“No” Is A Complete Sentence

Jeffrey Madoff: This is Jeffrey Madoff and welcome to our podcast called “Anything and Everything”, with my partner, Dan Sullivan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Hi, everyone. Dan Sullivan here and my podcast partner, Jeff Madoff. And we’re communicating from, telepathically almost, but certainly Cloudlandia-style, we’re communicating from Chicago and New York. Jeff is in New York, right next to the park, and I’m in Chicago, and we’re doing Free Zone workshops this week.
 
So anyway, Jeff, we had an interesting topic, and I’m gonna kick this off, this episode of “Anything and Everything”, with a marketing class that you invited Babs and me to at the New School, where you are a professor in marketing, and you had a interview with Kathy Ireland, the heart-throb Sports Illustrated cover, whose copies of that cover is probably on the walls of more males than any other female in history, Kathy Ireland was there. And I remember you asked her all sorts of questions, and one of the questions, because she’s a very famous entrepreneur, very successful entrepreneur with a $2 billion company, and you asked her, “What was perhaps the biggest lesson that you had to learn when you became an entrepreneur?”
 
She was a model for about 15 years, and then since 32, I think she’s been very, very successful. Successful in the usual sense, up and down, but what was the lesson that she learned? And she just said that “No is a complete sentence.” And I just thought, that just reverberated through my brain, you know, how important it is. And it brought up a memory of an interview that Steve Jobs did near the end of his career, but he wasn’t sick. He was interviewed, I think it was Fortune magazine or one of those magazines. And somebody asked him the question, “What are the 10 things that you’re proudest of about your time at Apple?”
 
And he said, “The 10 times when I said no to a possible project.”
 
So you sent me an email, “Why don’t we talk about the importance of entrepreneurs being able to say no.” I thought, boy, that’s a really, really good topic, because almost all the trouble that I’ve seen in entrepreneurs’ lives is when they can’t say no to something they should have said no to.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I remember the impact that statement had on you. And I wanted to correct the record that Kathy Ireland worldwide is now doing about 3.3 billion. So I didn’t want to underestimate the incredible growth and success that her company has had.
 
There’s two questions, at least. One is “What does saying no do?” And how do you determine what to say no to? But also, “What is yes?” Because that too is a complete sentence.
 
Dan Sullivan: That’s the thing is that you can’t say no unless you know what yes is. That’s right. That’s right. I mean, it’s counter-puntal. When you walk away from something, you know, you’re saying no. But I think it helps if you know what you’re walking away to.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. And so what does saying no do? Why is that powerful?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think the big thing, I have a sales team, in Coach we have about 14 salespeople. We call them membership advisors, but they’re salespeople. And I said, “I want to tell you something that’ll make you successful or you won’t last long.” And I said, “Yeses reward you, nos inform you, and maybes kill you. You don’t die because of nos, you die because of maybes.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Explain that.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, they didn’t say yes, they didn’t say yes, and they didn’t say no, but they want you to call them back again and again and again, okay? Not so much now, but earlier in our career, we had almost entirely female salespeople. And we have call records of every single call going back to the 1990s. I mean, we can look at somebody was talking to someone in 1995, we have the call record for that. And there was one, and we weren’t watching real closely, and that’s not my job anyway, I’m talking about, there’s other team leaders who do this, Babs is involved in it, but this one woman, and she was let go, but she had a call with a prospect that was 60 calls over about a two-year period, about 60 calls. And she said, “You know, he’s really close. He’s really, really close.” And it’s usually our female and their prospect is male. And “He’s really close. You know, he just has to clear some things up.”
 
And I remember saying to her, “I don’t know what you thought you were doing, but he was having an affair.” No, he had this very pleasant woman that he would talk to almost on a weekly basis over two years, you know.
 
I said, “I bet you don’t talk about the Program a lot when you’re talking to him. I bet he’s talking to you about his life, and he’s asking you questions and everything like that.” But I said, “He’s having an affair.”
 
And I said, “But looking back, when did you know that he wasn’t going to do it?”
 
And she says, “Well, you know, I I always had hopes, you know, that he he would sign up.”
 
And I said, “It was destroying your ability to be a salesperson.”
 
On the other hand, we had a woman who set the all-time record in one year, and she worked from home because she had young children, and she had 240 registrations in one year. OK? And she’d get on, and she said, “OK,” she said, “at most, we’re going to have two discussions,” the prospect. So she said, “I’m going to take you through what we do here, and you’re going to say yes, or you’re going to say no. But if you say, ‘Well, let me think about it, and I’ll talk to you one more time.’ If we talked about it one more time, and you don’t say yes or no, then I’m saying no, and I’m going to move on to someone else.” You know? And she just, choo, choo, choo.
 
And she wasn’t a people person at all, but she was a registration person.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And a closer, obviously.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, she was just a closer. But I think that the big thing is that you’re depriving yourself of future opportunity by allowing this, what isn’t really an opportunity, to use up your time. OK?
 
