What The Future Holds For Entrepreneurs

Steven Krein: Hi, this is Steve Krein. Welcome to the next episode of the Free Zone Frontier Podcast. I'm here with my podcast partner and long-time friend and collaborator, Dan Sullivan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Hi, Steve. Usually you just ask me, you got any good shit for me today? Yeah.
 
Steven Krein: For those who haven't appreciated the Impact Filters as a client, if you don't know, Dan's brain basically gets put into these little half page documents called Fast Filters, which lets you talk about whatever it is you're thinking about in the framework of the best result, the worst result, and success criteria. So before we do these podcast episodes, Dan always sends over one or today I got two things that he's been thinking about. And it outlines for me like the tension between best result and worst result and kind of what Dan's thinking about. But the topic of this Fast Filter really got me, Dan. It was the introduction for the future of entrepreneurism.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And this is a book that we're creating for our special first wide conference that we're doing with Strategic Coach in May of next year, I think it's the 8th and 9th of May, in Nashville, Tennessee, and we're gonna have 1,000 Strategic Coach clients there. First come, first serve, we have just 1,000 seats. But what Cathy asked me, Cathy Davis, whose brainchild the conference is, and she's the principal organizer for the whole thing, she said, I just want you to write an introduction to a special book, that's called The Future of Entrepreneurism. This will be, instead of giving people, you know, a bag of candy or a bag or something with Strategic Coach on it, why don't we give them a book? I'll do the intro and our 17 other Strategic Coach coaches, our associate coaches, will each do a chapter. And so I did this yesterday. I got it and we recorded it. So this is fresh. The ink is almost not… Well, it's very fresh.
Steven Krein: The thing that struck me is, you know, I don't think there's anybody that has been coaching entrepreneurs longer than you on the planet. You're turning 80, 80 next May. Yes. Next May, the anniversary of Coach is coming up in November.
 
Dan Sullivan: The Program will be 35 in November 13th. And then next August, I'll be 50 years coaching entrepreneurs.
 
Steven Krein: So if you had written the book on the future of entrepreneurism in the 80s, it might look a little different, maybe a lot different than what you're writing about in 2023, 2024, just to kind of frame that conference is coming up in May of 2024. Now that you could look back with such clarity and experience and insight that when you look forward, it makes you even more excited about the future of entrepreneurism and entrepreneurship.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, if I just take a look at since 1974, so it'll be 50 years next year, if I was writing a book in 1974 called The Future of Entrepreneurism, we couldn't even account for what the microchip was going to do to entrepreneurism in 1974. As a matter of fact, the word microchip, if I remember correctly, had only been coined about a year before. It was 1973. I remember a great article in The New York Times, which I read until the paper fell apart. And it was this strange new invention called the microchip. And they said, this invention is going to be the most transformative invention that's ever been created, because it can be applied to every existing invention and transform any existing invention, but the invention can be applied to itself to create even more powerful microchips. Okay, and it really caught my attention, because I'm, you know, like all entrepreneurs, I'm looking for a change of the game. And this was a real game changer. But there's two statements. They said that large corporate bureaucracies will have a hard time adjusting to the speed of change. That's going to be the result of the microchip being applied to all existing industries, but it'll create new industries and entrepreneurs are going to move from the margins of the economy to the center of the economy. And that was absolutely accurate. If you look at the great cultural heroes in the business world and American life itself, it's the great entrepreneurs. It's Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, like them or dislike them, they're great. And in the same way that the great industrial traders, you know, president of GM, CEO. I mean, who knows who the CEO of GM is? Well, you did in the 1960s and 70s, I'll tell you. But I mean, who's the head of Ford? I don't know who's the head of Ford, you know, or any General Electric, you know, any of the big corporations. But we do know who the founders were of these suddenly gigantic entrepreneurial—I don't know if they're entrepreneurial anymore, but they started with an identifiable individual.
 
