American Checklist™

While many people see entrepreneurs as being people who work alone, great things are usually achieved via teamwork. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young talk about how you can accomplish greater things if you collaborate with others, and how teamwork is easier than ever to engage in.

Disliking entrepreneurs: Many big corporations dislike entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs tend to be individualistic and ingenious, strive for exceptionalism, and want teamwork rather than bureaucracy.

Teamwork is key: As much emphasis as is put on individualism in American culture, the key is actually teamwork among individuals.

Individual growth: One attraction to being part of a team is that it can help you grow as an individual.

Collaborating companies: If you match up your company's ability with another company's ability, you'll create larger results than either company could achieve on its own.

Changing technology: Technology created by entrepreneurs is allowing other entrepreneurs to change the world.

Viable teamwork: Teamwork is only viable if what the teamwork creates is accepted in the marketplace.

Greater today: If you intend it and you self-create it, you can create teamwork at a much greater level today than was ever previously possible.

While some mindsets around the world encourage being average, the United States is a country that encourages individuals to be exceptional. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young talk about why this is the case and how the country was made for entrepreneurs.

Exceptional impact: If you take responsibility for yourself, distinguish yourself, and use ingenuity to do it, the impact of that outside of yourself is likely exceptionalism.

Killing exceptionalism: The part of America that is geographically but not philosophically American finds exceptionalism to be morally repulsive or reprehensible. But when we kill the goal and the desire to be exceptional, we stop getting exceptional results from people.

Making progress: Human progress is made by somebody doing something better, and that then serving as a kind of map for others to make improvements in their own lives.

Doesn't detract: Any number of people being exceptional doesn't take anything away from each person's exceptionalism. It's not a direct competition.

Causes discomfort: If someone has gotten used to average, running into an exceptional person can cause them discomfort.

Double-edged sword: Exceptionalism is the thing that will bring most successful entrepreneurs the most grief—and the most personal satisfaction.

From the start, the U.S. has been a country of ingenious people. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young talk about how America supports ingenuity, and how ingenuity benefits the American people.

Necessary ingenuity: Early immigrants to what became the U.S. were forced to be ingenious because they were doing new things in a new way and in a new territory.

Raising productivity: Ingenuity, like entrepreneurism, is taking a resource from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. There are millions of ways to do this.

Economic opportunity: Early Americans had the chance to perform economic activity that had previously only been reserved for people who'd been granted government monopolies.

Rewarding the ingenious: America has always rewarded people with new organizing principles, new ways of getting things done, and new ways of employing people.

Positive focus: Instead of focusing on what's bad, focus on the solution that's going to make the bad situation better. Instead of focusing on the unfairness of opportunity, take the opportunity to a place where it benefits a lot more people.

The secret: Being ingenious yourself and then spreading the benefits of that outward is the secret of American exceptionalism.

Multiplying ingenuity: You don't have just one great idea. When you turn ingenuity loose, it continues to multiply.

Freedom a must: You don't find ingenuity where you don't find freedom.

Immediately accessible: The best kind of ingenuity is the kind that's personally valuable and accessible right away.

It's not the pursuit of happiness, but the actual creation of happiness, that leads to happy Americans. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young discuss why gratitude and an understanding of the marketplace are necessary in order for your efforts to be worthwhile.

As healthy as you are happy: The body follows the brain in the sense that if you're unhappy, that will translate into physical ailments, and if you're happy, your body will get the message to keep going.

Not the pursuit: There's a problem with "the pursuit of happiness," as it's stated in the Declaration of Independence, because if you're pursuing happiness, it means you don't have it.

Gratitude is voluntary: The one thing that every individual has control over that triggers happiness is gratitude. If you're grateful, there's immediately a pump of happy thoughts because it's voluntary; nobody forces you to be grateful and appreciative, and it isn't a function of your circumstances.

No value: How grateful can you be for something that had no cost to you, that took no effort, and that never had a price attached to it? Until you've had the struggle, it can be hard to build gratitude and happiness.

