Three Creatures Of The Business World

Jeffrey Madoff: This is Jeffrey Madoff, and welcome to our podcast called Anything and Everything with my partner, Dan Sullivan.
 
Dan Sullivan: I was reading a psychological sociological study by a management consultant who talked about three totally different kind of creatures in the business world, and he identified them as corporate executives, managers, and executives. That's one group. The second group are professionals. And these are people who have studied long and hard to get a professional credential. Could be doctors, could be lawyers, could be accountants, could be engineers, could be architects. So there's a long, long study that you have to go through before you get the degree, which allows you to put it on the wall. And so all those sort of people who make their money because they have a professional credential. And then the third are entrepreneurs who created the self-made individuals who create their own companies. And what do they talk about when they get together? And he says it's radically different. And I'm just going to lay it out, and then I'd like to get your insights of where and why the differences come about.
 
The corporate executives only talk about successes. They only talk about how they did this, and it produced this result, and how they did this, and they put the team together, and they got this technology together, and it was a real success. They just talk about successes. The professionals talk about problems they're solving, problems that, you know, I came up against this, you know, lawyers came up against a particular very complex situation, accountants came up with a real rule change in the tax law, and they had to do this. But it was all how they approached the problems and how they got to the solutions. The entrepreneurs, when they got together, talked about their failures. And they talked about, didn't see that coming. Caught me by surprise. And I really had to pivot really fast. I really had to transform my thinking. I had to come up with a whole new approach to it. So those are the three groups. These are the three types of thinking that he noticed. So any insights into this?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, when you mention corporate executives only talk about successes. First thing I think about is that's how they get bonuses. And the compelling need to show growth every quarter is based on not only their bonus, but their longevity at the company. So I think when they talk about success, and not to mention, by the way, if it's a public company, shareholders. You know, because private companies, you don't really know how much business they do. And they don't need to address those same things, which I think is quite interesting. Professionals, the nature of their business is problem solving. You know, you don't go to a lawyer unless you have a problem. You know, we're trying to avoid one. You don't have an accountant unless you had to really have somebody keeping all your finances organized and showing you the best ways to avoid the taxes and all of that.
 
Dan Sullivan: And if you talk to them, you come away now knowing you have a lot more problems to solve than you thought you did.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, yeah, I look at lawyers, and some of my best friends are lawyers, but I look at lawyers as basically, if they were doctors, they would infect you so they could treat you. And so I think there's a lot of that. And then the entrepreneurs, I think, talk about their failures, but it's, in my experience, and you have a lot more experience in this than I, they'll only admit to that based on a certain level of conversation that's going on. And because otherwise everybody talks about, you know, how fast they grew their business and, you know, all this kind of thing. But talking about the failures, I think there's a psychological need to not feel alone. And once somebody makes it okay to say, that didn't work out, you know, and they talk about that failure, then they realize that's just part of the, everybody experiences them. When you're an entrepreneur, oftentimes you don't have initially anybody else to talk to about it, other than other entrepreneurs. Because I don't think the entrepreneurs go around saying to other people, I have failed.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, it's just a really interesting thing because, you know, when I think back more than 50 years now, you know, the significant failures are a multitude. There's just many, many, many failures, you know. Some of it's back stage, some of it's front stage. You hire the wrong people, you know. They were excited in the job interview, and you're a salesperson, and they got excited, so they bought the position you were trying to sell them. And so you have to learn that the people doing the hiring are like poker players. They don't indicate anything, you know. And then, you know, being out in the marketplace and the many, many rejections you get for what you think is a great product, great service, and everything like that. But you have to, eventually, the marketplace is right. What you had, they weren't interested in at the moment that you're trying to sell them.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, yeah, I think to say they're right, would you say IBM was right in passing up the personal computer?
 
Dan Sullivan: Probably at the time because, you know, it sort of dictated, it was sort of like the electric camera, you know, came out of Rochester, New York, you know, the electronic camera. I think it happened at Xerox first and then it happened at Kodak. And you can see the inventor of the electronic camera.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Digital camera?
 
