The Greater Game: Chapter 5 – Greater Community

John Bowen: Well, Dan, I am excited to get together again. We are at podcast number five, the Greater Community Multiplier. This is one you and I are, I think we're passionate about all 10, but this one we're even more so. But what I'd love to do is just get a couple of thoughts from you before we do it. It's kind of we're in the middle of everything, is to dive in and take a look at the whole big picture again, to remind everybody where this is all coming from. Let me spotlight it here. We're doing 10 episodes, four stages. We're going to talk about one architect. It's all about the greater game. But from your perspective, what are your thoughts here?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, I think first of all, just to back up a second, John, I'd like to say that I think you and I are the OGs in the coaching world of creating communities of entrepreneurs. You know, I started in the 70s. I thought that there was a basis for putting together, you know, entrepreneurs into a community where they were, you know, at equal aspiration, they're very growth-aspiring, they're talented, they're successful, they want to keep growing. And just like what we're experiencing now with AI being a fundamental game changer, in the 70s and 80s, for the first time, they had personal computers. And if you trace back You know, AI is a great breakthrough, but there were 100 breakthroughs during the 60s, 70s. It's kind of a step transaction, moving up through the whole technology. Yeah, and the biggest thing there, and you're 94.6% number, you know, that we're talking to a particular group of entrepreneurs here. And that is, these are individuals who have $20 million or more in their gross income every year. They're not small businesses, they're actually medium-sized businesses. But as you indicated from your research company, which is probably the best research company on the planet for entrepreneurism… I think we're doing the most and we're studying the successful ones, and that's what everybody here cares about. Yeah. 19 out of 20 entrepreneurs are simply optimizing what they already did. Nothing wrong with that. It's the center of the economy in any place where the entrepreneurs operate. They're the ones who are creating new growth. They're the ones who are creating new jobs. But now that we have this new capability, which has emerged over the last three years, you can play an entirely new game with what you've already created. What I've been putting together over a 50-year period, I started in 74, but I started the community really in 89, was that there's certain values, certain principles that hold any community together. And for the most part, entrepreneurs have been trained to operate on their own. As very successful individuals, And it's a testimony to their extraordinary capabilities that they've been able to make the mark that they've already made. But now we have a chance to put together an entirely new type of community in the world that's based on the actual research into the best entrepreneurs.
 
John Bowen: Yeah, Dan, I can still remember the conversation. We signed a 25-year deal to do research that we talked about a little bit earlier in the podcast, and I can still remember we were at CoachCon, and you were with Babs, and I was with you, and we were walking down, and we said we should do a book, and we were trying to decide. I went out and we did the research before deciding to do the book on a little over 1,000 successful entrepreneurs. And we started at the 5 million and above, and it went up to, I think, about $150 million of net worth. So these are successful individuals. And I want to go back to what we talked about. You brought it up. But what we saw was this concept of this 5.4% of them were killing it. And they had a whole different kind of architect that they were doing. And this was, again, two years ago. So AI was still obviously starting, but it wasn't what it is today. But we were seeing the framework of this you know, 100x to 2x capability now. I mean, you have a great book out there that, you know, many people have read. 10x is easier than 2x. And now we're going, you know, 100x is easier than 2x. I mean, that's changed in a relatively short period.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, I think that's the nature of exponential technologies, is that if you've done everything right up until now, and what we're laying out in this podcast series here are 10 multipliers that really don't involve technology at all. They just involve better kinds of thinking and it's the entrepreneur seeing themselves as the catalyst for growth. They're the individual who creates new opportunities. They're the individual who creates new value creation, new types of solutions in the marketplace and then they create great teamwork around themselves. And that takes an exceptional entrepreneur to do that because most entrepreneurs have a secretary or they have maybe some virtual help that does them, but they're basically time managers. They're keeping track of people's tasks and they're doing scheduling for them. We're not in that world anymore. Now we're into what I would say a cognitive world where we have technology now that's capable of massive amounts of thinking, which before we could only find in hired help. So, as we were doing this book, I said, we're not talking about 10 times anymore, we're talking about 100 times.
 
