Stacey Hanke grew up on a dairy farm in central Wisconsin. For over two decades now, she’s been providing executive mentoring and helping sales professionals become more influential. In this episode, Stacey shares how she applied what she observed growing up on the farm to running an entrepreneurial business.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• How their father’s drive and passion influenced Stacey and her sisters/team members.
• Why Stacey spent time in large corporations before starting her own business.
• How you can see yourself through your potential customers’ eyes.
• What people have learned over the last four years.
• How receiving some harsh feedback ended up being a turning point in Stacey’s career.
• Why being part of the Strategic Coach® community is a game changer.
• How Stacey has managed having work relationships with her sisters.

Show Notes:

Strategic Coach thinking tools are like plants. They’re planted in your brain, and they develop at different rates.

All growth is compounded growth.

If you have entrepreneurial drive, you can decide that the sky’s the limit.

If you want entrepreneurism in your life, you have to choose what you do appropriately.

Having purpose becomes more important as you get older.

Communicating with influence is a process of constant development and has to be consistent.

How we show up and interact with others determines who’s in our circle, the businesses we run, and the money in our pockets.

People are finally understanding the power of communication because there are now so many different mediums that we're trying to influence people through.

Communication is the core of everything you do, no matter what industry you’re in.

It doesn’t matter what you know if you can’t communicate it effectively.

Feeling influential and confident doesn’t always translate to how you’re actually perceived.

How smart you are doesn’t determine how influential you are either.

Before we can change anything in our lives, we have to be self-aware.

When you reach a certain point in your career, people are going to stop telling you the truth and start telling you what they think you want to hear.

If you don’t demonstrate consistency, people question whether you’re trustworthy.

How you communicated years ago might not work for where you are now.

What is common sense is not common practice.

It’s important to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because the minute you understand the discomfort, growth will happen.

Resources:

Tool: The Positive Focus®

Blog: What Free Days Are, And How To Know When You Need Them

Through speaking engagements, webinars, coaching, and books, Dave Sanderson helps people understand how to embrace their uncertainty so they ignite opportunity. In this episode, Dave, who was the last passenger on the plane crash known as the “Miracle on the Hudson,” shares how that incident served as a wake-up call that transformed his approach to business—and life.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

•  What it was like on the sinking plane, and why Dave was the final passenger to leave.
• How Dave realized he was only a number to the people at the company he worked for.
• What had previously prevented Dave from starting his own company.
• Why Dave believes that everything happens for a reason.
• What separates successful people from really successful people.
• Why the Strategic Coach® community is so important to entrepreneurs in the Program.

Show Notes:

• Embracing uncertainty can be a powerful catalyst for personal growth and entrepreneurial success.
• Life-altering experiences, like surviving a plane crash, can provide clarity on what truly matters in life and business.
• The four entrepreneurial freedoms—time, money, relationships, and purpose—work together to create a holistic framework for success and fulfillment. All four are necessary for a satisfying entrepreneurial life.  
• Your most valuable asset is not your business, but your ability to transform challenges into meaningful opportunities for growth.
• Helping others during challenging times can provide a sense of purpose.
• Self-doubt and fear of failure are common challenges in entrepreneurship, but can be overcome with the right mindset and the support of like-minded people.
• Gratitude is a strategic tool that can reframe challenges and unlock new perspectives in your entrepreneurial journey. It’s the antidote to fear.
• Your purpose is your most powerful differentiator—align your business strategies with your deeper mission to create sustainable, fulfilling success.
• Preparation and having a game plan are essential when facing uncertainty in business and life.
• What’s important isn’t the resources you have, but you how use them.

Resources:

Blog: The Four Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Book: From Turmoil to Triumph by Dave Sanderson

Tool: The Impact Filter™

The Kolbe A™ Index

Nicholas Schwarz became an entrepreneur because he was lacking the Four Freedoms of Time, Money, Relationship, and Purpose. Now, Nicholas runs a company where he helps his clients expand those Four Freedoms for themselves. In this episode, Nicholas shares how he’s gone from working in a job he didn’t like to becoming a happy entrepreneur.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• All the factors that made it difficult for Nicholas to be an employee of another company.
• Why becoming self-employed was unthinkable in his line of business.
• How Nicholas’s “wonderful journey” in The Strategic Coach® Program began.
• What Nicholas defines as “relaxed entrepreneurship.”
• Why, nowadays, Nicholas delegates as much as possible.
• How Nicholas’s company helps when it comes to transgenerational wealth.

