Why Gratitude Is Critical For A Growth Mindset

Gord Vickman: Hi, welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. This is a bit of a twist on the show. My name is Gord Vickman, in today for Shannon Waller. Dan, how are you?
 
Dan Sullivan: How are you, Gord? I'm thankful that you're here.
 
Gord Vickman: I'm also filled with gratitude for being here and filling in for Shannon today. Shannon will be back on the next trio of episodes. Dan, as we enter the holiday season in the United States, Canadians always find it a bit peculiar that Thanksgiving in the United States is so close to the holiday season, so it's almost like a double shot. You get to see your family once, and then a few weeks later, you see them again. One of the things that a lot of families do is they gather around the table throughout the holiday season, seasons, and they express gratitude. What are they thankful for? And gratitude comes up a lot in your conversations, being thankful for certain things, but you had an interesting twist on it in terms of why gratitude is so important for entrepreneurs. It's important for everyone, but maybe no more so than for entrepreneurs. Why is that?
Dan Sullivan: Well, it's really interesting because I find from coaching for 50 years that entrepreneurs tend to be a lot more grateful for their work lives than people who haven't created their own companies. And I find that entrepreneurs know what it's taken on their own part to grow their company, but they're also enormously grateful for the teams who allow them to kind of elevate themselves continually to focus more and more on where the most profitable parts of their business are. And their team members want them to do that for a lot of reasons, because team members who have an entrepreneur who is always focusing on what comes next, that's even more higher top line in terms of revenues but bottom line in terms of profits because it guarantees their ongoing jobs, you know what they're working on there's not going to be any disruptions, and the other thing is that entrepreneurs are enormously grateful for their check writers, the people who actually finance what they do. I get a double dose of it, as you mentioned, Gord, because I get two Thanksgivings because I live in Toronto. I've been here since 1971, so that's 52 years, and Babs has been here since 1976, and we've been together for 40 years, and we're very grateful for that. But gratitude is a very, very interesting emotion. I'll just give you one unusual thing about gratitude. It's an emotion that precludes all other emotions, especially all negative emotions. You can't be complaining and grateful at the same time. You can't be envious and grateful at the same time. You can't be anxious and grateful at the same time. So it's a universal negativity eliminator, gratitude. We do an exercise, I do, and every other team member, and Strategic Coach starts every meeting with a Positive Focus of something you're excited about. And implicit in that is that you're grateful for it, something you're grateful for. Opportunities, something needs to really happen, but it's all in the positive zone. And then after we've actually had the meeting, and all of our meetings are very project-oriented, and we make progress. We're clearer, we feel more capable, we feel more confident about that. And then at the end, everybody finishes off the meeting by saying, here's what I like best about this meeting. So it opens with positive and then finishes with positive. And that's just uniform, that standard operating procedure in Strategic Coach.
 
Gord Vickman: One of the things I've heard clients say quite a few times is they carry the Coach tools beyond their work life into their family life as well. And I've heard more than one client say on a few occasions that they start dinner, not just Thanksgiving or Christmas or the holidays, whatever you're celebrating, but they start dinner every night with their family with a Positive Focus. And they're getting their very young children into the swing of doing a Positive Focus. I start my day, I have this thing, it's sort of a twist on the Positive Focus. I just have a little sticky on my Mac desktop, and at the top it says, life is great. And then I have three bullet points. So I start every day with life is great. It's a neat start to the day, because anything that you may have dragged from the day before, you're right, it just sort of washes away. And then you start your day on a positive footing and a positive note. I don't know, I found it infinitely helpful. And I wasn't doing that before I met you. That was the inspiration for that. Is this something you've always done? We know a lot about your childhood because you've told us a lot of stories here on the podcast and throughout your work at Strategic Coach, but is this something that you had growing up where your parents tuned into this or did you figure it out later on, on your own?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think that I was consciously clear about it right from the start because I had a dream childhood. I mean, I go to conferences where there are entrepreneurial conferences. I don't go to conferences that aren't filled up with entrepreneurs. What I noticed is one of the big drags for a lot of entrepreneurs is they're trying to get away from their beginnings. You know, they're trying to escape from, you know, maybe it was a matter of scarcity. They didn't have enough money. You know, they grew up in families that were kind of fixed in terms of what the parents expected life is going to be and everything else. My experience is the entrepreneurial instinct starts before 10 years old and it's demonstrated in what they choose to do with their time very early in their lives and usually when the other kids are out socializing or they're into early romantic relationships and then they have lots of play, which I'm a great fan of, but entrepreneurs, generally, you can see the instinct towards money-making because the children who are entrepreneurial-minded know that money is the key to gaining independence. And if they can make their own money, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, they had a sense that they were a cost to their parents, and they tried to establish independent income so that their parents didn't see them as a cost. You know, all sorts of jobs. I cut lawns. I was a paper boy. I was a caddy. That all happened before I was 16 or 17 years old. So I think entrepreneurs live in a different world in terms of things you can be grateful for, you know, and they're grateful for their skills and they're grateful for the opportunities that they personally can open up for themselves. One of the things I've noticed, with very few exceptions, I've personally coached 7,000 entrepreneurs there and about. Next year is 50 years since I've been coaching. August of next year, 2024, I'm 50 years. Actually, this is the way I'm making my life. The thing about it is it was lonely. It was very lonely. People would look at it from the outside. They would say, boy, you had a really tough first eight years from 1974 to ‘82, I was bankrupt twice. I went through a divorce. But I see those experiences as uniquely valuable because they were course corrections for me. I didn't have my thinking right. I didn't have my value creation proposition right. I didn't have my business model right. And when I met Babs, Babs Smith, who's my partner in life, we've been married since 1986. But the moment I met Babs, I had that other partner that I needed and all my gratitude starts with my gratitude for my relationship with Babs. I'm going to reverse the flow of the conversation here, Gord. I want to start with your gratitude about what you're doing in work, but I'm going to move you outside into your personal life, and I'm going to ask you, is there anything, Gord, that you're grateful about this year?
 