Dan Sullivan: Digital camera, yeah. If you came up with a digital, it shows I'm from the ‘40s. I had a steam camera. And he says, I want to present, I'm creating a theatrical situation here. But he says, I've got a great new thing to present to the board of the Kodak. And he said, this digital camera. We have no more need for film. We have no more need for all those chemicals. It'll be just the camera. And then they allowed him to view their Alaskan offices. You know, they sent him up. You know, you can be too early with a new idea. You can be in the wrong place with a new idea. You can be talking to the wrong people with a new idea. Those are all failures. You have to really learn timing, you really have to learn understanding what the world looks like from the other person's point of view, what they're looking for, and everything else. There's a lot of failure in getting smart.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, you know, it makes me think when you were saying that, I think about mobile phones. And, you know, the first mobile phones were, you know, a sizable unit that, you know, had a receiver in the trunk of your car, or it was, initially it was, you know, the police and things like that. And then people had mobile phones, but the modern, going back to the ‘90s, early ‘90s, the modern mobile phones smartphones. First you had Palm and Palm Pilot and they were doing gangbusters for a little while, until they tanked. And they tanked mainly because BlackBerry came onto the scene. They had much more highly secured messaging and email. And as a result of that, they got large government contracts and things like that. Well, what happened after that, which I think is quite fascinating is that, and I don't know if this is the case, but I would think it would be, is a smart person like Steve Jobs and others out there, but Jobs thinking, there's a big market for this. These guys are scratching the surface in who they're going after. And this is gonna become the thing that you don't leave home without it, as Karl Malden used to say for American Express.
 
So I think it's fascinating because I think timing is impossible. Sometimes you guess right. And other times you don't. And I think Apple coming out when it did, at least they were able to look and see, oh, you know, there's potentially a huge market for this. And there were use case studies. And why wouldn't individuals want it? You know, so I think that, you know, failure is an interesting concept. I mean, for me, failure is giving up on something that's important to me. And, you know, I think if you create a product and it doesn't sell, you try to create another product that will sell. You know, whatever. But I think that's the business part. The emotional part is …
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think when you go back to the first product you were trying to sell, you had more of an emotional commitment to it than down the road a bit.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: Where down the road, it's just a product. It's an experiment. I want to see whether it works. I think when you first start out, you're not experimenting. You're putting your life on the table.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: That's why you want to do it a lot. So you can get past the emotional stage.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, and I think there are things that never leave that emotional stage. You know, part of being a creator is that what you're creating is a certain expression of who you are and what you're doing. If you're just strictly a salesperson, whatever gets the sales and makes you the money is your favorite. You know, when I had my national sales force for my clothing company when I was designing and there was essentially the old 80-20 rule that basically 80% of the samples didn't make it out of the sample case because they knew they could sell these things, and so they didn't want to try to sell the other things. And I think that sales is a whole different animal because that's truly marketplace reflection. Assuming that you're a decent salesperson or you aren't off-putting to people, but then you're actually selling yourself because it's like, they could buy that product from any number of sources, why would they buy it from you? How do you look at failure?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I've certainly changed in my response to failure and it comes down to this. How quickly can I get the customer involved in the creative process?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Explain that.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, you know, I said that now I've got an idea here. I've got an idea and let me take it from your standpoint. I understand that you have a situation where I have a formula. It's called dangers, opportunities, and strengths, that you have a certain danger, you know, that is a recurring danger and you would like it to be eliminated and eliminated for good, okay? And I tell them what I think it is. And if they nod, if they nod, you're testing it out. Next one is that you have an opportunity, and the opportunity looks like this, and then you have strengths. You have, you know, you have reputation, you have a presence, you have a brand, you have a success. And anything new that you're going to involve yourself with has to do a good job of eliminating the danger, capturing the opportunity, and maximizing the strength.
 
