For 35 years now, The Strategic Coach® Program has been helping entrepreneurs to achieve business success and business growth while living happy lives. But Dan Sullivan didn’t set out to create a program for entrepreneurs. He set out to create a thinking program, and entrepreneurs are the ones who took to it the most. In this episode, Dan talks with fellow business coach Shannon Waller about the genesis of Strategic Coach® and why it works so well for entrepreneurs.

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

• The learning experience created by others that’s had the most influence on Dan’s thinking today.
• The ways of thinking on which Dan based The Strategic Coach Program.
• How constantly growing in capability and confidence protects you from worrying about the future.
• What lets Dan know he’s created a timeless thinking tool.
• Where all Strategic Coach thinking tools come from.

Show Notes:

The entrepreneurial game will continue for as long as you’re up to it.

Each person can take the actual experiences of their daily life and develop them into knowledge.

The challenges you face each day are sufficient to create a lifetime learning program.

It's easier to get things created and produced these days than it was in the old days.

Entrepreneurs have to be learning on a daily basis, while many non-entrepreneurs don’t have to do much learning after they get the job.

Some non-entrepreneurs view having to learn new things as a chore, while entrepreneurs see it as an advantage.

The bigger the problem and the faster the solution, the bigger the check for the entrepreneur.

Strategic Coach clients are never told what they should learn from using a Coach thinking tool.

It’s dangerous for an entrepreneur to get bored.

Entrepreneurs get punished most heavily for not changing their minds.

Entrepreneurs can make greater progress from thinking than people in most other lines of work.

As a group, Strategic Coach clients are uniquely confident and feel a unique sense of capability and confidence about the future.

Strategic Coach clients make more money and take more free time than a comparable group of entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs are the only people whose success depends upon being transformative.

Strategic Coach clients have a shared language thanks to the Program’s thinking tools.

The cause of most entrepreneurial problems is loneliness.

Resources:

The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs [Article]

Unique Ability®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Entrepreneurial Time System®—The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management

The Experience Transformer®—Transforming Experiences Into Multipliers [Article]

The Impact Filter™

Do you give yourself time to think? Many people don’t. And for entrepreneurs, the stakes are higher because they’re in the marketplace independently. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller talk about why thinking time is so important for business success and how entrepreneurs can get the highest quality thinking time through The Strategic Coach® Program.

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

· Why deep thinking is scary.

· The question that The Strategic Coach Program was based on from the start.

· Why it’s easier to get entrepreneurs thinking about their thinking than most people.

· Why thinking about your thinking is something that has to be consciously learned.

Show Notes:

Most people only do the kind of thinking done in Strategic Coach® in extreme emergency.

Most people engage in three levels of thinking: thinking about things, thinking about other people, and thinking about other people’s thoughts. But there is a fourth level: thinking about your thinking.

Higher education is almost entirely based on people who spent their whole lives thinking about somebody else's thoughts.

In any sale, the first thing that people buy is a relationship.

There’s only one expert on what progress is going to make a client happy, and that's the client.

Some people don’t think about their thinking because they’re afraid of their thinking.

For most people, it’s an unnatural act to think about their thinking.

The Strategic Coach Program is about the clients, not the coaches.

Instead of thinking about their thinking, most people just engage with whatever the world throws at them during the day, and then watch TV in the evening.

Thinking about your thinking means taking agency over what actually goes on in your mind.

The more you think about your thinking, the more normal it becomes.

The problem is never the problem; the problem is not knowing how to think about the problem.

Tightly scheduled entrepreneurs cannot transform themselves.

Resources:

Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan

The Dan Sullivan Question by Dan Sullivan

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Your Life As A Strategy Circle by Dan Sullivan

The Impact Filter™

Article: The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Podcasting is the future of content. Are you ready to master it? Join Dan Sullivan, Shannon Waller, and industry veteran Paul Colligan as they dive into the business of podcasting, from where it was to where it’s going. With over 20 years of trailblazing experience, Paul shares secrets to podcasting success and the mindsets that separate the amateurs from the pros. Learn how to create a hit show and leverage this booming medium to skyrocket your business influence and growth.

