Unlocking The Secret Fuel That Powers Entrepreneurs

Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. Dan, we were talking yesterday and you said something interesting, as you often do. You said you don't have excitement in the future unless you have some fear in the present. And I was like, that's a really good topic for Inside Strategic Coach because my experience is people really like the feeling of excitement and they really do not enjoy the feeling of fear. So why are those two things important, especially with the time senses?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, Shannon, first of all, I'm going to say that what we're talking about is entrepreneurs here because my focus is how entrepreneurs create their future. The real thing is the entrepreneur growing, and my sense is that if you thought of growth as a coin, there are two sides to the growth coin and one of the sides is excitement and the other side of the coin is fear. Okay? And I'm not talking about neurotic fear here. I'm not talking about pathological fear. I'm talking about that you've just committed to something in the future, which is very, very exciting. And then there's the fear that you can't pull it off. So my sense is that you've got to, really, as an entrepreneur, get used to fear and that you should make it a normal part of your life.
 
So for example, we have a really big book project that's going to be one of our mainstream books later in 2025. It'll come out. And we've had really top-notch success with the first three. I'm not sure this is going to be as good as the book that we're writing right now, so I have a sense of fear about it. But if it turns out to be much better than the books that we've written or equal to, but in terms of what they've done, then that's going to be very, very exciting. You got to be easy with the whole point that if you want growth, you have to have something that's very exciting because it's bigger and better than what you've done before, and you're fearful that it's not going to be one of the things I've observed.
 
You and I are writing a new book, one of our quarterly books, and it's called Always More Ambitious. I'm sort of really exploring what ambition really, really means. And a lot of people don't have ambitions because of the fear side of an ambition that it's not going to happen. You're not going to get there, you're not going to pull it off. And entrepreneurs don't like the future of being less than the past, but the present is where you experience all this. You experience both fear and excitement. So I think it's kind of like if you want the right kind of gas in your tank to be always growing as an entrepreneur, you got to make sure that the mix of the fuel is both excitement and fear,
 
Shannon Waller: Which is a very useful way to think about those two feelings. It's interesting, we were actually having a fear conversation as part of our 10x workshop this past quarter, and what's your relationship to fear? Is it demoralizing? Does it stop you in your tracks? As you were saying, Carol Dweck has a brilliant book called Mindset, and she talks about a growth mindset, which is like if at first you don't succeed, try again. Versus a fixed mindset, which is like, oh, I don't know how to do that, therefore I'm not going to try.
 
And that stops people cold from growing. And so you want to encourage this in yourself and your children and everything else. And entrepreneur's relationship to fear, which is what we're talking about, is key. It's like do you immediately say, oh, here's all the justifications for why I should be afraid. Or do you in fact use it, as you said, as fuel? What are some ways, and I like to say hold it lightly, how can people take action to use that fear as fuel rather than just being frozen in place?
 
Dan Sullivan: The interesting question, which category of entrepreneur are you? So when I first started coaching entrepreneurs in the 1970s, I began noticing a certain pattern which actually divided the group of entrepreneurs into two types. One is they’re status seeking entrepreneurs. And what I mean by that, when they were young, they felt that they were a have not, and they started picking up on external measures that they would be a successful entrepreneur if they had this kind of house or several houses. They had this kind of house, it was in the right neighborhood, they were in the right part of the community where they grew up and they had a picture of who the people were. They had a picture of what the house was like and the kind of lifestyle that went along with it. And then it branches out from the kind of home you have to what kind of clubs you belong to.
 
The golf is a big issue. So do you belong to the right golf club and what you're invited into during the course of your life that you're invited into this particular organization or this type of social club? It's very, very social. And then you have children and you want your children—it's the kind of school they go to. It's the type of achievements that they have. And there's these markers and there's a lot of them, and it's kind of a complete status ecosystem. So earlier in their career, they're very growth oriented, they're measuring themselves, but they have a destination in mind. And as they get closer to the destination, they have less ambition, and then they'll get to a point where they wanted to be, and then they have no more need to grow, and now it's to maintain.
 
And you can have two entrepreneurs who are as equal as entrepreneurs can be. In other words, they have big opportunities, they have great skills and everything else, and you can follow them pattern wise. And then all of a sudden one of 'em will be slowing down and the other one is going at the same speed or they're speeding up, and let's say we're measuring them from 30 years old to 50 years old. So they were sort of equal from an outside perspective. They were sort of equal when they were 30, 35. A lot of growth, both sides, and they're talking to each other. And then at a certain point, one of them slows down, and then at a certain point that person who is slowing down actually stops. And now it's all about their external measurements and maintaining a status where the other person will hit one achievement and they immediately set a goal for a bigger achievement and then a bigger achievement, and then a bigger achievement.
 
