How Entrepreneurs Drive Themselves Crazy, And How They Can Stop
There might be a lot of reasons for an entrepreneur to freak out, but there’s one freakout that triggers all the others. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller discuss the dangers of having unrealistic deadlines.
Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:
- How short deadlines lead to entrepreneurs developing all sorts of bad behavioral habits.
- How entrepreneurs tend to think unrealistic deadlines are a point of honor.
- Why giving yourself a short deadline results in a false sense of urgency.
- How Dan got past setting unrealistic deadlines for himself.
- How unrealistic deadlines can lead to not recognizing your success.
Show Notes:
Adding fear: Instead of just being excited about a new goal, entrepreneurs who give themselves short deadlines also experience fear.
No enjoyment: When working under unrealistic deadlines, a team can’t enjoy the activity or the teamwork they’re participating in.
Not the goal: Why entrepreneurs freak out has nothing to do with their having enormous, extraordinary goals.
While they brag: While entrepreneurs brag about how fast they got something done, getting it done drives both them and their teams crazy.
Master of time frames: Stop driving yourself crazy by becoming a master of time frames. It’s a life: Entrepreneurism is more than a way to make a living; it’s a life.
Resources:
The Strategic Coach® Signature Program
Episode Transcript:
Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here, and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. Dan, as usual, we were in a workshop together and you coined a term, which I found incredibly fun and entertaining and insightful when you were talking about an entrepreneurial freakout, which happens. So let's dive into that. Because you really addressed a key issue that people, you know how they kind of torture themselves and how they get into incredibly stressed states. So tell us about the entrepreneurial freakout.
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think there are a lot of freakouts. But I think there's one freakout that triggers all the other freakouts. I just have a statement about that, that entrepreneurs do not drive themselves crazy because of their extraordinary goals. They drive themselves crazy because of their unrealistic deadlines. It's not about the size of the goal. It's about the shortness of the deadline. And why it happens is that entrepreneurs brag about this, of how fast they got something done, and it actually, while they're doing it, it drives them crazy. It drives their team crazy, it drives their family crazy.
And in the end, they get exhausted by it. They develop all sorts of bad behavioral habits. And they think it's a point of honor how unrealistic they are with their deadlines. And I've watched it. First of all, I have it. You know, I mean, I come by this naturally. The understanding that I have about this, I've freaked myself out many, many times. And I don't do it anymore. It has to do with adjusting time frames to becoming a master of time frames. So anyway, every time I talk about it, first of all, I say how many of you freak yourself out with your-- it's not the size of your goals. It's actually just how much time in your mind you immediately don't give yourself to actually achieve it.
Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here, and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. Dan, as usual, we were in a workshop together and you coined a term, which I found incredibly fun and entertaining and insightful when you were talking about an entrepreneurial freakout, which happens. So let's dive into that. Because you really addressed a key issue that people, you know how they kind of torture themselves and how they get into incredibly stressed states. So tell us about the entrepreneurial freakout.
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think there are a lot of freakouts. But I think there's one freakout that triggers all the other freakouts. I just have a statement about that, that entrepreneurs do not drive themselves crazy because of their extraordinary goals. They drive themselves crazy because of their unrealistic deadlines. It's not about the size of the goal. It's about the shortness of the deadline. And why it happens is that entrepreneurs brag about this, of how fast they got something done, and it actually, while they're doing it, it drives them crazy. It drives their team crazy, it drives their family crazy.
And in the end, they get exhausted by it. They develop all sorts of bad behavioral habits. And they think it's a point of honor how unrealistic they are with their deadlines. And I've watched it. First of all, I have it. You know, I mean, I come by this naturally. The understanding that I have about this, I've freaked myself out many, many times. And I don't do it anymore. It has to do with adjusting time frames to becoming a master of time frames. So anyway, every time I talk about it, first of all, I say how many of you freak yourself out with your-- it's not the size of your goals. It's actually just how much time in your mind you immediately don't give yourself to actually achieve it.
Shannon Waller: It's interesting, Dan, because the fact that they don't give themselves time and create this incredible, to some extent, false sense of urgency. You know, thinking about The Gap And The Gain, it throws you into The Gap because even if you do accomplish The Gain, you know, your goal, but it's not in the time frame, you beat yourself up because you didn't do it when you said you were going to.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, they say they're going to achieve an extraordinary thing in three years. Well, let's say three months. They want to achieve something in three months, and it takes six months. And it's a great achievement, but they don't take any pride in it. They don't get any pleasure out of it because they didn't do it in three months. So it's kind of juvenile. You know, it's an adult entrepreneur, but inside of them is an adolescent mentality.
Shannon Waller: So what drives this setting an unrealistic goal? Because I know so many entrepreneurs or people, including myself, who we fall into this trap, and I think it's because I think I need that short deadline to kick in my creativity or something, or I have this sense of urgency that's driving me. But from what you're saying, it's not, I'll use the word healthy. It's not the best approach because it drives you to really not great behavior, you know, in terms of teamwork, how people take care of themselves, what their compensating strategies are. But there's this impulse to do it. It's very common in, for sure in the entrepreneurial world.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think there's a number of aspects about it. And I'm sort of creating this because I hadn't heard the question before. So I think the big thing is just a profound sense of scarcity. And they may be extraordinarily successful. They've taken care of money, and they've got all the outward signs of being a successful entrepreneur. But inside, it's almost like they're just starting again. They never get a sense that they're making progress. Okay.
And the other thing is that they're adrenaline addicts. First of all, there's an extraordinary goal which gives them a lot of excitement. And then they immediately water down the excitement of the goal by diluting it with extraordinary fear around time. Okay? And they've learned that they don't deserve the excitement of the goal unless they have to pay a price of fear about the time. And so they, right from the very start, where they could have had 100% excitement, they only get 50% excitement and 50% fear. And then the fear grows and grows as they get closer to their unrealistic deadline, and they're not getting the achievement.
Shannon Waller: Oh my gosh, that nails it for me. You know, when you say profound sense of scarcity and adrenaline junkies. And we get to see that shift in Coach where people go from this incredibly, you know-- Look at their bodies. They're tight, they're anxious, they're stressed, they're high strung, they're all the things. Incredibly successful to even join Coach. Right? But they're Just wound tight. And then they just start to relax and unwind. So I want to ask, what's the alternative, Dan? And it sounds like you can just stay with the excitement and you don't need to torture yourself with that adrenaline rush of urgency. You can just actually live into the excitement of the big goal.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I would say the other thing is that they're profoundly lonely and so they don't see that other people would be very, very excited about contributing their skills. And as it turns out, when they get the achievement, all these skills get involved. But the other people never feel good about the project. They never feel good about participating in the achievement because they, themselves, are put under extreme time pressures, and they're never given a chance to actually enjoy the activity. They're never given a sense to just feel great about the teamwork they have. Right off the bat, they don't even get the excitement.