Well, I have a question, actually, where they tell me those things, so they're actually giving the script to my sales team, and I'll say, well, here's the thought, and then I get them involved with the thinking process, because that's what I sell. And then if it's a good conversation, but one of the things in my world that I'm very, very clear about is that the first thing that gets purchased before anything else is a relationship. Do they actually accept the relationship? So I have a question, and this is how I sold my coaching back when it was just me out there. I said, if we're having this discussion and it was three years from today, you and I, and we're together three years from now, and you're looking back over the last three years, what has to happen in your life over that three-year period for you to feel happy with your progress, both personally and professionally.
 
Well, we do it. And one of two things happened. They either answered the question or they didn't answer the question. Okay? If they answered the question, they talked for an hour. I wouldn't have to be involved much. I might ask, you know, clarifying questions. I might ask that, but they're just talking and talking, and they're getting more excited as they're talking. If they don't answer the question, it's usually along the lines, I don't even know you, and you're asking me for very, very personal information, so I'm not going to give you that information. I said, well, thank you very much, because I think you've just saved both of us a lot of time here. See, my skill and what I provide is enabling you to get really clear about your goals and then I show you all sorts of ways of implementing your goals and getting you very, very clear what kind of team you need, what kind of, you know, how your daily structure has to be for that. But I need your information because your information is unique and I have to apply my process to your unique set of goals, but you don't want to provide me with that information, so there's nothing I can tell you about what I do.
 
So people say, well, what happens then? Well, I say goodbye and I leave, you know, and everything like that. Because most of your time as an entrepreneur is wasted in selling to people who don't want to buy and selling to people who don't want to have any future relationship with you, but they would like some free information from you, so they'll let you keep talking, and I cut off the free information. So that became the basis of the whole thing. And if the person answered the question, they just got their first session. They just got their first session of my coaching. And they say, boy, I'm really excited. I'm really clear and everything else. And they say, and I said, good, if you want, we can formalize what you just said. I can put together a plan for you that reflects what you just told me. And I'll send that back to you. And he says, okay, and how do I pay you? And I said, well, you pay me first and then I'll do your plan. And, you know, it worked out. And I began to realize this is that most people don't have the ability to ask themselves questions that clarify their thinking. And our whole program is essentially based on that process. Thirty-six years later.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, I think there's another essential aspect of that, both going on the micro level with Coach, but I think in any business, the person that doesn't want to give you that information—I mean, if it's just gossip, let's discount that altogether. But if you need certain information in order to have the clarity to develop a plan for them, and they don't want to give it to you, they're interested in what you have, but they don't want to give you that information. I think that you're dealing with what is the cornerstone of all relationships, which is trust. And if you don't trust the person that you're going to buy from, or sign up with, or whatever, you ought to recognize that pretty quickly, because you're wasting both of your times, because nothing is going to come of it. So I think trust is essential.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, that's what the marketplace in economics requires. You have to have trust. As you're creating a future with what you're doing, the future is being created in front of your eyes, you know, and you have to trust people going into the future.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And I think that in a way, I just thought of this, so we might be able to poke a lot of holes in it, but business is either a price consideration, and they're not always separate, but it's either a price consideration or a trust consideration. You will pay me more if you trust me that I can deliver something that's going to help you and make your life better in some way. But if the response is, and I've gotten this in my production business many times, in my fashion business too, where somebody would say, well, you know, I can get this for 20% less. And I had this trendsetting shirt that I did, the Sunday afternoon shirt. Literally, you've heard the phrase, and I was living it, couldn't make enough of them. I would get calls from stores who said, how many do you have left on your shelves? I said, I don't know, 1,200. I'll take them all. That's how hot that was.
 
So we were doing the boutique show in New York and a very flamboyant customer of mine, a good guy who had a store in a village, and he came into the show, and this is a big trade show for fashion, and he said to me, I gotta take you next door and show you something, one of the other hotel rooms, show you something. And this company had literally bought my shirts retail, took out my label, put in their label, and had a display of like 10 of them on the wall. And I'd never experienced anything like that before. And so I said, well, they can't deliver those. I have exclusive on-nose fabrics. And he said, and you're sure those are yours? I said, yeah, and the buttons are from Button Place in Iowa. And yeah, no way.
 
