How To Succeed When Others Are Stuck

Dan Sullivan: Hi everybody, it's Dan Sullivan here. And I'm with my longtime conversational partner Steve Krein.
 
Steve Krein: Dan.
 
Dan Sullivan: And this is another, the latest episode of Free Zone Frontier. And Steve, there's a lot of going back to the frontier about the world that we're living in here on a lot of different fronts—economically, politically, culturally. I've noticed that it's a source of perturbation for a lot of individuals who are very nervous, very anxious. Since they have the tools of social media, they're making wild claims and wild predictions, and they just seem to be not cool and calm about what's happening in the world.
 
Steve Krein: First of all, Dan, it's always great to be with you. And I was thinking about this topic about what the world is experiencing right now and creating two different, very specific conversations with and among entrepreneurs. And one of them, there's a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and people really scared and really fearful. And I think whether it be fear-mongering or just concerned and really somewhat paralyzed. And then there's a whole other group incredibly excited and feels like this is the best times to be creating. And I'm interested in getting your context because whether it be moments like back in 2000 and 2001, 9/11, whether it's 2008, whether it's the recent crisis, what people call scary times are either moments where people get paralyzed and retrench almost into the corner and then there's others who either invent or reinvent themselves and look at these kinds of moments as opportunities.
And I felt like it was an opportune time to ask you the question about how you think about this moment, not to timestamp the podcast, we're in mid 2023. And the world, for a lot of people, looks uncertain and for others, it looks certain. But I'd love to get your context for how you handle these moments and how you think the community's handling these moments.
 
Dan Sullivan: From my experience, and I'm pushing 80 now, so I just crossed 79. I was born just before Normandy in the Second World War. And right from the beginning when I was a talking child, I was surrounded by adults who had been through the First World War, had been through the Roaring Twenties, who had been through Great Depression, Second World War. Now we were into the Cold War. And it seemed to me that the world was about really big, surprising things happening. And then I think except for some small events which were more political than they were military—there wasn't military and it wasn't as climactic as the time when I was born. I had a feeling that things had sort of settled down and become very, very predictable. I think that was probably true for the most part up until we turned the 20th century. And then you had 9/11 right off the bat, which was a big surprise. I mean, a world event.
 
And we have the communication technology where everybody's aware of it immediately. Very interesting. I was talking to my mother, and she lived on a farm when Pearl Harbor occurred. And she didn't find out about it for three days because she wasn't listening to the radio and nobody phoned. And now instantaneously, the world immediately is aware of something happening. And I think that makes things very, very unpredictable because I think that the people who we expect to be in charge are responding not only to the event, but they're responding to other people's responses. So I think it's very much more complicated when some sudden change happens in the world right now.
 
And then, starting probably in the mid-teens, so let's say 2015, 2016, you had Brexit, which I think took the world by surprise. And then you had the election in the States, which took people by surprise. And then earlier than that, you had had the subprime meltdown, which was a big one, 2008. Biggest one we've had in our lifetime, you and I. And then COVID. COVID was a historical event. And now we've gone into a sudden inflationary period. Two things that really strike me is that the money is no longer cheap. So you can see it in the venture capital world, you can see it in the banking world, that money was pretty well cheap for almost 30 years. And now it's not cheap anymore. And that slows things down.
 
And so what I think is happening here, Steve, is that people expected that everything was going to go along, constantly getting better, getting bigger, things getting easier, things becoming more comfortable. And it was sort of a utopia we were being told was coming because of technology. And I think there's a wrench been thrown into the gears. So I'm just taking a look at it from the fact that I've got the perspective of eight decades. It gives you a different perspective that, I don't think that the things that are happening today are any bigger than's happened in the past. I think the majority of people are less prepared for something different to happen.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. Actually, I was talking to Rebecca, my wife, about how well your wisdom and your experience has aged in terms of having that perspective, means that there's some timelessness to it. And there are some rules that even dusting off old things like The Scary Times Manual, dusting off Strategy Circles, thinking about Lifetime Extenders. I think there's some timeless strategies, and tools, and concepts that you have embedded into Strategic Coach and into the Program that have prepared all of us within the community for whatever is happening, and not being too shaken by it.
 