They just get the fear. And their family, they go home and their family gets the fear. The family gets the scarcity. So they're doing it, you know, as if they're Rugged Individualists, you know, and they're the only one who counts, that it's strictly about them. You know, and that's juvenile. You know, it's sort of adolescent. You know, I mean, the biggest egotists in the world are children. You know, they think it's all about them. You know, they don't realize that there was 100 billion humans before they came on the planet. And, you know, their parents, all the adults, the older people in the world. They've got a part of the game too. It's all about them.
Shannon Waller: They do think it's about them. I also think sometimes they think it's contained to them. But as you illustrated, and I've seen as well, there's a massive cost to, you know, just torturing yourself because it tortures other people with these unrealistic deadlines.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And the scarcity is that as long as they drive themselves unrealistically, it keeps them from thinking just how alone they are. And it's not just that they're lonely, it's that they're afraid of being alone with themselves.
Shannon Waller: Because that would be pretty unpleasant state. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan: Because all they're reminded is of all their failures when they're with themselves. All they're reminded is of all their failures. The failures weren't failures to achieve. Their failures were not to achieve the realistic deadlines. It's not about the actual project. It's not actually about the actual result. The real goal is that they'll achieve it in an unrealistic time frame.
Shannon Waller: It's so interesting, Dan, because I have actually heard-- In fact, there was a video I was watching last night where someone says, they actually, because of that urgency problem, which drives everyone crazy, they actually said they don't even like goal setting. They actually don't want to set goals because automatically it goes with unrealistic time frames. And they just, you know, you set goals for yourself in your life, can I do this by 20? This by 25, this by 30, this by 40, you know, get married, have a house, have kids. And if you don't do it by that time frame, you beat yourself up. The Gap. Right. And so the person I was listening to said, I don't even think setting goals is a good idea. Now, I'm not sure you would have the same opinion. But I'm curious.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And it's an addiction. I mean, Joe Polish is great, great entrepreneur, and great partners with us. And he's the creator of Genius Network. He said two things which I was just enormously impacted by. He said that the most honored and admired addiction in the world is workaholism. And he said, first of all, because people watch it, and they see that the person is achieving enormous amount. They work every day. They work on weekends, and they're always working. And it's comfortable to people who are not doing that because somebody's out there doing it.
You know, it's like the Jack Nicholson, great speech from A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise. And he says, you want me on the wall. You know, while you're having your parties, you want somebody on the wall. And it's almost like they think that they're out there being heroes. And to a certain extent, it's admirable for people who aren't doing that because, well, at least somebody's out there doing all the work all the time. So, you know, we can enjoy ourselves. We can take vacations, we can have weekends off and everything because these people are out there working themselves to death, actually.
And that's the one thing that Joe told me, which I found profoundly--. He says workaholism is the toughest addiction to get over. And the other thing you have to understand is that the addiction is not a problem. The addiction is a solution to something much worse, and the fact is that they're scared stiff of being alone with themselves because when they're alone with themselves, all they are reminded is of what a huge failure they've been. Even though in the eyes of other people, they're a great success.
Shannon Waller: Yeah, you can totally see the very slippery slope that happens for people.
Dan Sullivan: Quite frankly, I've been through it. I've been through it. If it wasn't for a Babs Smith, my partner in life. We've been married 36 years, and we've been business partners for 34 years in The Strategic Coach Program. If it wasn't for her, first of all, I'd probably be dead. And if I wasn't, I'd just be a smart drunk, worried about the rent.
Shannon Waller: You've said that before. I'm glad Babs found you. And I'm glad you found her. No Babs, no Coach. So Dan, you've shifted your mindset into a more adult one, where it's not about unrealistic deadlines, but there's no way you've given up goals. So what's the shift? What can people do to unwrap themselves from this incredibly compelling workaholic addiction and frame things differently? There's a shift in mindset that needs to happen in order to stop freaking out. What is it?
Dan Sullivan: Well, I'm going to tell you the solution that I hit people with and it has an immediate impact. And we have, you know, three parts to Strategic Coach. The first part is the Signature Program. The second part is the 10x Program, 10x, the Ambition Program. And the third program is the Free Zone Program. But I want to focus in on the 10x Ambition Program because that really catches people's attention. And they said, "Well, what's a way of thinking about 10x?" And I said, "Was last year your best revenue?" And they said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, if it wasn't, just pick your best revenue year. Just tell me what it was." And they do. And I said, "Okay, now I want you to think about achieving 10x your revenue goal."
And here's the answer that tells me I've got an addict on my hands. They'll say, "10x? I can't do that in a year." I didn't say anything about a year. I said 10x, but immediately they put a year, they put a year. Because it's an extraordinary goal. I mean, because they haven't achieved it. You know, it's extraordinary in the sense that all they've achieved is one tenth of the goal. And immediately, they say, "I can't do that in a year." And I said, "A year?" I said, "I didn't say anything about a year, I said 10x your last year's revenue." And they said, "Well, what is the time frame?" And I said, "25 years." And they said, "25 years? I don't need 25 years to go 10x."
I said, "Really? How many do you need?" And they said, "15." I said, "Oh, that's great. Okay, so you do it in 15. And you got 10 years' change. What would you do with the 10 years' change?" And they said, "Well, I'd go 10x again." I said, "Wait a minute, just a few minutes ago, you said you can't do 10x. That freaked you out. But now, you're saying you can go 100x and it doesn't freak you out." So the thing is, it all lies in giving yourself time. But they don't get the adrenaline rush for giving themselves 15 years. Okay. Because it doesn't feed their addiction of unrealistic time frames. Well, 15 years is a realistic time frame. And it doesn't trigger adrenaline. And it proves to you that they're adrenaline addicts, they're freakout adrenaline addicts.
Shannon Waller: So basically, there's like a whole shift to your nervous system that has to happen to make this. But you've made that shift, Dan. And there is something about when you actually can recognize that you're successful. And you don't have to have that, you know, beating yourself on the back to strive. You don't have to come from scarcity. You can come from the fact that you actually are in a great place, and you're simply going to expand. There's a whole shift to that. But it takes a while, right? In our program, it takes two to three years for people to start to calm the heck down.
