When Smart Isn’t Enough: Part 2

Jeffrey Madoff: This is Jeffrey Madoff and welcome to our podcast called Anything And Everything with my partner, Dan Sullivan. Dan, if you recall last week, we started down the path of happiness. What is happiness? How do you achieve happiness? And there's an awful lot of interest in the world of happiness and how you arrive there and what the obstacles are. And so we went through some interesting aspects of it, and we ended up, that being part one, that we would do part two, which is today. And it relates to what we were talking about before we started recording, which none of you heard because we didn't start recording yet. And now that we are, there's the belief that if I solve X, whatever X is, then I'll be happy, which I think is a trap, and that solving tons of well-defined problems, eradicating diseases, landing on the moon, getting higher IQ points and so on, none of that actually made society happier. You know, when polio was eradicated, society didn't get happier. You know, when the Flynn curve for IQ measurement kept going up, society wasn't happier. So one of the questions I have, because you see, I think you see entrepreneurs falling into the same trap. They think if they hit a certain milestone in revenue or something, they'll be happy and then they discover they're not. How do you look at how entrepreneurs factor happiness into their achievements, oftentimes wrongly?
 
Dan Sullivan: I'll make two distinctions. One is it has to do with, as you mentioned, it's almost like there's an event that if I achieve the event, whether it's solving a problem or, you know, I'm achieving a particular gain that's quantitative. And the one thing that I know is that I think measurement is very, very important, and I think there are quantitative measurements that kind of tell us that we're progressing and you're kind of winning the game of entrepreneurship. But it's not the money is the main quantitative, especially money that you're keeping, not just the money that you're making. So it's profitability, it's increased savings, increased net worth. Those are all quantitative in there. You know, you can basically achieve those. But I think more and more as they get deeper into it is that the measurement is an external measurement, but what makes them happy is some sort of internal state of consciousness. That's the one distinction is quantitative, qualitative, and more and more I notice in our program, because people stay in our program for decades.
 
My longest continuous quarterly review client in July of this year, 2026, this will be his 39th year. I've seen him every quarter for 39 years and he's gone a hundred times you know, easily in terms of his revenues and, you know, he's affluent, he's extremely well off. And the more that I've seen him, the quantitative measurements have become less and less important because it works. But the more and more what I've noticed is a way of living each day, you know, and that he has a way of going about living each day and it's got 360-degree characteristics, it's his health, it's his relationships, it's the interestingness of the work that he's doing. He's a marathoner, so he'll do about six during any given year. And he's at the point of being a marathoner where he now is invited back because he's been in London, Paris, New York, the big ones. And if you've not done it before, you have to qualify. There's a series of things you have to do. Well, he's long past that.
 
And he's in his seventies. He's fun to be with, he's very interested in things, he's got a lot of interesting views on world affairs, political affairs, he's interested in technology and everything. But if you met him, it would strike you that this is a happy person; experiences of going in the ditch or hitting some sort of problem, but he's at the point where that's just to be expected that this is, you know, these sort of things are going to happen. He doesn't have a sense that he's immune to the kinds of unexpected setbacks that anybody can have. And more and more I notice as they, over a long period of time, I've got 60 or more than 30 years, he's by far the furthest out. And I brought it down to three things, because you mentioned that we would go on with this. The number one thing for happiness, as far as I can see, they just like themselves. Yeah, they just like who they are. They're not trying to be somebody else. They're not comparing themselves to somebody else. And he has lots of friends that they like each other. You know, there's just this sense of it's a good life.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, and that raises an interesting insight that we've talked about before. I think when you start comparing yourself to others, you're dead in the water, right?
 
Dan Sullivan: You're just dead. I forget who said it. It was one of the group of American philosophers, Emerson or someone like that, the middle of the 19th century. Don't hold me to this because I'm not sure who said it. I'm not sure anybody knows who said it, but they said that self-comparison is the thief of joy.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So, yeah, I think that when you try to measure yourself against others as opposed to something that I think you and I both believe in is, look at where you were a year ago or two years ago or whatever. Have you moved forward from there? Oh, yeah. And I think that when you're measuring against yourself, you know, you hear great athletes say, you know, my greatest competition is with me. And I think that that's true. And I'm not talking about perfectionism. I'm talking about a realistic context that you can render an opinion about progress or not from.
 