But I think that the fear of rejection, that somehow no is rejection, no isn’t rejection, no is just a decision. What I mean by that, if they say, no, they’re not rejecting you, but you’re rejecting you because you didn’t get a yes.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right.
 
Dan Sullivan: You’re taking it personally that you didn’t get a yes. And I said, “It’s a numbers game.” You know, we know it’s a numbers game, you know, out of 10 prospects, you’re going to get one.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Which actually, even that’s not a bad record. 10%.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Our leads tend to be really good, and they’re better and better these days. They’re more and more qualified. We have people fill in all sorts of things. I mean, being online now really helps. You can really screen people a lot easier before you actually have to spend human time on them.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So how do you know whether something is a real opportunity? Or something that’s gonna keep you on the phone 60 times in two years and never materialize into a deal.
 
Dan Sullivan: I’m thinking this through as you ask the question, but I think it depends on what you think is an opportunity, okay? So my whole attitude is that what qualifies as an opportunity now depends upon your goals, okay? So you have to establish a big goal in the future.
 
Before the call today, we were talking about the play Personality, which is now at a stage where in New York at the workshop level, it was a winner in Philadelphia at the first on the road show. It was a big winner in Chicago. From a production standpoint, from a review standpoint, it’s a big winner, and now there’s a big jump that you’re contemplating. But you have an ultimate what the real goal is, and that’s the theater within a mile of where you’re living in New York.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I’m willing to go, you know, two miles.
 
Dan Sullivan: Two miles, okay. Then you’re off-Broadway. Yeah.
 
But the big thing is, because you’re clear about that, then the situation that’s being entertained is either a step towards that or it’s a diversion. And I think the one thing is, you’re not at the point with this play where you want diversions. You want next jumps.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, that’s right.
 
Dan Sullivan: So the next jump is the yes. Okay? And what the person is saying is either in alignment with that. But the other thing is you can sense whether the person is a decider or not.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: What are the indications of a decider?
 
Dan Sullivan: Let me compare two points in your life: You, where you are right now and 30 years ago, okay? So you meet someone and you’re sizing them up. And I find with humans that usually happens in about the first five minutes. You decide whether this is a yes or whether this is a no as a human being. So I bet you’re a lot faster. Well, first of all, I bet you’re a lot better whether they even get to see you and talk to you today as opposed to 30 years ago. There’s about 100 filters that you activate in the first five minutes, and they’re coming up short. That’s what I notice.
 
You know, I have people, it doesn’t happen often because I don’t do that much in personal marketing, but a person come up and say, “Tell me why I should join your Program.”
 
And I said, “You shouldn’t join our Program.”
 
He says, “Well, no. I mean, you know, I want to find out where I join.”
 
I said, “Just the way you’ve greeted me tells me that you’re not going to join the Program, OK?” I said, “I don’t know why you’re doing this. I don’t even know why you’re talking to me. But you’re not going to join the Program, OK?” I said, “I can tell. I know who joins the Program. And I know who doesn’t join the Program. And you qualify as someone who doesn’t join. But you would like to waste my time. So this is kind of over.”
 
And I had a salesperson meet once, and I’ve done it more than once, and they said, “Well, you didn’t even give them a chance.” And I said, “There was no chance. There wasn’t anything there.”
 
Now, I couldn’t have done that 30 years ago, but I can do it very easily today. And the reason is, 30 years ago, I was the seller, but today I’m the buyer.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And that’s a distinction that you often bring up. So define that distinction for us.
 
Dan Sullivan: The buyer is the one who can walk away. The seller can never walk away because there’s always a possibility, but with the buyer, it’s binary. It’s either a hundred percent or it’s zero. There isn’t a 50%.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And so that takes me to a point where…
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, you’ve just gone through a very, very significant buyer-seller period over the last five years, and that has to do with who’s the backstage with your Broadway play. You know, who are the actors, who are the dancers, who are the choreography, who are the musicians? But my sense was you were always a buyer throughout that entire period. You weren’t trying to get someone. You were just having the people who were right for their play find you.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, there’s two things. There’s that aspect and then there’s, of course, the backstage where I’m raising money. And so how do you make the determination whether or not that person is truly serious, can follow through and do it. And you are correct, my sense of that has gotten much more acute.
 
One of the things that I have found is that if a yes is contingent on them closing some other deal first, then they will have the funds available-
 
Dan Sullivan: That’s no.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. That’s exactly right.
 
Dan Sullivan: And if it’s contingent upon them actually wanting to take over as producer, then they’ll decide whether they want to keep you on their project.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, which of course, that’s not happening. So yes, the clarity is there, but it also is interesting because if you pay attention, you realize there’s certain through-lines in some of the stories. And Lloyd Price had a phrase, which is certainly true, said, “There’s a million ways to say no. There’s only one way to say yes: They write a check.” It’s the only one that counts when you’re in that field.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And it seems to me that he just pointed out, and what you’re very good at, is that you have criteria of what is a box that gets checked.
 