Steven Krein: Yeah, it seems like some of them have the founders still running the companies and some of them aren't really entrepreneurial-led anymore and they're now, you know, big corporations that even can act that way. But what is entrepreneurship and entrepreneurism? And maybe define the difference if there is one.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I like first principles. And I go back to the original definition, which was 1804 by a French economist by the name of Jean-Baptiste Say, S-A-Y. When asked what an entrepreneur was, he says it's someone who takes resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. Period. Okay. And they said, well, what kind of resources? And he said, any kind of resource. Okay. So I've always used that, that the job of entrepreneurs, you know, to use the example of your company, there are start-up health companies, but they're kind of isolated companies. And each one of them is battling in their marketplace and in their society to actually, you know, surface and become an important business company. You know, I have often said that I think you've created the first purely entrepreneurial R&D global entrepreneurial network in the world because you have close to 500 start-up health who are operating within a common structure with a common process and they have various futures, you know, they may be the owner of the company forever, they may take on partners, they may take on investors, they may go public, they may have an IPO like you did, but whatever it is, they have to advance in how they operate internally and they have to operate how they present themselves in the marketplace. And you've created this massive coaching program and then you have investors, you know, who can give a little or can give a lot, they're actually invested in all the 500 companies. They have not a huge investment, but they have, you know, what is a significant investment for the companies themselves. That money allows them to grow faster, allows them to develop faster. You took a resource called 500 isolated start-up health companies and you took it to a higher level of productivity.
 
Steven Krein: Yeah, you know, I think that for a lot of innovators is a difficult thing to wrap your head around. When you come from the science background or academic background, you don't have an appreciation for what it means to be an entrepreneur. It could look intimidating. It could look mysterious, and it could also look, what I've learned as we talk to more and more research teams and academic founders who come over, you know, they feel like it's coming over to the dark side, right? And so it's interesting, like, oh, making money, oh, for profit, and it becomes the whole thing. But I do think that the future of entrepreneurism, the accessibility of being an entrepreneur, the tools, especially in the world of AI, are now built for entrepreneurs and people who can, with a keyboard and a computer and their phone or an iPad, become incredibly productive pretty quickly. Almost no real significant investment and cost at the beginning to get their ideas out and begin working on something. And even if it does require money, it's a fraction of what it used to cost.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and as I mentioned at the beginning of our interview, that the microchip was the key changemaker. And that, after ‘74, it wasn't until ‘80 that you got feel of that, because that's when the first personal computers appeared. I think IBM was ‘78 or ‘79. And then the other things speeded up. I think that microchip with graphic user interface was the double hit because they were telling you, even when the personal computers came out, that everybody had to learn programming. I mean, the public is not going to learn programming. So maybe just a click, you'll learn how to do a click. And it was actually Park Labs. It was the Xerox, somebody at Xerox Park Labs in Palo Alto actually created a graphic user interface, but Xerox was selling paper and toner, you know, they were selling ink and they had no use for it. And Steve Jobs was introduced to it and he said, I don't think that'll go anywhere. And meanwhile, he got back to his office as fast as he could. And, you know, they called his IP lawyer and he said, I don't care how much it takes. We're going to own this and then Bill Gates stole it from Apple, and then Steve Jobs sued Bill Gates. And then Bill Gates said, yes, I did steal it from him, but he stole it from Xerox. So the other thing is that there are some vital things. And of course, apps became very important. Applications became very important. The internet came in. And then I think the great breakthrough was the mobile revolution. You know, in 2009 is the iPhone, which really established the cell phones, and then the latest is just last November, which is the ChatGPT. I think this is the next big jump. But all those empower entrepreneurs. Every one of those steps empowers entrepreneurs. It doesn't empower large corporate bureaucracies or large government bureaucracies.
 