However, I think what you just described for a lot of people is the first time they're going through it or perhaps the first time they're realizing things aren't going to go the way they had planned. And so, how do you think about the kind of assessment, if you will, of the step back for entrepreneurs, innovators, is the Free Zone podcast, I think, for our Free Zone community? How do you think about the step-back-and-reflect kind of moment? And which of the tools, either existing or new, are you thinking about when it comes to just recalibrating and getting your feet on solid footing to move forward?
 
Dan Sullivan: First of all, it has to do with where your confidence comes from. I mean, there's entrepreneurs. It's a very big box that we throw a lot of people in. We call them all entrepreneurs. But I think there's enormous difference from one end of the spectrum to the other. So it all depends on where your confidence comes from. Does your confidence come from external factors? Or does your confidence come from something that's internal, that doesn't matter what the situation is, you find a way of being confident about it?
 
Steve Krein: Yeah, my community, Startup Health, is all about entrepreneurs solving big health challenges. Type 1 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, mental health. We talk a lot about age reversal, I know you do in your community as well. These are massive challenges that will take a lot of time and a lot of collaboration and a lot capabilities to achieve. And for those who are immersed in just heads down, getting their job done, getting work done, it's easy to ignore the outside. But what are you doing and how do you think about shutting out the outside factor so that that internal compass you're describing is kind of harnessed at every... That's every day because it really isn't [inaudible 00:08:46].
 
Dan Sullivan: Babs and I were talking about this. And this is since I started coaching, which was '74, so it's 49 years. This is the seventh downturn caused by something that's happened. The downturn could be big inflation, '70s were a much bigger... The inflation rate got up to 17 or 18% in the mid '70s. So that was wild. When people get uncertain, they hold onto their money. So it's a problem for entrepreneurs that when people have their future taken away, they're not spending, they stop spending because money's a safeguard. And if they're not sure where the money's going or where the money's coming from, then they hold onto the money. And I always tell entrepreneurs that you should have enough security that you could go a quarter or two quarters without worrying about cash flow, that you're taken care of, you have the reserves. And I said, "Your job over the next quarter or the next 180 days is to go out and enable people to create a new future for themselves."
 
And D.O.S. is the vehicle that you use to do that: "If this was a year from now and we were looking back over the year, what has to happen for you to feel happy with your progress, both in your personal life and your business life?" And all of a sudden, they have to think in a new way about the way they're looking at it. And then you say, "Specifically, what dangers do you have that need to be eliminated over the next year? Opportunities need to be captured? And strengths need to be maximized?" And all of a sudden, their brain is freed up from the paralysis that they've been stuck with because of the uncertain times. And away they go and they get excited and they say, "Oh, I could do that." And invariably, when our clients have done that, they find that frequently, it's the best quarter or the best half-year that they've had. Because it wasn't that money wasn't available; it's that the person didn't have a future to spend the money on.
 
So that's my advice for the entrepreneurs. And then our team, we have two roles with the team. One is that our job as leaders are to make sure everybody's confidence is up every day. And that's in relationship to their projects and their teamwork with other people to just focus on what's possible, what's available. And then our second one, which is a big one, was make sure you come out of this trouble with the same team power that you went into it with, because your competition isn't going to do that. A lot of your competition is not going to get out of bed in the morning. The other half is not going to get out of bed sober. And so it's a time when entrepreneurs can make tremendous gains in the marketplace if you maintain your teamwork power.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. Well, I just finished listening to your newest book, "Geometry" For Staying... What is it? Cool, calm, and?
 
Dan Sullivan: It's Cool & Calm. Yeah.
 
Steve Krein: Cool & Calm. Cool, calm, and collected, I'll call it. But you talk about the three elements of everything being made up, nobody being in charge, and life's not fair. I have the hat on around my day-to-day around healthcare and in particular, these diseases and illnesses and things that affect people's lives, their mothers and their fathers and their sisters and their children. And so, there are oftentimes entrepreneurs working on solving problems where they don't realize that everything's not made up. They don't realize that nobody's in charge. They don't realize that everything's not fair. So I took away a lot from that context. But I'd love to ask you why you wrote this book now or this past quarter and how you see that playing it to what you just described for this moment. Because I think it's unique that out of 30-something books now, this one came out now.
 