I’ve been trying to remember who it was that said this. I’ve been trying over the last couple of weeks. I think he was a country and Western singer, well-known in the United States. He had a set of rules. And one of the rules was, “Don’t be reckless with your heart.” The second one is “Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts.” And what I mean reckless is that you’re not giving any clarity to whether there’s a relationship or not, okay? And you’re not doing that for yourself and you’re not doing it for someone else. And you’re not decisive about cutting it off. And because you’re being careless with your heart, you’re attaching your heart to a possibility, you’re not attaching your heart to a reality. Okay? And you’re doing the same thing to another person.
 
It came up over the last week because of the Middle East situation, the Israeli situation. We sent out a very clear-cut letter that we were donating this amount of money to the UJA in Toronto, and that, you know, to all of our friends in the Jewish community, we want to know that we want to give maximum support to you and everything else. One of our team members said, “You know, we have clients whose point of view is the opposite,” and I said, “Yes, but we’re not sending the letter to them,” you know? And say so, and say so, and everything like that. You have to be clear about these things. I said, “People who strive to achieve a neutral position in life disappear after a while.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, because I think what you’re really saying is, you have clear reasons for saying no. And as a result, you have to be focused on that. Because otherwise, you get into that limbo, maybe-world, or just indecisiveness, which is not good on any front.
 
You know, I think it shows something else, too. Saying no. First of all, I guess I want to take a step back. Saying no, a lot of people are reluctant to do it, because they’re afraid they’re going to miss out on an opportunity, possibly. They’re afraid, as you said, about the rejection and they don’t want to experience a rejection from saying it. And there’s a lot of good things about saying no, because I think, and one of the things that is a theme, I think, for both of us is saying no also shows that you value your own priorities. Because it’s an opportunity, possibly, you don’t jump at it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think the other thing is that you could look at saying no, that you missed something. But my feeling is when you say no, you’re actually gaining something. You’re gaining clarity. You’re gaining commitment. So I don’t see saying no as losing anything.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I agree with you. And I think that once you’ve made that decision, then it’s really important to focus on the good that saying no does and learning from that, because it does establish your priorities and prioritizes your opportunities, which can lead, as you’re saying, to new opportunities.
 
And it also, I think, is important it sets boundaries. And when you set boundaries that you’re not willing to go beyond, that also helps, I think, in establishing clarity in terms of your decisions and what you’re doing.
 
So why do people say yes?
 
Dan Sullivan: Here’s the thing: I don’t see the opportunity as outside myself.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Tell me what you mean by that.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think the opportunity is inside myself. If I make a decision that gives me more confidence, I just expanded the opportunity for me as an actor, as an agent. My agency just went up when I say no. It’s like resistance training: Your muscles get stronger.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I think that’s a great point. When you say no, I think it’s important to reach these decisions. Yes or no. And I think it’s important to show gratitude to the people that make you an offer, even though you’re not interested in it. And I think that that’s often overlooked, because you need to stay consistent. And I think that’s consistency, I think, is really important in business. It doesn’t mean that you don’t recognize new opportunities or anything like that. But if you establish boundaries, those are your boundaries. And unless there’s a good reason to change those boundaries, you don’t change those boundaries. I think that a big thing about saying yes or no is, is it aligned with your core beliefs? Because if it’s not, then you’re in the category that it can do more harm than good. Because you’re compromising those core beliefs. And I don’t think any of us got into business to do that. So I think that that’s really important.
 
And people say yes also just to avoid the discomfort of saying no. And they may not have the bandwidth to handle it properly. They may not even know the subject well enough to do it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it’s a skill that comes with practice.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right.
 
Dan Sullivan: I mean, the first time you do it, if you haven’t done it before, it’s hard. Yes. The 10th time is a lot easier.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right. I remember gunslingers saying that in the old westerns, you know, “How many times can they hang me?”
 
Dan Sullivan: But, you know, core values is really important.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. And I think that oftentimes we don’t really know what our core values are until we’re forced to examine them for one reason or another. But I think that there’s a lot of haziness because we’re also, as humans, very adept at rationalizing our decisions and even trying to turn bad decisions into good ones if you’re in denial.
 
Dan Sullivan: Actually, I don’t think we ever do anything else.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: But rationalize?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. But there’s good and bad.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right.
 
Dan Sullivan: I mean, there’s good and bad, because we’re making it up. But the core values is some result of all the yeses and nos of your previous life. In other words, you’ve already said yes and no to a lot of things in your life, and that’s called your life. Yeah. I mean, this is the history of my life. There was a yes, and there was a no, there was a yes, there was a no, and that’s it.
 