John Bowen: I remember the first time you brought that up, and I'm going, whoa, wait a minute, that might be too much. And now, I don't know, we might have even underestimated a little. I don't have any problem with a hundred types. Yeah. Yeah. No, well, and it's such a great time to be an entrepreneur. I want to give a little more framing and then dive into the community because I think, you know, we're right in the middle and it's easy to get lost in this. And, you know, this was some findings that Dan and I and our teams found. It's so important. You know, he started the four stages. And the very first is, you know, Foundation for Freedom. You have to have ambition, obviously, to be an entrepreneur. You really want to have security, the cash confidence. And, you know, each of these are the first two podcasts. And then we went to energy for expansion. This is where it takes off, where you have the vision, that motivation. And then really, I mean, Dan's been the one convincing me of this, but I am such a big believer in IP now. And, you know, we have a mutual friend, I won't name his name, that said IP is gone with AI. If anything, I think it's even more. But What we're going to dive into right now is collaboration and multiplication. So once you've got the foundation, you get the energy, you start expanding, this is where it really takes off. And one of the things that's interesting, and we go in a community right away, and that's what we're going to do in this podcast, but then teamwork, autonomy, and we're going to dive into those. You don't want to miss any of these episodes. And then we're going to share with you what the 5.4% are doing to really blow out these things. And Dan, one of the things that I love about all this is, I mean, as I was working on the book with you, I wanted to walk my talk. You know, the business just took off like crazy. You know, the ability to do this now like never before is really real.
 
Dan Sullivan: So the big thing, as we talk about community, there's a number of things that you have to think about, that communities are held together by language, okay? So you have a common way of talking about things. So when we started writing the book, I said, I'm gonna use all my experience from coaching since 1974. That's when I jumped out myself. I was a copywriter at a big, ad agency, and I said, you know, I think there's a new possibility here in the marketplace. But the big thing is that in order to put a community together, it's not around a product. It's not around a service. It's not a way of operating in the marketplace. It's a way of thinking. It's a way of communicating with each other. And what we have put together here You know, we've really tested this out with your technology that you do your research from, is that we have like the 10 rules for being a multiplying entrepreneur. So these are 10 multipliers, and you just listed them. But the one that's really important is what is the community? And the community is like-minded. First of all, they're like-minded people. The other thing is they've all earned their right to be in the community on their own as an entrepreneur. It's a very lonely journey. And there's no shortcuts to becoming an entrepreneur. It's a big risk. You have to differentiate yourself from normal society. You have to take risks that other people don't understand. But the big thing is that when you put your community together, okay, and that's what we're doing here for you, and this is a community that your specialty, John, for as long as I've known you, has been the great financial advisors of great entrepreneurs.
 
John Bowen: I love being in the wealth management industry and the largest concentration of wealth. I mean, household families in the U.S. that have 5 million or more of financial assets, 75% are entrepreneurs. And, you know, when we get to 25 billion or more, it's 90% the purest way of wealth. And, you know, I have the privilege of working with top financial advisors who are entrepreneurs serving entrepreneurs.
 
Dan Sullivan: I would like you, John, just to inform some of your fascination with the subject of that, that the vast majority of entrepreneurial families who really constitute the center of wealth in the United States are not well served by their financial advisors.
 
