Skip to main content
Year

Stop Planning Your Retirement, with Shane Stirling

Shane Stirling runs multiple businesses in a variety of industries, and he’s gained a tremendous amount of wisdom in his more than eight years as a participant in The Strategic Coach® Program. In this episode, he shares some of the most important lessons he’s learned from Coach.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

  • What led Shane to significantly increase his predicted lifespan.
  • How entrepreneurs in the Program learn to manage their time more effectively.
  • Why it’s important for entrepreneurs to disconnect from their businesses for periods of time.
  • Why Shane changed his thinking about retirement.
  • Why Shane got “143” tattooed on his hand.

Show Notes:

Why they’re there: A lot of people who come into The Strategic Coach Program are there because of overwhelm, overwork, and lack of structure.

True time off: Most entrepreneurs aren’t taking true time off from work.

What they like: Entrepreneurs can work strictly in the activities that they like doing.

Find someone else: If there’s an activity you don’t want to do, find someone who does like doing it.

Become habit: If you consciously make a choice every day, it will become a habit.

Start something else: Just because you sell a business doesn’t mean you won’t then start something else.

Resources:

The Entrepreneurial Time System: https://resources.strategiccoach.com/time-management/entrepreneur-time-management-guide

Unique Ability: http://uniqueability.com/

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan: https://resources.strategiccoach.com/quarterly-books/my-plan-for-living-to-156

Abundance 360: https://www.abundance360.com/

Episode Transcript:
 
Dan Sullivan: Hi, this is Dan Sullivan. I'd like to welcome you to the Multiplier Mindset podcast. 
 
Hi, this is Dan Sullivan and I want to talk to you about an entrepreneur who, because of his first hour in The Strategic Coach Program, decided not to die in his 80s but die at 143. So the very first hour in The Strategic Coach Program, I asked the question, very first question, they've just settled down, it's 9:00 in the morning, it's their very first Strategic Coach workshop. And I say, "Can we get clear about something right away?" I said, "Just write down." I have a form, and I say, "In this box right here, just write down the age at which you plan to die."
 
And everybody writes down their age, and then I take them through about a 20-minute thinking process. And on average, at the very least, they decide that whatever number they wrote down, they're going to actually add 25 years to it. And they're going to extend their life by another 25 years. That's the first thing. And the other thing they say, "Since I'm extending my life for another 25 years, I'm not going to retire. I'm going to take the business and be an entrepreneur — constantly growing, constantly creating new opportunity, constantly creating new capabilities — until the day I die." 
 
But I've got an example here of Shane Stirling. And when he did the exercise, his very first hour. Shane is from Fort St. John, British Columbia. This is God's country, for those of you who are not familiar with Canada. In the very west coast of Canada, British Columbia is the furthermost western province. And when he did this first hour, he said, "I'm expecting to die, my grandfather died, my father died when he was in his 80s. And they had heart problems, they had blood pressure problems. And so you know, I'll probably, you know, make as much money as I possibly can, retire long before my 80s, and then, you know, just do what everybody else does. Just do it."