Joe Polish: Hello. This is Joe Polish.
Dan Sullivan: And this is Dan Sullivan.
Joe Polish: And here we are for a fantastic episode of Ten X Talking. I say fantastic, because I guess people have to listen to it first, and determine if this is fantastic, but here’s what I’m thinking, Dan, and I’ve given you really no indication of what we’re going to go with this. I want to talk about goal setting.
Dan Sullivan: Yes.
Joe Polish: Something as basic as goal setting. And the reason that it occurred to me is you have a way of thinking about short term goals, twelve month, three years, all the way up to lifetime goals, and twenty-five years out.
I want to give some context about the reason I wanted to talk about this. For as long as I’ve been in strategic coach, you have really done a great job of guiding very successful entrepreneurs on how to not only create business goals, but personal goals, so that they have just a fantastic life and design as best of a life as they can.
I’m running across a lot of people that are in the internet space. I don’t mean internet marketers. I mean people that are in the online space, fast moving companies, and I’ve had several people say you can’t do three year goals anymore. That’s silly. Life is moving so quick. I mean you got to worry about what’s going to happen next week.
I’m not talking like a couple people have said that. I’ve heard that from probably twenty or thirty people in the last six months. It’s interesting, and I wanted to literally start with goal setting. I mean why goal setting, and how do you think about it today? Have your thoughts on it changed at all? You’ve been teaching this for forty years, so that’s my invitation to you.
Dan Sullivan: It’s interesting, because over forty years I’ve been personally very, very aware of six thousand entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with. A lot of them, not to the degree that I have the discussions with you, Joe, but a lot of people I spend quite a bit of time with personally, as well as in the workshops, and goals are really, really interesting things.
I think that one of the things that you have to get clear about with goals right up front is that it’s a way of programming your brain. If you think about it like software programmers, they program a software to do a certain thing. You have to understand that there’s a part of you that can do the programming, and then there’s the program. The number one way that we actually create our future is by programming our brains to be looking for certain things.
I always look at a goal as a set of instructions that then tells what to look for and what to listen for. It’s a particular result. It can be measured. It’s got a deadline to it. The brain takes measurements very seriously, and it takes deadlines very seriously. A lot of people freak themselves out about goals. They make it almost into something they worship or it becomes like a religion.
I don’t look at it that way. I just look at it as you’re giving a set of instructions to your brain to say that this in the future is going to be more important than this, and then you should be on the outlook for resources, and capabilities, and opportunities that allow you to achieve this result. That’s how I treat goals.
Joe Polish: How do you think about the difference between setting a goal and prioritizing a goal?
Dan Sullivan: Just going back to your report on where some of the marketplaces right now, with the whole issue of goal setting, that three years is … You can’t really be realistic about three years. You have to be working about next week.
I personally believe that three years, also, isn’t as valuable as it was forty years ago when I started. But on the other hand, next week doesn’t really get you anywhere. You’re being very reactive if you’re looking at next week.
There’s a happy medium. I’ve got two frameworks that I personally deal with in terms of goals. One of them is ninety days, because ninety days is very graspable. I mean it’s three months out. It’s the month, after the month. You can visualize three months ahead. But not only that, you can achieve a lot in three months, and then if you take stock of what you do at the end of three months and you set another three month goal, that’s very reasonable.
But there’s still something lacking, and the thing that’s lacking is that you have to have a big framework, and there I go really long. I don’t go lifetime, but I go twenty-five years. I’ve sent you an update on my latest version of the twenty-five plan.
The reason is that I notice people who are great in the world are people who can stick with something for twenty-five years. If you look at Steve Jobs, he became great at the twenty-five year mark. He started in the mid-80s, but it was right around 2000 that Apple took over the world of music. It took over the world of cell phone. Because he had put in twenty-five years, more of less focused on a particular strategy. His strategy was we make beautiful technology that people love using. But I think it took him around twenty-five years to really get a handle on where the world was going.
I’ve just constantly looked at where great people really started with their greatness, and they had this plan that was way behind what most people actually think in terms of.
Joe, you, I think that you have exceptional talent, and we’ve actually had Ten X Talk sessions where we’ve talked about what your unique ability is, but there’s a lot of people with a unique ability. There’s a lot of people who are extremely talented, but they don’t stay with anything long enough for it to really make a big difference in the world. Anybody in this day and age who can stay with something for twenty-five years can really make a big difference in the world.
You got twenty-five years on the one hand, and then you got the next quarter. That’s kind of like the framework that I work in. I don’t work in one year plans. I don’t really work … We have company one year plans, but I don’t personally have a one year plan. A company one is really good for the company, but it’s not good for me personally, so I use three months and I use twenty-five years.