Dan Sullivan: I mentioned the first one that you like yourself. I think the second one is that you have a way of measuring daily progress. And I talk about daily because sometimes people will say at the end of each quarter, I look back and I see if I've done it. But I said, why don't you just make it a habit every day that at the end of the day, what did you do since you got out of bed this morning? That counts as progress. And just reminding yourself of it makes you happy. You design your day so that you give yourself a happy report at the end of the day.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, and I think it's also realistic to realize it's not always gonna be happy, but you have to look at a bigger picture.
 
Dan Sullivan: Or a smaller picture.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: True, true. Yeah, yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think it's both macro and micro, you know, that there's some things which take a year. But the big thing, especially if you're writing, I really notice that with writing, is have some tangible improvements every day in the writing. I was just going through, I've went through, I'm just finishing it off today and sending it to Melody in the morning. So for the people who are listening to the podcast, Jeff and I are just at the final manuscript stage of the book Casting Not Hiring, which is coming out. And I was going through, and what I did is everywhere where you quote somebody, and there's lots of quotes, I turn it into italic, and it's more striking on the page if all the quotations, not just the quotation marks, but you put it into italic. So I've gone through your entire thing and put all the Hillary Sterling and the, you know, John Mezzo and all the others. I've just put it wherever they say something, I just put it in italics, and it looks really good on the page. Yeah, and what I've noticed is that people immediately go to where there's a quotation. So you might as well make it slightly different from the normal type.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, there's ways to do that, and one of those ways is italics, you know, if you want to do that. And you just reminded me of something I want to make a note of to talk to you about later. So what's the third thing?
 
Dan Sullivan: Third thing is increase your value to other people. And how do you do that? You do something nice for them.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So give me a range of what's nice. It's nice to give somebody a contract for X amount of dollars.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, there's professionally and personally, that there's something that you can do for them that they can't do for themselves, and you do it for them. And that can be done through action, that can be done through money, that can be done through connections. It could be you did your part of a project that other people depended upon, and you got it done. You showed up on time, you did what you said, and you finished what you started, and you said please and thank you. And it gives people a sense of teamwork. Actually, one of the great things that you can do with other people is just be in teamwork with them and continually doing your part.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, well, we actually go into that in terms of what is a fruitful collaboration. We talk about in the book, I think that that's a very big deal, you know, and when you get it right in a collaboration and ideas are ricocheting around and nobody's got some outsized ego stake in it, they're looking at, we're trying to all achieve the greatest outcome together. We all benefit if that happens. So how do we foster a situation where we do that? And I think one of the net byproducts of that is a sense of happiness and gratitude for a process that went really well.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think using your capability in teamwork automatically makes everybody feel good.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. But give me a little more of a definition about when you say using your capability, what do you mean by that?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, you're good at it. You're good at it, but it's not you wanting to be in the spotlight. It's you using your talent to move a teamwork project forward.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right. So we're all kind of rowing the boat, so to speak.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, but one thing I want to say, I don't think my experience, things come in threes. It's not just one thing. It's that you like yourself, you're making daily progress, and you're using your talent to increase teamwork. It's a Triple Play. And I think people work these things out, and that happens to be mine, but it's not the 11th commandment. How much, how can I phrase this?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: When you're involved with other people in a project or process, how open are you to changing your mind, which doesn't mean that you've given up on your own idea, but maybe you have learned there might be a better way of doing it. And I think that there's a lot of very smart people who are very intolerant of other ideas, and which sacrifices any notion of happiness because there's a pall over the group because there's are certain people that just they take anything that is not theirs as a slight. Now, you're always dealing with groups of people. Do you say you agree with that? How do you deal with something like that, where you do value your own opinion? I value my opinions. I'm also open to changing. I'm changing my mind about those things.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, first of all, how skillful have you been at getting yourself into a good group? I have a great deal of discernment that I've developed over the years of, one thing, I've got a highly negotiable personality. And what I mean is that if you're putting together a group project, then it has to take advantage of the unique insights of everybody in the group or don't do it. I like discussions, and I like to see where discussions are going, and I have a particular skill that's useful to discussions, but so do others. I don't see it as a win-loss situation in a discussion. That's an argument, and I'm not really interested in arguments.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: How big a part do you think self-reflection plays? Because I think that we've talked about over the years, we've been doing a podcast where you approach us like a therapist, because you don't give anybody any answers. You ask them questions that provoke them. And I don't know if you would put it this way, but from what I observed, it's the case that they've got to think about what they're doing. They have to think about either why they aren't getting the outcome they want, or if they've achieved it, what have they done that they can replicate and grow from? And all of that is self-focused.
 
