Transcription
Dan, we are here, you know, our first official podcast of the Greater Game. And you know, we want to bring everybody on the journey, not only the book and the dashboard, but all the research. And this is a 25-year journey that you and I are on. And it's pretty exciting because, you know, the whole thing we see, and I know you've always done this, is it's so easy to get caught up in a kind of a smaller vision. And we have an 18-month window, I believe, you know, with AI and our teams, and we can jump ahead very quickly to kind of jump-start that 100X along the way. But give me some of your big framing on this as we dive in. And we'll, I want [clears throat] to share some of the entrepreneurs we wrote in the book, too. I mean, there are so many good stories out there that you and I know. And I want to encourage everybody that if they're an entrepreneur and they're listening to this, you know, boy, the future is indeed bright.
>> [clears throat] >> Yeah, well, the big thing I was lucky when I first became a one-on-one coach. We didn't have a company at that point. It was just Dan making house calls. And but I used to have this big artist sketch board, and I would just say, "Tell me, you know, if you could have the capabilities that you needed, what's possible from your standpoint, just with you, what you do in the marketplace, and what kind of clients and customers you actually had?" And then I would just say, "Just free form here. I'm going to draw it out. I'll draw a sketch of your future." And right off the bat, I began to notice an enormous jump in ambition that individuals had when they got in touch with the capabilities that they already had. So, my approach to ambition is that it is the master capability. It's the capability of capabilities. And that all new capabilities that you develop happen because of your ambition. But every time you develop one of those new capabilities, and we're certainly seeing that in the age of AI, that every time somebody gets a new AI capability, their ambition constantly expands. So, my sense is it's not a function that you have a gas tank and your gas tank runs out of ambition at 55 or 60 years old. As long as you're developing new capabilities, you'll always expand your ambition.
No, it is. And, you know, the part to me is once you start letting your mind go and think bigger. And I, I think one of the best framings we have in the book that you and I talk about a lot is thinking 100X future. You know, wherever you are today as a successful entrepreneur, when you, when you start thinking 100X where you are now, you go, "That's too much." But then you start thinking about what's possible because of where we are in today's world. And we start thinking, "Okay, we can build uh platforms. We can build ecosystems. We can, you know, kind of abandon the model that we had. And we can create systems that multiply." And we're going to go over all the multipliers that do this. Then all of a sudden, thinking bigger gives you a huge advantage.
Mhm. Yeah, and the interesting thing about it, you have to do a little history here. So, I started off with 10 times as the operating uh mindset. And they said, "10 times."
>> And I can remember the first time you introduced it to me, the 10. This is a long time ago. I'm going, "That may be too much." You know, all of a sudden, you know, you get a little nervous. And I want to acknowledge everybody, if 10 was a little too much for me, 100 might feel that way now, but you, we're going to give you the roadmap. But go ahead, Dan.
Yeah. And the big thing is you have to do a history lesson. So, I ask people, "When were you 1/10 of where you are right now?" And for the entrepreneurs that I deal with, it wasn't 25 years ago. It might have been 10 years ago. And uh and I said, "Let's, so, let's break how you did the 10-times the first time, 'cause you've already done it. I'm not, I'm not introducing a new idea to you. You've already done that." And uh they go back, and I said, "Let's break that into five jumps that you took." And then we analyze the jumps, and they come to the end of the exercise, and immediately they say, "Wow." And I said, "I can tell you right now that 80% of what you did in the past to get to where you are right now is still valid for the future, but what has changed in the world is the technologies. And not only that, team members with technologies that can now take you 10-times uh faster. And they all do it, you know, they do it in four or five years, where before it might have taken them 20 years."
Well, it's like, you know, it's not only your internal team, but your external team as we create community. We'll talk about that, but our partnership together. I mean, what we can create. I mean, we started a 25-year partnership a couple years ago to study entrepreneurship. And it's, and it's evolved to not only the research we're collectively doing, but also the the Greater Game book, the dashboard, all the tools, the journey. And it's really made a difference. But I want to share just some of the statistics from, oops, the research. Let me get the right slide. Uh, greater ambition. Uh, engineering uh your 100 times future. I mean, couple things to be thinking about. I'm putting this slide up if you're watching it in video. If not, I'll talk to it. But, you know, the the big statistic when we look at, there's always going to be 5.4 is the most successful entrepreneurs. And we've, so over half of them really embed a long-term vision, that 25-year vision. They're very focused on it. When we look at the other group, the 94.6 hitter, they've already won the game. I mean, everybody here, you know, substantial 5 million and above uh net worth uh, you know, we found only 14.2. Yeah. And a big part of this was 25 years. And you talked about this, Dan, but, you know, once you start thinking 100X, it forces you to abandon, you know, just doing incremental improvements. I mean, you're forced to architect something totally different. And that's what really gets me excited about all this.