I mean, measure yourself from Akron. How many yeses and nos got you from Akron to where you are now?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, I would add another thing into the mix of the yes and nos in terms of what you’re saying. is a phrase you use a lot, which is placing bets.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, guesses and bets.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: You guess and then you bet, okay? And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. But then your skill at guessing gets better and your skill at betting gets better. I mean, you just have to do it a lot. And I find being decisive in small ways on a daily basis…
 
Kathy Kolbe, who has a wonderful profile that sort of identifies what people will naturally do in order to achieve anything. And I think we’re kind of similar. I think you’re a little bit more of a Fact Finder than I am. But I think that you make guesses and bets. So she did a neurological test where they put sensors on my head and then they gave me a big bag of stuff, you know, a balloon, you know, a marble, a jack, and there were about 35 different little objects, you know. None of them really related to each other. And then you had to, in a course of five minutes, had to create categories to take all these things and put them into categories. And this was done in a collaboration she was doing with Arizona State University and the U.S. Army, and they were trying to discover, was there a difference between officers and people who weren’t officers, you know, that they could tell that there’s a certain decisiveness that you notice with officers, that you wouldn’t with someone who wasn’t an officer. This was the project, you know, and there was a big budget for this and everything.
 
And so she was testing people who had been using her Kolbe method for a long time. And so she put it on, and I was given the bag, and within about a minute and a half, I had them sorted into two groups. And I didn’t show any stress on their meter of being confronted with us. It was just do-do-do-do-do-do-do. So we got finished, and she said, “Well, what categories did you approve?” I said, “This pile here, I like them. This pile here, I don’t like them.”
 
But take that and remove it to every day we’re confronted with things that might be opportunities. And if we sort them out really fast it’s because we like it or we dislike it. If you know, we’re meeting someone and you know, there’s a possibility this could be a relationship, but we cut it off right at the beginning because you didn’t like it.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Going back to the value, your values are your sum total of your previous decisions.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Okay, so what questions should a person ask themselves when they’re determining whether to say yes or no?
 
Dan Sullivan: One of the things I tell people, it’s hard to make decisions in the present because you have incomplete information. And the other thing is that there’s emotion attached to it in the present.
 
So what I do is I always say “A year from now, if I make the decision today, what’s it look like a year from now?” Okay, or six months or a month, you know, you can use the time period. Because you’re less emotional in a future date than you are today. And the other thing is that you’re also supplying yourself with criteria, because you’re saying, “If I’m happy with this a year from now, it’s because this happened, and this happened, and this happened, and this happened.” And all of a sudden, you’re clarifying criteria you would have for whether it’s a good or bad decision.
 
The big problem is emotion, because I think, first of all, our first response to anything is emotional. I mean, the most rational person in the world says, “I don’t go on an emotion,” but of course they do, because emotions are the first thing we pick up.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Why are you saying that?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yes, exactly. Yeah, and the thing is that emotion is not thinking. I mean, I respond to everything emotionally, but then I try to sort it out really fast using my brain, okay? And you’re using the brain that you’ve created to this point from all your previous experience. That’s what I think.
 
You’re looking at a future opportunity with where the Personality play is going, but you’re basing it on also what’s happened since the first reading. Or since your first interview with Lloyd that produced the documentary and then produced the possibility of the play. So you’re bouncing the new thing off everything you’ve done and what was valuable about what you’ve done, what you’ve created up until now. You know, and a great value has been created. And you don’t have just your say-so about this. A lot of other people have said, “This is a great play,” you know, “I would go to see this play over and over again,” and everything like that. So there’s a real value that’s been created. And anytime you make a next decision, to a certain extent, you’re putting everything that’s been created at risk.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s true. That’s true.
 
So, is a way of boiling this down, is it correct to say, pose this question to oneself, which is, “Will saying yes add value to my life?”
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Because if the answer to that is no, then why do it?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You know, and, but there’s no-
 
Dan Sullivan: Jeffrey Epstein wants you to take a plane ride to the Caribbean. “Does this add value to my life?” You know?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, I think that that kind of question, so what do you do? Let’s push this example a little bit, not with Jeffrey Epstein, but let’s say that you’re somewhat strapped financially. An opportunity comes up, an opportunity that you think you can execute on, but it’s contrary to what you would do and violates your values, but it also enhances the possibility of you having a future in that business as opposed to going under.
 
So, you know, we’ve all hit troughs in our business and it’s always easier to make the right decision when you aren’t pressured in any way. But as entrepreneurs, we’re often pressured every day.
 
So what do you do when you have that kind of a conflict? And it seems like saying yes would relieve the pressures of the current situation, but in your heart you’d really like to say no because it’s nothing you would do unless you were in that position. How does one make that decision?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, one of the things I do is I check backwards. “Have I been faced in a situation like this before?” And do I have an example where I decided no, because it was a violation of my values. And did I say yes, and which turned out better? I mean, we’re, we’re memory machines. So we, you know, we’re always checking backwards.
 