Dan Sullivan: Mm-hmm.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: But I think self-focus in a way that's very healthy.
 
Dan Sullivan: Mm-hmm.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And good. And it's interesting because, you know, there was a major shift in our culture to the me generation.
 
Dan Sullivan: Mm-hmm.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Where everyone thought they were the most important person, wherever they were. And what are your thoughts on the importance of thinking about how you think, not just in an intellectual way, but emotionally, how do you interact with other people? And how do you even know what direction you're going if you've never really examined yourself? How do you know what will even make you happy and all of those things? I mean, what's your take on that?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, in Strategic Coach, we make a distinction of four different ways of thinking. There are people who think about things, and all they talk about is things. Physical objects, you know, their belongings, their possessions, and everything else. Doesn't make for a very interesting discussion unless you're a thing person and you're comparing notes on things. Then there's people who think about other people, and I think it's why social media has become such a big thing, is that all their time is finding out about what so-and-so is doing. But it's not a thing, it's actually other people are doing things and you're fascinated or you're threatened or whatever, the full range of emotions about what other people are doing. And it's nonstop throughout the day. And then there's thinking about thoughts. And higher education is really based on thinking about thoughts. But for the most part, higher education isn't people thinking about their thinking, it's them thinking about other people's thoughts. And academics will become famous because they're an expert on so-and-so's thinking, you know, someone in the past. But it's not actually their thinking, it's somebody else's thinking. And then I think creative people, if they're continually creative, have the ability to step back and just see the way they're thinking about things is sort of, oh, that's really interesting how I'm thinking about this. And it's not about judgment, is this good or bad, it's just you're kind of watching how your brain works, and where your brain takes you.
 
I think everything that we're talking about in the area of theater is that if you've departed from just having a job that's a series of tasks, but you've gotten into a teamwork situation where you have to constantly be aware of how the way you talk, the way you are acting, the way you perform, the way you do contribution and cooperation with other people, and you can actually see this, and you're constantly adjusting how you're performing and how you're going forward. And I find, for me, thinking about things isn't really, really interesting, so I get no energy from that. I'm very resistant to gossip. I don't like hearing gossip, and I don't basically take part in it. I'm not really, really interested in it. Thinking about other people's thoughts, I find it interesting only in what the other person's thought does to my own thinking. And I think thinking about your thinking is a very enjoyable activity. And it's almost like you're two people. One of you is an observer and the other one is a performer. And you're watching how you perform. And you can make adjustments on a continual basis. You can make continual improvements. I think that's a very happy, energizing experience.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You know, another word came to mind as you were talking, which I think is a huge obstacle to happiness, and this happens a lot with high achieving people. I think it happens a lot with people, but particularly high achievers when they're dealing in that rarefied air. I mean, I have heard discussions of people, heated discussions about which private jet they're going to buy is better than the one you bought. And those conversations, to me, always kind of borderline on total absurdity. A dear friend of mine, one time we were shopping, I had to buy a hot water kettle, you know.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's good for the economy, though.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: No, that's true. Yeah. And the word that I'll mention is also a huge part of marketing and advertising. I was going to say, my friend, we went to Zabar's, which is a great store, deli and housewares on the Upper West Side of New York. They had about 40 different tea kettles. They went from like $30, you could spend $600. And I'm looking at all these different tea kettles, and my friend Doug, who you've met, said, remember, they all boil water. It's true. They all boil water. So how much do you wanna spend on that thing that helps you boil water? None of them do it better than the other one. It's a temperature physics thing. And I think that the word is envy. What does envy do to an individual? Does that drive their ambition?
 