So I've been studying this for 50 years, and why does the one stop and the other one keep going? And it has to do with the one who keeps going, doesn't have external measurements, they have internal measurements, and it's in terms of their capability. And in terms of what bigger challenges can they take on and pull them off. Now, anytime that you set a bigger goal that's significantly bigger than anything you've achieved, there's fear because you don't have yet the capabilities that's going to be required. And I don't mean just your own personal capabilities; you don't have the teamwork capabilities, you don't have the technological capabilities, you don't have the financial resource capabilities, and that puts you in a state of fear. So for you to keep moving requires courage.
 
And my sense with if you're status oriented, that's your goal to achieve a certain status in other people's eyes, you'll reach a point where they don't want you to grow anymore. You've reached their level and they don't want to see a new behavior that bothers them. And so you have to be acceptable to an external thing. So that's basically what I'm seeing here.
 
Shannon Waller: That sounds like some people could actually get trapped in that level
 
Dan Sullivan: Success trap.
 
Shannon Waller: Right? Yes. Interesting. Because then also some other behaviors—I was just talking to a friend who is part of a golf club and he's talking about the amount of drinking that happens on a particular day of the week when all the guys are together. It's almost like they're anesthetizing themselves to, it could be not growing, who knows what else is happening in their life, but it's intriguing. So you really do have to be internally focused and motivated to not really go, okay, that's you, that's cool, you, I'm going to do me, and decide what is important to you. It strikes me that's going to be a much more fulfilling path to follow, but I'm not in someone else's skin, so it's hard to tell. What's your take on that?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it's hard to know because we never know what's going on inside someone else, what their life looks like to them, what their past looks like to them. But it's just an observation. It's not a judgment on my part except that I'm just curious. I'm just very, very curious of what went on when you had all the capabilities to constantly grow that you decide to stop. And it deals with the issue of retirement. And I've never entertained the thought of ever not doing more of what I'm already doing,
 
But always something new that expands capability. It actually relates to the new book that we're writing, the quarterly book, which just started yesterday. We've done lots of books and I'm saying, I don't know if we can pull this one off. I always have that sense. What's it going to take to pull it off? And it's an honest question because the way you did the last one is not the way you're going to pull this one off. So there's growth required. There's going to be failure until you get it right. And I think there's just something that for the status based entrepreneur, the fear that they've experienced in the past to reach the level of status success that they wanted was seen as a necessary evil. And I think with the growth seeker who just wants to always be growing, the fear is seen as not a necessary evil. It's seen as a necessary resource.
 
Shannon Waller: That's interesting.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's almost like fuel, that they think of fear as fuel, and it puts them on high alert. We have sort of four criteria that they're really alert. I have to pay attention to new things. Okay, I'm really curious about what's going to be different about this next level of growth. You become super alert to how you're going to respond, and then what kind of new resources I’m going to need? Really, they've done it hundreds of times, but because at least 50% of the new project is actually new, it's scary. We have The 4 C’s Formula that to grow, you have to have a commitment to something that's beyond your present capability, and then you're scared that you might not be able to pull this one off, even though you've done it dozens and hundreds of times in the past. You have this sense, I don't know. And then you begin seeing the change of mindset that's going to be required to pull this off.
 
And this is where it all starts. The status seeking is a mindset, and constant growth is a mindset. So the thing that the people really find interesting that status seekers when they get there, they do have a fear, but it's a fear of losing what they've achieved. In other words, they're not in motion anymore, and they don't have the same daily teamwork. They don't have the same mission statement. You don't have a coordinated focus of being around people where we're pulling off something big. But since they've given that up, I mean the moment that they sort of stop growing, you give up all the capabilities that come with growth, and that's really scary.
 
Shannon Waller: It is. They've gone from playing offense to defense.
 
Dan Sullivan: To defense, and then you become nervous about other people who are growing around you.
 
Shannon Waller: Well before you probably were looking ahead to your own goals, now you're looking sideways.
 
Dan Sullivan: Sideways, you're looking sideways.
 
Shannon Waller: Which we know is a great way to lose a race, as seen by the swimmer swimming next to Michael Phelps. But yeah, so all of a sudden you're focused on what everyone else is doing rather than your own growth and your desired goals. So that sounds, frankly, even more terrifying, has to be something like that. And it's interesting, Dan, because as you said, the status focused entrepreneurs and people see it as a necessary evil, but growth oriented entrepreneurs really see it as a necessary resource. And that to me is kind of fascinating. So you talk about people when they run out of future is when they're not willing to feel afraid anymore.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I think that a status seeking person and status achieving person, they lose the value of what they've achieved because it seems nothing's moving, and they try to keep things from moving forward.
 