Dan Sullivan: Well, takes 15 years. But actually, I find that if they're okay with 15 years-- And the other thing is, they never involve their team or anyone else in the time frame. Okay. They'll tell people, "Okay, we're going 10x." And they'll feel the, you know, the doubts, the objections, the uncertainties, and they say, "Don't you worry." I mean, "We're going to make it. Don't worry about that. Make it up to me." But they do worry about it. Because they've been living with an addict for a long time, and what I find frequently that people have this attitude go through team members really fast.
Okay, People love the kind of the creativity of the entrepreneur. They love the ambition of the entrepreneur. But it just wears you out to work with this person. Okay. And then in the end, they don't actually achieve the goals frequently. And the reason is because they don't have enough teamwork. Not enough willing, excited, really talented teamwork to pull off the goals. Okay. And then they say you can't find good people. And I've had deadline freakout addicts come back to me and said, "You know, this is the second year in a row where I've fired all my staff because I come back, and I tell them what the goals are, and they become the opposition party." They're not opposing the goal. They're opposing the time frame.
You know, and they go through divorces, and they have other addictions, like alcoholism or drug addiction or high-risk behavior, and everything like that. If you have one addiction, it's easy to develop a second one, you know, because addictions are solutions. Because they make you feel better. The problem is that they're not their own best friends. As a matter of fact, they're their own worst enemy. And so they don't want to be alone with themselves because they're alone with their enemy who always sets up experiences in life that make them feel like a failure.
Shannon Waller: That is so true, Dan. They're always with someone who makes me feel like a failure.
Dan Sullivan: I lived with my enemy, you know. Now, I'm my friend. I really like Dan.
Shannon Waller: Well, you talk about being your own best friend, as compared to your own worst enemy. That just blows me over.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, entrepreneurs don't need outside enemies. They're walking around inside of one.
Shannon Waller: Oh, that's so true. Yeah. So I love this 10x, and just go back to the time frame, because I've coached teams on going 10x, which is really fun. They'll realize that, you know, they've actually gone 10x once already. And they'll also want to set the next time frame. And I have the entrepreneur talk last in terms of how long they think it's going to take, and I have the team go first. And it's really funny because, often, the team will come up with a slightly shorter deadline, like eight years instead of the entrepreneur's 10 or 12. It's really funny. And they're like, "Oh, the team thinks we can do it."
Because the team is getting to choose that. They're not feeling that pressure of a year, two years, or three years for going 10x. They're actually the ones choosing and owning that future. And the entrepreneur is almost always, I'm gonna use the word, gobsmacked, you know, by the fact that, oh, you know, the team actually has a very realistic, excited perspective that--. And it totally engages teamwork. Your whole point about the costs of when you don't do it, it drives people away. They're excited by the big goals, they're excited by the ambition, the creativity. They're really stressed by these unrealistic deadlines.
Dan Sullivan: I think that's really the, you know, that describes the transformation when entrepreneurs come into Strategic Coach. Because the first level of the Program, the Signature Program, is where you learn what your role is as an entrepreneur, and you realize that you have one of the skills that's needed for the success of your company. So it's not about you as the entrepreneur. It's about your company. And the goal of the Signature Program is that you can create and surround yourself with a constantly expanding Self-Managing Company where you're the one who gives the vision but in consultation with your team.
And you say, I think if you just look at where we're getting our best results with our best clients, and you know, the kind of checks we're getting from, you know, the revenues that we're getting from, you know, this type of client, what I'd like you to do is to think through how we're operating in the marketplace. And my feeling is that we can become more and more selective with who we're working with now. And there's some clients probably we shouldn't be working with anymore. But I want your judgment on this because you as a team member, will know best who the best clients are just in terms of working with them. Because they always treat me right.
But if they, you know, aren't really great clients, they mistreat you. So I want you to know that you have the judgment on which clients we should go forward with and how we should create more value for them. But all new people, and I would like to consult with you, what are the standards now that we have to establish for our new clients, you know, based on our positive past experience, negative past experience? And I think we can go 10x, but what time frame do you think would be good for that? I mean, how long do you think we could possibly do that? And that giving the team the creative freedom to kind of calculate things from their standpoint and then have a consensus among the team.
And then say, we think what you're talking about is really possible. But we estimate, you know, probably eight years, nine years to do that. Can we think about it in those terms? You have a better judgment about those things than I do. I have the vision, I kind of know what it looks like. And what they say, well, we depend upon you to do that because we're kind of busy every day, and we got our lists and everything. And we know, as a matter of fact, we'd like you to free up just to be creating this really bigger future. But don't commit us to a future that won't be a happy experience for us.
And that's the first level and then you develop the ability to go 10x, and then they start taking on projects. You know, if you give them the right to determine the time for the self-managing goals, then they'll develop the capabilities so that you can have self-multiplying goals where they're starting to initiate improvements. And that's the second level of the program, The 10x Ambition Program.
Shannon Waller: For self-multiplying.
Dan Sullivan: And then the third level is where you have a Self-Managing Company, and you have a Self-Multiplying Company. And then you can do incredible collaborations in the marketplace with other companies that are self-managing and self-multiplying. And that's the Free Zone level. So the big thing is, but it all starts that you have to stop being a deadline junkie. Yeah.
Shannon Waller: I love it.
Dan Sullivan: And the big thing is, you get your family back, you get your personal life and you get your health back, you get your energy back, and all the other addictions that you've acquired along with the deadline freakout addiction.
Shannon Waller: Dan, as you're talking, I just have this whole sense of a distress just leaving the system. And what you've described, which is true, it's not pretend. This is-- We've seen it hundreds, thousands of times. People who thought they had to hold themselves so tightly against the goal, because of the deadline, and then they start to ease and then they not only accomplish the goal, they accomplish all of these incredible byproducts, and they invite more and better team members and they've got better teamwork and they've got better clients.
Dan Sullivan: They attract better clients and customers. They attract better vendors, they attract better thing. And the message goes out: This entrepreneur has a great organization to collaborate with, to cooperate with, to create value for. Yeah, it's an attraction game, you know? And you know, the flip side of that, the negative side, repels. It repels good people, it repels good customers, it repels good vendors. They say, you know, "It's just too much of a hassle to work with them." You know. "When I know I have to deal with this company, I have to gear myself up for a bad day."
