Podcast Payoffs

Gord Vickman and Dan Sullivan explain how entrepreneurs who don't think of themselves as technically minded can still use the latest tools to their advantage. You’ll learn simple, actionable steps for breaking through the mental barriers that can make technology seem intimidating at first, so that you can make it another part of your overall teamwork strategy.

In This Episode:

• How can entrepreneurs who don’t consider themselves to be technically minded embrace new technologies?
• Dan’s new quarterly book, Thinking About Your Thinking, is based on a mental skill he developed at age six and formed the basis for all his subsequent success.
• Most people think about things, people, and thoughts, but there’s another level of thinking available that opens up new and better possibilities.
• Why Dan’s never felt lonely or weird—even when he was doing completely different things to the people around him.
• Instead of learning about every new development himself, Dan simply surrounds himself with others who are fascinated by technology, tells them what he’s looking for, and rewards them for discovering useful new shortcuts and capabilities.
• Gord and Dan discuss the Kolbe profile, which helps you learn how to work in your best abilities—or team up with others whose skills complement yours.
• The Kolbe profile made Dan happy because it highlighted the areas where he has no staying power or motivation, which showed him where he needed teamwork.
• Kolbe also helps explain the widely different ways in which people will approach learning a new tool.
• “Technology is teamwork that has been made automatic.” - Dan
• The starting point is an awareness of individual uniqueness, then combining that with other people’s uniqueness.
• “I always keep a smart human between me and technology.” - Dan
• “I would not spend any time learning how to use any technology. But I’m very, very fast to understand the importance of the technology.” - Dan

Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan

The Kolbe Profile

ChatGPT is on everyone’s lips and on everyone’s screens, but as an entrepreneur, you might be asking how it can help with your business growth. Dan Sullivan and Gord Vickman share how to tell if the current crop of AI tools is useful for your business or just the latest futuristic distraction.

In This Episode:

• ChatGPT is the next level of written communication that started with the teletype.
• AI has not yet reached the level of being able to tell a good story.
• Great teamwork is completing any project through greater productivity and achieving greater profitability.
• If you’re wondering how an AI tool can be useful to your business, first ask how it can help make your team more productive, and second, ask how it can help increase profits.
• Garbage in, garbage out: AI results are only as good as the instructions.
• Dan points out that ChatGPT’s response is strictly positive because the company OpenAI is most profitable when we see its benefits and consume its service.
• Gord and Dan wonder what exactly we’re being sold. Is this just a toy to generate meaningless social media content or a tool that can allow anyone to be a creator of useful material?
• No matter what new technology comes up, Dan’s approach is always to keep a very smart human between him and that technology.
• AI might generate the first 80% of the content, but a very smart human can take it to the next 80%.

Learn more about Ray Kurzweil

Learn more about Mike Koenigs

Learn more about Hamish MacDonald

Every new technology makes someone’s job irrelevant. Blockchain and its by-products—NFTs, smart contracts, and stablecoins—decentralize transactions that are traditionally moderated by middlemen and gatekeepers. If you’re one of those middlemen today, it may be time to find innovative ways to create value that people will pay you for.

In This Episode:

• Technology eliminates people having to do predictable work in a process or system.
• Freed from doing predictable work, people can be creative elsewhere.
• The blockchain, which allows smart contracts and cryptocurrencies such as stablecoins, is a technology that eliminates middlemen and gatekeepers.
• NFTs allow creators to sell directly to buyers, and buyers to resell directly to each other.
• Originally, CryptoPunks’ pixelated cartoons were reselling for tens of thousands of dollars.
• Like Holland’s tulip bulb craze in the 1600s or the Japanese real estate craze in the 1980s, people are using these cartoons as an investment, believing they can sell them for much more later.
• Trust is the essence of capitalism.
• The internet has made it difficult to know whom to trust, but blockchain smart contracts solve that.
• Smart contracts are tiny programs plus data deployed on a blockchain, such as Ethereum, that automatically execute an exchange once the conditions have been met.
• Instead of having a third party such as Kickstarter hold all the money during a crowdfunding campaign and then take up to a 10% cut, a smart contract can eliminate that middleman at just the cost of hosting the smart contract on the network.
• Defi, or decentralized finance, works the same way to make secure loans available to people who were turned down by banks.
• Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged to a stable asset like the U.S. dollar or gold.
• Because they don’t fluctuate wildly, stablecoins can be used for reliable international payments.
• Stablecoins also cut out fees to banks and other institutions because there’s no currency exchange and no service charge for moving across borders.
• If you want intellectual property protection today, you must file copyrights and trademarks in every country for it to be enforceable everywhere.
• With the blockchain, Strategic Coach could upload its thinking tools in a similar way to smart contracts or NFTs to universally prove ownership of creation.

