One Bold Move That Separates Top Entrepreneurs From Everyone Else

Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here, and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. Dan, you have a way of saying fun and intriguing sentences, which I'd like to then interview you on. So you said, you can either be unique or equal: choose one. So I am very intrigued. So let's talk about unique or equal and why you cannot be both. Choose one.
 
Dan Sullivan: First of all, I think that this has been a constant issue since humanity existed, is that what we notice pretty much after we're alive, maybe five or six years old, maybe it happens before that, I don't really know, but there's an emphasis on, what is your goal in life? To be equal to other people or is your goal to be unique? And these are completely separate worlds. These are psychologically different worlds and they're emotionally different worlds. And I think you think different kinds of thoughts depending on whether your goal is equal or unique. And the whole thing is that unique from a meaning standpoint is completely separate from equal. Because to be unique means it's one of a kind.
 
So is your goal to be like everybody else or is your goal to be one of a kind? And it requires a completely different psychological development on the part of the person that you're not trying to belong to a group, you're trying to differentiate yourself from the group. Now there's certain things that is common human nature. But you don't have to work at that. You were born with that. So what I've tried to do, and I think it may have something to do with my birth order, because I'm a fifth child in a big family, seven children. And I have four older, who are old enough that you wouldn't play with them. Okay, in other words, there's enough of a gap.
 
Shannon Waller: More than six years, yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: Six years, so you don't play with them. And then I have two that are younger, and it's seven years difference. By the time I was born, almost all the attention space in my family was used up by the four older children. So you never sense that you were going to be like them because they had a totally different existence. That's a big age gap. When you're six and they're six years older, you're not in their world. So, very early I began to realize there's all sorts of things that I can do that are really, really different, part of them because the four older ones are using up all my parents' attention.
 
So what I came to, if I look back, and I've been told this by my parents. I hit on usefulness. My older siblings would argue with my parents and fight with my parents, and I was the useful child. You know, I see where I could be useful for mom and I could be useful for dad and everything else. And it gave me my own world, and I think that that world has, you know, just progressed onward from that.
 
And I'm going deep here that I haven't thought about this very much, but the big thing is that you stop comparing yourself to other people. You stop comparing what other people have. Then you just begin to become self-referential. In other words, you're just saying, well, I did this yesterday. I wonder if I can do this better today, and tomorrow I can do this better. And you can spot pretty early on other people who are either unique or they're equal. And I'm talking about their striving, you know, it's a striving instinct.
 
Shannon Waller: Ooh, that's good. So this is how people are taking action to move ahead in their life. And we were just talking about status versus growth-minded people. So I'm sensing a connection between these two things. So Dan, just so that I have a clear picture of it, in terms of, you know, unique people differentiate themselves, are self-referencing, again, don't compare themselves to others. And you did this by being useful, which you still are, by the way. Started when you were small and kept going. What is the mindset of equal?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, first of all, it's based on total non-stop comparing yourself with other people, okay? And for that reason, it's competitive. So you're constantly looking at new measurements that tell you whether you're equal or unequal, and it becomes an obsession in life, you know. And there's another context, and that is fairness. Okay, are you being treated fairly means, is the way I'm being treated, is that equal to what other people are being treated? So everything becomes a comparison and measurement, but it's outside of yourself. You're using other people as your measures, whereas the unique person is only using themselves as the measure.
 
Shannon Waller: So I'm gonna hazard a guess, Dan, that your four older siblings, who are much closer in age, would have probably competed for your parents' attention, would have felt a scarcity of that. It's like, oh, they did this for so-and-so, are they gonna do that for me? It's not fair. All of those debates that anyone who has two children really close together is very familiar with. So they would have had that experience, and you had your singular experience. That's really interesting. Yeah, so we see this in families, and we definitely see this out in the world. So, given that our audience is entrepreneurs, I'm gonna hazard a guess that I know which strategy makes the most sense, but what are your thoughts?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, first of all, deciding to be an entrepreneur and actually becoming an entrepreneur is not a normal choice. It's not an equal choice. I mean, a person who is watching everybody else and their main thing is to study hard, acquire skills in that so that you can be with a lot of other people who are like you. And then there's a competition of who's better and who's getting better treatment and everything else. And so that's a really full-time job. That's a full-time job. But if you just give up any notion of equality, and I should say this, is that I would believe in equality if I had any proof of it.
 
Shannon Waller: You would believe in equality if you had any proof of it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, people say, you don't believe in equality, do you? And I said, well, I would if I had any proof of it, but I've never seen any two people who are actually equal. So I don't have any evidence of equality. And there's a mix-up, you know, when it comes to fair treatment. It's not a matter of being fair. It's the question is that in order for society to be productive and for society, all the human beings to be successful, we have to have a set of rules of how we're going to play together. So it's not equality, it's just that there's common rules applied. It's like baseball. Nobody gets to walk on three balls, you know. Nobody gets a fourth strike instead of a third strike, they said, in order for this game to work. It's not about equality, it's just that the game won't work unless we're all following the same rules.
 