Shannon Waller: Right. Yeah. It's not a great way to operate in the world because it just creates so much stress and tension and you don't get the best out of people. You don't get the best creative, cooperative ideas when people are having to protect themselves against you. So Dan, you painted this picture of so much of a calmer, but still exciting. So if the fuel in the tank is excitement versus fear, you know, it's really focusing on on the excitement to be able to motivate yourself, motivate your team, get yourself out of bed in the morning. And it's so much more of an expansive Gain perspective and abundant perspective, rather than coming from that scarcity of time. I'd much prefer that second picture you painted rather than first one.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, the other thing is entrepreneurism is not just a way to make a living. It's actually a life. You know, first of all, because if you've been an entrepreneur for five years, the employment world won't have you back. You know, you're gone.
Shannon Waller: You're unemployable.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So it's a lifetime sentence. So I mean, you know, people say, well, I can't predict the future. And I says, "I can predict your future a lot better than I can somebody who's in a corporation." He said, "What do you mean?" "I can guarantee absolutely that 20 years from now, you're going to be an entrepreneur."
You know, I can't guarantee what people in corporations—they may be unemployed, they may be retired, they may be dead and everything else. You know, you're 45 years old, you know, and you've been at it as an entrepreneur probably since the time you were 10. You know, you were out selling something at 10. And I said, so we've got a 30-year track record that there's no alternative except to be an entrepreneur. So we can look down the road 25, 30 years, and I know you're going to be an entrepreneur. There's no other alternative. You may be an entrepreneur in a different kind of activity, but it's still you.
And the only question is, just when you get to the top of the game, you'll be so tired out, you'll be so worn out, you'll be so unhappy with what you do, you'll retire. And we know that entrepreneurs who do that are usually seriously sick, seriously afflicted by disease, and they die. You know, they just die. You know, and they spent a whole life from the outside perspective, playing a great game, achieving great goals, but they get none of the satisfaction, they get none of the happiness out of that. And one of the things the world is developing in a way where all kinds of new entrepreneurism are really possible.
So a lot of people are going to go into it. But I would say that the main message that they are told right from the beginning, you know, "One of the big things you have to understand is that you have to work, work, work all the time. And the only way you're going to be successful is by achieving extraordinary goals in unrealistic time periods." I was invited back in the early years, when we were just getting started with Strategic Coach, I'll say the 1990s. 1989 is when we started. I would be invited to associations that had mainly young entrepreneurs, you know, 25 to 35 years old. And it was a pain. You know, I did it two or three times, and I said, I just can't talk to people like this.
First of all, you know, I was usually put on first thing in the morning and only half the room would show up because they were either doing their hangover in the room, or they were still in bed. Okay, so I tried it once. And I said, "Maybe I just hit a bad group." And then I was invited to another one, and it happened. And then I went talk to them. And the person said, "They really need your coaching, they really do." I said, "What they need is a 12-step exercise to overcome their addiction. You have an entire association of alcoholics." But the alcoholism was just a sub addiction to the fact that they were all extraordinary goal/unrealistic deadline addicts. They were deadline freakout addicts, you know. And it was getting so bad that they had to drink heavily, or some other afflictions, to lessen the pain that they were creating by their main addiction.
Shannon Waller: And that's very genuine. I mean, people's careers are built around talking about the addictions of entrepreneurs and how to manage that. So yes. So Dan, just to wrap up on an action note, what is something that people can do right now, today, tomorrow if they know they're falling into that workaholic trap, if they know that they're falling into that scarcity of time, urgency trap, and freaking out? What's the shift? What's one thing that people can do to get themselves unhooked from this?
Dan Sullivan: Set an extraordinary goal and talk it over with your team. And accept what their consensus is on the deadline. Talk it over with your family and tell them what the extraordinary goal is, and be advised by them what's an acceptable deadline.
Shannon Waller: I love that. Bring in other people. And, Dan, the other thing is, you almost have a starting point of 25 years.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I always think in terms of 25 years. First of all, nobody thinks in terms of 25 years. But I'm 78 years old, and I've had three of them. So I know what 25 years looks like. And right now, I'm in my fourth one. And I have a goal for age 100. It's the achievement of this goal is that the total GDP of the Strategic Coach client network is all entrepreneurs. If you add up all their revenues in 2044, it'll be $15 trillion.
And I think that the number of entrepreneurs who will do that-- We're at 2,500 right now. I think the number would be probably about 10,000. Which is very, very reasonable, because we've gone to Zoom so that we have a multiplier that doesn't require travel. We've got a multiplier that we don't have to have space. We don't have to have food. And people can come from India, they can come from, you know, the Far East. You know, they can come from Southeast Asia. They can come from Australia and New Zealand.
But they just stay at home and they do the Program like that. Yeah. And the other thing is, right now, we're attracting much bigger entrepreneurs. We're, we're out there for 33 years. We're having $100 million, $200 million revenue entrepreneurs already joining the Program at the first level, okay. We're not teaching them how to be successful. We're teaching them how to be happy.
Shannon Waller: And as a byproduct, they get even more successful. There's people put their hand up and say, "Okay, count me down for a billion. Count me down for 2 billion." You know, which is really kind of fun. So, Dan, you've got this big goal. And I love how you talk about 25 years being 100 quarters. And you just focus on an improvement every quarter.
Dan Sullivan: One thing I asked myself at the beginning of every quarter, "What's two or three things I can do this quarter that have a compounding effect over the entire 25-year period?" It's like, I'll invest right now, but this will compound and it's totally changed how I look at the future. And the other thing I do is, "How can I achieve this without me doing any of the work?" Okay. So who is it that's got a superior skill in a particular way? You know, so we've created a couple of books on this, which kind of sum up that, which is the "Who Not How" book. And this is available, you know, from Hay House Publishers. I have a collaborator, Ben Hardy, who is an amazing writer.
So it's a big book, and people will get this book and read it and say, "How do I sign up for this program?" And we have another book which is called "The Gap And The Gain," which is that the only road to happiness for entrepreneurs is by measuring your progress backwards. Okay. So, most entrepreneurs have an achievement, they achieved the goal, and then they measure it against their unrealistic ideal, their unrealistic deadline, and they said, "Yeah, we achieved the goal, but we didn't do it in the time frame." And they, you know, I've described the misery, not only that they put themselves into, but the misery that they put everybody else through. They're not going to last, they won't last.
You know, first of all, the people who always measure their progress backwards always get more and more excited, they get more and more energy, they always attract better team. And there's a compounding multiplier effect, just because they're measuring their progress. And they like themselves. Okay. And I find there's a direct correlation of how much other people like you based on how much you like yourself. You know, if you hate yourself, other people aren't going to like you. They'll maybe admire you, they might respect you, but they really don't want to know you. And that includes the person that you're married to. And know and your children, they don't really like being around you.