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

• What it was like in the early days of podcasting.
• The factors that led to podcasting becoming what it is today.
• What entrepreneurs love about podcasting.
• Dan and Shannon’s early experiences with podcasting.
• How podcasts let you find people who share your mindset and values.
• The type of people who are plugged into podcasting.
• Predictions on the future of podcasts.

Show Notes:

It takes less than five minutes to submit your podcast to Audible for free. And you’re in the directory less than 10 minutes later.

It's always mindset that stops people from trying something new.

The value of the content needs to be understood as greater than its packaging.

The best thing about podcasting is the speed of creation.

It’s easy to tell when a podcaster is following a script.

In a good podcast, you don't know what the second question will be until you've asked the first question.

If you try to control the experience of a podcast, you lose the authenticity of the end product.

Listeners feel like they have a personal relationship with podcasters.

Podcasting has had a profound impact on how politicians speak.

People now use the podcast standard for judging all public speaking.

Podcasts are only popular in countries where they have cell phones.

The only problem with new media is when you treat it like old media.

Resources:

The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Podcast: Podcast Payoffs with Dan Sullivan and Gord Vickman

Podcast: 10xTalk with Dan Sullivan and Joe Polish

Podcast: Shannon Waller’s Team Success

The Team Success Handbook by Shannon Waller

AI As Your Teammate by Evan Ryan

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

descript.com

Article: “Scary Times” Success Manual: How To Be A Leader When Times Get Tough

Article: Your Business Is A Theater Production: Your Back Stage Shouldn’t Show On The Front Stage

The Positive Focus®

Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good by Sarah Lacy

Employment opportunities for people with blue collar skills are going to keep growing. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller talk to Kenny Chapman, CEO of The Blue Collar Success Group, about his entrepreneurial path and how skilled blue-collar work is going to be much more crucial, popular, and needed going forward.

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

• How Kenny’s experience in the military led him to becoming an entrepreneur.
• What The Blue Collar Success Group helps with.
• How Kenny “leveled up” his self-esteem.
• The biggest benefits he gets from being in The Strategic Coach® Program.
• How Kenny used his growth mindset to expand his business and then branch out.

Show Notes:

In the 1940s, being a plumber was a valued career.

Blue-trade industry covers hundreds of different specialized skills.

It takes good leadership to have a good company.

If you don't operate an effective, good model, you're not going to have what you need in order to pay people top of market and above.

Mindset drives everything, and clarity drives direction.

Identity limits us a lot.

You're much more valuable the more you learn and the more you see.

When we hear the word “education,” we've automatically trained our brains to think “higher education.”

Like colleges, skilled trades are not created equal.

Customers complain about price no matter how much it is. So you might as well get customer complaints at a profitable number.

Resources:

The Blue Collar Success Group

Blue Collar Success Laws by Kenny Chapman

The Six Dimensions of C.H.A.N.G.E. by Kenny Chapman

Visual Thinking by Temple Grandin

Kolbe

CliftonStrengths®

GravyStack

The 4 C’s Formula by Dan Sullivan

The Impact Filter™

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Unique Ability®

Every great entrepreneur wants (and deserves) to have a dependable team around them so they can be freed up to develop new ideas and focus on growing their business. But how do you get one? After all, the first question most entrepreneurs ask when they join The StrategicⓇ Program is, “Where do you find such great team members?” In this episode of Inside Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller finally answer this question in-depth. From identifying and nurturing your team’s areas of Unique AbilityⓇ and creating a positive and collaborative work culture to investing in team members’ growth, Dan and Shannon share everything that makes Strategic CoachⓇ a magnet for skilled and passionate talent—and how your business can become one too.

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

• The number one tool necessary for building and maintaining a great team.
• How to determine if an activity is right for an individual.
• Why Strategic Coach team members don’t really need to be managed, monitored, or motivated.
• How Strategic Coach creates an incredible sense of safety for its team members.
• The two things that team members are looking for.
• Why you should think of hiring someone as an investment, not a cost.

Show Notes:

At Strategic Coach, you’re always either winning or learning.

There are a lot of Coach tools that support having a great team.

Everybody's on their own unique growth path in terms of who they are and the kind of work they’re most likely to enjoy and excel at.