Dan Sullivan: No.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, so go into that.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, first of all, I've given a lot of thought. There's two words that are more or less become interchangeable. One of them is jealousy, and the other one is envy. Jealousy is that you can be inspired to improve through jealousy. You can be inspired to achieve through jealousy. Envy is that somebody else has something that's superior, or you judge it to be superior to what you have, and you want them to lose it. Well, I had a client, top financial advisor from California. And when I first met him, I thought he was a confirmed bachelor. You know, he was just … but one quarter, he told me that he had met a woman online from Kiev. I still use the word Kiev. And she was Russian. And they met, and it was an online dating service, international online dating service. And then he went to Ukraine, and he met her, and they got married. And she was really an interesting person. She spoke very good English. And we were at a dinner party, and she was sitting right next to me. Don't quite remember her name, but I was asking her questions about Russia. You know, she grew up during the Soviet Union.
 
And she said, stop, stop. She says, I'm going to tell you a story. And it tells you everything you'll ever need to know about Russia. Once you hear this story, you won't need to know anything else about Russia. There was two farmers, and they lived next to each other for 40 years. They each had a cow. One Monday, after 40 years, one of the farmers gets a second cow. On Tuesday, the one who still has only one cow goes and talks to the priest. And he says, I want to say a prayer to God, and the priest asks why, and he tells him the story that his neighbor has a second cow. And so the priest said, so you prayed to God, so you also have a second cow. And he says, no, I want one of his cows to die. She said, that's all you need to know about Russia. That's envy.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I'm not sure, because I think, at least in my understanding, it's a fine line between envy and jealousy. I think that they're both pretty toxic ways of being.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, first of all, it starts with self-comparison.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: An unhappy experience.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Exactly. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: But one of them, you can actually do positive things out of your jealousy. With envy, you're not doing anything. You're just wishing that somebody has less as a result of your unhappiness with their success, their achievement, their popularity, whatever it is. You want them to lose it. I see it as a radically different approach. It goes nowhere. The impact of an envious person is toxic outside of them, but it's totally toxic inside.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, and it's the kind of toxicity that spreads because it can disrupt a group of people or even two people in a relationship. And I guess I think that both of them can be motivators. You can be motivated because you are envious of what someone has and you want it.
 
Dan Sullivan: No, that's jealousy. That's jealousy. The one is that the other person is going to lose what they have. It's not that you want what they have, you want them to lose what they have. There's a famous book by a German, and Germans know about this subject really well. His name is Helmut Scheck, and he wrote this 24-chapter book on envy, and he just goes right back to the earliest writings, all the stories, all the plays, and everything, and he said that envy is talked about until about 1850. He says all of a sudden there's no more talk about envy after 1850 from a psychological standpoint. He said envy was always considered a very, very negative psychological condition, but he says once you get to about 1850, for example, it's not even mentioned in modern psychology books. And he said, the reason is that in 1850, envy was institutionalized as socialism. And socialism is seen as a good thing. Socialism is not that we should have what other people have. Socialism is certain people should not have what they have. Everything should be equal.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, well, that's a much bigger discussion. Do you agree that both envy and jealousy are obstacles in the pursuit of happiness?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, yeah, I think the one instantly makes you unhappy, the other one prompts you into action, which at the end of it is going to make you unhappy. The only thing that envy prompts action is that you do everything you possibly can to bring another person down. Jealousy can actually prompt you into action where you also achieve, that you also, in your comparison with the other person, you're actually making progress.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Interesting. I've got to do some further research into that because I think it's an interesting distinction.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, I consider envy the diametrically opposed thinking to ambition. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs hide their ambition because they don't want to trigger envy in other people.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, I mean, ambition, to me, ambition is a positive depending. There's degrees of ambition. I mean, if at all costs, I'm going to get what I want, no matter what's in my way, and so on, that's not healthy. But ambition is also, I think, a fuel that can result in a creative expression, innovation, progress, everything else.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, the way we're talking about ambition in Coach is that it's a capability that prompts all other capabilities. In other words, it's a general capability that you have the ability to acquire new capabilities, okay? Whether it's toxic or not is a character issue. It's not an ambition issue.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, I would agree with that.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So when people say, you know, that he just walks over other people, I said, it's not, ambition is not the problem. It's his character. That's the problem.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think ambition is neutral. It's just a capability.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: How do you define capability?
 