You’re constantly using each quarter to build yourself, and you get a hundred cracks at it, because that’s how many quarters there are in twenty-five years. If you get a hundred cracks at getting better and better, you can certainly pull it off.
Joe Polish: Yeah. That’s true. I want to respond to a couple of things that you said, and make a couple of points for our listeners.
I’ve kind of done this episode. The reason I wanted to do it and talk with you is there’s several people I have in mind that I think are absolutely reactive, but they think they’re very strategic, and they’re on cutting edge, and because of the fast pace of technology and how the world’s going to change, and how they think things are going to be so obsolete, you don’t want to plan it out too far ahead, because it’s not going to end up that way.
I’ve never seen you as ever being a person that cannot turn on a dime when needed to, because of your planning, not because you did planning and you can’t. I think that’s the misconception that a lot of people have, and why they really won’t nail down specific goals. They think they’re being flexible, when in reality, they’re just leaving themselves open to I could get hit by a truck.
But here’s the point I wanted to make. One of the greatest spokespeople for the world of exponential thinking and how fast paced the world is changing and the new technology is our friend, Peter Diamandis.
Dan Sullivan: Right.
Joe Polish: This guy hangs out with more billionaires, more people in the tech space. Co-founder of Singularity University. I mean he’s on the cutting edge of everything. Sensors, network, artificial intelligence, 3-D printing, medical devices, founded the X PRIZE. Responsible for the prize that created the possibility for private space travel. All of this stuff.
And the biggest grounding thing that I’ve ever seen happen to him is his association with you, joining strategic coach, which I, of course, heavily encouraged him to do, and then you giving him the framework of doing what he’s doing with abundance for twenty-five years.
That literally laid tracks for him that did not exist with a guy that was already doing pretty much massive impact changing things in the world.
I want you to talk about, the people listening here, how do they think about their thinking? I mean what is this twenty-five year goal thing you’re talking about? What does that mean?
Dan Sullivan: I think that, first of all, exactly what you talk about in terms that the world will change significantly in twenty-five years in certain respects, so you just back up twenty-five years ago, and you see how much the world has changed. I would say the vast majority of it is because of technology.
We’re celebrating the twenty-fifth year of our workshop program this year, so we’ve had occasion to go back and just think about what the conditions were in the world. There weren’t fax machines when we started. There were no cell phones. There was no multi-media. There was no databases. There was no internet. There was no emails.
In some respects, it’s a totally different world. But in some respects, it’s constant. The things that are most important are simply … they’re true today, and I’ll just make this up on the spot, because I really haven’t thought it through before you put the challenge out.
But I would say the biggest thing is that people still have aspirations that are beyond their present capabilities, especially in the entrepreneurial world. We have a lot of people listening around the world, and I’m always surprised where some of our biggest fan clubs are. We have people in central Asia, in one of the countries that ends with Stan.
Well, we would never have talked to those people twenty-five years ago, but what we’re talking about, Joe, would be just as interesting twenty-five years ago as it is today. If you look at the world of communication, it actually consists of four parts.
The first part is data, so there’s data that comes in, and it’s like watching the stock ticker. You go to the economic stations or the financial stations, and you look along the bottom, and it’s all the prices of stocks on the stock exchange up to the moment. Well, that’s data, and five minutes from now that data will change. That changes very fast.
And then there’s information, which is based on data. Information is usually a lot about what shows up in the news every day. Every day there’s new information. In some cases it makes the information … In a lot of cases, it makes the information from yesterday obsolete. It changes, not like data, but it changes on a twenty-four hour period.
And then there’s knowledge, and knowledge is one stage up from information. Knowledge is information that’s good for a period of time, and this information will be good for a year. This information will good for maybe even time periods that are more than that.
But the communication content that lasts forever is called wisdom. If you look at the great religions of the world, they’re based on principles that were established thousands of years ago, and the vast majority of human beings on the planet still follow one of these wisdom tracks that was established two thousand, three thousand, four thousand years ago, and that’s wisdom.
What you want to do, if you’re going to be planning goals, is your goal going to be a data based goal. Is it going to be information based goal. Is it going to be a knowledge based goal. Or is it going to be a wisdom based goal. I decided pretty well forty years ago I was going to live in the wisdom world, because what I said forty years ago was still going to be true today. When I look at twenty-five years from now, what I’m saying here is still going to be true.
I think we talk a lot in this program, we don’t talk about data and information, we essentially talk about knowledge and wisdom, which has longer shelf-life.