He said, okay, watch this. And it was a very busy sales room, the great big room out of small room. Then he goes, who do I have to fuck to get attention here? And there's like 60 people in a room. And he goes, hello, hello, Bloomingdale's. He wasn't from Bloomingdale's. He had a little store downtown. And so one of the principals says, do you own the company? He says, no, I want to talk to the owner. I'm from Bloomingdale's. I don't talk to employees. I talk to owners. And so the principal of the company came over and he said, can I help you with something? He said, well, you certainly can. I want this, this, and this of that shirt. And he said, well, we don't have those fabrics. No, that's what I want. He said, well, we don't have those fabrics, but we've got a number of beautiful fabrics we'd like to show you. What do you mean you don't have those fabrics? Why don't you have those fabrics? What are they doing up on your wall if you don't have them?
 
And I'm just stunned listening to this. He said, well, we can get you these others. He said, I don't want the others. What do I have to do to make myself clear? I want those. You don't have those. You're lying to everybody in this room. Well, I can't do business with a liar. I don't trust liars. Let's go, and we walk out of the room. Everybody was listening in that room. And we walk out, and then he turns to me and goes, so Academy Award? Do you think that's an Academy Award nomination? How was that performance for you? But, you know, I think that trust has so much to do with who you do business with. But if you're only shopping price, I can guarantee you that your trust will be violated.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting. I have a little tool, it's called Your Five Capitalist Jumps. And I said that I've been studying capitalism, I've been reading books on it for 50 years, and I've been working with capitalists in terms of entrepreneurs for 50 years. And I said, basically it's a flywheel, and it comes down to, first of all, pricing. The first thing you really have to get your mind around is that you have your time, which you have to price, you have your expenses, which you have to price, you have your labor, and you have to have your profit in mind in order to price properly. So you have to have pricing. And if you, as an entrepreneur, look back at your successes where you've taken jumps as an entrepreneur, it's where you made a real quantitative and qualitative jumping in pricing somewhere along the line. Then the next thing is that you have unique relationships with clients, and some of them go back decades. And to a certain extent, that relationship is your property. You have a real property there. And if it's a great relationship, you have no competition, because they would never even entertain anyone else's offer with you. So that's property.
 
And then you have productivity. You have a way of producing things to respond to the marketplace. And you get more done with less time. You get more done with less money. And that's productivity. Then you have profitability. You get to keep more and more of what you're making. And then you have prosperity. And prosperity has you're surrounding yourself with great people. You're surrounding yourself in your company, great team members outside the company, great clientele, you have great relationships, you're having a great positive impact on the world that you operate in, and you're a real force for good in the world. Now, rinse, re-lather, and do it all over again. So it's pricing, property, productivity, profitability, and prosperity. Then you start over again. But the really interesting thing is that the entrepreneurs are just attaching their experience to those categories. Okay. It's all a jumble for them. They do this on Monday, they do this on Tuesday, you know, and, you know, there's always new things they have to do. But I said, essentially, at the center, there's actually a flywheel. Okay. And what you do is you feed new experiences into the flywheel, and your pricing gets better, your property gets better, everything else gets better. So that's basically my approach.
 
So I'm looking for the person who would be attracted to that model, you know, that's what I'm looking for. But I have to have their information or I can't attach the model to what they're looking for. But the interesting thing when it comes to capitalism, there was a very, an economist, Viennese, I think, had to escape during the Second World War, went to England, went to the United States, named Hayek, F.A. Hayek. And he said, you know, capitalism is weird because its enemies named it. He said, you know, there wasn't a thing called capitalism, you know, before Marx and people who are against capitalism. Until they came along, there was no name for what they were against. And so they actually named it. He said, but capitalism isn't really about capital. It's a by-product. Capital is actually a by-product of what capitalism does. It increases capital, but he says what capitalism really is, is an ever-expanding system of increasing cooperation among strangers. So it's a system, it's an ever-expanding system of increasing cooperation among strangers. Well, how do you get increasing cooperation among strangers? Trust. In other words, it only works through trust.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And I think that's true across the board.
 