Dan Sullivan: A capability is the ability to do new things at a better level.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, it's interesting because I see ambition as something that is a character trait of one who is motivated to do more than what they're doing, and that the ambition is a drive fueled by the notion of wanting to do more, wanting to do better, you know, whatever. I don't see any of it as negative. Again, character issues can enter in, as you were saying.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I make the distinction that it's the character. I mean, I think it's open to all human beings to be ambitious. It's available. It's like electricity. What I've noticed in dealing with the entrepreneurs, I've always been puzzled by something. Why do entrepreneurs retire? And they usually retire at the top of their game. So I was saying, so I'm not quite understanding why. And I've never met one who, after they retire, is happy because they retired. And what I feel about this is that whenever you want another capability, you have to be really committed to it, which means that you have to disregard some of the things that you're doing right now to devote your attention, devote your energies, devote your money to getting a new capability. So, for example, I think the major market book, Casting Not Hiring, is a major new capability, that once that book is published, we'll suddenly discover, both of us, that we've acquired a brand-new capability, and that every day, hundreds of people are hearing about this and they're reading the book.
 
Well, that's a capability. But in order to get that capability, we have to rearrange our schedule, rearrange our focus, rearrange where our energy goes for the better part of a year on this particular topic. And when you're doing that, devoting the time to it, you can't be devoting your time to other things. And I'll just bring it back to you that your decision that you're going to take somebody's story, Floyd Price's story, that really impressed you when you did the documentary film on him and you met him and you had a relationship with him, that you would devote very, very significant amounts of your time, attention, and energy over a long period of time to have this story out there. And it's acquired greater capability going from the first reading, that was a capability, then the workshop, that was a capability, then the first on the road show, Chicago was a capability. And then you're having to acquire bridge capabilities in London with the, I don't quite remember the name of what you did in ‘24. The concert.
 
Well, even previous to that last year, you did something else. Industry-related. And what you're doing is that you're creating smaller capabilities so that big capability actually happens. So now you're saying, well, we're waiting in line in London. Maybe if we really go big right now in New York, then it'll be easier and you're changing your whole notion about your marketing strategy and your casting strategy and everything else. But there's this capability that you want to see real in the world and thousands and millions of people know about this new capability. Yeah, that's the ambition. And the people, I don't know who you've talked to, say, why are you doing this? I mean, look at you. You're in your 70s. Why are you doing this? All they're telling you is that they don't have any ambition.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, I think a lot of people can't help but to reflect what somebody else is doing. And comparatively, they look at themselves and they would rather… Not to be reminded of that. Yeah, and the thing is there, the threatened part comes in when they're saying, why are you doing that now?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. That statement is never about you. That statement is about them.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's exactly right. That's how I feel too.
 
Dan Sullivan: Because I'm not doing anything now. No, I was saying to a certain extent, they're reflecting, you know, you know, it's like I have five siblings and none of them for the last 50 years has known what I do. I know that because they've never asked me a question about what I do. But I was back to see them about six months ago. And to a person, they all wanted to know that thing that they don't know that I've been doing for 50 years. When am I going to stop doing it?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You know the thing we never talk about?
 
Dan Sullivan: That's not a question about me, that's a question about them. That's right.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, that's right, that's right. You know the topic that we've avoided, that we've never talked about? You know what you should do, because you do your family reunion once a year, is it?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, it's usually events, birthdays, usually is around some, not really just specifically family reunions, but it's, you know, their every birthday now because they're in their seventies and eighties, it becomes more important than when they were in their forties or fifties. Yeah. Another year. And the big one, I had a big one because my sister was 90 and that's sort of a major, major milestone. She's the oldest sibling, right?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, the oldest, yeah. So I would suggest next time you all get together, play What's My Line. You remember that? They can ask you, no, Dan does not deliver. Well, actually, you do have a delivery business. You do deliver certain things. You know, so we've touched on envy, we've touched on jealousy, and touched on ambition.
 