But I’ve never made a decision in my life that went against my principles that I felt good about afterwards. For example, I realized I went through a practice marriage in the 1970s, five years, and I realized the day I divorced her, I had exactly the same feelings about her as the day I first met her. But I talked myself out of it.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And probably talked yourself out of it for a lot of the same reasons people have trouble saying no.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and “She’ll change.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, one bad bet in life is believing that other people will change because of your influence.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right, that’s for sure.
 
But, you know, I think that there are times that we take on jobs that we’d rather, in the big picture, rather not, but needed to meet payroll. You know, needed to keep the whole engine going forward. And it’s nothing heinous about the decision, but it’s one you would rather say no to. So how situational-?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, it depends upon, I mean, there’s a difference between doing things that you don’t really like doing, but not from a moral standpoint, just from a, “I really don’t like this type of work.” Okay.
 
So for example, I’m a trained artist and I’m a trained writer. And people have said to me, “Could you just spend an hour on this because we enjoy your skills? You have good layout capability and everything, and we’ll pay you for it,” which is different because I would volunteer it, but I wouldn’t take payment for something like that. I would volunteer it to help somebody out, but I don’t do that.
 
But more and more, as the cash flow is good, I don’t have to do that sort of thing, but still there’s kind of like a skill-memory. “Well, I could be really a hero here or I could solve this in about an hour for the person.” And I don’t do it because it’s a diversion from where I brought myself in life. Okay? And I said, “This is not good.”
 
You know, I remember once I had a client who was quite affluent in the 1990s when cashflow was much lower than it is now. And he said, “I’d like you to come to California for a weekend. I have a private jet. I’ll pick you up. We’ll fly you out.” He said, “We’ll put you up. We have a great place. And I just want to talk to you, you know, and get your advice because you’re, from my standpoint, you’re an exceptional coach and you seem to simplify things, complicated things, and allow people to get simple understanding really fast. And I’ll pay you $50,000 for the weekend.”
 
And I said, “Nope, I wouldn’t do that.”
 
He says, “It’s 50,000.”
 
I said, “Yeah, but it’s my weekend.” But I said, “The biggest reason is you’d learn a lot, but I wouldn’t learn anything. I’ve done this in the past, not for 50,000, but I’ve done it for 500. I’ve done it for 5,000, and this isn’t where I am in my life. And that would not be a good use of my time. Plus I’d be tired on Monday because I’ve been working the whole weekend.”
 
So I said, “Over the weekend, I’ll probably come up with new ideas that are worth $50,000.” Okay?
 
So, the whole point, people said, “Well, nice to be in a position like that.” And I said, “Yeah, but part of my lifetime goal is to be in a position where I can do something like that.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, which raises another interesting question to ask oneself about saying yes or no is, “Do I have the time and energy to do this?”
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: “And what else could I be doing?”
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Which seems like that’s kind of the decision that you process really quickly then, that you’d rather not put the time and energy into that because you’d rather put it into the other things you’re doing.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I’m well known in the coaching world, you know, because I’ve been at it for 50 years and the company has become quite prominent in the marketplace. There was another one, it was at MIT in Boston, and “We’re putting together a conference and we’re going to have about 20 people there who are well-known in their industries. And would you come and spend the weekend? It’s your dime, but you’ll meet so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so.”
 
And I said, “It wouldn’t be a good use of my time.”
 
And he said, “But you’d meet all these other people.”
 
And I said, “I’m meeting everybody I need to meet.”
 
But again, it’s taken me 50 years to get to the point where I can say no to something like that.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, which is a really important perspective to have, because I think that a lot of young entrepreneurs are in a rush and don’t realize it’s that accumulated experience which becomes wisdom in terms of making and informs decisions in a way.
 
You know, a lot of times I think also people say yes to please someone else, as opposed to the yes coming from a place where they think it adds value. It’s too uncomfortable or discomforting to say no.
 
But how much also is there, “Well, this could be a great opportunity I’m afraid of missing out. I may not be so crazy about this specifically, but if I say no to this, I could be missing a doorway to something that could be really big for me.”
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, missing out is, let’s do a whole podcast on missing out. What are you missing out on? What’s missing inside that you’d be missing out?
 
I think there’s an incompleteness inside of people. I mean, first of all, are you happy with yourself? Are you happy with yourself? Or does your happiness depend upon something you dare not miss out on? It doesn’t reveal what’s out in the world. It reveals what isn’t inside of yourself.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Take that a little deeper.
 
Dan Sullivan: It’s interesting. First of all, I like being with me. I like being with me. And then there’s other people that I like being with because who I am and who they are resonates. You’re one of them. And there aren’t a lot of them.
 