Gord Vickman: Well, this year has been the most transformative of my entire life and that's not hyperbole and it's not even a mild exaggeration. My wife and I had a baby on May 17th at 11.09 p.m. and his name is Gabriel. Life changes and one of the things that is neat, I think my favorite thing about being a father, this is the first, and I was in my 40s when he was born so I'm a bit long in the tooth to be having children. But my energy's good and I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job. We learn on the fly. A lot of books were recommended to me about this and you gotta read this book and that book and this book and that book. I didn't read any of them. I just learned how to change diapers by changing diapers. And I learned how to feed a baby by feeding a baby. And I learned how to calm him down by just calming him down. So that would be the ultimate, you know, shining star of gratitude in my life. And it does change everything.
 
Dan Sullivan: And you had someone else involved in that too, didn't you?
 
Gord Vickman: Yes. You need two people for this, unfortunately. No, fortunately. Yeah, there you go, fortunately.
 
Dan Sullivan: You didn't do the hard part.
 
Gord Vickman: I believe there's some kind of lizard somewhere that can actually become pregnant without a male present. I don't know if I just totally made that up, but I read some science things and there's some lizard that they discovered became pregnant in a cage and there was no male anywhere near her. So we are not lizards.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, we know humans who are striving to be lizards, but they're not good lizards.
 
Gord Vickman: There are some lizard people, especially in the internet space. But that would be my ultimate symbol of gratitude, because as I mentioned, this has been the most transformative year. And my favorite thing that I'm looking forward to is just, and parents can relate to this, this is not just me talking about me, seeing the world through your child's eyes. You know, Christmas and New Year's and the holidays and Thanksgiving, you get to experience that for the first time again with this new little person who's never gone through it. We went to a farm last weekend for a little family outing, along with a few people here at Strategic Coach, and my son saw a cow for the very first time. I've seen many cows in my life, and it was no big deal. It was like, meh, another cow. How you doing, cow? But for him, it was wild. The pupils of his eyes just dilated like saucers and he just stared at this cow. And then I was thinking, well, this is the first time he's ever seen one. This is the first time he's ever seen an animal in the flesh beyond the cat that wanders around passive aggressively because our cat's mad that he's here. Unfortunately, I told both of them, you guys better start getting along because neither of you are going anywhere for a very long time. So seeing the world through your child's eyes again was a moment of gratitude for me as well. And I think that was, you know, it's interesting. It's a difficult job, but again, having that gratitude and, you know, living in a place where we have mostly peace and mostly tranquility, having some stability and security in life, and now having a wonderful, beautiful little family. I just couldn't have asked for anything more. 23 was a bit of a lucky number for me, even before my son was born in 2023. I'm not sure why. I suspect it's because when I played hockey as a child, the first sweater they ever threw to me on the Copper Cliff Flyers in Northern Ontario, Canada, was number 23. And I still have that sweater. And then, you know, many, many moons later, my son was born in 2023.
 