Steven Krein: So let's talk about that for a moment, and I don't know if you're covering it in the book, especially because you're only doing the intro, but I'm noticing, and I've noticed this a lot in the last year more than ever before, the democratization of these tools for entrepreneurs. They're almost giving them superpowers in things that you used to have that team of writers or a team of marketers or a team of engineers. And whatever job is now in a company has been amplified, not eliminated, it's amplified. So that new developer is now like an experienced developer. That experienced developer is like a master developer. I know marketing, branding, writing, so many of the things that we need as entrepreneurs to communicate or make things real are now being commoditized down to monthly low fees and things like that. And so how do you think that changes the big bureaucratic companies, the kind of future as it relates to what's available for the taking, if you will, going forward?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think that one thing is that both government and large government bureaucratic organizations, large corporate bureaucracies, and large non-profit bureaucracies are seeing unpredictably innovative entrepreneurs as their main enemy. There's an attempt to not have single individuals and small groups suddenly create something that goes into the marketplace, goes viral, and it just upsets everything. It upsets the status quo. And I'm noticing people say, well, I'm trying to, you know, appeal to corporations. I said, you know, they don't see you as a friend. They see you as an enemy. There may be someone in a corporation who's entrepreneurial. You know, for example, one of our clients is a U.S. Senator, Ted Budd from North Carolina. And he's an entrepreneur. He's got an entrepreneurial business. And the different states have different requirements of how close you can be to your business and everything like that. But he's a force for good in the U.S. Senate as far as entrepreneurs are considered. He has a thriving company, and I won't say which party, but his main business is firing ranges. You show stealth in how you're cryptic. I mean, I don't want to give away, you know, the good, but he's been in Coach for 15 years. You know, he's a long-time Coach. He still attends Coach while he's in the U.S. Senate. But you want to have people in all those organizations who actually understand, you know, like you do, you got 500 little research labs, and big corporations should say, geez, why don't we just pay attention to what StartUp Health is doing? I mean, we're getting 500 labs. We've got one lab, and maybe it has four or five divisions, but these guys, and I'm talking about the big healthcare, but you've taken productivity, the speed of innovation in the healthcare industry, you've just taken it to a higher level of productivity.
 
Steven Krein: I think the magic that we unlock with our community is actually not the global community. It's the communities within our community. And so we think about our Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot. We now have 25 companies from six different countries collaborating in a Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot community. We brought in the biggest funders of research and development in the world as partners. We have a board of very entrepreneurially-minded leaders from philanthropy, venture capital, industry, academia. But the main focus, they're not a governing board, they're an advisory board that is aligned with the long-term mission of preventing, managing, and curing diabetes. So very mission aligned. But the entrepreneurs are in charge. They're the ones that are defining the future. A very interesting thing that happened on our last board call. Again, it's an advisory board call. One of the young start-ups was presenting, leading a discussion, and one of the board members from industry said, oh boy, you know, this is going to take a long time. Are you sure you really want to go do this? Like, this is not a five-year thing or even a 10-year. Like, we're talking like 15, 20 years. And before this entrepreneur could respond, which, by the way, I was waiting to see how she would respond, one of the other board members spoke up. Actually, interestingly enough, another industry person who said, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're working on things for 2040, 2050 now. He was incredibly supportive of the notion of, it's the entrepreneurs. They need the encouragement. They need the belief that it's possible. They need to be the visionary optimist here. But it's interesting how quickly you could get into groupthink and start to think more conventional and become that informed pessimist on it. But the entrepreneurs who are dreaming up, whether it's new molecules or new solutions, digital life science, right, they, I think, through our community, feel locked arm in arm with a certain mindset and a like-mindedness around what the future could be that is 25, 30, 40 years out. Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: Entrepreneurs see the instant result, okay? Then they negotiate with the world on how long the distance actually is. But in the corporations, they're not just negotiating with the world, they're negotiating inside their own bureaucracy, you know? And there's not a thing that happens in a corporation that doesn't have political implications. If somebody gets a little bit too ahead, you know, it's like we can't let him or her get it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I understand why things in corporations take 20 years, because the big battle is inside the corporation. It's not between the corporation and the marketplace. And then there's all the corporations not wanting another corporation to get ahead of them. You can see how AI has just unhinged the large tech corporations. Google was supposed to be the one who introduced this, and it was Microsoft that hated Microsoft.
 
Steven Krein: Well, I don't know how true the stories are, but you read about the infighting in Google about releasing this a couple of years ago, and they were worried about it. And by the way, obviously, the leader, not the founder, by the way, nor is Microsoft. But I think the new CEO or the newest CEO of Microsoft is much more like Bill Gates than he was Steve Ballmer. But you see that you need an entrepreneurial mindset to not stifle what time-wise, maybe it would have been different two or three years ago. That world wasn't ready. But the timing of ChatGPT, which really was entrepreneur-led with Microsoft, not the company that led it, but the CEO really led that collaboration. And you could see how it pushed forth, really, a new era.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and I think the big thing is that COVID is more consequential than we've even realized so far. You want to see the world when it stops? We just saw the world when it stopped. So if we go back now, we're going to go back the same way things were. We're going to do something totally different. And I think it probably pushed AI ahead by maybe five years. First of all, they democratized it right off the bat. It wasn't just somebody in control of the technology. They made the technology available to anybody.
 