And the other thing is, like people say, “What’s your bucket list of things you have to see before you die?” And I said, “There isn’t anything I need to see.” I said, “I’m happy where I am. I’m happy the life I lead. I’m happy where we choose to go every year. There isn’t anyone-”
 
“Yeah, but you know, there’s some great places that if you went there, the experience would change me.”
 
And I said, “There’s no place I would go on the planet that the experience would change me.” And there isn’t anyone I haven’t met. Our team does surveys: “If you could have dinner with one person, who would it be?” And I said, “Well, nobody living. But I said, I think Shakespeare might be interesting. Shakespeare might be an interesting person to have dinner—if he was free.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, yeah, I think I’d love to talk to Shakespeare about what is storytelling, because he set the template for so many.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. What is being a human being? Yeah. You know, and I just read a book called Stalking Shakespeare. It’s the great Shakespeare swamp: The moment you get into the swamp, everybody always has a theory. “Well, it was this person, it was this person, this person, this person, this person.” And the author kind of wimps out at the end. All it tells you is that that he’s a bit of a drug addict and he’s very insecure and everything else.
 
But the interesting thing about it is that Shakespeare is a genius forever. You know, first of all, Shakespeare is. It’s not a case that Shakespeare was, Shakespeare is. And whoever he was, he’s a genius. I mean, genius is genius. It’s very clear that he’s a million times more important today than when he was alive.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Because?
 
Dan Sullivan: His influence, his influence over four centuries. Moreso than any other non-religious person that I can think of, any personality. I think Shakespeare dominates human thought-form. Whoever he was and however he did what he was, there’s unquestioned that he wrote something, and we have access to the reading, and we can read it, and it’s profound.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So what I’m hearing you say also, and this is a reason to say, or let’s say gives one this confidence to say no, is overall, you’re happy who you are, which gives you a sense of satisfaction and confidence that you’re not gonna be missing out on something if you say no.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You know, it’s funny when you mentioned, there’s nothing that you have to see. You know, we know people that travel constantly, go to great cities all over the world. And I’ve been to a number, but certainly far less than some of these other people have been. The thing that always strikes me is despite all the miles they’ve logged, they haven’t gotten any more interesting. They’ve just traveled a lot.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It’s like people who know celebrities, their passion is to know as many celebrities as possible. It doesn’t make them any more interesting. As a matter of fact, I think it’s a little bit of a subtraction every time they meet a new one. But I think there’s something missing on the inside that they think is outside. You know, it’s achievable outside.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Look, I know that I would enjoy looking at Grand Canyon, which I’ve never done. But of the things that I wanna do, that’s way down the list. Because what defines things for me is there is, of course, myself, but it’s also the vast range of…
 
You hear the New York Symphony there in the background, right?
 
Dan Sullivan: I love it. I’m trying to think: Fire? Accident? Murder? It’s New York.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. All three, that’s right.
 
Because to me, what makes experiences enjoyable is most often the people that I meet, the relationships that get formed, and those kinds of things, which I find enriching. And so it resonates with me when you say, “I don’t have to see X.”
 
And we both share boundless curiosity. I do enjoy all the various places I’ve been, which I’ve had a great time doing it, but it also does strike me. I know people who travel so much and other than they shop in a [unclear] environment, It’s kind of stunning to me as, “God, you ought to have more to say or a wider perspective or something as a result.”
 
Dan Sullivan: One of my little books I wrote was called Thinking About Your Thinking, and I said, I’ve observed that there’s four types of thinking that human beings do, and the vast majority think about things, okay? So it’s objects, it’s places, and they like talking about things. They like talking about this, they like talking about that, okay? And that’s, I think, at the bottom of thinking, is thinking about things, things they’d like to have, things they’re missing, things they wish they had.
 
And then the next level up is thinking about people and their gossips. You know, basically it’s the thing of gossips. They want to know what’s going on with everybody, especially the personal lives of people. Then it’s what are the things that people have, you know, so they’re combining levels one and two.
 
And the third one is thinking about thoughts. Thinking about thoughts. Not thinking about thinking, but thinking about thoughts. And the entire upper education establishment in the world is based on people who think about thoughts. But they’re not their thoughts, they’re somebody else’s thoughts. They’re an expert in this, they’re an expert on Freud, they’re an expert on Marx, they’re an expert on this thing. But it’s all about thinking about thoughts. And it’s all intermingled. It’s like Neapolitan ice cream, things, people, and thoughts.
 
And then there’s a big chasm, and there’s a jump-over, and it’s the people who think about their thinking, okay? In other words, they have observed and usually at a very young age that they have this activity that they’re actually thinking and they can almost observe themselves from outside of themselves and say, “Gee, you’re really thinking about interesting things here. And you’re observing how you think about things.”
 