Mhm. >> [clears throat] >> You know, the definition of an entrepreneur is very recent in history. It uh, as far as I can tell, entrepreneurs as we understand them today were first defined in 1804. And it was a French economist who was a great student of Adam Smith, who created The Wealth of Nations. And it's 250 years since Adam Smith brought out The Wealth of Nations. And what he was noticing that in Great Britain, where he was Scott, but he was noticing that all of a sudden there was this new class of people in society who were taking advantage of the first really great multiplier technology, which was steam power. And he was noticing that they just operated very, very differently from the way wealth had been created. First of all, they could do it honestly. A lot, a lot of wealth before 1800 was you, you were granted it because you had the right political connections, or you stole it, you know. And that it kind of gave people a notion, well, these people are just stealing, but they're not stealing. What they're creating is great new value from a vastly expanding consumer base who wanted to travel much faster with rail power, and then all the application of steam power to every other industry. And they just began. But his definition of an entrepreneur, which is very, very crucial to our discussion here, an entrepreneur is someone who takes resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. And he was asked the question, "What kind of resources?" And he said, "Any kind of resource, including starting with yourself." So, what we're doing, we're taking the resource called the entrepreneur who's watching our podcast, and we're saying, "You're the number one resource that's going to get expanded here." And when you expand you yourself as an entrepreneur and think 10 times, now 100 times, because of the technologies we have, we're way past steam power, you know, we're we're into a completely cosmic realm now with AI. And there's one other I'm going to mention, which is very, very important here, and that is regenerative medicine. That if you take advantage of medicine today, there's no upper limit on how long you can continue being an entrepreneur.
Well, that's, I mean, why don't we go into telling some stories from the book? I think the, when I look at, there are two transformations. I'd like to start with Paul, 'cause this one's near and dear to my heart, 'cause when I first started working with you, Dan, I talked about the that I was going to retire at 65, and, you know, just I would be with you for a few years, and wind it down, get a great value. I'm now 70, and I'll be 71 this year, and I, I, I got to tell you, I've never been more excited, making a bigger impact, and enjoying it. And it's has nothing to do with the money. I mean, you and I are both financially, you know, we can do whatever we want, but what this allows us to do is to really have a purpose. It's amazing. And I want to set the stage with Paul, because um, do you want to tell the story? You want me to set the stage, or?
>> Yeah, well, it's really Paul, as many of our Strategic Coach clients, he came in through a great referral. And he came in, and he immediately walked up to me, and he says, "I know I'm starting my first workshop, but I want to tell you that I only have a very, very short plan here, because I'm going to retire. I'm going to use your Strategic Coach concepts, your tools, your thinking tools, and so I can get to a point where I can retire, and then I'm going to my wife and I are going to create a gourmet coffee shop." And he was already a very, very successful engineering company. He had created an engineering company, and they, I think at the time, they were at about 40 million, 40 million dollars.
>> Well, he went from 50 million. >> 50 million to 600. Yeah. And >> process. Yeah, and basically, I said, "Well, you know, we've got some thinking to do today, so you tell me 90 days from now if there's been any change to your vision of the future." And so that was um, that, that, you know, that's a decade ago, and Paul is now the number one engineering company in his category, and he's gone over a billion in his revenues. His company has gone from 400 engineers to over 3,000 engineers, and his life has gotten simpler. His life has gotten more enjoyable. His health has created, and he says, you know, "I don't know when I would stop." He said, "I have no concept of why I would stop." And he said, "I realized that I was planning to die around 76 or 77." And he said, "Well, that's what I am now." And he said, "I have no comprehension of how long this can go, but I do know that every step I take, it gets more enjoyable."
No, and I, I like the line I pulled out of the book where he told, shared with us, you know, "My wife thought I lost my mind," you know, 'cause they're ready for the coffee. He's ready to retire traditional. And then, you know, she saw how energized, how much he loved the business, and he built the acquisition machine. So, he became one of the major players. And, you know, his valuation that I had from the, when we were talking, he told me, you know, when he started, when he was thinking coffee shops, you know, it was a $60 million valuation. Today, it's well over $1.2 billion. And, you know, a 20-fold increase over a 10-year period. Um, you know, Dan, he's just getting started. And I will tell you, he looks 10 to 15 years younger than he did when he started started the, you know, the growth process. Growth actually makes you younger.
You know, growth. I, I think, you know, there, I want to, I, you know, I, I want to share another one. I, I feel that way personally, too. Uh, you, Rodrigue Walker, you know, we >> Rod Rodrigue, yeah. Roderick, I'm sorry. Uh, went from two locations to 14, 70-hour workweek. You know, this is where it gets really, you know, you don't know what's possible. He's killing himself with two. This is how you get healthier. You're doing only 25 weeks or 25 hours a week, and then two to 18 million. Um, you know, just, Damn, this is so important. And the thing that I loved on his quote is when he showed up at coach, he found out it was totally different possibility here.