Dan Sullivan: I'll talk about what you're doing as a Unique Ability and individual involved in Unique Ability Teamwork in Coach. But one of the things that I want to point out, gratitude doesn't happen naturally. It has to come from inside the individual. It has to be created inside of the individual. Gratitude is a very interesting word from this standpoint. It's allied very closely with another word that's called appreciation. And appreciation is a unique word in the English language because it refers to value in the sense that the term in the stock market is called stocks appreciating. You know, when precious metals, gold is appreciating, home prices are appreciating. That's a clear statement that the value of this has increased. But my feeling that's totally generated from the inside. What seems valuable to some person has no value to other people, which indicates to me that the value isn't actually in the thing. The value is in an appreciation that takes place inside the individual, that this is really, really valuable. My feeling is that everything we're grateful is because we appreciate the value of that thing. And the other use of the word appreciation, which in one realm, it's got an economic meaning, but appreciation outside of that simply means that I really value this. I value my family. I value where I live. I value what I'm doing. And again, it neutralizes and eliminates all negativity. It does.
 
Gord Vickman: I heard something many moons ago. I wish I could attribute this to whoever said it, but I'll just borrow it for the purposes of this conversation. And it was, you don't attract what you condemn. So, if you're in the habit of condemning, and we see this a lot, and this is not to get political, but those who condemn success, those who condemn wealth especially, those who condemn anyone who has something that they don't want and then you've mentioned before on a few different podcasts that successful people have a belief in not only luck but a little bit of magic, and you've talked about signals out to the universe before now, some people might say oh this is pretty woo woo, this is what you know they're getting into some space cadet kind of stuff, but I do believe and I suspect you do too, stop me if I'm wrong, that when you do condemn certain things, you are sending powerful signals out into whatever universe you're currently living in that you don't want that thing. So if you condemn success, you're telling the world, I don't want any of that. When you condemn wealth, you're sending powerful signals out into the universe that you don't... Don't give me any wealth. Don't give me any wealth, because I just told you I don't want it. Am I on planet Mars here, or is that something that you think, am I on the right track?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. One of our main concepts in Coach is called The Gap and the Gain. There was a new workshop, I'm in Chicago today, which is our big conference center is actually Chicago because the largest percentage of our clients are from the States and they fly in from all over the States. And I'm grateful for Chicago because it's one flight from anywhere to get to Chicago. It's the only city in the United States that you can get more places with one flight to Chicago than any other place. We were just sitting around, and one of the new clients, first workshop, he said, “You've written a lot of books,” and I think at last count, it's 53. The one we're doing right now is number 53. And they said, “Of all the books, if you could only start again with one of the books, which book would it be?” And you know, there's a lot of big concepts out there that we're known for. And I had to think about it, because I hadn't been really asked the question before, and I said, “I'd start off with The Gap and the Gain.” And The Gap and the Gain indicates how you measure your progress, how you measure your forward movement. And a lot of people put themselves in a position that no matter how much they succeed, they measure it against the ideal. And they thereby eliminate all the value of what they've just achieved. And from the outside, it looks like they're very successful. But from their standpoint, it's their failure because as much as they've achieved, it counts as nothing against the ideal. Because the ideal’s like the horizon, you're never any closer to the horizon. You're never any closer to the ideal. What you really would like to have, which you've never actually told yourself, it's just a thought. I can see myself where everything is ideal. And it's all made up. You're comparing actual progress against a made-up abstraction. The other way is when you succeed, immediately turn around and say, how far have I come since I started this project? Well, I've made a lot of progress. It might not have been as much progress as I want, but it's a lot further ahead of where I was, and throws you into an instant emotion of appreciation. But not only that, not how much you succeeded, but everybody else who helped you. We work in teams. I mean, whether you admit it or not, nothing significant gets achieved just on rugged individualism and everything like that. So talk about now, let's switch back to your role as manager supreme of many podcasts in the Strategic Coach universe, our vast podcast global universe in which we have zero competition.
 
Gord Vickman: Well, grateful that I had more than a lump of clay to begin molding. I had somewhat of an idea of what I was going to be coming into and what I was going to be working with, but I was never starting from scratch. Now, I knew about Strategic Coach a little bit. I knew who you were before I joined the organization, and it would be exactly five years, October 2023.
 
Dan Sullivan: I'm going to talk to you about this 23 thing, you know.
 