Dan Sullivan: This is number 35 of the quarterly books. Yeah, it's a good question. One is the decision I made in 2018. It was in July. And I just decided I wasn't going to watch television anymore. I just felt that it was a end-of-day waste of my energy, and it actually frazzled me a bit before I was going to bed. And I've been successful in that decision. So I'm five years in July, I haven't watched any television at all except the odd time when I'm walking through the airport and CNN is on, and I have to catch myself.
 
Steve Krein: You still watch Netflix and television, but not television channel.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I don't watch Netflix. I never really got involved in the streaming. So I've missed all the things that other people are talking about from an entertainment standpoint. But the other thing is, I've noticed that the world seemed to get better the less television I watched. And I began to realize that television was there to make people anxious in some way. Especially the news aspect of television. And without thinking what it was going to free up when I started, I discovered at the end of the first year, I got 800 hours back. I just estimated weekly and seemed to me about 800. And that's been repeated, so I'll get 4,000 hours back.
 
And it's been literally, Steve, the most productive five years of my life. We created three new books. Basically, we were just really starting the Free Zone at that point. And so, we've created the Free Zone. We created the Age Reversal Future program, which is going into its second year. And then we created the new IP Value Builder on entrepreneurs taking their creative solutions—past, present, and future—and turning them into patents. The other thing is, my sleep improved, my exercise improved, and just my general demeanor. But at the same time, I do read the news on the internet. There's news commentary. But usually it's in the form of articles that people are writing. And there seems to be this epidemic of mental illness in the world right now, especially affecting young people. You would have some insight in that because your daughters are... The oldest is how old now?
 
Steve Krein: I have three daughters, 20, 17, and 14. Right in the thick of-
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, they're at ground zero.
 
Steve Krein: It's an interesting theme by the way, among that age group, is the impact of social media and the impact of mental health. And in some ways that generation is incredibly in tune with even the word mental health and mindset. And my kid's uniquely capable of understanding "batteries included" versus "battery not included" people. Arm them pretty well. But you have this notion you're describing of the external world contributing to, I think, a real epidemic among an age group that we're going to see play out over the next couple decades what went over the last 10 years.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I just had a little situation on Saturday. I go to a brain clinic. And I've been going now since last October to use biofeedback to redirect my brain because brain scans indicated that in the middle of the night when I should be resting, I'm actually doing a lot of creative activity. And during the day when I should be doing creative activity, I'm actually kind of dozing unless I'm talking to someone interesting like yourself. But I was just sitting, waiting for my appointment when there was a mother there, and she was sitting right next to me and she was talking on the phone. And the word "safe" came up about five times in her conversation. "I worry so much about her when she goes out. I don't know if she's going to be safe. And we don't know what's really happening on social media. And I get the sense that she's not safe with what's happening."
 
And then just at the end of that hour, her daughter came out, and she seemed pretty put together to me, but the mother didn't seem put together. The mother seemed very, very unsteady by just the normal. She was just talking about normal, ordinary situations. I have a philosophy that I'm a hundred percent responsible for my behavior. But you're a hundred percent responsible for your feelings. And everybody I meet is a hundred percent... First of all, I haven't the foggiest idea what your feelings are. I'm not sure you do either. So it's guesswork. But my behavior is pretty measurable if I do an analysis. It's a question—did the way I behave work or not work? And I get feedback. But there seems to be enormous amount of emphasis during this... I call it the "age of rage." There seems to be enormous amount of emphasis that somehow we're responsible for other people's feelings.
 
Steve Krein: So let's pick that apart a little bit. Let's go back to the three parts of the "geometry" equation and how you described not only them individually, but collectively because I think you're addressing some really useful life lessons in there. I actually talked about these three with my girls last week at dinner because I was always seeding to see how they respond and the idea that these kind of life lessons are profoundly helpful, especially in a very young age. And at an age where you are and can be influenced by the external world, not truly understanding where things come from, where things are playing out.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, the three rules. And the word "geometry," I'd like... And I put geometry in quotation marks because geometry is a branch of mathematics. And it's been well established, the... He wasn't the creator of geometry. He was the aggregator of everything that was known in the Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean, Asia Minor. And he was in Alexandria, which was a central city in Egypt. Greek by the name of Euclid. And he seemed to have compiled all the math and put it in an orderly fashion. I went to a college where you read the great books of the Western world. And we had four tracks, but one of them was mathematics. And so my BA is the history of mathematics. So we took a look at all the different mathematic disciplines that have been developed over the last couple thousand years. I fell in love with Euclid. And his first book of geometry, which is 47 propositions that build on each other. So you can't get to number two unless you understand number one. And you can't get to number 47 unless you understood the previous 46.
 