So anyway, the other aspect of this is that this is a major force in the world, you know, so entrepreneurism. When I was born, I was born in the 1940s. Entrepreneurs were kind of these weird marginal creatures around the big corporations like General Motors and the titans, you know, of the Industrial Age. Once the microchip comes onto the scene, and you have personal computers, and they have software, and then the internet comes along, and then you have mobile--. You know, like, you have more computer power in your iPhone than NASA had for the Apollo space trip. I mean, entrepreneurs have enormous information processing power. They have enormously powerful marketing apps, communication apps.
So entrepreneurism becomes more and more a major force at the center. And it's going to attract some extraordinary talent. So when we wrote the book, Ben Hardy, who's a wonderful writer, he said, "You know, we got to make sure this book talks to everybody." I said, "No, we only talk to one person." And he was on our team, and he's one of the most brilliant book strategists and publishers I've met by the name of Tucker Max. I said, "Our target reader is Tucker Max." And he said, "Why?" And I said, "Well, Tucker was a born achiever. Nobody had to teach him about entrepreneurism. Nobody had to teach him about goal setting. Nobody had to teach him about achievement. But he missed all the classes on being happy."
And we sent this to Tucker. And we said, "We want you to be the target reader for the book. And this is the reason why." And we just typed out and sent an email about what I just said. And he said, "This is so true. This is so true." I've known him for about 15 years, and he's profoundly more happy. And his achievements are 10x what they were 10 or 15 years ago.
Shannon Waller: He's happier and healthier in every single respect. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan: And he has a healthy and happy effect on other people.
Shannon Waller: Yeah, which is awesome. Dan, this has been a fascinating and profound conversation. Thank you for getting to the heart of entrepreneurs' pain and how they're often their own worst enemy as opposed to being their own best friend. And the simple strategy is, set a really long time frame and talk to your team. Don't give up on your big, ambitious goals. But really don't be the one to set the time frame is what I've heard. Dan, thank you, as always.
Dan Sullivan: Thank you, Shannon.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, they say they're going to achieve an extraordinary thing in three years. Well, let's say three months. They want to achieve something in three months, and it takes six months. And it's a great achievement, but they don't take any pride in it. They don't get any pleasure out of it because they didn't do it in three months. So it's kind of juvenile. You know, it's an adult entrepreneur, but inside of them is an adolescent mentality.
Shannon Waller: So what drives this setting an unrealistic goal? Because I know so many entrepreneurs or people, including myself, who we fall into this trap, and I think it's because I think I need that short deadline to kick in my creativity or something, or I have this sense of urgency that's driving me. But from what you're saying, it's not, I'll use the word healthy. It's not the best approach because it drives you to really not great behavior, you know, in terms of teamwork, how people take care of themselves, what their compensating strategies are. But there's this impulse to do it. It's very common in, for sure in the entrepreneurial world.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think there's a number of aspects about it. And I'm sort of creating this because I hadn't heard the question before. So I think the big thing is just a profound sense of scarcity. And they may be extraordinarily successful. They've taken care of money, and they've got all the outward signs of being a successful entrepreneur. But inside, it's almost like they're just starting again. They never get a sense that they're making progress. Okay.
And the other thing is that they're adrenaline addicts. First of all, there's an extraordinary goal which gives them a lot of excitement. And then they immediately water down the excitement of the goal by diluting it with extraordinary fear around time. Okay? And they've learned that they don't deserve the excitement of the goal unless they have to pay a price of fear about the time. And so they, right from the very start, where they could have had 100% excitement, they only get 50% excitement and 50% fear. And then the fear grows and grows as they get closer to their unrealistic deadline, and they're not getting the achievement.
Shannon Waller: Oh my gosh, that nails it for me. You know, when you say profound sense of scarcity and adrenaline junkies. And we get to see that shift in Coach where people go from this incredibly, you know-- Look at their bodies. They're tight, they're anxious, they're stressed, they're high strung, they're all the things. Incredibly successful to even join Coach. Right? But they're Just wound tight. And then they just start to relax and unwind. So I want to ask, what's the alternative, Dan? And it sounds like you can just stay with the excitement and you don't need to torture yourself with that adrenaline rush of urgency. You can just actually live into the excitement of the big goal.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I would say the other thing is that they're profoundly lonely and so they don't see that other people would be very, very excited about contributing their skills. And as it turns out, when they get the achievement, all these skills get involved. But the other people never feel good about the project. They never feel good about participating in the achievement because they, themselves, are put under extreme time pressures, and they're never given a chance to actually enjoy the activity. They're never given a sense to just feel great about the teamwork they have. Right off the bat, they don't even get the excitement.
They just get the fear. And their family, they go home and their family gets the fear. The family gets the scarcity. So they're doing it, you know, as if they're Rugged Individualists, you know, and they're the only one who counts, that it's strictly about them. You know, and that's juvenile. You know, it's sort of adolescent. You know, I mean, the biggest egotists in the world are children. You know, they think it's all about them. You know, they don't realize that there was 100 billion humans before they came on the planet. And, you know, their parents, all the adults, the older people in the world. They've got a part of the game too. It's all about them.
Shannon Waller: They do think it's about them. I also think sometimes they think it's contained to them. But as you illustrated, and I've seen as well, there's a massive cost to, you know, just torturing yourself because it tortures other people with these unrealistic deadlines.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And the scarcity is that as long as they drive themselves unrealistically, it keeps them from thinking just how alone they are. And it's not just that they're lonely, it's that they're afraid of being alone with themselves.
Shannon Waller: Because that would be pretty unpleasant state. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan: Because all they're reminded is of all their failures when they're with themselves. All they're reminded is of all their failures. The failures weren't failures to achieve. Their failures were not to achieve the realistic deadlines. It's not about the actual project. It's not actually about the actual result. The real goal is that they'll achieve it in an unrealistic time frame.
Shannon Waller: It's so interesting, Dan, because I have actually heard-- In fact, there was a video I was watching last night where someone says, they actually, because of that urgency problem, which drives everyone crazy, they actually said they don't even like goal setting. They actually don't want to set goals because automatically it goes with unrealistic time frames. And they just, you know, you set goals for yourself in your life, can I do this by 20? This by 25, this by 30, this by 40, you know, get married, have a house, have kids. And if you don't do it by that time frame, you beat yourself up. The Gap. Right. And so the person I was listening to said, I don't even think setting goals is a good idea. Now, I'm not sure you would have the same opinion. But I'm curious.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And it's an addiction. I mean, Joe Polish is great, great entrepreneur, and great partners with us. And he's the creator of Genius Network. He said two things which I was just enormously impacted by. He said that the most honored and admired addiction in the world is workaholism. And he said, first of all, because people watch it, and they see that the person is achieving enormous amount. They work every day. They work on weekends, and they're always working. And it's comfortable to people who are not doing that because somebody's out there doing it.