Strategic Coach team members can continually focus their time at work on doing what they’re excited about.

The moment someone is hired, Coach invests in learning about who that person is and how they can grow their skills.

At Strategic Coach, if something doesn’t work, the system gets blamed, not the individual.

The four core values of Strategic Coach (PAGE) are: positive and collaborative teamwork; being alert, curious, responsive, and resourceful; getting results; and providing an excellent first-class experience.

Strategic Coach has uniformly very helpful and very positive team members.

Some Coach clients have been with the company for 15, 20, 25 years, and so have some team members.

The educational system generally disparages successful business people.

Almost all Coach team members are directly in contact on a person-to-person level with the company’s clients.

A team member can’t be at their best if they don’t feel safe.

If you want great team members, you have to be a great entrepreneur. And that also includes being a great person.

Great team members who want a bigger future aren't interested in being with someone who doesn't have any future.

If you're going to be able to attract and retain the best people out there, you can’t have an entitled attitude.

Resources:

Unique AbilityⓇ

Article: Your Business Is a Theater Production: Your Back Stage Shouldn’t Show On The Front Stage

The Team Success Handbook by Shannon Waller

Everyone And Everything Grows by Dan Sullivan

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

When things need to get done, it doesn’t mean that you, as the entrepreneur, need to do them yourself. In fact, for the best kinds of business growth and business success, you need to do as little as possible. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller share the three rules for having a friction-free future.

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

• The way to achieve more by actually doing less.
• Why you need to be clear about what you want to be doing.
• How to determine the minimum you need to do for a goal to be achieved.
• Why things getting done without your doing them yourself means you’re growing.

Show Notes:

Strategic Coach has a lot of tools for creating teamwork where other people do work that you don't like doing.

For every task, there’s someone who’s great at it, loves doing it, and finds it energizing to do.

There are times in your past where you’ve done a lot, but someone else would have done it if you’d done nothing.

Friction is where you’re moving, but you’re being resisted by forces.

When a new thing has to be done, ask yourself three questions: Is there any way this can be achieved by me doing nothing? What’s the minimum I have to do for this to be achieved? Is there anyone else who can do my minimum?

The more you stick to the three rules, the more gets achieved by things you instigate.

Rather than having pride about the things that get done, some entrepreneurs have pride about doing the things that get things done.

An entrepreneur is only required for the activities they love doing.

Resources:

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Impact Filter™

Unique Ability®

Article: Your Productivity At Its Best With This Guaranteed Hack

Everything that humans create is done with tools. But the skill level people have for using tools varies drastically. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller discuss why it’s essential to be good at using the tool of language for both thinking and communicating, and share the thinking tools that all entrepreneurs can use for both business success and business growth.

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

• Why Dan vowed years ago to never again operate his business with receivables.
• Why you’re never starting from zero.
• How entrepreneurs can learn what to do in the future by looking at their past.
• How Strategic Coach® thinking tools improve clients’ lives.
• Dan’s process for developing and introducing new Strategic Coach thinking tools.

Show Notes:

One of the reasons to get really good at language is because it gives you the tools for thinking and communicating.

If you don’t have the language to think about things, you’re trapped by your emotions.

If your language skills aren’t good enough, people can only respond to your emotions.

A lot of small businesses stay small because they never really comprehended what entrepreneurship really was.

Some things that are impossible can become possible if you change your thinking.

Strategic Coach currently has roughly 250 thinking tools in the company’s 35th year.

Every quarter, Dan creates three or four new thinking tools.

New thinking tools address new things that are happening to entrepreneurs where there isn't a structure for thinking about it.

Questions about the future are tools for instigating a thinking process.

You always have to have a bigger and better future to bounce your present off of.

In today’s world, ideas and processes have tremendous value.

Resources:

Total Cash Confidence by Dan Sullivan

Article: This Tool Will Help You Make Sense Of The Past AND Take Charge Of Your Future

The Impact Filter™

Your Life As A Strategy Circle by Dan Sullivan

The Transformation Trilogy by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Article: The Four Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Everyone And Everything Grows by Dan Sullivan

The Positive Focus®

The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management