Peter, I think he’s very much geared in, just because of the world he lives in, to the latest data, but I would say it’s mostly information, because it’s mostly about technological change. All I got him to do, is say, “Peter, there’s one part of your life that you’re going to make a lot of money on, and that’s by bringing the latest information to everybody who follows you,” and he’s one of the most popular and well paid platform speakers in the world. He’s in high demand. He’s turning down offers.
There’s a part of it where he really has to be up on top of the latest information, which is technological change. But I said, “Peter, as far as your own life is concerned, base it on wisdom. Don’t base it on information. Just base it on things that twenty-five years from now are going to be just as true, or even more true, than they are today.”
Joe Polish: Right. What’s great to see is when people that most of the world, in a certain niche or area, go to, to tap into, to get all of the guidance. When you can give a track to a person like that, that you can just see the weight be lifted off their shoulders.
Because a lot of the people don’t need more stuff to do. They just need better ways of doing. A lot of people, it’s not about doing things right, it’s about doing the right thing, and how you go about doing it. That’s the freedom that I think comes with a lot of the tracks … I think of Dan Sullivan, and I think of strategic coaches laying down freedom tracks for people.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. That’s my goal. You’ve just nailed what my central passion is. I just want to free people up from things that kind of oppress them, or they get manipulated by short range things, and I just want to free them up to build long range things.
Joe Polish: Yeah. Let me, also, point something about myself, too, and one of the reasons why strategic coach resonated with me in the very beginning, why it continues to resonate with me, and why I consider it just a life-long thing that I do as much as I would brush my teeth, or exercise, or do any sort of thing that produces a good result on a regular basis.
I’m a very impulsive, very distractible personality, grasshopper brain, which over the years has gotten better and better. I mean I do many things that help with it, like meditation and exercise and eating clean and all that. What is helpful about strategic coach, about you, the models, the thinking models, unique ability, free days, focus days, buffer days, the frameworks that exist, is it keeps me on track.
If I didn’t do this stuff, I would be completely nutty. Would I still get stuff done? Yeah. But I would do it in a much more crazy sort of pace, and I would jump around a lot.
Getting someone to stick with something, like you had said earlier, people are great that can stick with something for twenty-five years. I don’t think I would have thought of that ever had I not, not only gone to strategic coach, but made a commitment to say it. Because there’s a lot of people that show up. It’s like twelve step groups. It’s not an attendance program, it’s a step program. You don’t just show up. You actually got to do the work.
That’s sort of the same thing with strategic coach. I mean how committed are you to this sort of future, and instilling that belief that this is a worthwhile thing to do, because I’ll tell you. There’s a lot of difficulty that I think … I’m speaking, of course, for myself, but just so many thousands of people I’ve met, there’s a real difficulty with people that have things going really well, and if they stuck to their knitting would just get better and better and better, and they just are constantly diverted. They’re taken off track. The analogies everyone uses is bright, shiny objects and that sort of stuff.
But there’s a real sort of wow, that’s interesting, and the squeaky wheel gets the noise, sort of attention span of many entrepreneurs, and that kind of goes back to what you said about people still have aspirations beyond their capabilities. I mean that’s one of the hallmarks I think of entrepreneurs is they can see things. They’re not even capable of doing them yet, but they’re trying to get there. But the challenge is you can be very capable and keep with it, and become more capable, more impactful, wealthier, and truly have some real freedom, and something can come along and just throw you off track.
Having something that pulls you back in those moments, which is why I love your twenty-five year framework. I love the way you think about goals, and just the way you even talk about it I think is a life-line for a lot of people.
I mean I can sit and say, “Yeah. Everyone that’s listening, let’s talk about goal setting and stuff,” but I mean this is I think a real lifesaver for a lot of people if they take it seriously, because they can flounder their whole lives if they don’t get grounded in something.
Dan Sullivan: I’ve given a lot of thought to this, but, believe me, I live in sort of rarefied error, because gradually as I’ve matured myself personally, I’ve surrounded myself with go-getters. I’m wealthy just in terms of who I get to work with. I just don’t have anybody boring in my life. That’s kind of like a form of wealth I think, because I’m sure a lot of wealthy people are surrounded by boring people.
Joe Polish: I love that line. I’m writing that down right now. Everyone listening should. Have no one boring in your life. This is a good rule.
Dan Sullivan: No, I don’t. I mean they’re challenging, and there can be frustrations that come with it. But I don’t have anybody who bores me. Everybody I meet with just activates my mind in a creative fashion.
