for themselves that doesn’t go anywhere.

If you see hiring people as a cost, you might just do all of the work yourself.

When entrepreneurs do everything themselves, 90% of what they do doesn’t actually make sense for them to do.

Investing in team members means you’re freed up to do better work, and that will easily pay for the investment.

When you hire someone, you’re investing more in yourself than in the other person.

If you consider someone to be a cost, that person will know it.

Making an investment is a risk, and it can require courage.

Someone who treats other people as costs treats themselves the same way.

With an investment, you'll put an enormous amount of thinking into it to guarantee that it’s successful.

When you’re making an investment, have a goal for the return and a deadline for that goal.

Resources:

Casting Not Hiring by Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff

When Patti Mara graduated from university in the recession of 1989, she couldn’t get a job—so she made one up instead. In this episode, Patti shares how she’s achieved entrepreneurial success, the exciting new project she’s launching to support local businesses, and what she’s learned as a long-time coach in The Strategic Coach® Program.

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

• The invaluable resource that Patti turned to when she realized she didn’t know how to build a business.
• Some of the most helpful tools Patti learned in her first year at Strategic Coach®.
• The difference between tasks and results.
• The value in separating the fault from the problem.
• “magic” that happens in every Strategic Coach workshop.

Show Notes:

• Entrepreneurship often emerges out of necessity, but being good at making up a job for yourself doesn’t mean you know how to build a business.
• Strategic Coach concepts can dramatically shift an entrepreneur's mindset and ability to build a thriving organization.
• Every coach at Strategic Coach is also a Program member who uses Coach tools and concepts in their own business.
• What you sell is actually the vehicle for how you create value.
• Your business is the value you create to the people you want to work with.
• Everyone wants to feel like they’re winning.
• When team members feel like their roles serve a greater purpose, the whole company culture shifts.
• And once you recognize team members as experts in their roles, you can encourage their innovation and sense of ownership.
• When you empower team members to solve problems rather than to focus on who was at fault, customer interactions get much better.
• Awareness and mindset are more impactful than specific skills when training team members.

Resources:

Blog: Time Management Strategies For Entrepreneurs (Effective Strategies Only)

Unique Ability®

The 10x Mind Expander by Dan Sullivan

Turning Teams into Heroes and Customers into Raving Fans by Patti Mara

UpSolutions Team Success Program

Blog: What Is A Self-Managing Company®?

Tool: The Positive Focus®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Podcast: Team Success

pattimara.com

wechooselocal.com

Entrepreneurs need to be ambitious. But what happens when you achieve your ambition? In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain the drawbacks of having ambition as a destination and describe the incredible benefits you can expect when you see ambition as a capability.

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

• Why Dan sees ambition as an internal capability.
• Measurements you should be making every day.
• What’s made Dan’s life simpler over time.
• How Dan gifts Strategic Coach® members extra years to their entrepreneurial lives.
• What you need to avoid to be continually ambitious, and why.

Show Notes:

• Ambition is a capability, not a destination.
• Simply by continually improving your ambition each day, you’ll experience exponential growth over time.
• Dan Sullivan feels more ambitious at 80 than he did at 50.
• To strengthen your ambition, it’s important to measure your daily accomplishments and strive for continal growth.
• You can measure your progress not just in achievements, but in the ability to accomplish more in less time with greater impact.
• Ambition itself should be measured in terms of increased capability and confidence.
• Simplifying life by eliminating distractions (like television) can reclaim valuable time for personal development and ambitious pursuits.
• Surrounding yourself with growth-oriented individuals, often younger, can inspire and fuel your ambition.
• To be continually ambitious, there are three things you should avoid: celebrity, retirement, and legacy.
• It’s important to focus on being useful and impactful in the present rather than worrying about future legacy.
• Viewing ambition as a capability can also help you feel more fulfilled personally—and have a greater impact on your community.
• Every day, ask yourself what you can do so that you’re more ambitious tomorrow.
• Being around people who aren’t invested in growth is an obstacle to your ambition.

Resources:

CliftonStrengths®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

For many entrepreneurs who achieve business success early in their lives, repeating that success can be difficult. It’s called the success trap, and in this episode, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain what the success trap is, why it’s difficult to escape, and how you can safely avoid falling into it.

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

• Why some entrepreneurs eventually go on auto-pilot.
• How experiencing a crisis can actually be beneficial to an entrepreneur.
• Why Dan doesn’t take people who are growing and succeeding in their thirties as seriously as people who are growing and succeeding in their sixties.
• How inheriting wealth can lead to a success trap too.
• What’s allowed Dan to be fitter, healthier, and more ambitious at 80 than he was at 50.

Show Notes:

Entrepreneurs who are motivated solely by status will stop once they reach a certain point.

You can lack purpose and the motivation to keep growing yet still find it hard to make a change because the money is good.

Setbacks can be a wake-up call to reinvent yourself and reclaim your drive.

Success is comfortable, while failure is scary, painful, and frustrating.

Failures are prompts for new learning.

Entrepreneurs who are successful over the long haul have learned how to turn failure into a new form of success.

When someone’s successful early in life, it can be difficult to tell how much of that success was due to their capabilities and character and how much of it was simply investment from others.

For some, entrepreneurism is a freedom only from where they came from.

Status-motivated entrepreneurs are very boring, and usually a bit depressed.

Creating wealth is only valuable because it makes you more capable and confident as an entrepreneur.

You need resistance in order to grow.

Growth has to come from within.

For growth-motivated entrepreneurs, the lifestyle that comes with success is just a happy by-product of their drive, not the destination.

Ambition isn’t a destination, it’s a capability.