Show Notes:

Entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs for the sake of freedom.

The real freedom that allows all the other freedoms to happen is being able to control your time.

Strategic Coach® members have the ability to actually arrange their life the way they want it.

The Freedom of Money isn’t the most important freedom.

Risk is always perceived as something negative, while uncertainty gives the possibility of something positive happening.

Sometimes, we stumble on rocks we put down ourselves.

Entrepreneurs who use Strategic Coach tools carve out a lot of time for themselves.

The Strategic Coach community is very helpful both as a sounding board and as an emotional support group.

Being your own boss has pros and cons, but the flexibility is worth it.

What you do as an entrepreneur is sometimes very lonely.

Talking about your entrepreneurial successes and challenges resonates more with someone who’s also gone through the whole process.

Resources:

Article: “The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs”

Unique Ability®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Article: “What Free Days are, And How To Know When You Need Them”

The Cecily Group

Joe Stolte is an entrepreneur working at the crosshairs of marketing and artificial intelligence. His company, Daily.ai, uses machine learning to help thought leaders and small brands build AI-automated email newsletters. In this episode, he explains how his company supports clients in achieving business success and talks about the business lessons learned from his company’s early days.

Here's some of what you'll learn in this episode:

1. The entrepreneur ideas and entrepreneur motivation Joe showed at a very young age.
2. How Joe’s company finds the best content in the world on any topic clients choose.
3. What it means to have short-term pessimism and long-term optimism.
4. How the AI becomes smarter, making the newsletters better.
5. The change in mentality that’s given Daily.ai an edge.

Show Notes:

When it seems everything out there is negative, what grabs your attention is the stuff that’s positive.

It’s a win-win to partner with people who already have a marketplace of your potential clients.

An entrepreneur doesn’t have to be the one with the idea.

If you focus only on customers that are a good fit for your company, they’ll refer you to other people.

ChatGPT has given people a taste of the exponential power behind machine learning and AI.

If you get your clients their desired outcomes, the outputs don’t really matter.

During tough times, you have to manage your expectations.

You know you always need to get better, even during good times.

Ads almost always get less than 50% conversion.

Anything in excess becomes its opposite.

Links:

The Spark newsletter

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

The Impact Filter™ tool

Lisa Larter has a strategic marketing firm, providing consulting services around strategy and business advisement. Like many entrepreneurs, Lisa started off thinking she had to do everything herself. In this episode, she shares the wisdom she’s gained from using her growth mindset to gain continual business success.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• The role of an entrepreneur in their business.
• The way in which Lisa’s background in retail helped her with marketing.
• The importance for entrepreneurs of understanding cash flow.
• How to make sure you’re prepared to pay taxes.
• What let Lisa know that her business idea “had legs.”
• The wisdom Lisa would impart to her past self.
• The variety of benefits Lisa has gotten as a member of the Strategic Coach® entrepreneurial community.

Show Notes:

The entrepreneur’s main capability is vision.

There are many talented people who don’t have a purpose or a vision for using their talents.

A lot of people understand sales and profit, but they don't understand cash flow and the timing and movement of money.

Meet as many of the right people as you can that you want to do business with.

People should aim to have a baseline—a certain amount of cash they want to carry in their business—and do whatever they can to avoid going below that number.

Entrepreneurs want freedom in their lives. And money buys you freedom.

Every entrepreneur needs some type of mentor, coach, or advisor that they can talk to when they have difficult things going on.

You will cap your potential if you don't learn how to lead and build a team.

If you’re entrepreneurial and you have a dream, it doesn't matter what your background or education is.

Resources:

Who Not How

Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz

The Self-Managing Company by Dan Sullivan

Judi Paré is a real estate developer dedicated to building affordable homes. When Judi began her entrepreneurial journey, she didn’t know what boundaries to set in order to maximize her productivity. In this episode, Judi shares some of the changes she’s made, and the business success and growth she’s achieved as a result.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• How Judi learned to separate the roles of employee and family member.
• How The Strategic Coach® Program helped Judi with restructuring and reordering her business.
• The importance of setting boundaries and sticking to them.
• How Judi responds to feeling overwhelmed.
• The many ways Judi has ensured her business can give back to the community—and why.
• Why Strategic Coach® works for entrepreneurs with continuous growth mindsets.