I just thought it was a marvelous way to put together a knowledge system. I actually memorized them. I could go to a blackboard. We didn't have whiteboards in 1967. And I could actually do all the propositions. They all have a diagram with them, and I could actually do it. And I just thought it was a beautiful system. It was kind of like a work of beauty. And I just said, if you're building a knowledge system in the world, this is really a great model for doing it. So I think that what we're facing with right now is a crisis of mindset. And that they can't build anything on their mindsets. It all falls apart without Euclidean geometry. If you don't follow the rules in Euclidean geometry, the thing you build is not going to stay up. It's going to be shaky, and it's going to be dangerous.
 
And you know, Steve, because we've been talking for 25 years, that Coach is really fundamentally about mindset. It's just, how are you looking at this? And does it make sense to look at it this way? And does it produce the results you're looking for if you look at things this way? So I call it the "geometry" of mindset. Doesn't have 47 like Euclid, it's got three. And the first one is everything's made up. Everything's made up. And the second one is nobody's in charge. And number three is life's not fair. So I'm going to ask you a question. When you saw the three, and you thought them through, what did it do for your mindset? I had seen it before because I had introduced it in Coach when I was writing the book.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah, I mean, these sort of elements have been interwoven into Coach for a long time. It never stated this way. But I think... I discovered many years ago, probably 15 years ago, prior to even starting StartUp Health that I didn't realize... Maybe never thought about it, but obviously never really dug deep into realizing, like, no one's in charge of curing cancer. No one's in charge of eradicating Alzheimer's disease. A lot of people working on it, but no one's in charge of it. And I think one of the underpinnings of why I was so confident when we launched StartUp Health in 2011 that we could really make an impact was because what I realized digging into and meeting with all the different industry players, the payers, the providers, the pharmaceutical companies, the governments, you're like, oh my God, no one's in charge here. And it was really freeing, just that one concept, forgetting about the other two elements of the geometry.
 
It's like, no one's in charge and, therefore, we can do something about it. We can get involved, we can make an impact. And the thesis for StartUp Health was this idea of we can build a global army of entrepreneurs and innovators who are collaborating to solve these problems. And what's interesting is that it's very freeing to think about it that way. It's very motivating and it's very exciting when you really just start to ask that question about whatever it is you're working on. And for entrepreneurs, it's beautiful. For, I think, other people, could be incredibly scary. But you have the capabilities and the confidence that you can actually make an impact on something because no one's in charge. It's actually empowering.
 
I have, I think, for the last 12 or 13 years at StartUp Health, used that as a constant reminder. Whenever someone talks about a big problem, you're like, "Well, who's stopping you from doing that?" Obviously, there's regulations and there's rules and things like that. But when you really dig deep at these diseases, and I know firsthand in the case of dementia or heart disease like my father had, and you start to talk to doctors, and you kind of dig deeper and deeper, and you do research and you're like, oh my God, there's nobody in charge of it. There's lots of people working on it. And it's every man, woman, and child for himself or herself.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I've added to my conversation, I mention it just briefly in the book, was they said, well then what's in charge? And I said, there's something in charge, but it varies according to situations. And what's in charge is rules. We have rules that we agree to. If there's eight billion people on the planet, there's probably a multiple of eight billion different rules that allow people to get up in the morning with a certain amount of predictability about how the rest of the day is going to go. And we have rules. And I think it's why we like sports, why sports is such a big thing in modern life is because it's really about the rules. And the umpire isn't in charge. The umpire simply enforces the rules. All the different aspects of baseball were created by somebody. Some aspect of it was made up. There's previous sports, which if you looked at them, you'd say that's going to end up in baseball.
 