Gord Vickman: Yeah, there's something there. So gratitude for having supremely talented, wickedly successful, extraordinarily compelling here as I pilot on for you entrepreneurs to work with, learn from, produce, and promote. There was a lot to work with. And I know others who, you know, rolling the boulder uphill with much less, I mentioned earlier, the lump of clay. So here I came into the organization, had plenty to work with, there was lots to mold, and there was just, there were limitless things, limitless opportunities with the entrepreneurs that you work with and host shows with. There's, you know, our show that we do, Podcast Payoffs, the show with Shannon, Inside Strategic Coach, that I'm graciously filling in for today, humbly filling in for today. The show you have with Joe Polish, Mike Koenigs, Peter Diamandis, Jeffrey Madoff, Mark Young, there's just lots there. For someone like me, who's an audio professional, Steve Krein, apologies, Steve Krein as well, there's plenty to work with. So the gratitude that I could express in terms of my role here at Strategic Coach is, we will never run out of interesting things to talk about. And we're so glad you're with us and joining us today. It's just limitless. There's plenty for me to work with as a professional. I have an abundance of riches in terms of someone who produces podcasts and wants to make them shine and share them with the world. There's lots for me to work with. If I could pinpoint and single out the single most, I wouldn't say maybe important or the single most pronounced nugget of gratitude that I have is, that we have an abundance of riches here at Strategic Coach.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and just to play a little bit of history for our podcast listeners and viewers is that we put out a job offer into the marketplace. We used a tool of ours called the Impact Filter to set up just exactly what the job was, you know, laying out that we're looking for, someone who can help us achieve this and this and this and this. So I met you after about three or four stages of this process. But when it got down to just you, I created another tool, which is called the 4x4. And I said, this is how you have to show up when you're working with me. You have to be alert, you have to be curious, you have to be responsive, and you have to be resourceful. And then we want to see things happen faster, easier, cheaper, bigger. So there's four components. One of them is performance. That's the first one. The other one is results over there. And then I have one called being a hero. And if you really want to be a hero, here's some things I'd really like to see you pull off. And then I have another one, drives me crazy. And just to put you on notice here, don't go to any of these things, you know, because it'll drive me crazy. And I don't care how good boxes one and two are, if you drive me crazy, you're gone. And so I sent that to him. And that's before, I hadn't met you before. And you came in and right away, you said, “Well, I got the clear picture of what you're looking for. Here's what I'm going to produce in the first six months. I'll do this, I'll do this, I'll do this, I'll do this." And then we were conversing, and about halfway through our first meeting with another person, Eleonora was with us, and I said, “In case you're wondering, Gord, the answer is yes.” And he said, “Yes, what are you doing?” I said, “Well, I thought sometime during this hour, you're wondering, gee, I wonder if I get to be the podcast manager. And I just wanted to let you know that the answer is yes, you will be the podcast manager.” And I said, “I don't think we have to talk anymore.” And then you left the room.
 
Gord Vickman: And a few people around the table just sat there in stunned silence. So yeah, gratitude for that document. And entrepreneurs in Strategic Coach will be familiar with the 4x4. Fantastic document when you're looking for team members or looking for collaborations, any kind of thing, because it just lays everything out. That's a document that I'm grateful for. And I'm sure a lot of team members are grateful to receive that because the whole point of it is there's no ambiguity in terms of sitting around wondering, gee, I wonder if I'm really hitting what I need to hit here and doing what I need to do, and I'm wondering if I'm on top of things. That 4x4 document that Coach members will be familiar with has stood the test of time.
 
Dan Sullivan: I tried to be a person that what you see is what you get. There is no secret Dan. There is no hidden Dan. Dan has no secret agendas. I said, I'm putting on the table everything I want to achieve, and I realized it's all teamwork, and to be the podcast manager, I can't tell you anything about your job. I can tell you what the results are that I want from your skills, but I have no idea. If I knew how to do it, we wouldn't be having this conversation, you know. And what came into play here was your 20 years in the broadcast medium, and my sense is that podcasting, along with social media and a lot of other media, are replacing what we've thought of broadcast media, where you're talking at the audience. And I want to have a relationship with the audience, and you're the one who really clarified that in my mind. What we're selling on our podcast, we're not selling Strategic Coach. We're not selling books. We're not selling anything that people can purchase. We're selling a relationship that you may like inviting me and all of our podcast series and our team. You might like to set aside time every day, wherever you are in the world, just to tune in on a conversation. Yeah, and I'm grateful for that. But just specifically, Gord, I'm going to ask you another question, just in terms of a year ago to now, what are some things that you're really grateful for that have been specific jumps? You know, could be technological, could be the way we're thinking about it, could be our reach numbers and everything else. So just in relationship to the last year, what pops out for you?
 