But two things, Joe, and this is recent thinking on my part. But I think that the two things which they never get right, those people who they have two belief systems, and one of them is that they can be something else besides what they are. They see some other person operating, and they say, “I could be like that person,” and the truth is they can’t. Oscar Wilde, the great writer from around 1900, he says, “Be yourself. Everyone is taken.”
I mean it was just one sentence, but I said, “[inaudible 00:18:25] truth in that.” You only get to be this one person, and people are always looking to be someone else besides who they are, and that means that they’re not happy with who they are, and so there’s a dissatisfaction. There’s a lacking, or there’s a deficiency that they see in themselves that they think will be fulfilled and made complete if they’re someone else. These are successful people. I’m not talking about losers here. I’m talking about really successful people.
The second aspect is that they think they’re missing something. That they have to be super alert to every moment of every day, because they’re missing something. There’s some opportunity out there that they’re missing, and it drives them crazy.
This always gets a laugh in the workshops, and I said, “All of you by being here today are missing an enormous amount of opportunity. Do you realize that? Things are going on, because I’ve taken up eight hours of your time, and you’ve committed yourself to doing this today. You’re just missing massive amounts of opportunity.” And I said, “How many of you feel that way?”
In the early stages of the program, people are, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I was worried about that. That I can’t afford these eight hours, because I’m going to be missing something.” But it could be any eight hours in their life, and they have the feeling they’re missing something.
I say, “Well, did you ever go swimming in the ocean,” and people put up their hands, Pacific or Atlantic, or any other big body of water in the world. And I said, “When you came out and somebody said, ‘Well, how was the swim,’ did you say to them, ‘Well, it was a good swim, but I missed a lot of water.'” How much water do you need when you go swimming. I mean most people have all the opportunity that they need to be successful. They have all the capabilities. They have all the resources. But they can’t use them, because they think that there’s some things that are better that they’re missing.
Not recognizing that they can’t be someone else, and thinking that they’re missing something, I think keeps them on a treadmill all their life.
Joe Polish: I agree. How will goal setting, or say like a twenty-five year plan, because I’d like to on this episode, and before we wrap up, I’d like to actually have you give some specifics, and maybe even an exercise or recommendation for people, because I think just even being clear what your north star is, what your game is, what’s the game you want to play, and for people that don’t know, I mean they’re really in an area of confusion.
I think most entrepreneurs are constantly going in and out of that. I mean that’s the reason I commit to strategic coach, and why I go to strategic coach. It constantly keeps me on track. I don’t have to worry about, “Oh, you know, what’s going to happen if I don’t know what to do?” I now have all these tools and these thinking processes, and a place where I can go that specifically helps me with that. That’s why I’m very happy to cut a check for it, and tell other people to do the same.
How will this help that condition?
Dan Sullivan: Here’s the something about goals, and a lot of people think goals are outside of themselves. But goals are actually you in the future. When you set a goal, you’re actually creating a future you. There’s a present you, which is just momentary. I mean it’s just a movie and line. And then there’s a past you.
The reason why goals are important is because if you don’t have goals, you’re going to end up being your past you, and we all know people when we were teenagers or in our twenties that seemed to have unlimited promise. They were going to be world beaters, and yet you meet them twenty years later, and they’re boring. They’re no more than they were when they were twenty years old, except physically they’re not as good, and they’re not even really as smart as they were twenty years ago, and you say, “What happened to them?”
The reason is they thought the future was going to be created by someone else. Their parents had created their future. Their teachers had created their future. They always expected someone else to create their future.
That’s only good until a certain age, and I would say it stops at thirty. I think our society has advanced so much that we can actually provide young people with a future until about thirty years old. But it’s a bit like your body … Your body will be okay for the most part until you’re thirty. You’ll still grow muscle until you’re thirty, but after thirty you don’t grow any more muscle.
But most people think, “Well, somebody else is going to keep me healthy,” and they’re not going to keep you healthy. If you don’t weightlift, and you don’t do aerobic exercise after thirty, every year you’re going to be physically worse off than you were the year before.
Same thing with your future. Think of your future as the capability, and most people, they never develop the capability of creating a future, because someone else created the future for them. They get married because they hope their marriage partner will create a future for them. They get a job because they hope their employer will give them a future. But they never realize that this is a capability that you can actually develop for yourself.
The big distinction between entrepreneurs and people who work a job is that entrepreneurs recognize fairly early in life that nobody else was going to create the future that they wanted, but they still make the mistake that somehow the goals are separate from them, but it’s actually you projected out into the future.