Dan Sullivan: I mean, go to London. You've created an ever-expanding system of increasing cooperation among strangers when you went to London. You didn't know the actors. You didn't know the managers. You didn't know the theater.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You know, it's interesting because I think that all developed economies, no matter what their stated position is, are in the global market are capitalists. you know, because all of these countries are trying to either stay ahead or get ahead. And that's through commerce, through the trade agreements, the tax agreements, all of these different things to, you know, encourage or discourage business. And that general assessment, would you agree with that? And so it makes me think of, for instance, a product that isn't as innovative as it seems. Initially, the first electric car was kind of forced out of business by the car companies. Now what we have, starting with the most popular name, Tesla, there's the electric car, but many of the largest, I don't know where they rank, but high up there in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and so on, they wanted to keep using gas. They have no desire for anybody to ever use some kind of a chargeable battery in their car to keep them going.
 
So we're in a situation now where there's, on one hand, a case can be built for the potential of electric cars and what they can do. And then you've got to look behind that curtain, no matter what your thoughts are on electric cars. You look behind the curtain and then you realize, wow, there are huge global forces at play here because there's trillions involved in the infrastructure for oil and gas. And there's not as much money, but an awful lot of money being put into developing that. Who do you trust? How do you get your information on whether this is a good thing or not? Who do you trust to do that? And then there are things at play that we can only reach by conjecture from things we've read in the political forces that need, but it makes a really interesting situation. If the political leader happens to be totally transactionally based, and then they're going to go where the largest potential payoff is, and whether or not an electric car is better for their country or not, isn't no longer the issue. You know, that's the surface issue. The real issue is, where can you profit the most?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing is it all comes down to do consumers actually want them. I mean, for example, I'm not a car guy. I've never really been, I've lived in big cities since I was 18 years old and you can make your way around in big cities, you know. People say, well, what's your favorite car? And I said, I like them with four wheels. I like them with four wheels.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Another one of your unreasonable demands.
 
Dan Sullivan: I like that it's enclosed, you know, when it's cold out and when it's wet out, you know, the usual. Fairly basic, fairly basic set of checks on it and everything like that. And we have one. I mean, Babs has a Tesla, the X, which is sort of their SUV. And she loves it. She just absolutely loves the car. And she's a real get up and go driver. Babs really liked it. We only take one long trip where distance comes in and it's about three hours. And I'm the guy who is always checking the dashboard to see where the gas is, and I'm watching the electric charge. I'm watching the electric charge down there. And so, you know, my attitude is that she doesn't like going to gas stations because she can't stand the smell, okay? Where I love the smell of gasoline. You know, if I could bag it and take it home, I'd sniff it later.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You can do that, by the way.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, yes, of course you can, of course you can. Not with Babs in the car, though. Anyway, but it really comes down, you know, I talk to a lot of the clients, some of the clients have, you know, EVs, but the vast majority of them don't. And they say, you know, probably someday I'll get an EV, you know, I mean, I'll try it out and everything else. But he said, you know, the habits of just having a gasoline car, you know, and, you know, and I kind of like the car. I like having the freedom of the car and everything like that. You know, I got a really great maintenance guy. I got a really good service job. And there's where it really comes down is service. It's not that the service for EVs is bad. The service for EVs is unknown.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, yeah, I think that it's service and availability of charging stations
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, that's the big one. That's really the big one. That's the big one right there. If you live in a city and you don't have a garage, it's hard to have an EV. It's got to be on the side of the house. If you live in an apartment building, unless the proprietor of the building has put EV stations in, it's going to be hard. But you have to think about it. And I think people don't want to think too much about it.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I think that's true. I think that's true. The point that I was trying to make is that there are forces when you say whether people want it or not. I also often wonder, well, look at cigarettes, okay? Without getting into all the politics of it, it was the health impacts were undeniable and known many years before even the warnings went onto cigarette packs. But there was lots of money to be made. And so once it finally came out, the public's trust was sufficiently eroded, plus the health threats were just threats. There's real serious science research behind it. And I think that we are, as a populace, responsive to advertising and public relations and all of these kinds of things. So when you say whether the market will tell you whether people want it or not, they may want it, not knowing the harm that it could cause, or they may not want it because the sources of information are untrustworthy.
 
