Free Zone Frontier

Why do some companies continually grow while most fail? You need more than a great idea; you need to surround yourself with others who are thinking the same way. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss the successes of Steve’s unique, collaborative StartUp Health network, the mindsets entrepreneurs need in order to achieve the greatest success, and the things they do that most entrepreneurs won’t even think about. 

• Medical breakthroughs are happening at such a fast rate that the most knowledgeable person really only knows how ignorant they are.
• “Free Zone” collaborations aren’t about the money that’s exchanged.
• True collaboration bypasses a lot of problems entrepreneurs normally think about because there’s no competition.
• There’s probably no industry on the planet that has less collaboration than health care.
• It can be difficult to maintain a transformative mindset when you’re surrounded by resistance to transformation.
• If you’re working at effecting change over the long term, you need to have a long-term view to feel good waking up every day.
• There are entrepreneurs who are coachable and open to the idea of lifelong learning, and there are entrepreneurs who aren’t there yet.
• Even at their most competitive, entrepreneurs are more collaborative than people who aren’t in the entrepreneurial marketplace.
• Real intelligence isn’t what your individual brain does; it’s how your brain accesses the brains of other people.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

The Strategic Coach® Program

What Is Rugged Individualism? And Why You Might Be Guilty Of It

Innovations in the realm of age reversal are accelerating. Getting physically younger while getting older in years is a real possibility. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explain the advances, discuss what’s needed for further breakthroughs, and share why age reversal developments are critical for entrepreneurs to be preparing for. 

Show Notes:

• Many entrepreneurs retire out of social or societal expectations.
• Setting a goal that might seem crazy serves as a magnet for what you need and as a repellent for what you don’t.
• You treat your remaining years differently depending on when you think you’re going to die.
• Thinking about your legacy means you’re thinking about being gone.
• There’s the expectation in society that once you turn 65 or 70, you don’t take on anything new.
• The solution won’t be possible if you don’t have the goal.
• Medicine is going to become the fastest growing industry in the United States.
• There are thousands of solutions that need to be worked on to enable true age reversal.
• There's been an incredible drop-off in venture capital funding of all areas except health and medicine.
• American progress in all areas is driven by adventuresome consumers.
• Mission alignment is the single most important predictor of success in long-term health-related entrepreneurial ventures.

Resources:

The Strategic Coach® Signature Program

Learn more about Steven Krein at StartUp Health

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein delve into the power of the “When Are You Great?” tool, discussing how it serves as a crucial planning aid and a potent marketing resource. Using real-world examples, they explore the implications for crafting compelling offers, narrating impactful stories, and leveraging a marketer’s secret weapon.

Show Notes:

• To figure out what gets talked about, you have to combine everything you’re telling with everything you’re being told.
• You share when you’re good because you have competition. Others share when you’re great because they don’t think you have any competition.
• Saying when you’re good is trying to make a convincing argument. Being told when you’re great is your compelling offer.
• How you're making people feel transcends what you do for them.
• Your messaging should include both what you do and what happens when someone participates.
• Measuring impact is hard in the short term, but unavoidable in the long term.

Resources:

The Four Freedoms

The Self-Managing Company by Dan Sullivan

The Strategic Coach Entrepreneurial Time System®

The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan

In one of our most popular episodes, Steve and Dan revisit why there’s a big difference between convincing someone with an argument and compelling them to take action with an offer. And in the market world where we all live, people don’t want to be convinced—they want to be compelled.

Show Notes:

A convincing argument is about the speaker, but a compelling offer is about the listener.

In the education system, you convince someone with your argument, but it doesn’t get them to take any action.

Characteristics of a compelling offer are that it happens very fast, and the clients don’t have to do much work to get it.

Humans aren’t computers, but meaning makers.

The basis of a compelling offer is that everyone is thinking in one direction, and then you present a message that changes the way they’re thinking about things.

Data is what you need to make an argument convincing.

Some people see situations in black and white (it happened or it didn’t happen), and don’t see the progress being made.

When you make a compelling offer, people want to be involved regardless of when the success will come. 

When someone is facing a new experience, it will be a good experience if they have something new as a solution, and a bad experience if they don’t.

Resources:

Deep D.O.S. Innovation by Dan Sullivan

You Are Not a Computer by Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explore the powerful 4 x 4 Casting Tool™, which can transform how you integrate new team members into your company—and galvanize your current team members to take ownership of their roles. Discover how treating your company like a theater project ensures you have the right people in the right roles for maximum impact.

Show Notes:

• An entrepreneur's primary job is to push things forward, not get stuck in bureaucratic processes.
• The least productive thing you can say to your team as an entrepreneur is, “I’m unhappy with you, but I’m not going to tell you why.”
• The 4 x 4 Casting Tool tells people how you expect them to show up, how they show progress in terms of getting things done, how they can be a hero to you, and how they can drive you crazy.
• It also empowers team members to take ownership of their roles within the company.
• When someone new joins your team, it's your job to tell them what the game plan is and what's expected of them. People can’t read your mind.
• Traditional job descriptions are impersonal and technical, and they fail to capture the nuanced working relationships that can (and should) develop in a growth-focused team.
• Having a Self-Managing Company® means that every team member is managing their constant growth and contributions in the company.
• You can’t complain and create at the same time.
• Remote work has fundamentally changed team dynamics, and it will take more effort to ensure team members feel connected to each other—and your vision.

Resources:

Anything And Everything Podcast

What Is A Self-Managing Company®?