CryptoPunks 

IBM article: “What are smart contracts on blockchain?” 

Forbes article: “An Introduction To Stablecoins” 

Your Life As A Strategy Circle by Dan Sullivan

There's a misconception that podcasting is a quick way to make money. But if you're only in it for the cash, you'll likely be disappointed. Start a podcast for the right reasons: to create value for your audience. When you focus on creating great content for your listeners, the money may show up in other ways. Dan Sullivan and Gord Vickman explain how Strategic Coach has seen consistent growth for decades by doing just that.

In This Episode:

• Most entrepreneurs develop the courage to become entrepreneurs because they’re good salespeople.
• Marketing is what allows you to even have the opportunity to be in front of someone.
• If you see a problem, set out to solve it whether you get paid for it or not.
• You should do it because it’s valuable, regardless of the money you make.
• Don’t listen to the people who are trying to throw you into The Gap by saying, “Oh, you must do this. Because everyone else is doing it!”
• Don’t force people to learn something new in order to get value from you.
• A podcast is like a message in a bottle. Most will sink, but others wash up on a beach where somebody will read it and say, “I’ve been looking for that!”
• Existing clients listen to our podcasts faithfully. They come to the workshops and talk about the subjects that the podcasts cover.
• The goal of the Strategic Podcast Network is to attract people and marinate them in the content in hopes that they become successful, talented, ambitious entrepreneurs.
• It’s not tough to make money if your focus is on making other people successful.

The Gap and The Gain by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan

The Strategic Podcast Network features all our shows in one place

10xTalk podcast, featuring Dan Sullivan and Joe Polish

Joe Polish’s Genius Network

Inside Strategic Coach podcast featuring Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller

Are you paranoid that you’ll soon be replaced a computer? What you might not realize is that no matter how fast a computer can process information, only humans can create meaning. Dan Sullivan and Gord Vickman discuss how technological breakthroughs actually affect human beings and the best ways for entrepreneurs to think about the coming wave of artificial intelligence.

Even if you have an enormous amount of money to invest, you can’t be sure you’re hiring the best person for a role unless you take certain factors into account. Gord and Dan share what you should really be looking for when you’re trying to make a splash in the marketplace, with many examples that have worked well in Dan’s more than 30-year entrepreneurial career.

When you feel bothered by something, it can be hard to figure out why, and this feeling always gets in the way of your productivity. Join Dan Sullivan and Gord Vickman to learn the best things to do when you’re bothered so you can move on with your life and continue creating great things.

Dan and Gord talk broadcasting, podcasting, and publishing, and why it's so crucial to be clear on what your core money-making business is. (Hint: It's probably not podcasting.) Also, who are the "Whos" to do the "Hows" that will create your bigger future?

Let’s revisit one of our most popular episodes to explain why plenty of shows have good content but fail to gain traction and intrigue. The reason is that content isn’t enough—you need to wrap it in a great story so it really sinks in. Dan Sullivan and Gord Vickman discuss why the best shows include the best stories.

Gord and Dan sit down with Willard Bond, Strategic Coach's audio engineer, to talk about the evolution of sound design. You’ll hear tips for pre- and post-production, why ideas matter more than technology, and why you can't resist picturing a fox.