Dan Sullivan: Also, there's the other fact that it's one of the most powerfully addictive drugs in the world.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, right, which is a good reason to stay away from it altogether.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You know?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Nicotine's tough to beat.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, so I think it's, so trust cuts across so many fronts. But it is, I think, uniquely interesting in business because the way you laid out those different professions earlier in our conversation, you know, I think that's really true. In each of those things, I think the common bond is in order to have a successful relationship, trust has to be a part of it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So based on those three and using your term of trust, which do you think has, of the three, which has the most trust in someone who's in your profession? You know, you're an entrepreneur, you're a professional. And I would say the corporate has the least trust.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, I think that's true. I agree. Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I think professionals, their whole reputation is really based on trust. So talking about problems is probably a way of convincing people that they really know what they're talking about. It's probably not your solutions that say it's your knowledge of what's involved in the problem is probably part of where the trust gets increased.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, your promise, though, to that potential consumer is I have the solution to your problem, or I can help you avoid getting that problem.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I think that entrepreneurs, they have tremendous bullshit monitors. I think entrepreneurs have enormous bullshit monitors. You know, I don't buy what he's saying. I don't think he's real, you know, like that. And my feeling is that there's a way of going about being an entrepreneur that has a lot of pleasure, but it's got a lot of initial pain. And if you don't show that you've got a grasp of that pain of failure, especially early in your career, I think entrepreneurs are silencing. I don't think this is real.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, I also think that entrepreneurs, and I am an entrepreneur, and always have been.
 
Dan Sullivan: You're very much an entrepreneur.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: But I also think whether or not they have really sensitive bullshit meters, I don't know. But they also, there's a huge number of entrepreneurs that spew a tremendous amount of bullshit.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's really, really interesting. It doesn't have an impact. You know, if they're on stage and there's an audience, it's one thing. But where I'm just talking about entrepreneurs amongst themselves talking, you know, one of my narrative stories I talk about is four years into my entrepreneurial career, going through both a divorce and a bankruptcy. And people are really keenly interested. They say, how'd that happen? What'd you do there? How'd you come back from that? How'd you arrange your life? And there are some very gifted people who are very, very successful front stage, but back stage, they have a lot of problems back stage. What can't be seen. A lot of the impact of Strategic Coach is that their back stage personal lives get a lot better as they go along. Their families get better. There's a real solidness to their personal life.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, the challenges of business, no matter what you do, I think that everybody faces those business challenges to some degree or another. You know, if you're a lawyer or an accountant to some professional, doesn't mean you don't suffer from cash flow problems. Doesn't mean that you don't have unhappy consumers, even those that are threatening to sue you or, you know, whatever. Because I also, I think you and I both agreed with this. We've talked about it before is despite the technology, human nature essentially hasn't changed. And when you look at the history, we're watching, Margaret and I are watching The Revolutionary War, Ken Burns' series, which is brilliant. And what a niche he's cast himself in. His role is America's historian. I mean, that's phenomenal, what he has done. I have a lot of respect for the quality of the work he does, too. And clearly, he has won the trust of people. But you hear this stuff leading up to the revolution, and, you know, you could switch the names around and you could apply it to today. I mean, it's just absolutely fascinating.
 