Shannon Waller: So the rules have to be applied consistently. I don't know if you'd use the word equally. So the rules have to be applied. It's when they're not that quote-unquote unfairness happens.
 
Dan Sullivan: But someone who just focuses on uniqueness creates their own games. They're not really in the same game as everybody else. Entrepreneurism is a great example, but anyone who's artistic, anybody who comes up with a new idea and then more or less bets on this new idea, bets on them being the person to come up with the new idea, has totally eliminated all question that I'm comparing myself to anyone else, because my whole point is to be doing something that nobody else is doing, so how can I compare myself to people And where entrepreneurs get caught is that they have one foot in both worlds.
 
Shannon Waller: I was wondering about that, because I know people who are very unique just because of who they are, but they feel guilty, they feel bad, they want to try and create equality for everybody, and they end up a little mixed up. So tell me more about that, I'm intrigued.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, you can't do two things at once. You can only do one thing. I think there are people who are very, very unique. They're very, very creative. But they're tortured by the fact that they're not one of the group. And I said, you know, you can't have it both ways. If you want to be unique and outside of the group, you can't want to be part of the group. But you can create another kind of community among unique people, and I think that's what we've done in Strategic Coach, is that everybody who's an entrepreneur in Strategic Coach is unique, okay? They wouldn't be a successful entrepreneur. They've got a something that nobody else does, and they've found customers and clients who will pay them because they're doing something unique. But then at a certain point they said, yeah, but I want to be a member of the group. And I said, well, probably there's no group that exists that's going to want you as a member.
 
Shannon Waller: It's like entrepreneurs are no longer employable.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and this is where it becomes very, very important. This is one of those things, and the more that you focus on how you do things differently, well, there's three things. Is it new? Is it different? Is it better? So, you're observing activities that are taking place that are creating a certain sort of result, and you say, you know, it takes six steps to do that. I bet I can do it in three, okay? So, new is different because six was the normal. Three steps is different, and is it better? The real question is, are you committing your life to being equal, or are you committing your life to being unique? And to a certain extent, I don't think you have a choice. I don't think you actually choose this. You become this. Because I think the direction of your life is already determined before you have the ability to think about it. So that's really what I feel here. But the big issue is, I think every human being needs a community.
 
Shannon Waller: Very true.
 
Dan Sullivan: So is your community going to be one where you hide your uniqueness so you can be part of the group? Or is it going to be one, because of your uniqueness, you now know how to find other people who are unique and collaborate with them? So I think that's the fork in the road. It's like Yogi Berra's great line, “When you come to the fork in the road, take it.” And the whole thing has to do with that you're okay with your aloneness, you're alone with your unique creation, and are you okay with that? And are you okay if there was a group that was a community of everybody who's creating their unique thing, and they learn how to talk to each other?
 
Because I think that we're social creatures. We have to interact with other human beings. Out of need, we have to do that, but we also do it out of want. We want to be around other people. And we don't want to be the only person on the planet who thinks this way, because there's no interaction with the world that you're living in. But it's an interesting thing. Now, in Strategic Coach, we don't go looking for the unique people. The unique people go looking for us. And so I think at 36 years, we're at the point now where the word is out, person-to-person, mostly in the form of books, podcasts, and other things, that we have created something that's really, really encouraging and supportive to people who are unique, and we've created a community so that they have lots of company, they have lots of encouragement and support for other people in being unique.
 
Shannon Waller: Which is interesting because in the Strategic Coach community, I don't see much competition. People are celebrating and supporting one another's uniqueness. If something inspires you, you're like, oh, what a cool idea. I can apply this version of it to my business. It's quite joyous, actually, would be the word. Like, people feel so much better after they connect with us. It could be on the weekly planning call, it could be on the monthly power-up session, in their quarterly workshop. Any experience and connection back just goes, just take a deep breath. It's like, okay, found my community again, touch base restored, going back out into the world.
 
`There is a great book by Todd Rose called The End of Average. And it really helps to dispel this myth that people are the same, right? And there's no average human being. They take measurements, they do all the things. And in fact, when things are customized is when you have the most successful combination of, well, the most successful results, actually. I highly recommend reading it. It supports Unique Ability in such an interesting, totally different way, which is really fun.
 
But I want to go back to something about equal, because there is inequality, and I think anytime you innovate or create something new, it changes the status quo, so there will be some differences. But I see a lot of guilt, especially around unfairness, around inequality. I'm just curious as to your take on that. How do people deal with that? And you've had some great coaching in the past when we've chatted about this, which is like, let's create more benefits for everybody. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's all equal. So I'd like to get your take on that.
 