Show Notes:

There is massive a shortage of homes across Canada, especially affordable homes.

Strategic Coach takes a resource called an entrepreneur from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity.

In order to grow the company, you have to free up the entrepreneur.

In most cases, when an entrepreneur is stuck, they’re approaching their role as though they work for a corporation. 

It's important to step away from your business because when you come back, you're able to be so much more productive. 

The important ideas that come out of Strategic Coach workshops don’t necessarily all happen in the workshop room.

You’re never too old to learn.

Right now, in Hamilton alone, there are up to 8,000 people waiting for suitable housing. 

People want to live where they work and people want to buy homes where they work.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

Book: Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Blog: What Free Days Are, And How To Know When You Need Them

Blog: The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Plentitude

Business coach Dan Sullivan and marketing and advertising geniuses Joe Polish, Dean Jackson, and Mark Young have all been friends and business colleagues for years. Now, they’re teaming up as the Super Partners for a very special podcast episode where they talk about what marketing really means and provide examples of elegant ideas that entrepreneurs can use to better engage their audiences.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• Solutions that mean no more cold calls or door-to-door sales.
• The purpose of advertising.
• How advertising can be used to help people.
• The difference between marketing and sales.
• Why selling has gotten a bad name.
• What’s changed since Dan founded The Strategic Coach® Program 35 years ago.
• Why direct mail is still the greatest form of marketing in the world.

Show Notes:

Everyone who has a business is going to have to do marketing and selling.

One elegant idea is worth more than 1,000 semi-good ideas.

Perfect has become the enemy of good.

Anything you put in front of somebody is marketing.

Only the hungriest fish snap at the crappiest bait.

Once you figure out marketing, it's the ultimate leverage.

Marketing is the aggregate of all the steps you take to go from somebody not knowing you all the way to them being engaged in a relationship with you.

Once you figure out a marketing algorithm, it works again and again.

You can create control in your future if you learn how to put a message out there that causes people to want to give you money.

There are businesses that die of starvation, and there are businesses that die of indigestion.

The average person receives between 5,000 and 24,000 advertising messages daily.

Part of sales is just connecting with someone.

People don't buy from you because they understand what you do. People buy from you because they feel understood.

Dan’s definition of selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result.

Resources:

I Love Marketing podcast

10xTalk podcast

American Happiness podcast

Cloudlandia podcast

HYPNO-TI$ING by Mark Young

Video: “Is Selling Evil?” by Joe Polish

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy

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

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

Strategic Coach®

Mark Young

Jekyll + Hyde Labs

Dean Jackson

The 8 Profit Activators

Joe Polish

Genius Recovery

What’s Your Cleator?

Up until six or seven years ago, Nikki Fraser’s career consisted of working in large banks. Now, she’s an entrepreneur. Nikki and her husband, Dan, run a company called NextKey Services that provides small and medium-sized businesses with all of their outsourced finance needs. In this episode, Nikki shares what’s allowed her to make the biggest impact she can as an entrepreneur while having the personal life she wants.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• What inspired Nikki’s decision to leave corporate America.
• How The Strategic Coach® Program has been fundamental in the growth of Nikki and Dan’s business.
• Some of the business lessons Nikki has learned on her journey.
• Why Nikki and Dan don’t take it for granted that they’re able to work together.
• How to end up in a place where you're really focused on what you do best.
• Why corporate America can never produce the best product or the best service.
• What it’s like attending Strategic Coach® workshops as a couple.

Show Notes:

If something is going to be successful, it requires total commitment.

You have to be committed before you have the capability. And that requires courage.

Corporate America, as most people experience it, is not for entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurism means that you're using your own Unique Ability® to create Unique Teamwork that produces really unusual value.

It's important to be okay with not having all the answers.

It’s okay if something you try out doesn’t work. Keep trying.

Finance isn’t a compliance; it's something entrepreneurs or business owners can use as a strategic asset in their business to grow and transform.

You can pass on wealth to your kids, but passing on the right mindset is more important because then they can retain the wealth or even build their own.

It’s important to have time to turn off.

Being in a safe space with supportive, encouraging, like-minded individuals really gives you more confidence.