You know, it's like the Jack Nicholson, great speech from A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise. And he says, you want me on the wall. You know, while you're having your parties, you want somebody on the wall. And it's almost like they think that they're out there being heroes. And to a certain extent, it's admirable for people who aren't doing that because, well, at least somebody's out there doing all the work all the time. So, you know, we can enjoy ourselves. We can take vacations, we can have weekends off and everything because these people are out there working themselves to death, actually.
And that's the one thing that Joe told me, which I found profoundly--. He says workaholism is the toughest addiction to get over. And the other thing you have to understand is that the addiction is not a problem. The addiction is a solution to something much worse, and the fact is that they're scared stiff of being alone with themselves because when they're alone with themselves, all they are reminded is of what a huge failure they've been. Even though in the eyes of other people, they're a great success.
Shannon Waller: Yeah, you can totally see the very slippery slope that happens for people.
Dan Sullivan: Quite frankly, I've been through it. I've been through it. If it wasn't for a Babs Smith, my partner in life. We've been married 36 years, and we've been business partners for 34 years in The Strategic Coach Program. If it wasn't for her, first of all, I'd probably be dead. And if I wasn't, I'd just be a smart drunk, worried about the rent.
Shannon Waller: You've said that before. I'm glad Babs found you. And I'm glad you found her. No Babs, no Coach. So Dan, you've shifted your mindset into a more adult one, where it's not about unrealistic deadlines, but there's no way you've given up goals. So what's the shift? What can people do to unwrap themselves from this incredibly compelling workaholic addiction and frame things differently? There's a shift in mindset that needs to happen in order to stop freaking out. What is it?
Dan Sullivan: Well, I'm going to tell you the solution that I hit people with and it has an immediate impact. And we have, you know, three parts to Strategic Coach. The first part is the Signature Program. The second part is the 10x Program, 10x, the Ambition Program. And the third program is the Free Zone Program. But I want to focus in on the 10x Ambition Program because that really catches people's attention. And they said, "Well, what's a way of thinking about 10x?" And I said, "Was last year your best revenue?" And they said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, if it wasn't, just pick your best revenue year. Just tell me what it was." And they do. And I said, "Okay, now I want you to think about achieving 10x your revenue goal."
And here's the answer that tells me I've got an addict on my hands. They'll say, "10x? I can't do that in a year." I didn't say anything about a year. I said 10x, but immediately they put a year, they put a year. Because it's an extraordinary goal. I mean, because they haven't achieved it. You know, it's extraordinary in the sense that all they've achieved is one tenth of the goal. And immediately, they say, "I can't do that in a year." And I said, "A year?" I said, "I didn't say anything about a year, I said 10x your last year's revenue." And they said, "Well, what is the time frame?" And I said, "25 years." And they said, "25 years? I don't need 25 years to go 10x."
I said, "Really? How many do you need?" And they said, "15." I said, "Oh, that's great. Okay, so you do it in 15. And you got 10 years' change. What would you do with the 10 years' change?" And they said, "Well, I'd go 10x again." I said, "Wait a minute, just a few minutes ago, you said you can't do 10x. That freaked you out. But now, you're saying you can go 100x and it doesn't freak you out." So the thing is, it all lies in giving yourself time. But they don't get the adrenaline rush for giving themselves 15 years. Okay. Because it doesn't feed their addiction of unrealistic time frames. Well, 15 years is a realistic time frame. And it doesn't trigger adrenaline. And it proves to you that they're adrenaline addicts, they're freakout adrenaline addicts.
Shannon Waller: So basically, there's like a whole shift to your nervous system that has to happen to make this. But you've made that shift, Dan. And there is something about when you actually can recognize that you're successful. And you don't have to have that, you know, beating yourself on the back to strive. You don't have to come from scarcity. You can come from the fact that you actually are in a great place, and you're simply going to expand. There's a whole shift to that. But it takes a while, right? In our program, it takes two to three years for people to start to calm the heck down.
Dan Sullivan: Well, takes 15 years. But actually, I find that if they're okay with 15 years-- And the other thing is, they never involve their team or anyone else in the time frame. Okay. They'll tell people, "Okay, we're going 10x." And they'll feel the, you know, the doubts, the objections, the uncertainties, and they say, "Don't you worry." I mean, "We're going to make it. Don't worry about that. Make it up to me." But they do worry about it. Because they've been living with an addict for a long time, and what I find frequently that people have this attitude go through team members really fast.
Okay, People love the kind of the creativity of the entrepreneur. They love the ambition of the entrepreneur. But it just wears you out to work with this person. Okay. And then in the end, they don't actually achieve the goals frequently. And the reason is because they don't have enough teamwork. Not enough willing, excited, really talented teamwork to pull off the goals. Okay. And then they say you can't find good people. And I've had deadline freakout addicts come back to me and said, "You know, this is the second year in a row where I've fired all my staff because I come back, and I tell them what the goals are, and they become the opposition party." They're not opposing the goal. They're opposing the time frame.
You know, and they go through divorces, and they have other addictions, like alcoholism or drug addiction or high-risk behavior, and everything like that. If you have one addiction, it's easy to develop a second one, you know, because addictions are solutions. Because they make you feel better. The problem is that they're not their own best friends. As a matter of fact, they're their own worst enemy. And so they don't want to be alone with themselves because they're alone with their enemy who always sets up experiences in life that make them feel like a failure.
Shannon Waller: That is so true, Dan. They're always with someone who makes me feel like a failure.
Dan Sullivan: I lived with my enemy, you know. Now, I'm my friend. I really like Dan.
Shannon Waller: Well, you talk about being your own best friend, as compared to your own worst enemy. That just blows me over.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, entrepreneurs don't need outside enemies. They're walking around inside of one.
Shannon Waller: Oh, that's so true. Yeah. So I love this 10x, and just go back to the time frame, because I've coached teams on going 10x, which is really fun. They'll realize that, you know, they've actually gone 10x once already. And they'll also want to set the next time frame. And I have the entrepreneur talk last in terms of how long they think it's going to take, and I have the team go first. And it's really funny because, often, the team will come up with a slightly shorter deadline, like eight years instead of the entrepreneur's 10 or 12. It's really funny. And they're like, "Oh, the team thinks we can do it."