But what we do is very practical is that we're looking every day for things that work better than things did yesterday. And we document them, and then we tell other people about them, and they say, "Well, that's a good rule. Maybe we'll just do that." So my sense is, not only is nobody in charge, nobody's ever been in charge.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. That's where the "everything is made up" becomes a really good add-on to that. And I know it's the other way around where it's "everything's made up" and "nobody's in charge." But I think "nobody's in charge" and then "everything's made up" go together because the freedom to say, "I'm going to have an idea." And by the way, they might be built off of the stepping stones of previous ideas. I think you're watching this phenomenon pickleball now take charge. And they're converting tennis courts to pickleball courts, and everybody's playing, and it's all ages. And it builds on tennis, which I think sometimes people age out of because of injuries, and age, and flexibility, and safety. And so all of a sudden now, it opens up both young and old to play a sport and be involved in a community of passionate people. But all the roles were made up, tweaks on tennis, tweaks on ping pong, iterations on both of them-
 
Dan Sullivan: Volleyball too.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. And so everything being made up and nobody in charge go together really nicely. For entrepreneurs, it's a very freeing way of thinking and reframing what it is you're working on. I know, and going back to healthcare again, it's like this idea that we're operating in a very machine-like industry. The business models, the regulatory, everything set up for decades and is almost impenetrable until you realize that it is going to take time. But entrepreneurs are a missing ingredient. By the way, you go back couple hundred years, it all started with entrepreneurs. Yeah, you're getting back to can entrepreneurs and innovators, when they lock arms, they compare notes, can we innovate and solve problems by just, number one, not doing it in silos, but number two, doing it with enough time and energy and capabilities that we feel like we can actually make an impact here?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think the COVID period, essentially three years of COVID, really indicated that nobody was in charge there.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. And actually, when you look at-
 
Dan Sullivan: But new things were made up.
 
Steve Krein: I was just going to say, but new things were made up or even things that had been decades in the making were able to be put together collaboratively, in collaboration between different academics, and industry, and government, and everybody kind of collaborated to do something at a speed that they had never been able to before. But I do think it illustrated the idea that we have to take control of this situation we want to change. I think for a generation of entrepreneurs, massive opportunities. Because of the simple geometry of... You call it "Geometry" For Staying Cool & Calm, it's also geometry for entrepreneurship. And for Free Zoners in particular, I think it actually is a little bit of beginning narratives that can help you unlock any opportunity.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I notice even in Strategic Coach, there's a real spectrum from experts at their practice at one end, and people at the other end who are creating a new practice, you know they're constantly creating a new practice. And we see it from the Signature up to the Free Zone, the three levels, we can see. But one of the reasons I created this book is to free people up from thinking that their industry's in charge, government regulators are in charge, best practices are in charge. And I said, all that stuff was made up. It might have served a lot better purpose in the past than it does today. But people have a habit of sticking to things that other people made up when they don't realize that that was the truth, that somebody made it up. And one of the things that came up was when we moved in the third rule is life's not fair. That's a shocking statement to a lot of people because it's supposed to be fair.
 
We're supposed to have equality.
 
So I had one of our team members go back and do a little bit of research on the etymology of the word "fairness" and the word "equality." And they're fairly recent. Fairness was mentioned in its present state, how we understand it today. Fairness was around 1300, so 700 years ago. And equality was in the 1600s, so 400 years ago. And they said, "Well, didn't people have a sense of fairness?" I said, "They did on an individual basis." And I think that humans have always worked out a way on an individual basis or a small group basis that we got to establish something that everybody feels that it's fair. But it wasn't a big enough idea that it could become a goal of the larger society. And entrepreneurs, of all people, are the greatest violators of the rules of fairness and equality because you're creating up new things that advantage some people and disadvantage other people. And everything you create is going to cause some sort of disruption.
 
Steve Krein: So what made you add that to the third side of the triangle? If you were to think about geometry of all the things that you've done over the last 49 years in coaching, what made you pick "life's not fair" as the third one?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think that there's different aspects of people feeling comfortable about what they're about. One of them is, do they have freedom of innovation? Can they, without worrying about it, just create something new and suggest it? But that's sort of a individual initiative, individual motivation. "Nobody's in charge" is basically, we operate in organizational structures where an entrepreneur on his own is worthless because he's not interacting with customers, he's not interacting with other entrepreneurs or other organizations. And that frees you up from the feeling that new ideas are going to be shut down. I mean, they may be objected to. But there won't be any authority really that says you can't come up with a new idea like that. There's nobody in charge of innovation. Innovation is unpredictable. But then there's a bigger issue, and this really hits on ethical and moral issues. Do you have the right to introduce something new in the world that actually inconveniences, makes other people uncomfortable, even takes away their security when you create something new?
 