Shannon Waller: That's really good.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. When I was 80, I was 80 about a year ago, I'm approaching next birthday. We had a big party in Nashville and someone who I hadn't met before, he was actually a Strategic Coach client who had been 15, 20 years in Strategic Coach. And he says, so you're 80. So what's your ambition for when you're 90? And I said, when I'm 90, I'm going to be a lot more ambitious than I am at 80. We didn't have time to talk about it. It was just a thing. But what you have to make a shift in your brain about what ambition is, and a lot of status seeking people is that ambition is a destination. But for the growth minded person, ambition is a capability.
 
Shannon Waller: Ambition is a capability.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's a muscle. It's a muscle. And we all know from physical muscles that if you aren't taking on heavier resistance, the muscle won't grow. And I think it's the same thing with ambition, that you have to put yourself in a position where you're challenged to be better and to be stronger than you were. But I don't like really being around entrepreneurs who have retired, okay, they talk about the past a lot. One of the things I noticed, they talk about the past a lot. It's like going to high school reunion, but it's 25 years later since graduation. And the people who aren't growing talk about events—remember that game we played against the bad guys and everything like that. But the older they get, the more in the past are they connecting with something that was really exciting in their life. So all their excitement is in the past. There's no excitement in the future. And I think just who you are as a person in the present really determine what the size of the future is ahead of you. And if your past is way bigger than your future, then I think it's not an enjoyable life.
 
Shannon Waller: Very true. In fact, in Laws Of Lifetime Growth, always make your future bigger than your past is one of the key ones. I want to say one more thing about status, Dan, and that is that for the growth oriented entrepreneur who keeps growing, it's not that they don't get status, but it's a byproduct of their growth. It kind of just happens. The money happens, the houses happen, the cars happen, the trips happen, whatever. But it's not the destination.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it's not the activity.
 
Shannon Waller: No, it's really not. And so it's interesting, demographically, they can look the same. And we know this because we know who we're looking for to join Strategic Coach and demographically they look the same age, clothing, houses, locations where they live, all the things. But it's the mindset that is different. So we want who we can best serve and contribute to is in fact the growth oriented entrepreneur, not the status. They'll be there for a little bit, then being in a growth program becomes a threat. It's not healthy to their status, which is really interesting.
 
So Dan, one other point before I wrap up. The other thing about fear, and this ties into how people can take action, is it's felt physically. Yes, it's kind of an emotion, but you feel it in your body too. And so identifying where it is and what to do with it. So Dan, when you're feeling nervous, scared, anxious, whatever word you want to use about something, what do you do to transform that into action where you're like, okay, I'm using this as fuel rather than just getting taken out by it?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it's a good question because we have this structure of commitment, courage, and then capability and confidence. It's a loop. It's a four-step loop. The moment I feel scared, I said, oh, I'm in the courage stage. So what's required of me is courage. And I think that it's very, very important to have a context for this. And I think that to add another thing to the status person, the destination was to be like other people. The goal was to be accepted by other people. And with the growth person, there's a comparison, but it's who you used to be.
 
Shannon Waller: Oh, okay. So that's interesting.
 
Dan Sullivan: The growth person doesn't measure against other people. They always measure backwards against who they used to be. So I'm in my eighties now, and if you just look at what I'm working on, the type of projects I'm working on now, the type of teams I'm working with right now are just incomparably bigger than 70.
 
Shannon Waller: I'm laughing. You're busy.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, I'm always busy. I'm always busy. Just hours worked isn't any different at 80 than it was at 50. But there's a big difference in quality, and there's a big difference in quantity.
 
Shannon Waller: If I think about scope and scale, and I've known you for 34 years now, so I've seen it expand and increase. And I love this, Dan, looking back to your previous version of yourself without beating up on who that person was, you're very acknowledging of previous Dan and current Dan, which is really fun, but as opposed to other people, that is such a profound insight.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's just not comparing yourself to other people. I mean, I think that this is, I think you pretty well know in an eight-year-old which way they're going. I'm 80 and the eight-year-old Dan is pretty familiar to me. It's the same. It's just incomparably greater amount of useful experience, greater amount of kind of comprehending what's going on around me, but I see a real sort of constant attitude. It was growth at eight, it's growth at 80.
 
Shannon Waller: Fantastic. Dan, thank you so much. I love this whole idea about how we handle fear part of life, how you use it. Is it really to become other people and accepted? But again, I see people trapped there. I see where they go. They're like, okay, now I have freedom from all the pain. Now what?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, they just don't want to have any more fear in their future. And I said, well, the price of not having any fear in your future is no more excitement in your future.
 
Shannon Waller: Thank you, Dan.