Steven Krein: A little bit Steve Jobs, you know, user interface in the late ‘70s. Oh, yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I think that the great breakthrough is when you have a user interface that just automatically finds you the A.I. tool that's going to be for you. Yeah. And I think that Apple always is very quiet. They're never first. And it seems like they're not thinking about it at all. But I think their app store already exists. All they have to do is switch the app store over to A.I. app stores. And they've already got the platform, they know how to track people.
 
Steven Krein: If you need to pick what you want to download, it does it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So a lot of people aren't good at prompting. I mean, you have to be a good prompter to use AI. You've got to give them suggestions on what it might be. Yeah.
 
Steven Krein: I think it's been interesting, you know, watching one of the ways I really have come to appreciate it is when it prompts you and you're actually having a little bit of a dialogue. And so I've even found it useful to think through something. I'm filling out a worksheet and you're like trying to find the right words and you're trying. And it's like, oh, as though you were sitting with somebody having a conversation and go, I don't know what you think. And you're kind of-
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, but you're actually having a conversation with yourself. Yes. Yes.
 
Steven Krein: Yeah. I didn't mean that. I meant this. By the way, I did learn a lot about how unclear sometimes I am to my team when I tell the A.I. and it gives you back garbage because you gave me.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Whatever stupid thing you say, it'll give you back. But the big breakthrough that I think and I think Strategic Coach is in the forefront of this, that this is what entrepreneurs do. They take resources to a higher level of productivity. But my sense is right now, entrepreneurs are themselves the number one resource on the planet. Not all entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs just as a class are envisioning and creating the future. So that's the number one resource on the planet in all areas of life, every industry, every place entrepreneurs are. So we and Strategic Coach treat entrepreneurs as the resource that Jean-Baptiste Say, they were talking about a resource outside of the entrepreneur. And I'm saying the resource is actually inside the entrepreneur. And it's the desire for personal freedom of time, money, relationship, and purpose. That is the aspiration individually and collectively that entrepreneurs have for greater personal freedom is the single most important resource on the planet.
 
Steven Krein: That is a perfect bookend to this episode, Dan, because I feel, and I say this on a regular basis in our community and to prospective community members for StartUp Health, there's never been a more exciting time to be an entrepreneur in history. And I could have said that 25 years ago, but I think it's even greater now because what has just occurred, even in the last 12 months, is going to transform the next 50 years because it's giving the tools and the capabilities to collaborate to everybody. And so a lot of the obstacles that even existed for becoming an entrepreneur 50 years ago have been removed. So very little excuses not to be leaning in and doing that. But I'm excited, Dan, to release this episode and read this book and see you at CoachCon.
 
Dan Sullivan: This book will be out in May of next year because we're releasing it at the CoachCon.
 
Steven Krein: Looking forward to seeing you there. Any new insight out of curiosity from this conversation for you?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I would say this, that there's a conversation I've had over the years of someone who keeps referring to Strategic Coach member as our CEOs. And I said, no, no, no, no. Our entrepreneurs are the owners and they hire CEOs. I said, they're not CEOs. We don't have any CEOs in our company. And he says, yeah, but you know, they're saying they aspire to be CEOs. And I said, I don't know one of them that aspires to be a CEO, but they would like to find good COOs, CEOs, CFOs. They would like to find them. As they increase their profitability, they can afford them. And I said, they have no aspirations. What they have is they want more being able to do what they love to do with their time. They love making money in the way that pleases them. They love to have great creative relationships and their entire purpose is constantly growing. I said, they're not CEOs.
 
Steven Krein: Great to see Dan as always. And I couldn't be more thrilled to take this conversation to the next level. And in particular, if you go back and I know these are going to be released over time, but the conversation that we had today, I think is a perfect overlay to the conversation about thinking tools and how to unlock your entrepreneurial creativity and the future being without a doubt, the best time to be doing what we do. So thanks, Dan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thank you. Appreciate it, Steve.