And I think that person who achieves that, and I did it around eight years old. I remember walking down from my farmhouse where I lived down to the woods, and about halfway down the path, I suddenly had this thought, “Boy, this is really interesting thinking you’ve done since you left the house.” And I could maintain it for about five minutes, and then my mind got distracted by something else. But it was very enjoyable thinking about my thinking.
 
And then, of course, 70 years later, I’ve made an entire business out of thinking about my thinking and getting other people to think about their thinking.
 
And our podcast, both of us are great contributors to this podcast because as it’s happening, we’re actually thinking about our thinking and asking questions or making observations.
 
I mean, this morning I had no idea this was going to be the topic. And then you sent the email through and said, “Let’s talk about this.” But what we’ve been thinking about is thinking about how we think about yes and no, thinking about how we think about opportunity. And that’s a very energizing activity. And we don’t talk about things at all. I notice we don’t talk about things. We only talk about people as supporting proof for what we’re conversing. We don’t really think about thoughts at all. We don’t really talk about thoughts at all, you know.
 
So I think the big thing is if you’re a thinker about your own thinking, you live in a totally different universe. I’ve been to the Grand Canyon and it’s scary. But what was really interesting is the kind of thinking I did about my thinking when I was at the Grand Canyon. And what I’ve noticed, there isn’t any particular place on the world that’s better for thinking about my thinking. I could be thinking about my thinking anywhere I am.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, yeah, because you’re also talking about introspection. How do you think about what you think about? How do you relate to people who try to communicate ideas? Everything you do with Strategic Coach is about ideas and refinement of the ideas that you’ve come up with previously, and the effect that those ideas can have on the right people. And what makes them the right people isn’t just that they sign up for Strategic Coach. It’s sort of like the person that joins the gym, but they don’t do any of the exercises, and they’re wondering why their life hasn’t improved. No, it’s not just joining the gym. You have to do the exercises once you get there.
 
Dan Sullivan: But the other thing is, if you’re comfortable thinking about your thinking, and you encounter someone, one of the first indicators, and I didn’t realize it until we’ve had this last hour together talking, is that one of the things, “Is this a person who can think about their thinking?” Because if they can’t, then it’s all risk.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And how do you mean it’s all risk?
 
Dan Sullivan: Anything goes wrong, they’ll blame. They won’t say, “Gee, I’m discovering a lot about this,” you know. The moment I sense that the person doesn’t have the ability to think about their own thinking, it’s a no.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, and I think if you hold on to whatever those thoughts are with a white-knuckled desperation, that tells me much more about you than it does about whatever ideas you’re holding on to, because I think that that comes from a fear-based place, and that there are lots of people that cannot tolerate that or they cannot tolerate if you don’t agree on something, that all of a sudden a different person is revealed. Because now they’re fighting and protecting something as opposed to enhancing the value of that belief or learning from a different belief.
 
Dan Sullivan: I mean, that’s why they think about it that way.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Exactly.
 
Dan Sullivan: That’s an interesting topic. “Why do I think about that?” You know?
 
I was thinking about that, you know, in relationship to the recent events that, when I was six years old, my mother got me aside one afternoon, and she had all these newspaper clippings and magazine clippings, and it was about the Holocaust. And she said, “I want you to know about this.”
 
Now, she’s Roman Catholic. She grew from everything I could tell. The family she came up out of was anti-Semitic. The family was anti-Semitic. But they were somehow free of this. But she said, “This is the greatest crime that’s ever been committed.” And she said, “You should know about this, and you should read about this.” So I have. For 70 years, I’ve read books. I’ve watched movies. I’ve watched documentaries, and everything like that. But I was just examining why Babs and I, and Babs didn’t know a lot of this, but she’s known me for 40 years, and I’ve explained a lot of the history of how this whole situation developed. I said, “It actually goes back 3,000 years, and there was this water-hole. And there’s a little bit of a problem about who owned the waterhole.” You know, it’s a little bit like that.
 
We had a guide when we were in Israel, and he was very, very well-versed in religion and history and politics and geography and everything else. And he’d get to a certain point in explaining something, and he says, “Okay, he says, we’ve just run into the sign.” And I said, “What’s the sign?” He says, “It gets complicated from here.” It’s very, very complicated, you know.
 
But the whole thing is what’s your own experience with people who share this history? And my history is that largely throughout my life, they’ve been my best conversational partners. And I think the reason is because they’ve been forced to think about their thinking, about why they think what they think. They know ideas can kill.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. Any ideas that can kill are also—how to say this, fear is at the core, that’s that white-knuckled holding onto, that if there’s anything contrary, it becomes truly an overwhelming threat.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it destroys you as a person.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. Now, you know, we can let our listeners in on your theory also that, switched at birth, you were switched with David Solomon, not Sullivan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, babies got switched.
 