And that's where, I think, you have to come to grips with it, that equality and fairness is something that can be made up. And what we do is establish certain rules to be in charge of the fairness. But it's just like anything else, it's made up. And my feeling is that it's very situational. Society's pretty loose. There isn't a set of rules. I'll give you an example that tells you the difference between where I live and where you live. And there was a New York Times writer about 30 years ago named Tom Wicker. He was a big columnist. And he had heard about Toronto, that was just coming up as a city. And he heard it was nice and it was interesting. So he went up, spent a weekend, did the shows, did the tours. And then he was in the hotel waiting for the bus to take him to the airport to bring him back.
 
And he went into the store at the hotel, and he bought a candy bar. And he ate the candy bar waiting for the bus. And then he had the wrapper in his hand, the empty wrapper from the candy bar. And he was going to do something and he stuck it in his pocket. And then when he was back home in New York the next day, he was out on the street, he reached in, pulled out the wrapper, and threw it on the street. And he said, that's the difference between Toronto and New York. There's some very, very strict rules about Toronto. You don't litter. You always are on the right with the escalator. There's some of these basic rules everybody gets it on.
 
But somebody once said that Toronto's kind of New York run by the Swiss. There's rules. And we have rules. We have Coach rules. Without thinking about them too much, from your very first workshop to your next workshop in the 25th year of your being in Coach, there's a buildup of rules of how we interact with each other in the workshops. And when somebody brings up an idea, there's an accepted way of interacting with the person about the new idea.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah, it's funny you say that. So, my youngest daughter was competing in a volleyball tournament, the culmination of her season of volleyball, last night. She played six games, there were a few different games they were playing, and I was watching the teams interact. And her team had amazing communication. But no matter what happened, they were cheering each other on. If they messed up, if they missed the ball, if they'd hit the net, if they screwed up, there was a batteries-included supercharge every single time. And then I watched the teams they were competing with. And in particular one team, where I just noticed both the coach and the players when there was a mess-up, what they did. It was like, "Shake it off," and it was like a negative reinforcement. But her team was positive reinforcement. And I was actually thinking about some of the rules in Strategic Coach. I have the same rules in StartUp health, which are about supporting each other, it's about Positive Focus, it's about energy-providing language that you're using.
 
And I just noticed the smiles and the frowns versus the other team. And I've always been and admired being a part of the Strategic Coach community. And I noticed the difference sometimes, by the way, in YPO where it's not reinforced like that. I try to reinforce it in StartUp Health, but the idea around rules where the ground rules for being involved are almost not only non-negotiable, they're kind of just built in inherently in the behavior. The language you use, the support you give, the support for ideas. That simple idea of being "batteries included" are one of those rules. And I just was reflecting on it last night because I was just watching. I don't know if any other parents noticed.
 
My wife, Rebecca, and I were talking about it a little bit where, look at the communication style, look at the rules. And then afterwards we mentioned to the coach we appreciated so much the way she led the team this year. And she just said, "I learned too late in my journey as a student until it was later on that realized how important mindset is. So one thing all my girls and my teams always walk away with is the power of mindset." And so the mindset rules, I think, are what you're describing now, is one of the most impactful ones that lay the ground rules for life.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. We do notice it. I mean, when we're a spectator or an onlooker for other people's activities. There's this instinctive sense, at least I have it. And from your description of last night, you clearly have it. But I just look at, is there any electricity that's holding this group together? Or is it each individual on their own? And what happens with that is that the only safe place is perfection. You can't make a mistake because you get punished for mistakes. And what it does, it makes people very cautious. They become risk-averse because any risk that goes bad, they get punished for the risk. So I think that we're in a period... I mean we've been, certainly since you were born, and certainly since I was born, there's been an enormous number of new technologies which directly affect how people work together.
 
I mean, just you looking at a computer screen and me looking at a computer screen right now, it seems to me that we're basically in the same room, even though we're 500 miles apart. Well, that wasn't possible when you started your entrepreneurial career, and that certainly wasn't possible when I was growing up. So I think that there's changing opportunities and changing circumstances, and new rules have to be adapted for how you do this. So I just did the rules that if you let the rules sort of interact with each other, you sort of feel, "Oh, everything's okay." I mean, nothing that's happening in the world interferes with me having a good day.
 