Dan Sullivan: But I think envy and jealousy are the same from the standpoint that I think that they're toxic. But I think the one, nothing really gets done, and the other one, lots of things can get done.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, well, there are those people who just sit and grouse about things because they're envious of others, but they aren't willing to do the necessary work to achieve it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Not doing anything, yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right. And ambition by definition is, to me, ambition implies that you have to do the work. You can't realize an ambition without working towards it. You can talk shit about people and envy them and you don't really have to do anything but talk shit about them. But to actually accomplish anything.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think it's actually one of the main activities is talking shit about other people. Yeah. Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. As opposed to doing the work that would get you to where you want to go.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Somebody said envy is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I like that. That's good. So something comes along with that because I think we both know people that who are financially successful, have all the exterior trappings of a successful life, yet envy and jealousy are a part of who they are. Because as long as anybody they perceive to have more, that jealousy feeds the envy, and too much is never enough.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think the distinction I noticed among the entrepreneurs, and it puzzled me for a while, that as a result of new thinking that they got at Strategic Coach, they really advanced. They really grew, you know, their incomes grew, they had better teams, their lifestyle. And then at a certain point, they just stopped. They just stopped. What I realize is that there's a real difference between people who are motivated by growth and other people who are motivated by lifestyle. And when I say lifestyle, that when they were younger, let's say when they were children, they were teenagers, There was a great inequality between the lifestyle of their parents and their home and other people that they saw in the local community. There's a better neighborhood, there's better kinds of houses, there's better kinds of schools, there's better clubs that you can belong to, there's cars you can drive, there's second homes, there's boats, there's yachts, and everything like that. That motivated them to improve themselves, to get to a level. And once they use their entrepreneurial career to get to that level, then they've arrived. And then they're not interested. Growth entrepreneurs are different. They're motivated to grow to a higher level of capability. And once they get there, they consolidate that, and then they do it again, and then they do it again, and then they do it again. And the activity itself makes them happy of growing. And they've got a great lifestyle, but the lifestyle was never the goal.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right. I mean, I would say then from your definitions, I fall into the growth aspect. Yeah. Because the ability to have more things, I have enough that I have enough things, you know, and I don't think things make you happy.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, you just discovered last year that you had too many things.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes. And we're packing up to renovate. Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: I mean, are there boxes that haven't been opened yet?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Oh, yeah. But money has never been sufficient enough reason. Now, I have to temper that by saying I have been fortunate enough to have made money. Sure. So that I'm not wanting for basic things. That would be a very different situation.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: But yeah, I'm sure to a lot of people, what I've accomplished is in terms of acquisition and wealth is no big deal. And because I seek gratification, a sense of happiness about what I do. And that's from self-reflection. I can honestly say that I can't think of anybody I've ever been envious of. If you could be anybody in the world, who would you want to be? And I said, well, honestly, right now, I consider myself interesting. And that's my own discovery. So I'm not interested in trying to be anybody else.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think there's another distinction that what you just said is that I think people who are interested are happier than people who want to be interesting.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes. Yeah, I think that's correct.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think you've been wealthy in terms of what you're interested in.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, I would suspect you could say the same about yourself. Well, we'd have to compare. Well, then one of us might be envious.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's reflected in the interviews that you, you know, I've been deep into it over the last two days. I've been really, I doubt if anyone without your ability to be interested could have achieved those interviews.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Oh, thank you. What a great way to learn from a direct source.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I bet all the people that you interviewed felt better off about what they had done because you interviewed them.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: It was interesting. Like Hillary, she said, I like this because you forced me to think about things.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, think about her thinking. You got her to think about her thinking. I bet she has a much more cohesive and focused sense of how she's done what she's done as a result of the questions that you asked her. I don't know. Just take it in, Jeff. I'm doing my best here to try to compliment you.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I appreciate that. Thank you. I'm complimented by the effort. So why is it that there's lots of really smart people that make really dumb decisions? or catastrophic life choices. And why do you think that smart, successful people can be very good at business, but make terrible decisions in their personal lives?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, because they're smart in a particular way, but they're not smart outside of that way. In other words, in Strategic Coach, the central cornerstone of the whole program is unique ability. For example, I'm very, very good at creating things. We have a concept, actually, we just got the patent on this. In order for something to be successful as an entrepreneurial offering, somebody has to make it up, somebody has to make it real. In other words, it's not just an idea, but it becomes a product, it becomes a service, it becomes a process or a structure, and then make it recur. And those are three different people inside of a company. The one who makes it up isn't the person who makes it real. The person who makes it real isn't the person who makes it recur. These take totally different skill sets, and they have to be smart about that. You wouldn't want me managing anything, because I'm not a manager. I would do it once, and then I'd say, OK, let's do something else now. Well, that's not good management, especially as it relates to cash flow.