Gord Vickman: Grateful for AI. And I don't mean robots that are coming to get us. I mean, AI, as I've experienced it thus far, has allowed us to remove the mundane and speed up, expedite, and eliminate the things about the production process that were not particularly fun, allowing us space, time, and mental clarity to work on and experiment with things that were not possible before due to time constraints. That's what I'm most grateful for in terms of those who create those tools as an audio professional and someone who produced podcasts, me and everyone else on our team having been able to begin to experiment with those AI tools. That's what I'm most grateful for in terms of my role and the output that we're producing here.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Would you say you're more excited now than you were when you first started?
 
Gord Vickman: Absolutely. Because none of this was... Existed. None of this existed.
 
Dan Sullivan: None of this existed. We had a dark room and I just did a podcast and that's over and that goes in the dark room. Where it goes from there, only a few. I have no idea what happens to it and everything, you know. I'll pay you the compliment that I pay to almost everybody on my team. And I said, I just want you to know, you know, when I'm not with you, I'm not thinking about you. I don't have the least bit of concern about what you're doing, how you're doing it, what you're achieving. So I'll pay you that compliment. Gord, when I'm not actually working with you, I don't give you any thought.
 
Gord Vickman: You know, some people may consider that an insult, but Dan, that is high praise. And I truly appreciate our teamwork. Dan, any final thoughts here? Because for those listening in the United States, it is the holiday season. As I mentioned off the top, Canadians think it's mighty goofy to have Thanksgiving and Christmas so close together. Canadian Thanksgiving is in October. But in the United States, you have Thanksgiving, just a few weeks later, you have Christmas. So we are into the holiday season here for our listeners in the United States. Dan, any thoughts on gratitude, anything that you took?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, interesting, when I got to Canada, which was 52 years ago, and I will say I'm very, very grateful for Toronto because Canada, for me, means Toronto, and Toronto's just a really cool city. It's not like a big, what's called the GTA, the Greater Toronto Area, it's tripled in size since I came in 1971. And what I appreciate, it's amazing to be for half a century in a city that just always grows. It's very, very interesting because it's a global city in terms of its connections. It's a prime immigration from other places, favorite to a lot of people from other places who want to come to Toronto, but Toronto more than Canada. And the reason is the government is, relatively speaking, it's great government, you know, just comparing against other places in the world. The economy is sound. It doesn't have the dazzle of a lot of the U.S. cities. And the only thing I find really amusing is that there's certain sections of the Toronto media that always use Toronto, world-class city, and I have to laugh at it because I said, you know, I've been in New York a lot, I've been to London a lot, I've been to Tokyo, I've been to other cities, and these are really world-class cities. And you know that because they don't call themselves a world-class city. If you are a world-class city, you do not call yourself a world-class city. Other people call you a world-class city. Toronto's a great city as far as I'm considered, but for you know, the opportunity just to create a business here, the kind of team members you can have in this city. But as long as Toronto keeps calling itself, media people who call it a world-class city, it won't be a world-class city, I guess, until after their funerals. But our American clients really love to come to Toronto and it's a real city downtown, you know, it's not spread out. And I really love it here. And I've lived two thirds of my life. I'm an American to the bone, but I call Canada America's biggest gated community. You have to check with the guard and certain things you can't bring into the country, and let them know when you plan to leave. But it's been wonderful living here and allowed us to branch out to the United States, to the United Kingdom, which I love. I love London. I love where we go in the United States. The big thing I'll say about this is, all the people who say America is declining, America is falling apart, Canada is declining, Canada is falling apart, Great Britain is falling, I would say it doesn't have anything to do with what you're talking about. It has to do that you don't have the ability to appreciate and you don't have the ability to be grateful.
 
Gord Vickman: Dan, I'm appreciative and grateful for our time together and it's always a blast. And any final thoughts?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, I'm grateful Shannon was called away on an emergency to fill in somewhere else that I get to do inside Strategic Coach with Gordon. And he's got a great voice. I mean, God, you know, I mean, this is the voice at Strategic Coach. So anyway, it's been a pleasure.
 
Gord Vickman: Thanks, Dan.