Steve Krein: And so that comes full circle back to your decision to not watch TV and, ultimately, the idea of just staying calm and cool is at the center of your entire being. You're just staying calm and cool. And so, I do think it was interesting that you chose that title yourself just for what the geometry was. And it wasn't driven by the geometry of business, or the geometry of entrepreneurship, or the geometry of the community. But it was this notion of being calm and cool. And I think it transcends. And is applicable, by the way, for team and everybody. But I do think they're great ground rules. I like this little trio of the last few books you've written, starting with Thinking About Your Thinking. I mentioned to you, I think it's just interesting that these were the books you've chosen to write over the last couple of quarters and how well they go together for almost being not as tactical as some of the other books, but almost lifelong guides to how you think about living.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I've been very influenced by the writer, Peter Zeihan, who's probably the finest geopolitical thinker that I've come across in my lifetime. He is very contrarian. And his analysis says that we've been in a special set of circumstances for the better part of 75 years, and they're not sustainable, these circumstances. But almost all business, all of politics, all of culture has been based that these set of conditions are going to stay in place. But they're not. And people are sensing that things are kind of shaky. Everything's sort of shifting. But they don't have an overview, and they don't have a set of guidelines of how they personally can respond to uncertainty, respond to unexpected things happening, which none of their previous education or training really prepared them for.
 
So I was just trying to say, well, we're in a flux period, and maybe there's a different set of rules when you get into a flux period. But that's always true for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, if they're interesting entrepreneurs, they have an attitude that everything's more or less in flux. And day to day, I've got to be willing to shift my mindsets, and shift my focus, and shift my approaches. So I wouldn't write this for people who weren't entrepreneurs because I'd just get a lot of arguments. Or they'd say, "Yeah, and you know who's at fault for all this?" I really don't want to have that discussion. If something's really bugging me, I'm probably at fault because I'm not looking at it correctly.
 
Steve Krein: Right. Right. Well, I want to be mindful of other topics I want to get into for the next episode, but also the uniqueness of this discussion and "Geometry" For Staying Cool & Calm, I always want to say collected, but cool and calm. Along with your Peter Zeihan comments about what's happening in the world and how significant the changes are, is I think you're arming both the Free Zoners, but also the community with how to think about their thinking, how to think about, notwithstanding all the things that are happening in the world, to not let them be rattled by what some people are looking as, the world is falling apart, the world is horrible, all these different things. But each of your books stacking on one another seemed to be just the road map for building future bigger than our past. I don't know if you have any ending insights from-
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I would say this. It's a pleasure to talk to you about this because I had a feeling I was changing gears when I did Thinking About Your Thinking. But you're the first one of the readers of the books or listeners who actually pointed that out. There's a significant difference. Once you hit Thinking About Your Thinking, you're talking in a different realm. I think you were more conscious than I was when you pointed it out. So I thought about this. And I think it's that it is because we've entered a new era. And therefore, the tactical things from the old era, they're more subordinate to having a big picture of what's going on in the world. And I don't want to put it in basis of that you should be fearful. What I want to do is have you have a set of rules that doesn't matter what happens, you have a way of adjusting in a positive, creative way, productive way to anything that happens in the world.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. Well, I mentioned on a couple episodes ago, it was right around my 53rd birthday, and we're now going into our 25th, maybe even past our 25th year together. And I can't help but notice the difference between how I've grown up as an entrepreneur around your thinking, around the community, around the framework. And my confidence about the next 25 years is radically different than a lot of my peers that I interact with in my different experiences in my journey. And so, I'm deeply appreciative of the elevated thinking you're doing. By the way, as you're getting older yourself, even though you're, I think just at the midway point here, midlife for yourself on your way to 156.
 
Dan Sullivan: That's the bet.
 
Steve Krein: Yeah. Well, your best stuff's coming out of you now. Having now been a student of yours for 25 years, having been very acutely aware of when you veer into a new era like you just said, I'm like, I notice it at a macro level, but I appreciate it at a micro level. And you always seem to have the right book coming out for where I need to think about my thinking. Or be a book in between Thinking About Your Thinking, Geometry, was the Capitalism—And Everything Else. And the unapologetic view of just using money, and thinking about money, and capitalism. And not apologetically, but actually offensively, in a good way, to kind of create a future that has people paying you for your uniqueness. So I'm just appreciative of you and this book in particular. What a wonderful gift to people in mid-2023 to give people the ability to stay cool and calm. So thank you, Dan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thank you, Steve.