Do you believe in luck, or do you make your own success? In this episode, Dan Sullivan explores the concept of luck in entrepreneurship. Drawing from 50 years of coaching experience, he reveals how successful entrepreneurs create their own paths, often starting young by seeking opportunities to grow their wealth. Discover how self-made success intertwines with luck in the entrepreneurial journey.

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

• The top ways Dan has been lucky.
• Why it’s more difficult for someone born into wealth to become an entrepreneur.
• The new Strategic Coach® thinking tool that will help you recognize and increase your luck.
• Why being an entrepreneur requires a lot of courage.
• How Strategic Coach is run like a live theater company.

Show Notes:

50% of your success comes from luck, and 50% of it comes from the ability to take advantage of the luck you've had.

An entrepreneur’s success is an act of self-creation.

Entrepreneurs create their own income streams and their own capabilities.

Entrepreneurs understand intuitively that freedom requires money.

It’s difficult to separate luck from skill.

The U.S. is an entrepreneurial country created by entrepreneurs.

Even the challenges you’ve faced have shaped who you are today.

Recognizing the luck you’ve had keeps you centered and grounded.

Whether your capability drives your luck or vice versa depends on your perspective.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

Your Business Is A Theater Production: Your Back Stage Shouldn’t Show On The Front Stage

Do you believe ambition fades with age, or can it actually grow stronger? In this episode, Shannon and Dan discuss how ambition evolves over time, share Dan's desire to be even more ambitious at 90, and reveal how transforming ambition into action can lead to growth and fulfillment at every age.

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

• How Dan’s strongest ambition relates to ambition itself.
• What you can gain by sticking to what you’re great at and love doing.
• How Dan came up with the goal of living to the age of 156.
• Ways you can lean into expanding your ambition.
• Why it’s easier to move forward than to maintain your position.
• Why some successful entrepreneurs get discouraged when they think about their ambition.
• The dire consequences of giving up your ambition.

Show Notes:

People begin to feel old when they stop making commitments—and stop prioritizing courage.

When entrepreneurs focus exclusively on doing what they’re great at and love doing, their impact multiplies. When combined with technology, the results are exponential.

Since your skills and capabilities will be much greater 10 years from now, your goals can be much bigger in 10 years too.

When you’re ambitious, all sorts of unexpected opportunities and experiences become available to you.

When you view ambition as an action, it becomes something you can invest your talent, skills, and time into.

Ambition is a skill made up of a number of subskills.

When your brain normalizes the idea that you’re going to live far longer than normal expectations, it changes your understanding of the present.

Time only speeds up when you think you’re running out of it.

Being unable to imagine yourself with more ambition in the future robs you of your power in the present.

No one’s interested in being in teamwork with someone who’s stopped growing.

Your real age has to do with what lies ahead of you—and your imagination.

What human beings most look for in other human beings is commitment and courage.

Commitment and courage create capability.

If you’re more committed and more courageous, it’s easy to be more ambitious.

Confidence is the reward for acquiring a new capability.

With a higher level of confidence, you can make greater commitments.

To make any significant improvement or change in your life, you have to be 100% committed to doing it.

You only truly start aging when you give up your ambition.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan

The 4 C’s Formula by Dan Sullivan

Entrepreneurs always want to be moving forward. What determines whether they’ll be able to is their understanding of the difference between cost and investment. In this episode, business coaches Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller talk about the growth mindset that lets you improve for the rest of your life—versus the mindset that means you’ll forever be stuck right where you are.

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

• The reason why small entrepreneurs are small entrepreneurs.
• Why you won’t get a return on investment if you think of team members as a cost.
• Why becoming a Strategic Coach® member isn’t a cost, but an investment in yourself.
• Why it’s dangerous for your team members if you think of them as a cost.
• How to switch from operating in costs to operating in investments.

Show Notes:

Some entrepreneurs have essentially only created a job for themselves that doesn’t go anywhere.

If you see hiring people as a cost, you might just do all of the work yourself.

When entrepreneurs do everything themselves, 90% of what they do doesn’t actually make sense for them to do.

Investing in team members means you’re freed up to do better work, and that will easily pay for the investment.

When you hire someone, you’re investing more in yourself than in the other person.

If you consider someone to be a cost, that person will know it.

Making an investment is a risk, and it can require courage.

Someone who treats other people as costs treats themselves the same way.

With an investment, you'll put an enormous amount of thinking into it to guarantee that it’s successful.

When you’re making an investment, have a goal for the return and a deadline for that goal.

Resources:

Casting Not Hiring by Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff