Discover The Most Essential Tools Used By Successful Entrepreneurs

Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here with Dan Sullivan on Inside Strategic Coach. Dan, we just had a very fun, insightful conversation about binary thinking and approaches. And one of the things that you have done is put this into our thinking tools. And we just had also a lot of very enjoyable time recording our latest book about how Strategic Coach is really a thinking tool culture. So I wanna get into how important it is to have thinking tools and the fact that if there's no tension, there's no transformation. And that's really what the thinking tools help to bring out. So that's a lot to unpack. So let's get started with our thinking about your thinking tools, which are anything but forms. These are tools to help you think about your thinking. So why are thinking tools so important?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, why are tools important? Everything that you build in life requires tools. Either you're using the tools or someone else is using the tools. Language is a tool. One of the reasons to get really, really good at language is because it gives you the tools for thinking, it gives you the tools for communication, that if you don't have the tools, you're deficient. You can't really operate in the world. And I was struck by this. I saw a TikTok video that really went viral about three weeks ago. And it was a woman. She was in her early 20s and she had just graduated from university. And she got a marketing job in New York City, in Manhattan. But she wasn't making enough money, that she had to live in New Jersey, and the commute could be anywhere from two hours a day to three hours a day, depending on crowds and traffic and maintenance and everything else. And she was saying, I can't believe that this is what the work world is. She says, they make you work a full day. I mean, you have to work a full day. Why do you have to work eight hours a day? And she says, and why can't I have a job in New Jersey? My best job is in New York, and I have to live there. What was interesting about, I mean, the logic and the attitude were interesting in itself.

 
And I actually sent the TikTok to the three individuals in our Chicago office, our UK office, and Toronto. And I said, I have a suspicion that this is not the type of person that we would want to hire into Strategic Coach. But what was really interesting about it was the poverty of her language. She was obviously expressing very deep frustrations and very, very deep thinking, you know, deep emotion, not deep thinking at all, but very deep emotion. She said, and I'm not the only one that feels this way. I mean, I'm speaking for my whole, we just don't understand this 40 hour a week. We just don't understand having to travel to work. But you have to realize she's just emerged from an educational system that probably started at four years old in nursery school and kindergarten to finishing college. So she started at four and she's 22, seemed to be, that'd be right. So she's been 18 years where you got up in the morning and you traveled in 15 minutes and you got to school and you did this and you did this and you got out. And suddenly, you're confronted with a totally different lifestyle.
 
I totally get what happened. And I remember when I got my first actual job, where I had to show up and work for three hours, and this was after school, and I was 11 years old. And I had all the emotions at 11 that she's having at 22, but that was 68 years ago. I've kept those thoughts to myself for 68 years, but she's got 4 million people who know about her right now. She's like, well, it's not the job. I mean, I'm not worried about the job, but it's just the sheer amount of hours that I have to work and everything. I said, I wonder if your employer is going to see this TikTok, you know? But what I realized was she didn't have the language to actually express in understandable terms that someone else could deal with her. She was completely deficient in language. She just got 18 years of education and she hadn't picked up the language enough that she could very calmly say, you know, I'm going through a big adjustment right now.
 
She said, I have to tell you that the educational system doesn't really prepare students for what the real world is. There's just a lot of change I'm going to have to go through to adjust this. And the only way I can think about it is either find a place really close to home in New Jersey that would need my skills, or I'm just going to have to make a lot more money so I can live close to my job in New York. But she's trapped by her emotions because she doesn't have the language to think about things, and she doesn't have the language to communicate in such a way that someone else could say, well, what about this and what about this? You have to respond to her emotions.
 
And then there was the usual TikTok thing that people said, wake up, grow up, you know, is this the disaster that our educational system is producing? And everything else. And other people said, I'm totally with her. I'm feeling the same way. But no rational thought in any of the responses. So, you know, and I was thinking of how important language is. This goes back to that language is a tool and the more you understand how the language works, the grammar, how to communicate in such a way that people get the point of what you're talking about, and you have a vocabulary that supports you with that. And I notice people more and more, they don't have the language to actually express their emotional responses. And it comes across in a very unsatisfactory way.
 
Shannon Waller: It's really interesting that you say that, Dan, because probably this is the thing that I most appreciate about growing up and getting older is finally having the damn words. Like I remember like being younger, feeling things strongly as younger people do. My own children is included, but not having the words. I say the same thing, "Words are tools," all the time. And I often will give people sentences. I'm like, try this, say that. When your entrepreneur comes in with a new idea, say, that's interesting. Because it gives them an emotional response, but commits you to nothing. Like that expression is a tool to help facilitate teamwork, communication, idea progression, all the things. I can so painfully remember not having the language and the tools. I mean, I'm smart enough. I had a great family with very articulate parents, but it does take a while for some of us.
 
Dan Sullivan: It has to be embedded in your own experience of using the language and experimenting with the language. Okay, so I'm just establishing that as language is a tool that everybody has, but there's vast differences between people who have real skill with the tool. Same thing would be mathematics, understanding how math works. And there's this movement, you know, that you don't have to believe that two and two equals four. It could equal five. I mean, if you have a feeling that it should equal five, then your feelings should be respected. I said, yeah, but you aren't going to get anywhere with that belief, you know, I mean. I think you're going to get in serious trouble really, really quickly of getting the math wrong.
 
So our whole human existence consists of tools of one kind, tools of knowledge, tools of skill, tools that create cooperation, tools that create creativity. And language and math are two of them, and then there's a lot of others. But what I came across when I became an entrepreneur is that a lot of the language that was used to describe entrepreneurial life was actually bureaucratic business life. OK, you know, of how you plan meetings, how you put projects together. And it was all from business schools that were based on preparing people for corporate or large organization life. But it didn't really relate to how entrepreneurs, first of all, get the idea to be an entrepreneur and the motivation for why they become an entrepreneur and what really sustains them and what keeps them permanently as being just a one-person company.
 
I said, you know, there's a lot of small businesses and there's a reason why they're small. Because they've never really comprehended or understood what entrepreneurship really was. They had a desire or a dislike of working for someone else, but they wanted to escape from something else. They actually didn't have any clear idea to actually go towards and what they achieve that would really make the whole exercise of being an entrepreneur worthwhile. And I went through all this difficulty. I mean, I went bankrupt twice. I went through a divorce. The first 10 years were really difficult. I remember I had a bank loan, and I had to go in and explain to the banker why I had to be given an extension or I just couldn't pay it. And I said, I'm going through bankruptcy and I'm going to have to name you as well. And they said, we got you covered. I mean, we don't have you covered that we'll extend your loan. We'll cover it- We're used to people going bankrupt. And, you know, we've got this all blueprinted in, you know, your bankruptcy is not going to have any impact on our bank. More or less, that's what the person said. And he says, but can I ask you a question? Why are you doing this? You know, you have skills, you're a writer, you have skills, you know, you've worked at an ad agency, you understand. He says, why are you doing all this foolishness? He used the word foolishness. When are you going to learn that this isn't for you?
 
And I says, it is for me, I'm just not smart enough. I said, I'm just not smart enough, and I have to get smarter. But there's no possibility of me doing anything else except doing this for the rest of my life. So I really appreciate it. He said, well, good luck. He says, you've got more guts than I do, which was the truest statement that he actually communicated. He didn't have the guts to do that. And, you know, he was very cordial, but it wasn't a conversation he necessarily wanted to have. And I said, this will never happen again. I'll never have a conversation like this in my life. And the reason I went bankrupt was because of receivables. Okay. I had done the work. I just didn't get paid for... I was too close to the line, expecting to get paid within 30 days. And there was a time period where people were extending out their payment 60 days, 90 days. So I was just too close to the line. I didn't have any buffer. I didn't have any surplus. And I said, I'll never again have a receivable. And people said, well, you can't operate in that world. I said, I'm going to find all the customers that pay up front. Everything's up front. Okay. For a year, for, you know, a year is a nice time. And we built our own business. Me in my one-on-one capacity as a single coach to now we've got a three-country company. We never have receivables.
 
Yeah, so that's a thinking tool. Always have the money up front is a thinking tool. But I've got more clients say, you can't do this in my business. And they find a way of doing it in their business. And they said, what a relief, no receivables. You've always got half of next year's money in the bank. Your customers are the bank. So I structure that and I say, what would that mean in your business if you didn't have receivables? You got all the money up front? And a lot of people said, you just can't do it. I say, you can't do it the way you're thinking about the business right now. You can't do it the way you were thinking about your customers right now. But what would have to be true if your customers were delighted to pay all the money up front? And what kind of customers are there? So that's a thinking tool. And you can structure this as a series of thoughts on a sheet of paper. You know, what about this? And what about this? And what about this? All those people have said, this is amazing.
 
Now, we've got roughly 250 of these thinking tools after we're in our 35th year now, and every quarter we create three or four more. You know, probably this year it'll be somewhere between 15 and 20 new thinking tools. And it's just new things that are happening to entrepreneurs where there isn't a structure for thinking about it.
 
Shannon Waller: That's brilliant, Dan. And yeah, where there isn't a structure for thinking about it. So you've added new entrepreneurial language. And I want to talk as you just gave a perfect demonstration of it. That's why I was smiling is that so much of it is based around a question. So questions are tools as well to instigate that thinking process.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And it's always a question about the future. It's not true now. You can't do this, but a year from now, could you do that? Okay. And they said, well, I could do 50 percent of it. Okay, let's go for 50 percent. So that's four quarters. So the first quarter, what percentage you get? And they said, well, I could have five successful experiences in the next- That's good. Let's go for the five. Now, what do you have to do today, tomorrow, to get the five? And they said, well, I'd have to look at who I'm working with now. So I said, create two columns: those who'll play, those who won't play. Okay, so who are the ones that play? Now, go talk to them. Now, ask yourself, can I just give them what I've always been giving them? But in order to persuade them to pay me differently, is there something new and better and different that I have to create? So you have to change your offering in the marketplace. But it's all in relationship to the future. You can never solve any problem in the present. You always have to have a future bigger and better to bounce it off. Again, it's binary. You have to have a binary situation. You say, well, I can't do it now, but if I have two years to do it, I bet in two years I could pull it off. I said, good. Now we got a structure.
 
Shannon Waller: So, Dan, there's a future element to it.
 
Dan Sullivan: There's always a future.
 
Shannon Waller: So that's true. There's always a future. And that could be Experience Transformer, Impact Filter, Strategy Circle. All of our tools do that. But there's one other element of so much of how you kick off our thinking tools, and that is relating it to people's experience in their past. So I think one of your, and I'm probably going to mangle this, but you said you don't introduce a new idea to someone until they can first reflect on their own experience with that. I'm sure you can say that more articulately than I just did, but people are grounded in their own experience with this new idea.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So one of my binaries is future/past. So what I do, I'll say, if I want someone to be more capable and confident about the future, I first of all, have to make them feel more confident and capable about their past. So I'll say, what have you already done in the past that would be the kind of change or transformation, that kind of improvement, that you would have to do in the future? And immediately their brain goes back and they said, well, I did this when I was in high school, I did this. I remember once there was a big problem and I figured out how to do this. And you're embedding them in what is true already that they've already proved to themselves. And you say, now, what can you learn from that experience that can be immediately applied to the future? And they said, well, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. I realize I have to put together a really good plan that some people who can really help me will understand and be excited. I said, that's good. You did that already. Yeah, I've done that already.
 
I said, OK, let's do the same thing for the future. And I said, I bet you already know 50 percent of how you're going to go from here to the future. And once they get that, even if it's 10 percent, but they think they're starting from zero. You're never starting from zero. And that's a thinking tool. But I just listen to them. Every quarter, I talk with virtual workshops and in-person workshops. I'm communicating with three or four hundred people. And they're bringing up questions and they're bringing answers. And I sit there and I say, hmm, that's an area of unclarity for everybody. So let's create a structure for this. I create a new tool. I test it out. Works, doesn't work. It works, but it needs to be improved. And I got myself, and then I test it and test it. And then the other coaches, we have 16 other coaches, and they test it. And after a while we say, this is really good. Let's copyright this. Let's give it a good name. Let's trademark it. And now let's create a patent out of it.
 
Shannon Waller: Right. Yep. All the thinking tools are well protected. They're valuable.
 
Dan Sullivan: They have real value. They're actually an asset. They're like owning property. They're like owning machinery. In today's world, you know, the way the world has gone digital, the way the internet is now the main vehicle for the global economy, ideas have tremendous value. Processes have tremendous value.
 
Shannon Waller: Yes, methods have enormous value. Totally agree. And it's interesting, Dan, because the thinking tools really help to pull those out of yourself. So that's why I love our thinking tools. I even pulled out one on the plane flying home from Orlando. It was our Strategic Projects list in our Weekly Planner, and I felt so much better after, tried written stuff down. I mean, I have a regular meeting, but it's digital. And then it was actually physically writing it out that made all the difference. And I've been galvanized ever since. It was so fun to do that. I want to really stress the point is the tension that creates the transformation. Between the binary, between best and worst, or past and future, it's that tension that creates the transformation in our thinking tools, to have a lot of alliteration there. But I think that is such a critical point. And without it, our tools are always effective to my way of thinking, partly because they're tested as much as you said. But those are the tools that are actually really transformational.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, but these are the only thinking tools in the world- Ben Hardy, who is our author on our three best-selling books, he's the actual writer, and he said, you know, you have created the only idea structure that's totally created and based on the experience of outlier people. Most psychological studies in the world are on graduate students who haven't gone into the marketplace yet. These are people who have never left school and they're basing the psychology of the entire human race on a bunch of people, and they're mostly American, they're mostly English speaking, they mostly, you know, came up through the same path from kindergarten right through graduate school.
 
Shannon Waller: And they have to fill out the surveys in order to get their credits.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, but they get paid. We're testing on people who pay us. So I think we're getting a truer read on what's actually valuable. But the other thing is that these people are immediately using the tests, are using our Strategic Coach tools to improve every aspect of freedom in their life. You know, their Freedom of Time, their Freedom of Money, their Freedom of Relationship, and their Freedom of Purpose. And he said there's no other tools that really, really test- These are real risk takers. You're testing strictly on people who just totally bet on themselves. This is the thinking that people need to do who totally bet on themselves. And I think that makes a huge difference.
 
And we can see it with our patents we've submitted, 60 patents so far over the past year. And usually it's a year before you get a patent, and we'll probably get 15 back. And I think the reason is because the clerks at the Patent Bureau are picking up. This is really real. They can actually understand the process. And they said, boy, this works for me. This works for me. Anyway, so I think that's the reason. I think that's a real test if a Patent Bureau clerk thinks that your thinking tools are really good. Because it immediately has a dollar value. The moment you get the patent, it goes right on the assets of the company. But our whole program for what we do front stage for our clients, and our whole backstage, how we do what we do for our clients, is strictly based on these entrepreneurial thinking tools.
 
Shannon Waller: And Dan, let's just talk for a moment before we wrap up about the fact that, as you said, it's not only for our clients. And I am going to recommend that people check out The Impact Filter, because that is something that's available to everyone inside or outside the Program, just to get your feet wet. But it's also how we run our company. So let's talk about that for a moment, because I'm excited about our new book coming out called Everyone And Everything Grows, really, which is all about our thinking tool culture.
 
Dan Sullivan: How we put the company together, you know, we have a new book, it's available in ebook, it's available in actual book. Even if you buy the actual book, it's got an audible track, it's got a video track, and it's got wonderful cartoons, and it's got a scorecard where you can actually grade yourself on your mindsets related to this particular tool. And, you know, very short book, you can read it in an hour, you can listen to it in about two hours because there's a lot of extra material in the audio because I'm not reading the text, I'm being interviewed on the text. You can read the text and then listen to the interview, and you get double or triple the value. Or you can watch a half-hour to 45-minute video where I'm interviewed. And I always say different things because I've already written it. I'm not going to duplicate what I wrote. I'm going to add some extra value to it. I'm constitutionally incapable of sitting there for two hours and reading something. And I said, I already wrote this. Why am I reading it?
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah, not going to happen. What's really fun about the book is it really pulls back the curtain on things like "no defense budget" and Free, Focus, and Buffer Days for the team and Positive Focus-
 
Dan Sullivan: Unique Ability Teamwork for everything.
 
Shannon Waller: Unique Ability Teamwork for everything and Positive Focus protection from negativity. It just really does lay out how our tools work backstage as well as front stage. So, and one of the things we talk about is congruency and how the way that we work with our clients is exactly the same as how we work with our team, which I think is a very powerful idea.
 
Awesome. Well, Dan, I'm walking away with some new insight into our tools, which is kind of fun because we've been talking about this since 1991. So I really appreciate the thinking-about-your-thinking tools and the fact that it's the tension that creates the transformation. And from our previous podcast, all about kind of the binary nature of things, that's really what creates the tension. So I'm leaving with some new ideas and clarity about how to always be thinking about my thinking in more powerful, concrete, productive, and profitable ways. So, thank you.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thank you, Shannon.