Because the team is getting to choose that. They're not feeling that pressure of a year, two years, or three years for going 10x. They're actually the ones choosing and owning that future. And the entrepreneur is almost always, I'm gonna use the word, gobsmacked, you know, by the fact that, oh, you know, the team actually has a very realistic, excited perspective that--. And it totally engages teamwork. Your whole point about the costs of when you don't do it, it drives people away. They're excited by the big goals, they're excited by the ambition, the creativity. They're really stressed by these unrealistic deadlines.
Dan Sullivan: I think that's really the, you know, that describes the transformation when entrepreneurs come into Strategic Coach. Because the first level of the Program, the Signature Program, is where you learn what your role is as an entrepreneur, and you realize that you have one of the skills that's needed for the success of your company. So it's not about you as the entrepreneur. It's about your company. And the goal of the Signature Program is that you can create and surround yourself with a constantly expanding Self-Managing Company where you're the one who gives the vision but in consultation with your team.
And you say, I think if you just look at where we're getting our best results with our best clients, and you know, the kind of checks we're getting from, you know, the revenues that we're getting from, you know, this type of client, what I'd like you to do is to think through how we're operating in the marketplace. And my feeling is that we can become more and more selective with who we're working with now. And there's some clients probably we shouldn't be working with anymore. But I want your judgment on this because you as a team member, will know best who the best clients are just in terms of working with them. Because they always treat me right.
But if they, you know, aren't really great clients, they mistreat you. So I want you to know that you have the judgment on which clients we should go forward with and how we should create more value for them. But all new people, and I would like to consult with you, what are the standards now that we have to establish for our new clients, you know, based on our positive past experience, negative past experience? And I think we can go 10x, but what time frame do you think would be good for that? I mean, how long do you think we could possibly do that? And that giving the team the creative freedom to kind of calculate things from their standpoint and then have a consensus among the team.
And then say, we think what you're talking about is really possible. But we estimate, you know, probably eight years, nine years to do that. Can we think about it in those terms? You have a better judgment about those things than I do. I have the vision, I kind of know what it looks like. And what they say, well, we depend upon you to do that because we're kind of busy every day, and we got our lists and everything. And we know, as a matter of fact, we'd like you to free up just to be creating this really bigger future. But don't commit us to a future that won't be a happy experience for us.
And that's the first level and then you develop the ability to go 10x, and then they start taking on projects. You know, if you give them the right to determine the time for the self-managing goals, then they'll develop the capabilities so that you can have self-multiplying goals where they're starting to initiate improvements. And that's the second level of the program, The 10x Ambition Program.
Shannon Waller: For self-multiplying.
Dan Sullivan: And then the third level is where you have a Self-Managing Company, and you have a Self-Multiplying Company. And then you can do incredible collaborations in the marketplace with other companies that are self-managing and self-multiplying. And that's the Free Zone level. So the big thing is, but it all starts that you have to stop being a deadline junkie. Yeah.
Shannon Waller: I love it.
Dan Sullivan: And the big thing is, you get your family back, you get your personal life and you get your health back, you get your energy back, and all the other addictions that you've acquired along with the deadline freakout addiction.
Shannon Waller: Dan, as you're talking, I just have this whole sense of a distress just leaving the system. And what you've described, which is true, it's not pretend. This is-- We've seen it hundreds, thousands of times. People who thought they had to hold themselves so tightly against the goal, because of the deadline, and then they start to ease and then they not only accomplish the goal, they accomplish all of these incredible byproducts, and they invite more and better team members and they've got better teamwork and they've got better clients.
Dan Sullivan: They attract better clients and customers. They attract better vendors, they attract better thing. And the message goes out: This entrepreneur has a great organization to collaborate with, to cooperate with, to create value for. Yeah, it's an attraction game, you know? And you know, the flip side of that, the negative side, repels. It repels good people, it repels good customers, it repels good vendors. They say, you know, "It's just too much of a hassle to work with them." You know. "When I know I have to deal with this company, I have to gear myself up for a bad day."
Shannon Waller: Right. Yeah. It's not a great way to operate in the world because it just creates so much stress and tension and you don't get the best out of people. You don't get the best creative, cooperative ideas when people are having to protect themselves against you. So Dan, you painted this picture of so much of a calmer, but still exciting. So if the fuel in the tank is excitement versus fear, you know, it's really focusing on on the excitement to be able to motivate yourself, motivate your team, get yourself out of bed in the morning. And it's so much more of an expansive Gain perspective and abundant perspective, rather than coming from that scarcity of time. I'd much prefer that second picture you painted rather than first one.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, the other thing is entrepreneurism is not just a way to make a living. It's actually a life. You know, first of all, because if you've been an entrepreneur for five years, the employment world won't have you back. You know, you're gone.
Shannon Waller: You're unemployable.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So it's a lifetime sentence. So I mean, you know, people say, well, I can't predict the future. And I says, "I can predict your future a lot better than I can somebody who's in a corporation." He said, "What do you mean?" "I can guarantee absolutely that 20 years from now, you're going to be an entrepreneur."
You know, I can't guarantee what people in corporations—they may be unemployed, they may be retired, they may be dead and everything else. You know, you're 45 years old, you know, and you've been at it as an entrepreneur probably since the time you were 10. You know, you were out selling something at 10. And I said, so we've got a 30-year track record that there's no alternative except to be an entrepreneur. So we can look down the road 25, 30 years, and I know you're going to be an entrepreneur. There's no other alternative. You may be an entrepreneur in a different kind of activity, but it's still you.
And the only question is, just when you get to the top of the game, you'll be so tired out, you'll be so worn out, you'll be so unhappy with what you do, you'll retire. And we know that entrepreneurs who do that are usually seriously sick, seriously afflicted by disease, and they die. You know, they just die. You know, and they spent a whole life from the outside perspective, playing a great game, achieving great goals, but they get none of the satisfaction, they get none of the happiness out of that. And one of the things the world is developing in a way where all kinds of new entrepreneurism are really possible.
So a lot of people are going to go into it. But I would say that the main message that they are told right from the beginning, you know, "One of the big things you have to understand is that you have to work, work, work all the time. And the only way you're going to be successful is by achieving extraordinary goals in unrealistic time periods." I was invited back in the early years, when we were just getting started with Strategic Coach, I'll say the 1990s. 1989 is when we started. I would be invited to associations that had mainly young entrepreneurs, you know, 25 to 35 years old. And it was a pain. You know, I did it two or three times, and I said, I just can't talk to people like this.