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: But did you, when you were younger and starting off in coach and so on, did you think you were a good manager?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, but you're forced to because you don't have anyone else. You can't pay for other skills right at the beginning.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right. Yeah. So did you discover you weren't a good manager or did you enter into it knowing you didn't like that stuff that requires management or it was all new? You had to sort of find your way and find where your greatest capabilities were and then try to create a structure with Babs. that enabled you to focus on actually what would grow a business, because your management skills weren't going to grow strategic coach. It's the ideas that were going to grow strategic coach.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, I had enough skill to create a job, basically. In other words, I could operate in the marketplace through self-employment, but that's not a company, you know. And you asked if there was some discoveries, would you qualify bankruptcy as an opportunity for discovery?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, an opportunity if you take advantage of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: I didn't learn enough the first time, I did the second time. But then you did. Yeah, but then I did, yeah. But I'm no smarter about that today, it's just that I'm not the one responsible for it. Right, you don't have to do that anymore. I don't have to do that, yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So I think that's the thing. Were there things that you discovered, looking back, that you didn't realize were things that made you happy, but as you did them and thought about them, you thought, oh, so this is really where I wanna be looking at things, because this brings me something beyond the membership fees. This brings me something that, enriches me or satisfies me or gratifies me in some particular way? And it's a two-part question. That's the first part. The second part, does that still happen?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, you asked the first question. Yeah, I knew that creating new things was the thing that I loved doing in the area of ideas. And then there was all sorts of things that you had to master. In what form are you communicating the ideas? Are the ideas useful to other people? And that's where you really want to find out, is the thing that you love most that you're doing, is that the thing that people will pay you for? And I think that's the big, entrepreneurial achievement to discover that. But I also knew that working for someone else couldn't possibly be my future. Yeah. And I think at my present age, I'm doing more of what I love doing than I have at any time in my life.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Which is something that, I mean, that's wonderful. And it's also, I think, something that one has to earn. Yeah, it's hard work. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's right. And that's the thing that I think a lot of people don't get, because they only see the result, but they don't realize often what it took.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, the other thing is they have an endgame. They have an exit in mind, and they want to do it as much as they can before it comes time to stop. And I don't have stop in part of my thinking. Stopping is not a consideration.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, and it's interesting when you talk about, I talked to a number of young entrepreneurs. And the first thing they started telling me is, this was like a week and a half ago, I was talking to a very bright guy. And he was talking about what he wanted to do. And he said, so, you know, I'm starting this company, I wanna do an exit in three to five years. And from that money, I've gotten, I said, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. You're designing all the exits. And you haven't even built the framework so you have the doors to exit from or enter through. And he was in the process of raising money. And I think if you think that it makes you sound accomplished and experienced and smart to talk about, you want them to put money in you, yet you're talking about how quickly you want to get out of doing what you're doing. I don't think that's a good idea.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, there's a whole part of the economy where that's the scale, you know, and the people who put money in are thinking the same thing. They're thinking three years to five years, and they're going to get a payback. So there's a whole area of the economy, which is a fast startup, big hit, exit. You know, I mean, that's it. It's just that that would be of no interest to me whatsoever.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: But that's also, you've got to get to that point. It's very rare. It's what we talked about a couple podcasts ago. That's the unicorn, so to speak, is the one that actually starts something, builds it up that quickly and flips it for a fortune. And that's the rarity. Most people, it takes you time and experience in order to achieve that.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and the word there that's used, we had a really, really great consultant. He started off as an accountant, but he's a consultant now who talks about, he says, you know, scaling is a completely different game. He says, the question is, are you okay with growth? He said, you know, scaling is that right now it's costing this amount. And what you're looking for is something gives you a 10 times return, and it doesn't cost any more. He says that's scaling. He says, I don't think any of you in the room are actually interested in that thing. As you grow, your expenses grow. And he says, that's not scaling. That's growth, but it's not scaling. I think there's a bit of a gambling, someone who's got gambling instincts, you know, and I think it's hardwired. There are some people who are very, very good gamblers. I think Elon Musk is a terrific gambler and that's the way he's wired and he's developed all his skills about his big gambles. I mean, he comes as close to being a one-person stock as anyone I've experienced in my lifetime. It's not anything that he's created, it's him himself that attracts other people's money. Because they think he just takes big, big gambles. And then one of them is not operating exactly the way that he promised, then he does another one and he gets more money. It's a particular way of living. Whether it makes them happy or not, I don't know, because I think it's impossible to really, really say what makes another person happy.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I mean, yes, it's not a prescriptive thing that you can say. By the way, I believe it's the same thing with success. you know, there's so much nuance into what that actually means.
 