American goal: Many people who immigrated to America had the goal of becoming an American. These people are generally grateful to come to the U.S., and entrepreneurship is something that resonates with them. On the flip side, a lot of people who were born in the States take living there for granted.

Uneven fight: The fight continually occurring is an uneven one, because the targets that people on the left have are completely different ones than the people on the right have.

What you're worth: The marketplace determines the value of what you're selling.

Rising to the occasion: If somebody puts a spotlight on what they appreciate about us, we grow in the area.

Freedom, not free stuff: Free stuff brings temporary pleasure, but it doesn't bring lifetime happiness. Expanding freedom brings lifetime happiness.

Individualism is a characteristic of the American way, and it's a key part of an entrepreneurial mindset. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young talk about the importance of maintaining your individualism in the face of temptations to join the collective.

Disorderly leeway: Because the United States gives so much leeway to individuals to pursue their own path, there isn't the kind of orderliness and sense of neatness you get in a lot of other countries.

Upside and downside: The upside of the notion of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is that you get an enormous amount of entrepreneurism and ingenuity, and the downside is that a lot of people have voices that you might not like.

Individualist questions: Individualism means deciding, "Does this serve me? Does this make sense? Are these the values I hold?"

No collective importance: If you really believe in individualism, then you believe that the collective doesn't really matter.

Entrepreneurial start: In all cases, entrepreneurism starts with an individual who has what they consider to be an ingenious new way to approach the marketplace

Best government: Government governs best when it gives the maximum leeway for ingenious individuals to create new value in the marketplace.

Preventing competition: When entrepreneurs have become successful, they often cross the line and now want to prevent other entrepreneurs from coming along and being ingenious.

Individuals are smarter: In terms of running their own lives, individuals are a lot smarter than the people who are trying to run the country.

The most freedom: Because of the resources and opportunities available, and because of the

way the entire system has been designed—especially on the basis of the Declaration and the

Constitution—individuals in the U.S. have far more freedom to plan out and create their own lives as individuals in an exceptional way than individuals in any other country.

Big weaknesses: The weakness of large corporations is that their ability to respond to outside

change declines as they get bigger.

There has never been a state-imposed belief system in the U.S., but many Americans feel they have a personal relationship with a higher power. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young talk about how a personal belief in God gives Americans increasing purposeful energy.

Purposeful energy: Your personal belief in God gives you increasing purposeful energy.

80% believe: Something like 80% of Americans said "yes" when asked, "Do you have a sense that there's a God and that you have a connection with that God?"

Cut off: Whenever you try to say only our relationship and only our definition of God is the right one, and you have to toe the line, then it gets cut off from the energy. Then it becomes just another collectivist dictatorship.

No imposition: James Madison said that the one thing we have to protect—and it's really protected right in the first amendment of the Constitution—is that people are going to believe what they believe about God and that there will be no state-imposed belief system.

Always been: There's always been this development of a particular spiritual consciousness in the American public about a personal relationship with a higher being outside the realm of organized religion.

There's nothing inherently wrong with loving to come out on top. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young talk about how your winning doesn't mean that someone else is losing—and why losing doesn't have to be a bad thing.

How you win: The winning mindset is that you love coming out on top and coming out ahead in new ways.

Might as well: Oftentimes, you've obligated yourself to show up and perform, and you might as well win if you're going through the effort.

Lessons through failures: See failures as things you did, not as who you are. Consider what lessons you can take from each failure.

Not equal: Even when other people my age had more than I did, I never blamed other people, or society as a whole.

Useful disruption: Everything that's useful in the world should be disruptive when you first hear it. It should throw you slightly off balance.

Win or lose: If you don't put yourself in a position where you'll either win or lose, that means you're living a kind of ignorant life because you're not getting the proper signals from the results of your actions.

Clear-cut proof: You have to have clear-cut proof from the world outside of you that the way you think you're operating is actually a successful way of operating.