First of all, you know, I was usually put on first thing in the morning and only half the room would show up because they were either doing their hangover in the room, or they were still in bed. Okay, so I tried it once. And I said, "Maybe I just hit a bad group." And then I was invited to another one, and it happened. And then I went talk to them. And the person said, "They really need your coaching, they really do." I said, "What they need is a 12-step exercise to overcome their addiction. You have an entire association of alcoholics." But the alcoholism was just a sub addiction to the fact that they were all extraordinary goal/unrealistic deadline addicts. They were deadline freakout addicts, you know. And it was getting so bad that they had to drink heavily, or some other afflictions, to lessen the pain that they were creating by their main addiction.
Shannon Waller: And that's very genuine. I mean, people's careers are built around talking about the addictions of entrepreneurs and how to manage that. So yes. So Dan, just to wrap up on an action note, what is something that people can do right now, today, tomorrow if they know they're falling into that workaholic trap, if they know that they're falling into that scarcity of time, urgency trap, and freaking out? What's the shift? What's one thing that people can do to get themselves unhooked from this?
Dan Sullivan: Set an extraordinary goal and talk it over with your team. And accept what their consensus is on the deadline. Talk it over with your family and tell them what the extraordinary goal is, and be advised by them what's an acceptable deadline.
Shannon Waller: I love that. Bring in other people. And, Dan, the other thing is, you almost have a starting point of 25 years.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I always think in terms of 25 years. First of all, nobody thinks in terms of 25 years. But I'm 78 years old, and I've had three of them. So I know what 25 years looks like. And right now, I'm in my fourth one. And I have a goal for age 100. It's the achievement of this goal is that the total GDP of the Strategic Coach client network is all entrepreneurs. If you add up all their revenues in 2044, it'll be $15 trillion.
And I think that the number of entrepreneurs who will do that-- We're at 2,500 right now. I think the number would be probably about 10,000. Which is very, very reasonable, because we've gone to Zoom so that we have a multiplier that doesn't require travel. We've got a multiplier that we don't have to have space. We don't have to have food. And people can come from India, they can come from, you know, the Far East. You know, they can come from Southeast Asia. They can come from Australia and New Zealand.
But they just stay at home and they do the Program like that. Yeah. And the other thing is, right now, we're attracting much bigger entrepreneurs. We're, we're out there for 33 years. We're having $100 million, $200 million revenue entrepreneurs already joining the Program at the first level, okay. We're not teaching them how to be successful. We're teaching them how to be happy.
Shannon Waller: And as a byproduct, they get even more successful. There's people put their hand up and say, "Okay, count me down for a billion. Count me down for 2 billion." You know, which is really kind of fun. So, Dan, you've got this big goal. And I love how you talk about 25 years being 100 quarters. And you just focus on an improvement every quarter.
Dan Sullivan: One thing I asked myself at the beginning of every quarter, "What's two or three things I can do this quarter that have a compounding effect over the entire 25-year period?" It's like, I'll invest right now, but this will compound and it's totally changed how I look at the future. And the other thing I do is, "How can I achieve this without me doing any of the work?" Okay. So who is it that's got a superior skill in a particular way? You know, so we've created a couple of books on this, which kind of sum up that, which is the "Who Not How" book. And this is available, you know, from Hay House Publishers. I have a collaborator, Ben Hardy, who is an amazing writer.
So it's a big book, and people will get this book and read it and say, "How do I sign up for this program?" And we have another book which is called "The Gap And The Gain," which is that the only road to happiness for entrepreneurs is by measuring your progress backwards. Okay. So, most entrepreneurs have an achievement, they achieved the goal, and then they measure it against their unrealistic ideal, their unrealistic deadline, and they said, "Yeah, we achieved the goal, but we didn't do it in the time frame." And they, you know, I've described the misery, not only that they put themselves into, but the misery that they put everybody else through. They're not going to last, they won't last.
You know, first of all, the people who always measure their progress backwards always get more and more excited, they get more and more energy, they always attract better team. And there's a compounding multiplier effect, just because they're measuring their progress. And they like themselves. Okay. And I find there's a direct correlation of how much other people like you based on how much you like yourself. You know, if you hate yourself, other people aren't going to like you. They'll maybe admire you, they might respect you, but they really don't want to know you. And that includes the person that you're married to. And know and your children, they don't really like being around you.
So anyway, the other aspect of this is that this is a major force in the world, you know, so entrepreneurism. When I was born, I was born in the 1940s. Entrepreneurs were kind of these weird marginal creatures around the big corporations like General Motors and the titans, you know, of the Industrial Age. Once the microchip comes onto the scene, and you have personal computers, and they have software, and then the internet comes along, and then you have mobile--. You know, like, you have more computer power in your iPhone than NASA had for the Apollo space trip. I mean, entrepreneurs have enormous information processing power. They have enormously powerful marketing apps, communication apps.
So entrepreneurism becomes more and more a major force at the center. And it's going to attract some extraordinary talent. So when we wrote the book, Ben Hardy, who's a wonderful writer, he said, "You know, we got to make sure this book talks to everybody." I said, "No, we only talk to one person." And he was on our team, and he's one of the most brilliant book strategists and publishers I've met by the name of Tucker Max. I said, "Our target reader is Tucker Max." And he said, "Why?" And I said, "Well, Tucker was a born achiever. Nobody had to teach him about entrepreneurism. Nobody had to teach him about goal setting. Nobody had to teach him about achievement. But he missed all the classes on being happy."
And we sent this to Tucker. And we said, "We want you to be the target reader for the book. And this is the reason why." And we just typed out and sent an email about what I just said. And he said, "This is so true. This is so true." I've known him for about 15 years, and he's profoundly more happy. And his achievements are 10x what they were 10 or 15 years ago.
Shannon Waller: He's happier and healthier in every single respect. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan: And he has a healthy and happy effect on other people.
Shannon Waller: Yeah, which is awesome. Dan, this has been a fascinating and profound conversation. Thank you for getting to the heart of entrepreneurs' pain and how they're often their own worst enemy as opposed to being their own best friend. And the simple strategy is, set a really long time frame and talk to your team. Don't give up on your big, ambitious goals. But really don't be the one to set the time frame is what I've heard. Dan, thank you, as always.
Dan Sullivan: Thank you, Shannon.