As you keep using a Strategic Coach thinking tool, it gets easier and easier.

Resources:

The 4 C’s Formula by Dan Sullivan

Article: The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Unique Ability

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

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

Ann and Sunny Sheu are not only life partners, they’re partners on their entrepreneurial journeys. With their business, Mpowered Families, they help high-achieving entrepreneurial couples to be as intentional about their family lives as they are about their business lives. In this episode, Ann and Sunny share what it’s like to be in business with the person you’re married to, how they apply business lessons to their personal lives, and the benefits they get from business coaches and fellow members in The Strategic Coach® Program.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• How Strategic Coach® workshops are like a clarity break for Ann and Sunny.
• Where Ann and Sunny’s work overlaps, and where it doesn’t.
• How Mpowered Families workshops have immediate impact on families.
• What led Sunny to stop being a slave to the business.
• How improving your personal life and improving your business life feed each other.
• The danger of trying to be what you think people expect.
• Why being a Strategic Coach member is really about the mindset shifts.

Show Notes: 

If you want to change your behavior, you first have to change your mindset.

Many entrepreneurs don’t create the time and space to do for their families what they do for their businesses.

Your family is the most important team in your life.

When your family life is strong, then you have the space to give your all to your business.

To build a great family life, you have to first do the work on yourself.

What often happens in families is that people bring a very diluted version of themselves to the table.

If you can’t clearly articulate what you want out of life, you won’t know how to ask for what you want.

Once you're clear about who you are individually, you and your partner can come together and create a shared vision.

It’s not always easy for a couple to have an aligned vision for their family, but there are always commonalities.

Very rarely do people think a decade ahead for their personal lives.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

Article: “What Free Days Are And How To Know When You Need Them”

Article: “The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs”

Article: “The Importance Of Collaboration In Business: Leveraging Who Not How”

mpoweredfamilies.com

Ann Sheu on LinkedIn

Sunny Sheu on LinkedIn

From the age of 12, Molly Thompson knew she was different. She looked at the world differently and thought about the world differently, too, and it caused no shortage of problems. Now, she is the CEO of Perrysburg Energy Solutions, a company providing organizations—and communities—with compelling, mission-driven energy solutions. In this episode, Molly shares how she learned to embrace her uniqueness, the driving force behind her business success, and how her current project became a massive community collaboration. She also reveals how, through Strategic CoachⓇ tools and community, she learned to trust her intuition, think 10x instead of being limited by self-doubt, and turn perceived obstacles into opportunities. Tune in to learn more about embracing individuality and staying true to your vision as an entrepreneur!

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

•  How Molly recognized her entrepreneurial mindset from a young age of 12 and saw the world differently.
• Her early entrepreneurial ventures, like co-authoring a book and developing a TV show.
• How she overcame challenges as an entrepreneur who didn't fit traditional corporate molds.
• Her experience being diagnosed with ADHD and how she strategically leveraged it.
• How she used tools from Strategic Coach to understand her unique brain wiring and thought processes.
• What makes for a transformational experience for a customer.
• What happens when an entrepreneur gets bored.
• How Molly took her commercial lighting business to the next level with a visionary solar project.
• Her innovative approach to collaborating with multiple stakeholders across sectors.

Show Notes:

Molly knew from age 12 that she was an entrepreneur at heart, seeing the world differently than others.

Successful entrepreneurs often have a sense of being different or not fitting into traditional molds from a young age.

This early recognition of their distinctiveness can be a driving force behind their entrepreneurial endeavors.

It also helps them develop unique capabilities very early in life— and often makes them unemployable as a result. 

Young people are often pressured to conform and be like everybody else, but successful entrepreneurs learn to tune out the noise.

The biggest danger for an entrepreneur is boredom.

An ideal is like the horizon: you can never reach it.

It's a lot easier to ask for a million dollars than it is to ask for $200,000.

There’s value in taking a step back and thinking about things.

Obstacles are simply opportunities for growth and transformation.

Resources:

Book: I Am Diva!: Every Woman's Guide to Outrageous Living, by Molly Thompson, Elena Bates, Maureen O’Crean, and Carilyn Vaile

Book: The Gap and the Gain, by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan

Book: 10x Is Easier Than 2x, by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan

The Strategic CoachⓇ Signature Program

Glass City River Wall