Dan Sullivan: But going back to the question that you asked about self-reflection, I think success without self-reflection doesn't produce happiness.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I agree. Yeah. Why do you say that?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I had to say something.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And that's why we call this anything and everything, ladies and gentlemen.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I'd like to introduce another word, meaning. I think that constant success with no self-reflection doesn't create any meaning out of the experience. And I think we're meaning making creatures. I think the distinction between us, and I wrote a book on this, you know, one of my small books, you know, the comparison between artificial intelligence, or let's say computers, because computers are the the vehicle, and a way of describing intelligence, you know, that came in, I think probably Ray Kurzweil is probably the prophet here, that humans are information processors, computers are information processors, computers are much faster information processors than humans, therefore at a certain point computers are going to be smarter than human beings. And I said, well, that would be true if we're information processors. But I don't think we're information process. I think we're meaning makers.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I think it's an interesting distinction.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, yeah. I mean, information, you know, we take this, we take that. Actually, humans can make great meaning with very little information.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right. Putting aside whether or not the meaning has any accuracy to it or not.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. A great comedian doesn't use very much information. Right. It's just that he creates tremendous meaning, you know.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, and data can become information once it's interpreted.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Otherwise, it isn't.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, information is more meaningful than data. Yeah. Knowledge is more meaningful than information. Wisdom is more meaningful than knowledge. And that's what I was just going to say.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: No joke. That's what I was just going to say. The social psychologist, Mastroianni, Adam Mastroianni, whose article inspired me to want us to be talking about these things, which was quite interesting. He has what he calls the grandma test. And this is a good segue into that. His grandmother can't work a TV remote, but she knows how to raise a loving family. make a perfect pumpkin pie? And in business, do we undervalue that type of wisdom? Have you had mentors or advisors who were traditionally smart, but had something more valuable? How do you respond to that?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I remember Stravinsky, the Russian composer, crossover from the 19th to 20th century. And he created that great ballet that Nijinsky was in. He became very famous. And the dancer Nijinsky. And he said, you know, When you come to think about it, he says a first class soup is actually better than a second class symphony. He says creativity happens everywhere. He said, I would enjoy a first class soup more than a second class symphony, even though people say, well, symphonies require a way higher level of creativity. And he says, well, not if it's second class. Yeah. So the whole thing is there are people who create first class things that are never heard of because it says, well, that's not the important thing to be first class. And I says, who's to say?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That's fascinating and ties into, I think, where we will go next week, because it also I want us to really look at what is progress without happiness and what does it mean to be the smartest person? How do we actually measure intelligence in a day-to-day way and the skills that aren't currently taught that could be greatly valuable to all of us, like some of the things we touched on. So do you think we accomplished our anything and everything today? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. 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.