I’ve got a very distinct idea, with lots of measurements of what I’m going to be like … I’m seventy … Just approaching seventy years old, and I know exactly what I’m going to be like when I’m ninety-five, and I tell everybody about it. When I’m ninety-five, I’m still as healthy as I am right now. I’m still energetic. I’m still as sharp. And I’m still coaching, and I’m still coaching incredibly exciting, interesting entrepreneurs, and that’s twenty-five years in the future.
But, having said that, then I say, “Well, what am I going to do tomorrow to make sure that I’m that way twenty-five years from now.”
Joe Polish: Right, right.
Dan Sullivan: And that’s the secret of goal setting. It’s you and the future. If you don’t create a future you, you’re going to get trapped in your past you.
Joe Polish: Yeah. Love it. What would be the call to action, before we wrap up here, Dan, for everyone that is listening. What is a completely doable and very impactful thing that they could do? If they were to write something down, make a list, answer a question, what would you suggest that be as the starting point?
Dan Sullivan: Well, I would do two things. One is that I would just get out a sheet of paper and put down ninety days ahead. I would start with a small time period. I wouldn’t start with a long time period.
You need to build up goal setting muscles, and so I would just start with … The reason ninety days is, first of all, you can actually go for goals and not have to review them for a ninety day period, but usually after ninety days, you have to take another look at them, because the world has changed enough that they need refreshing and you need goal setting.
I would pick five areas, just five areas of your life. I don’t know why. But five seems to work. And you say, “These are five ways that my life is going to be better ninety days from now than it really is.” It could relate to work. It could relate to your health and fitness. It could relate to finances. It could relate to relationships, and it could relate to your own skills. You just write these down and say, “This is how I’m going to measure it.” There is no goal without measurement.
The way we measure goals is that an event happened. I’m going to run in the Boston Marathon, so you either do or you don’t. That’s the event. Or it’s a number. You have to have numbers or events, or you don’t have a goal. It’s just a slogan. It’s just a daydream. It’s just a wish.
You do that, and then every day for the next ninety days, you take out that list, and you simply say to yourself, “What can I do today that’s going to move to towards each of these goals?” And each day becomes a new opportunity to establish who you’re going to be ninety days from now, and it builds as you make daily progress.
I would say one thing, Joe, I don’t think we’ve really mentioned on 10 X, but we have a free app that really helps with following your goals, and it’s called Win Streak. You just go to the Apple Store. It’s free. You download it. It’s got little tutorials. It teaches you how to do it. What you want to do is get on a win streak, so if you were to establish your ninety day goals, then you download the app, Win Streak, W-I-N S-T-R-E-A-K. If you love it, give it to someone else.
Every night before you go to bed, look at your three wins for the day, related to your ninety day goals, and project three wins that you’re going to do tomorrow that are going to lead you more to your ninety day goals.
That would be the best way to get started, because it’s short range. It’s manageable. It’s only five things, and we have a technology that backs you up on it.
Joe Polish: Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome.
I just thought of something really useful for everyone, too, because many of our listeners listen to us on iTunes, and they subscribe to the iTunes Channel. Since you’re probably already there, then after you listen to an episode of Ten X Talk with me and Dan, a perfect way to wrap it up is go to Win Streak, and you can actually use that as a way to … what is the win for today? Well, I got this insight, or I thought about this, or I’ve identified something as a result of listening to Ten X Talk, and I’ll finish with reading a post that was sent to me on Facebook.
Brian [Switchcow 00:27:45], hopefully I’m pronouncing that right. Hello, hello, Joe. I just finished my first half marathon while listening to the Ten X Talk podcast, and am enamored with all the value you and Dan shared.
It’s people like the two of you that continually inspire me to push harder and smarter, so I can Ten X my business and my life. I wanted to take a moment to say thank you. Many of your insights hit at the perfect time. I just expanded my team and am now leading sixteen employees, something that has been both exciting and overwhelming. Your suggestions about sales copy, master minds, community building, and value creation, all hit me at the core.
If there’s anything at all I can do to help you with the digital marketing or social media, please don’t hesitate to ask. I would love to repay the value that you have bestowed on me. Keep changing the world. Brian.
First off, thank you, Brian, for listening. I would just say for anyone that gets value, just please share it. When it’s the right fit for you, look at what me and Dan do with both of our programs, with strategic coach dot com, and twenty-five K group dot com.
In the meantime, like Dan said, Win Streak, share it with someone. Use it. And give us your feedback on Ten X Talk dot com, and keep on listening.
Thanks, Dan. We’ll talk to you on the next episode everyone.
Dan Sullivan: Thank you, Joe.