But I think the big thing is that I had this early experience of thinking about my thinking and I just gravitated towards people who did the same thing.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Me, too. And where when I was younger, I used to be more confronting about certain things. As I got older, because I agree with you, fundamentally, you’re not going to change anybody. So what was interesting to me, what I could learn from is, “That’s interesting. Why do you believe that?”
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You know, not attacking, a genuine curiosity.
 
Dan Sullivan: Just wanting to know how they got to that point.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: And you know something, and there is a yes or no situation because if they don’t take the opportunity to explain to you how they got there, they don’t even want to go there, they aren’t going to go anywhere.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: No, good point.
 
Dan Sullivan: They’re just rigid. They’re just frozen. There’s no movement here. “What we have here is a failure to communicate,.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: As said in Cool Hand Luke. That is correct.
 
Yeah. I mean, it’s really fascinating because ideas, good ideas by their very nature are intrinsically fluid.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, yeah. Well, not only that, but they’re becoming.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Really good ideas are not fixed in time. They’re constantly becoming, they’re being added to. A confident idea can go anywhere.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes. So I think, why do you believe what you believe, and thinking about why you think that way. I think about why I think a certain way. Yeah. Why was I attracted to this instead of that?
 
What I have been watching these past few weeks, there’s a channel on cable in New York that at, like, three in the morning, it runs the Jack Benny Show. And I’ve recorded them each week. Great, well-written, quite surreal in many cases, really interesting. Very funny. And you know, looking at a show that’s 70 years old, but it still works. And his delivery still works. And it’s not just nostalgia, it’s looking at what it is. I didn’t think about any of that stuff. I liked him when I was a kid. And it’s funny because I loved Jack Benny. I loved Laurel and Hardy, although they’re a different category. But there were people, like, I never found Bob Hope funny. You know, he just wasn’t funny to me. And it ended up that I had a very interesting experience with him at his home where I interviewed him.
 
Dan Sullivan: And he wasn’t very funny.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, no. And this was later in his life. But I don’t think he was ever very funny. So why do I like a certain kind of music? What is it about that music? Is there a through-line between the music, the actors, all these things? What’s the through-line there?
 
Dan Sullivan: But anyway, this all started with an email, a very short email, and it was about “Let’s talk about the capability of saying no.”
 
You know, the big thing is, for me, I’ve gotten down to the point, it’s not that I’m dealing with a certain type of opportunity, it’s that the gateway to this opportunity is a certain type of person, and that’s either acceptable to me or not acceptable. It’s not the opportunity, it’s the person I would have to be dealing with.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I agree.
 
So, what I can do, because I’ve taken some notes while we’re talking, is give kind of a wrap-up of “What does saying no do”.
 
And it shows you value yourself.
 
It can help prioritize activities and can lead to new opportunities.
 
It sets your boundaries, which are important.
 
You should have good, focused, clear reasons for saying no, just like you should for saying yes.
 
And that people say yes oftentimes to avoid conflict or discomfort or rejection.
 
You want to say yes or no if something is or isn’t aligned with your core values and your beliefs.
 
And you always want to be nice and show gratitude. We didn’t get into that much yet, but you can always say when you’re saying no, “I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. But, you know, my plate is full at this time.”
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And you’re not rejecting the person, although following my logic, I am rejecting the person. But there’s other aspects to the opportunity, too. It doesn’t fit with what-
 
I mean, we all have a notion of what an opportunity is for us.
 
One of the things I think also plays into this is age. Something I might have really been interested in at 50, I’m not interested in at almost 80. Done it, seen it, and it’s not big enough.
 
We had a program several episodes before where we talked about “How are you excited, enthusiastic, and ambitious in your 70s?” You know, we talked about that. Well, what I’ve noticed is that what lies ahead has to be a lot bigger than anything I’ve ever done in my life.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, I love that criteria. I love that.
 
Dan Sullivan: And this might have been a big thing for me in my fifties, but it’s not a big, big thing for me at 80.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, I think what is big for both of us, and you’ve mentioned it regarding my play is, you know, and referencing yourself, that Strategic Coach has been doing better. You’ve been more productive in terms of the writings you’re doing and everything else than ever before. And your future is looking bigger than your past. And you’ve been there, done that.
 
I loved all the film production I did and traveling the world and working with all kinds of different people, and it was great. But I was hungry for a novel opportunity that I could put what I believe to be my talents into and create something that was more than I had ever done before. Because it’s fun. It’s fun.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think we’ve covered a lot of ground today.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I’m not going to say no to that.
 
Dan Sullivan: There were a lot of anythings, and taken together, it seems like everything.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That was a good rescue. Very good.
 
Dan Sullivan: Anyway, real pleasure as usual, and I look forward to the announcement of the big new thing.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Me too. Thanks, Dan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thanks, Jeff.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Thanks for joining us today on our show Anything and everything, if you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. For more about me and my work, visit acreativecareer.com and madoffproductions.com. To learn more about Dan and Strategic Coach, visit strategiccoach.com.