Unique Ability®

Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson

Entrepreneurial Operating System®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

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

The Impact Filter™

The Great Crossover® by Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss the Free Zone Frontier® and the StartUp Health programs. They both believe it’s crucial to have the right people in the room, sharing their experiences and collaborating. Connecting like this with a community of ambitious, calm entrepreneurs makes it possible to experience five years’ progress in three months.

Show Notes:

• What happens backstage is more magical than what’s seen on stage.
• Gutenberg's invention of the printing press was a revolution that led people to start having conversations with themselves.
• Fifty years into the microchip revolution, a “team consciousness” is emerging.
• In any group, the individuals’ mindsets are the most important factor.
• Entrepreneurs tend to be isolated. In Steve’s StartUp Health and Dan’s Free Zone Frontier, it’s understood that you can't go it alone.
• Belonging to a community of confident, ambitious, and calm peers helps entrepreneurs make the next leap.
• In the Free Zone Frontier, entrepreneurs report making five years’ progress in three months.
• Dan predicts that technology will increasingly go “maximum global,” and that people will stay closer to home and focus on their own communities.

Resources:

Learn more about Steve’s company, StartUp Health

The Strategic Coach® Signature Program

Ever wondered what the success formula is for top entrepreneurs? Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss “The 25-Year Framework” and how it benefits entrepreneurs by helping them prioritize their biggest goals and measure progress every quarter. They explain how having a quarterly rhythm can be transformational, and provide insights into how to achieve long-term goals, adapt to advancements in technology, and overcome crises in the marketplace.

Show Notes:

• Measuring your past progress and planning out the next quarter, every quarter, helps simplify and multiply your efforts.
• This kind of self-accountability and measurement allows for compounding results.
• Growth entrepreneurs must engage in quarterly reflection to achieve their goals.
• Entrepreneurs who treat every quarter in business as a 90-day period of progress, recalibrating and staying committed to their goals, are much more likely to weather market disruptions (such as a global pandemic) and will fare better in the long run.
• Quarterly review and recalibration are essential for achieving not only professional goals, but personal ones as well, and help you build meaningful relationships.
• Your social circle can either support or obstruct your goals. Curate it regularly.
• Avoid making major decisions on Friday afternoons. Everything feels much bigger and scarier when you’re tired from the week, whereas you have a fresh perspective and more energy at the start of the week.
• To reach your quarterly goals, you must commit to weekly improvements.

Resources:

The 25-Year Framework by Dan Sullivan

The Strategic Coach® Program

StartUp Health

Free Zone Frontier by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management (Free Days™)

Should businesses be focusing more on engaging their customers virtually or in person? Since some customers prefer one and some prefer the other, you’re alienating people if you go too far in either direction. Dan Sullivan and Steven Krein discuss the incursion of digital elements into various aspects of human life and what this has your potential customers feeling—and seeking out.

Show Notes:

There was an industrial phase where everything old was torn down to build something new. And then there was pushback.

A good city is for both the people who live there and the people who only come for a few hours, then go home.

There’s a 50% renewal rate for Strategic Coach® clients who stick to virtual, and a 75% renewal rate for Strategic Coach clients who attend in-person workshops.

Some people have decided to just not travel anymore.

Virtual strengthens what happens in real life; it doesn’t replace it.

Testing something out on 50 people gives you a good idea about whether it works.

People are now pursuing what they’re interested in, and it’s harder to get their attention for what you want to share with them.

News stories disappear from public discussions much faster than they used to.

In the 1940s, the notion that you were supposed to enjoy your work didn’t exist.

There’s become a complete disconnection between higher education and the job market.

When people don’t know where they’re headed in the future, they go back to what they know and defend it.

Resources:

Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

The Transformation Trilogy set by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Unique EDGE® Program

For most people, entrepreneurship used to feel out of reach. Now, technology has provided the necessary tools for anyone to start a company that has all the potential to give them freedom. Dan Sullivan and Steven Krein discuss the many invaluable ways AI can be used by business leaders, and how it’s opened doors for dreamers. 

Show Notes:

Entrepreneurism by its very nature creates disruption and inequality.

Entrepreneurs like talking to other people who are entrepreneurial about their ideas in order to develop them further.

AI is creating a whole generation of people learning how to learn differently.

It might be more interesting to consider what using AI does to your brain versus what it does to your business.

Ten years from now, everybody's going to be using AI just as a matter of interacting with their computer.

People who would never use ChatGPT are going to have AI built into what they’re already doing on their phones and computers.

AI will eventually become so normal that it’ll become boring.

Resources:

Perplexity.ai

The Kolbe A™ Index

The Impact Filter™

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

Book: AI As Your Teammate by Evan Ryan

The Transformation Trilogy: Who Not How, The Gap and the Gain, and 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

As of this year, Dan Sullivan has been a business coach for half a century, and Strategic Coach® has been helping entrepreneurs lead their best lives for 35 years. In this episode, Steve Krein and Dan discuss the inaugural CoachCon event that recently took place in Nashville, how the three-day conference came together, and the secrets that made it a resounding success.

Show Notes:

When people are committing to an event that requires traveling, they give it a lot more thought than they did before COVID.

You’re going to see that almost all businesses have three tracks: a technology track, a teamwork track, and a coaching track.

Technology does not coach itself. Teamwork doesn't naturally expand itself.

Dan sees it as a form of progress when great things can be created in his company that he has no involvement in.

Most conventions and conferences are overloaded with content with no time to think.

What gets talked about in free periods during conferences is a more important takeaway than anything heard in the panel discussions.

Sponsors of communities are not always authentic members of those communities.

If people have a great experience, they'll tell a few people about it. If they have a bad experience, they'll tell a lot of people about it.

Resources:

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

The Impact Filter™

The Strategic Coach® Program

Visual Capitalist