John Bowen: Well, it's so much in life is siloed and you may have a good financial advisor, good accountant, good attorney, good this and that, but you know, the complexity of life anymore has gotten so high that we talk about it in, in the greater, you know, security multiplier in the podcast too, where, It's so important. You need to have a foundation for freedom. Dan, I love the term you use, cash confidence, and I look at it as most of us as entrepreneurs, you already won the game, but now take the lessons from the super rich the family office and we've created the concept of virtual family offices and really we can do so much if we work with the right person. And this becomes really important because as entrepreneurs you want to forget about those issues of personal wealth, you want to be able to have that foundation so that you can create, as we're talking about today, Dan, the communities. And I joined Strategic Coach in 2009, and it was a little downturn, 2008, 2009, you might remember. Yeah, the financial markets were off, you know, almost half. And it's been pretty much straight up since then. But, you know, I joined strategic coach and it was really powerful being surrounded by successful entrepreneurs. So when we talk about community, there's kind of two communities you can be involved in one where you start your community. And this is really powerful. You can join one or you can then also become really part of a community that already has all your clients. too. And like for financial advisors, it's building communities with high-end attorneys, tax and estate attorneys, accountants, and so on. And what you're going to see, I mean, we're going to share a couple of stories of some successful entrepreneurs and strategic coach who have just taken off like crazy. I'm going to put up a little factoid, Dan, here. This is from our research. And we talk about the 1,000 that we surveyed in the beginning. Dan and I are now, I think we're up around 8,000 entrepreneurs that we've done in our partnership. But in that first group, what we found was 78.2% of that top community, they already led a very high level community. That's a huge number. One of the things I love, and Dan started his highest end coaching group called a free zone. It's all about collaboration. And, you know, one plus one equals 11. The number of strategic partnerships in the room, and I have a number of them too, has been huge. And, you know, we're seeing over and over again, and we're going to talk about Dale, but, you know, the ability to grow 10 times during a recession, you know, in five years, it's all about picking the right community that you want to be part of.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and I think the big thing here is that the best entrepreneurs create their communities. I mean, I was just watching, you know, Jeff Bezos, you know, he was responding to a comment that a certain political noter made over the last couple of weeks that you can't earn a billion dollars. And he just took her through the blueprint of how you actually do create a billion dollars. But she is correct. You don't earn a billion dollars by having a job. You earn a billion dollars by creating your own marketplace. If you think of Jeff Bezos, just with Kindle, you know, he's created billions of readers, a community of billion readers. They know you by name. My Kindle always says, Dan, you already bought this book. It's in your library. So he creates communities and this is a fundamental concept that if you give a big purpose and you can set out a big purpose and you say we're going to get together and you create a structure for people meeting and getting together and sharing their experience. and then create a language. And what we're doing for you here, and we can talk about the dashboard here, because the dashboard combines two factors, it combines language. So the podcasts we're doing here, each of the podcasts has a central theme. This one happens to be community, but we have 10 of them. And we're showing you that the top 5.4% entrepreneurs, what they actually do. just to be where they are, but actually how they go about creating their community. And they actually create the community with the language that we're using in the book, The Greater Game, and language that we're actually testing every month on the dashboard.
 
John Bowen: One of the reasons why I own a research company is I always had this belief that people leave subtle clues. What I've now found is it's blindingly obvious, but most of us are ignoring it. And I want to bring up the dashboard since you mentioned it, Dan, because this brings it all together. And what's really important here is for you to find out where you are in the greater game. So let me make it larger, you know, If you're paying attention to Dan and I today, I mean, you're already successful. And if you're just listening to this, you can go to thegreatergamedashboard.com. Thegreatergamedashboard.com. We'll have it in the show notes as well. But we're here to talk about the greater game. And you can go through and take a quick assessment. There are, no surprise, there's 10 series of questions around each of the multipliers. There's about 60 some questions. What's the powerful part is when you do that, what happens is you're going to go ahead and I'm going to sign into a demo account, and you're going to find in this case, it was set up to build a $100 million enterprise that runs without me. That's serious architect. You can see how each of the four levels, each of the multipliers, You'll also see where you are financially on that kind of cash confidence, you know, the virtual family office. Do you have any gaps? Where you've gained if you come back and report, you'll get that. You can see the three big moves here that this person should be doing. and then recommended actions whether it's appropriate to get a second opinion you can learn more strategic coach the acceleration and then also you can see kind of where you are with your scores based on your EBITDA. One of the things Dan and I, these 10 multipliers drive you to a much higher valuation. And then you can come in here on the peer side and compare yourself, you know, you to your peers, to the top 5.4 or to all entrepreneurs. And we're updating this monthly now. We survey at least 500 entrepreneurs. each month. And this is, Dan, I mean, it's one thing, you know, we wrote the book, we got the 10 multipliers, we got the four stages, but the powerful thing is putting it in place for yourself, implementing, execute.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. And I would say the moment that you engage with the dashboard, you're in the community and all you have to do is, you know, on a weekly basis, just check in. report any progress, but you're relating to hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs as this grows over the years, and there's a model being created. And, you know, thanks to John and his research company, we've found the center of the entrepreneurial kingdom in the world. We've actually found what they're doing And every month, every quarter, we're discovering new things that they're doing and putting it into a language that you can apply to your own experience. And you can then measure yourself. There's no reason why you wouldn't report accurately because it only does you good to know exactly where you are because that creates the aspiration that you have for doing better over the next week, over the next month, over the next quarter.
 