Keep striving: When you stop striving and stop growing, your individualism starts disappearing, your ingenuity just doesn't show up anymore, there's no need for wanting to be exceptional, and there's no more teamwork or growth in your life.

Not in competition: Wealth is created. For one person to earn a dollar, it doesn't mean that someone else has to give up earning a dollar.

Many Americans see opportunities even in failure. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young discuss how Americans are disrespected if they don't have personal growth as a goal and rewarded if they make something bigger out of what they've been given.

Growth is central: Central to American culture is that growth is a goal, growth is a result, growth is a measurement, and growth is a capability. You're taught this as an American, that you should grow.

Respected for growth: In America, if you don't have growth as a personal goal, you're disrespected after a while. On the other hand, you're very rewarded if you've made something of yourself.

Measuring growth: The U.S. is amazing in the number of different kinds of measurement that it has for growth in all areas. There are 100 independent measurement bureaus that are measuring whether something actually happened, whether it's really honest growth, and whether it's really productive growth.

No experts: In a collective, all expansion needs to be directed by experts, but there's no such thing as an expert in relationship to growth.

Growth operating system: Because of America's constitution, and the way the arrangements are laid out with the 50 states, it's actually a growth operating system.

Cultural role models: Generally speaking, over time, people who grow things in the United States are considered cultural role models.

Growth for happiness: When people are growing, they're happier than when they're stuck. There are so many people who are extraordinarily well educated but become very depressed because, with all that education, they don't actually grow.

Most of America's biggest successes have been the result of teamwork turning ideas into practical reality. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young give examples of this, and present the theory that the model for teamwork was built into the American way right from the beginning.

Comparing to the ideal: People who hate America are always comparing America to their ideal of America. They're not looking at the country from the standpoint of where it was 50 or 100 years ago.

A fundamental emotion: The fundamental emotion of all haters of America is pessimism.

Built on teamwork: When you look at how the country was built, it was individuals coming up with new ideas that all required teamwork for them to go from the idea stage to the practical reality stage.

The teamwork model: There's only so much life, liberty, and happiness that you can develop for yourself before you have to cross over into cooperation and collaboration with other people. The teamwork model was built into it right in from the beginning.

Fastest to market: American individuals are the best in the world at creative teamwork that generates entirely new approaches and methods, and the teamwork of the American capital market system will get your new idea to the market faster than anything else in the world.

Freedom to innovate: One cannot be innovative if they're not free to take a chance with their idea.

Succeed or fail: American culture gives individuals maximum freedom to succeed as well as maximum freedom to fail.

Top and bottom: Collectives tend to try to put a bottom under failure, but then they put a top over success. They protect you from failure, but they prevent you from real success.

"Exceptional" can be an inflammatory word when people mistake it for arrogance, but in reality, it's the way Americans accurately see themselves and their country. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young give examples of exceptionalism, including increasing, widespread prosperity in a growing population.

Power to the people: America is the first country that built a government based on all the power belonging to the people and the people granting a limited amount of authority to their government.

Unprecedented success: The personal success of individual Americans on such a wide scale with such a huge population is unprecedented. This refers to self-generated wealth in terms of the United States and the quality of life that the country has produced.

Raised the standard: The U.S. has set a model where it's raised the whole standard of living for the entire planet.

No value outside: The direct opposition to a transformative attitude toward exceptionalism is that no one has any value outside of the collective's ideals.

Can lose the mindset: You can lose the American mindset. You have to be active in developing these qualities of individualism and ingenuity. If you rest on your laurels, you're much more likely going to go to the left with those who are collectivist and conforming.

No gratitude: Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street could exist nowhere except in the U.S. There are a lot of examples where people benefit from the vast investment that's gone in over decades and the very culture itself actually created that. The biggest thing I notice about the collectivist and conforming side is that there's no gratitude for what actually put them in the position to succeed.

Your best interest: It's not the American way to be selfish. It's the American way to make decisions that are in your own best interest.

Differentiate yourself: When you're transformative, you're always differentiating yourself as uniquely better.