Yeah, and I think that, and I will tell you this, that when I started coaching in the 1970s, this was not possible. It really wasn't possible. And you, if you thought about this type of growth, that meant you had to work harder and work longer than you were working right now. And I said, "No, it's just the opposite." Yeah, you have to shift into a totally different gear. That your growth now depends upon it being shorter and easier.
Yeah, it's, it's an exciting time to be alive because, you know, what you can do is just is really so amazing. And, and I think one of the, taking the time to really put together your vision. You know, where would you want to be 25 years from now? And, and so often, you know, we get concerned because, you know, we're not sure where we want to be tomorrow, but creating that, going through the entrepreneurial fog, creating a vision doesn't mean that it, you know, you're putting a flag in the ground, you can move it, type thing. But all of a sudden, not only you, but the rest of the team can get behind that. And, and it's, um, really with today's tools, you know, the access to capital, um, there's no shortage of capital, there's no shortage of tools, you know, that it's, damn it's, you know, you and I talked about it, it's a great time to be alive.
Yeah. Yeah, and part, part of the interesting thing is attracting really great talent. And so people say, well, you know, you're talking about great people to have in your, in your company. But he says, "Where I live, we don't have great people like you're talking about." And I said, "Oh, they're there. They're just not looking. They're just not looking for you." I said, I said, "But what people who want to be team members in a great company, what they're looking for is somebody who has a huge vision where they know that just automatically their best talents are going to be used in the best possible way." And you, that's a guarantee that you have to give to people. I mean, there's always talk about AI getting rid of people, and we don't have that. I said, "No, no, that's not the way it's going to be. It's that you have to put a message out to the world that I'm into growth. I have expanding ambition, and this is where I want to go, and I want you to have a place in my company where your talents, the best talents you have, are going to be identified, and we're going to arrange everything that you're doing so that you at your best are growing."
Now, it's, well, it's an exciting time. I mean, we're hiring about eight people a quarter now. And, you know, so I mean, we use AI like crazy. We have a whole bunch of proprietary things, and we need more people than ever.
Yeah. Yeah. So, and I think that's going to happen. It's the roles are going to change. But I want to go back to the 100 X and, you know, there's a concept we talked about in the book called strategic abandonment, where you've got to abandon kind of what you're doing now and think about what's required for the 100x. You know, what are the systems that you need to put in place? And really, as you think through the, the, uh, vision, what I want you to be thinking about is this whole headline, kind of 25 years out. What is the impact that you're going to make? And Dan, I know, you know, once you share Strategic Coach, you, you're in the trillions of impact that you want to make. Um, and it's every entrepreneur you get to touch. And it's the same with me with the financial advisors, the entrepreneurs we help through our, uh, different companies. It's just, you know, it's an exciting time.
Mhm. Yeah, I, I'd like to go to the middle concept on your slide there, which is the 25 years. Why 25 years works, uh, one of the main reasons is 100 quarters. So, you have a 25-year vision, and that's like, uh, that's like a journey that you're going on, but you get to do it 90 days at a time. And every 90 days, uh, you employ greater talent in your company, and then you have tech, technological, technological component. And the way that AI is going is that you're, you're, uh, you're acquiring great talent, but it's coming in a technological form. And, uh, so, it's a combination of great humans and great technology. And you do it a quarter at a time. And it's one quarter, and that quarter, at the end of that quarter, you review your progress. You see what worked, what didn't work, you make a course adjustment, and all of a sudden, your ambition for the next quarter, it's like going through a lock system in a canal. Every, every 90 days, your elevation goes up, your capabilities go up, the work becomes more enjoyable, but your impact in the marketplace goes up. More and more, you're creating value for the best kind of customers and clients.
Now, this is so powerful. And one of the things that Dan and I both want you to do is be successful, win this Greater Game. And, and one of the ways we can do it is have you on the journey with us. And we have created a dashboard. Uh, you can go to, if you're on video, you can see the QR code. If you're not, it's the greatergamedashboard.com. You can check out your score on this one multiplier, the very first multiplier. You're going to come here, and it's a great resource. If you're just going to it, start the assessment, and it'll go through a series of questions on all 10 multipliers. You can, what if you've already done it, just sign back in, and you will have your scores of where you are with the 10 multipliers, the four stages that we go through. And it's, it's really powerful. But we'd love to have you join us on this journey. We're going to continue every month, we're surveying 500 of your fellow successful entrepreneurs. We're going to be sharing stories. We're going to be sharing what we call the entrepreneurial pulse, the entrepreneur confidence index, and how you can make that 100X. We'll see you in the next podcast where we go into one of my favorite subjects, greater security.
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