And I think that, you know, whether it's traitorous behavior going back to Caesar—et tu, Brutus? You know, I think that when you introduce people into the system, it starts getting to be a biased system in some way or another. So, you know, how do you deal with that most effectively? What you have to protect is your own integrity and have a very careful, monitor on who you trust. Because I think that, you know, I was with, I can't remember where this was, and I was talking to another entrepreneur, and he was, you know, telling me, I've worked very hard, I deserve to be X, and I said, what do you mean you deserve to be X? You know, you don't deserve, you earn. You know, maybe in other circumstances you might qualify for X, and I think that that's a really, what's most unique I think is the mindset. You're willing to place yourself, as an entrepreneur, you're willing to place yourself at financial risk, and if you're knowledgeable, also emotional risk, because it's gonna take a toll on other parts of your life, no matter how well you manage it. Some people are more successful than others in managing and juggling and all that, but even the best of us drop the ball sometimes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, yeah. No, it's getting back up. You know, the comeback story. I mean, if there's a dominant cultural thing in the United States that I've noticed not living in the United States, you know, I'm 50 years where my main place where I live is not in the United States. And the big thing that the United States has as part of their culture is the comeback story. Americans just love the comeback story. Especially someone who got to the top, then they lost it, then they were down, and then they turned themselves around and they came right back up. You know, that's it's just part of the culture. We love the comeback story.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: They come back. And I guess another form of comeback, which is very popular, is redemption.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Redemption. Yeah. That's a big deal. Redemption.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I remember being in a meeting actually with our friend Joe Polish. He asked me if I would stay the next day after his annual event. This was some years ago. Ariana Huffington, who had her book out, I think it was called Thrive. And she wanted to take her marketing to the next level, which I never know what that means, by the way. What is the next level? But you mean you want to make more money with what you're doing? Is that the next level?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, the next level is where you help her do that.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You're exactly right. You are exactly right. That was the inside of the day. Dan Sullivan was the inside of the day. So true. So they went around the table.
 
Dan Sullivan: I was in that meeting.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Oh, were you?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Her sister was there too. Yeah, I was seated next to her sister. Yeah, a nice person, her sister was a nice person. I'm being very specific about saying her sister was a nice person.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, I got the text and subtext, yes. And everybody, as they went around, and I was the last one, because it started with her sister, then went across the table, and everybody had their near-death experience, you know. Ariana, you know, collapses because she's not getting enough sleep, so she institutes napping rooms, you know, because she fell down, cracked her head open on the coffee table or whatever.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I remember.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Everybody's one-upping the next person. Yeah, I went through the windshield of my car. I thought I was gonna die. My life flashed in front of me. But then I realized there's more shit to sell. I gotta stay alive.
 