John Bowen: Yeah, it really does a great job of showing you the next 90 days, the next 25 years. And then we're doing a launch actually at the time of this recording tomorrow. And there'll be an Entrepreneur Pulse publication too, that will give you the confidence from that month and a whole bunch of research and stories as we build it all out. We're creating our community. Dan, I want to be careful not having the podcast too long, but I do want to just do a quick touch on a couple of the entrepreneurs that we put into the the greater multiplier community. And why don't we start with Dale Wills, a great story.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, Dale really brings out something that I've just found fundamentally true, because first of all, it corresponds to my own experience, that entrepreneurs have a unique ability to turn disaster into breakthroughs. And you can do that between breakfast and dinner. On a certain day, when you just tell the truth about where you are, and it was during the 08, 09 recession, as it's now called, people had money, they just weren't spending money. And what he recognized is that he had to totally change who he was talking to. And Dale tells the story in our book, the greater game book. which is now available at your nearest Amazon. He tells a story about how he suddenly realized that the banks were the people who had the reach. They're the people who had the network. He had the expertise. And so he showed how he could collaborate with the banks to actually make the bank customers better for the banks and make the bank customers his customers.
 
John Bowen: I mean, he got the banks to provide the financing in a recession that grew his revenue from $4 million to $40 million over five years. And this is where we see just the opportunity. I mean, if he had brought in consultants, they would have told him how to survive. He went ahead. really saw the opportunity and change. You can read in the book, he really changed that marketplace and he did it in a pretty tough area, Minnesota as well. We both have a very good friend. You're extremely close to Joe Polish. You introduced me to and I give Joe credit that he taught me an awful lot about marketing, communication. He's built an amazing network Why don't you describe a little bit of what it is, Dan, and then we'll touch on what he's accomplished.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, Joe, in my experience, I've personally coached 7,000 plus entrepreneurs. This is where I had direct contact. Our company has coached many more than that. But Joe is the greatest connector in the world. My Rolodex has one person and it's called Joe. If I want to connect with someone, I just tell Joe I'd like to connect with this person. You know, he has a great story. He's got a wonderful book out, which is called Make It About Them. But he's got an amazing community. I belong to his community. We trade customers like there's easily 400 of the Genius Network community people have signed up for Coach, and mine is in the hundreds of Coach that have signed up for Joe's. And that shows that when you create a community, communities can communicate with each other. Communities can multiply each other. So the game is to create your own community and then belong to other people's community, to learn different languages. But Joe, he's been in my community for 28 years, and I've been in his for 15, 16 years. But he's the greatest marketing, understanding how to connect with people and how to communicate why and how people can trust you to be an added feature, a great capability in your life. So Joe just tells a great story. And I mean, he had a childhood that I wouldn't wish on anybody. And at age 20, he's just not going anywhere and just turned himself around. But he demonstrated as an individual what entrepreneurs do in the marketplace.
 
John Bowen: You know, one of the things Dan and I are big believers in is outcomes too. You know, we're not just giving processes and systems and so on. And, you know, I want to share, Joe has over 200 members paying 35 to a hundred thousand dollars annually. And everybody here can do the math. You know, he's also partnered with many of those entrepreneurs. I've partnered with Joe on a couple of projects and he's now got equity in 35 different companies. He is probably the best curator. by character of anyone out there, not credentials. So this power of community, getting involved with communities, particularly with all the noise of AI now, has become even more important. Dan, why don't we close up this one? Because I want to go to, you know, they're all so important, but the greater teamwork as we get into it, is our next module, Multiplier 6. But why don't you wrap up the community, because you are one of the best collaborators. I mean, you and I are collaborating. I mean, we're two coaches collaborating together.
 
Dan Sullivan: That doesn't happen very often. I see entrepreneurs having two stages to their life, and there's no bypass to the fact that you have to do it on your own first. You have to go out into the marketplace, and you have to create value. Very few people want to deal with the marketplace straight on. Entrepreneurs are the very few people who actually do this. And you go out there, and you become very successful by the standards of the world. By the standards of your industry, you're very successful. That's stage one. Now you've hit a ceiling, and the only way that you can now jump to the next level, and there's great multipliers waiting for you when you make this jump, is that you now have to think in terms of community, not just in terms of your own entrepreneurial lifetime, your own entrepreneurial career. You have to expand outward. So think about this. You're 20, 30, 40 years, and you've done it on your own. You're great. You've got a great lifestyle. Everything works, but you've hit a ceiling. And now, with just a change in your thinking, you have to go to a community outlook, okay, where everything you've done up until now can be multiplied, but it can only be multiplied if you share it with other like-minded people.
 
John Bowen: You've already won, but we don't wanna see you grind it out. Let's have some fun together, create a community that can really make an impact. And we're gonna see you at the next podcast, number six. Teamwork, but this is a different community, your team, and how much of an impact they can make. We'll see you there.