Dan Sullivan: I'd like to go back to the whole concept that one of the geniuses of humanity as a species is that we allow for more and more uniqueness as we go along. The other thing is constantly developing new rules for new types of situations. And we just finished a book on the American Constitution on the Bill of Rights. This was a set of rules that was created when the population of the United States was three million, and now it's more than a hundred times that big. But it's a set of rules. It's the equal application of rules. It's not the application of rules to make people equal.
 
Shannon Waller: Ooh, let's say that again.
 
Dan Sullivan: What the Constitution is about is the equal application of rules. It's not to have a set of rules that makes everybody equal.
 
Shannon Waller: Mic drop. If I see one source of misunderstanding or contention, it's between those two things.
 
Dan Sullivan: There's an agreement that we're going to have a set of rules and we're going to apply the rules equally, no matter how different people are.
 
Shannon Waller: Yep, and as we talk about in this fabulous book, I might add, you really just get to see how it is about protecting all of the rights and opportunities for people to be incredibly creative and innovative. There's no guarantee of success, I will also say that. Failure is also allowed, but you're not penalized as being a bad person. It's like, good, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going for the benefit of everyone, for the benefit of the community, which is really cool. So, this is interesting, Dan. It's the equal application of the rules that really matters is what I'm hearing. It's the misapplication, and I think we are getting better at it despite news. That's actually what to pay attention to. That's where to go and look to make a difference.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it's a bit like a traffic light. It's red, green, and yellow. Anybody who doesn't agree with the order and goes forward on red, there's penalties for that, you know? And people say, well, this makes me a conformist. I said, you want to enjoy the ability to get somewhere fast? You can get there as fast as the traffic lights allow you to, you know? So it's not that they're trying to make people equal. They just want to create an equal application of rules so that regardless of what your purpose is out for driving or walking for that matter, just follow the rules. That's not making people equal, it's the equal application of the rules. And that makes a huge difference.
 
Shannon Waller: This is so fun to talk about. Equal application of the rules. And if I think about history, it's when the rules have not been applied equally. That has been the source of incredible pain and disruption.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I think the issue really increases with growth of population. So I was born in 1944. And I think the number, you know, I might be off by a couple of years because they didn't do a great job with census during the Second World War.
 
Shannon Waller: They were busy.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. But I think it was 2.2 billion on the planet, and now it's pushing 9 billion. So it's four times more people on the planet. Well, you've got to increase the use of laws so that there aren't collisions and conflicts and chaos. You've got to do this. But I think that if your main filter in looking at your daily experience you're striving for equality, boy, it's a full-time job, because almost anything can make you angry.
 
Shannon Waller: Well, and it really refers to our concept of the Gap, Dan, because if you were always comparing yourself to an outside picture, you know, I love the description of social media, is that we're comparing our insides to other people's outsides. Good way to go into what we call the Gap. And the Gap is when you measure yourself against an ideal that, frankly, is a moving target anyway. So it just puts people into the Gap. And so they are angry, they always feel like they're feeling short, they're disappointed. And this goes on for too long, you're depressed, which is never a great thing. So it sounds like a recipe for unhappiness.
 
Dan Sullivan: And there's an infinite number of things that can anger your equality standpoint. Okay, but I'm saying let's just keep expanding and make the rules so that there is a perception that the application of the rules is equal for everyone. But that doesn't say anything about them as an individual. It just says in your desire to be in a cooperative, collaborative society, just related to, are the laws applied equally? That's really the whole point. It's not, are you equal?
 
I mean, I just don't even know how you get your mind around the thought of people being equal. Equal on what basis? Left-handers are different from right-handers. Tall people are different from short people. People who are smart at one thing are different from people who are smart at something else. And the big thing is, encourage people just to find out the thing where they really are usefully different. In other words, that they do things in new, different ways that are useful to other people. I think that should be the striving.
 
Shannon Waller: I really like that, Dan. It reminds me of a Donald O. Clifton quote. He said, “People are sharp, teams are well-rounded,” right? So individuals are unique. We've got your top five Clifton strengths in one area and something else is at the bottom and vice versa. And if we're gonna work cooperatively and collaboratively together, we wanna be playing according to the same rules with our own unique individual contributions and talents. I like this way of wrapping it all together. So, Dan, what is your final piece of coaching to people? How can they put this into play? As you said, be usefully different. I really like that. Anything else?
 
Dan Sullivan: I'll give a very incomplete answer here, because for 50 years, my main focus is working with people who are already successful at being unique. I'm not really talking to the general population here. I'm just talking to entrepreneurs who, by their decision to be an entrepreneur, have taken a unique path in life. And they will only be successful to the degree that their uniqueness is seen as increasingly useful to other people. So my whole thing is that entrepreneurs shouldn't have a conflict in the way that they're looking at this. You have uniqueness, and then go seek out and create rules of collaboration with other entrepreneurs. And it'll be a multiplier. And don't try to fit in with people who are seeking equality.
 
Shannon Waller: That will not be a winning strategy. Yep. Great. Wonderful coaching, Dan. Thank you.