Dan Sullivan: You know, it was interesting. Joe had another very, not, I would say probably more famous than Arianna Huffington, because she was famous in certain sectors, but not all. And this was someone else. But she had a story. We were at the meeting. This was actually the first Genius Network meeting that I was ever at. There was about 30 people there. And this person was a big deal, and she came in, and she told her story, and her story was a story of victimhood, how men had taken advantage of her, and then she did this, and a man had done that, and everything like that. And everybody was going around saying, hey, you can do this, and everything, and it got routed to me, and I says, I have a feeling that for you to actually break through now is that you have to stop telling your story. And she said, oh, my story. I know. She said, really good. And then a minute later, she had just taken what I said and built it into the story. And she was telling. But you could tell her story was stopping her from going anywhere. She had this. But everybody was gaga. You know, they could get close contact with this person. I said, you know, she's not going to go anywhere because she's got this story that stops her.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, and the reason I brought up that meeting is everybody had their redemption story, how they faced, you know, some, you know, health crisis, accident crisis, everything, you know, and they were trying to outdo each other as they went around the table in terms of the crisis that they had come back from. And then, you know, of course, then I root for the people that didn't fuck up badly in the first place.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And I think that people who have kept on the path, stayed responsible, trustworthy, all of that, I think that's an underappreciated accomplishment. You know, it's not as dramatic as going through your windshield, but I'll take the other. But yeah, redemption, the redemption and the comeback. That's why I think people love Rocky.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh yeah. It's a real cultural meme and it's not everywhere. Canada doesn't really have it. You know, it's not in Canadian culture at all. And sometimes people say, well, what's the difference between Canada and the U.S.? I said, well, I'll give you one. And I said, it's bankruptcy, bankruptcy. The whole cultural response to bankruptcy is different. In Canada, first of all, they take away all your credit cards, and you don't get the first one back for seven years. In the United States, you go bankrupt on Monday, and you get your three new cards on Friday, because they don't want you out of the game. And they've already done the numbers. They've already factored in. Probably it's going to be okay if you get three new cards on Friday. I said, that's a big cultural difference.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, it is. Is that still the case?
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we have sort of a real high-tech city about 60 miles from Toronto. It's called Kitchener-Waterloo. And, you know, all the big companies, Meta, Google, Apple, they have talent scouts in that city. They have real good technological schools and universities. There's a lot of high-tech companies there, but we're talking about bankruptcy and how it's a disqualifier in Kennedy. If you go bankrupt, it's a real disqualifier. And I said in taking it back to when Silicon Valley was, you know, what it was in the ‘90s, you know, ‘80s and ‘90s, and Bankruptcy is like an MBA, means you tried, you failed, and here you are, you're back again. Probably you learned something, probably you learned something. I bet you're a better bet now than you were before you went bankrupt, like that. So the whole attitude towards failure that would be signified by bankruptcy is looked at totally differently.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, it's interesting how you don't think of, at least I didn't think of that as a cultural aspect. Now, I wonder, I mean, the biggest comeback story is religious, you know, when Jesus rose from the dead. I mean, that's not easy to do. I think he's the only one who's pulled that off.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. You know, no, I was just going through. I can't think of anybody. Yeah, I had this doctor, this great stem cell doctor, and Buenos Aires, and I met him the first time, and I was just, I have a joint, you know, that I need stem cells, and it's been really successful. But I said to him, and he was talking about, you know, he had a boy who was basically brain dead at 10 years old, and then he shows him at 12 years old, and he's talking, and he's walking, where he was basically bedridden, and he had no reaction whatsoever. And he showed it, and he just shows what he does, and he works on the immune system and everything. So I sat with him, and I said, you know, those stories are pretty miraculous, but I said, I want you to know that if you want to be historic, have somebody die, give them the treatment, they come back on the third day. I said, that's historical. And he's very Catholic, and he said, no, no, no, no, no, I can't talk about that. But one is, we like miracles, too.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, or what we think are miracles.
 
Dan Sullivan: No, we like the idea of miracles.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: And quite frankly, I think, you know, there are some situations that happen in life that are not explainable except from applying the term miracle to them, yeah. How certain people meet other people and it happens just the timing is right and everything. It's a good name.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, another name for that serendipity. But yeah, I think that there are things that happen that we don't know why they do.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And, you know, somebody wins the lottery, you know, but it's nothing that you can depend on. You know, don't go into debt thinking, you know, I bought 25 tickets. I'm going to win this lottery, you know. So I think that we have been true to our name, Anything and Everything. We went a lot here. You had any take away?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. We came back to the anything that we started with.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Everything that helped shape it. Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and everything, I mean, it didn't have enough dimensions to it. We added a lot of dimensions to it.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Dimensionality is everything.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Dimensionality, context. Context. You know, all of that. But yeah, this was, it's interesting, you know, talking about the professionals and the entrepreneurs and corporations.
 
Dan Sullivan: Managers and executives. Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I have such an aversion to that. I didn't even write it down.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it's like, I have a phrase, sharks cannot afford even small cuts.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: That's right.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So looking at those things and the aspect of trust, it's a potent combination that I think has always been true.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It reminds me of Sam Goldwyn, MGM. And he said, you know, the single most important quality in Hollywood is sincerity. He says, once you can fake that, you can get away with anything.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Thanks for joining us today on our show, Anything and Everything. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. For more about me and my work, visit acreativecareer.com and madoffproductions.com. To learn more about Dan and Strategic Coach, visit strategiccoach.com.