Join Dean and Dan this week as they talk about the procrastination predator!
Links:
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep044
[PROCESSING]
Dean: Mr. Sullivan.
Dan: Mr. Jackson.
Dean: Here we are.
Dan: We should inform everybody that this is just a continuation of a discussion that we started yesterday at-
Dean: Yes.
Dan: ... Jacques Bistro. We're just 24 hours from our previous talking.
Dean: Yes, that's it. That's actually one of two official lunch spots of The Joy of Procrastination Podcast, mostly.
Dan: Yes, it is.
Dean: Primarily, Jacques Bistro.
Dan: Yup, Jacques. Jacques Bistro and The Select Bistro, and, in both restaurants, we have table ten.
Dean: That's exactly right, one of the many commonalities. This is funny, because I was thinking yesterday our discovery that we have the same IQ was really something funny. Another similarity that we share.
Dan: Our Kolbe is the same. We're both official members of the ADD community, and we have ... Taking completely different IQ tests, mine was in 1965, so mine was 50 ... 65, so I'm just trying to figure out here, 53 years ago, and then I discovered yesterday that your IQ test was the same too.
Dean: That's funny.
Dan: In both cases, we're smart enough.
Dean: Smart enough, that's exactly right.
Dan: People say, "What's your IQ?" I said, "It's ... My IQ test makes me smart enough."
Dean: Smart enough.
Dan: That's all I'm going to say. That's all I'm going to say about it. I'm smart enough.
Dean: Smart enough. That's how long should a man's legs be? Is long enough to reach the ground, right? That's it.
Dan: That's it. That's right, yeah. Talk about that, you know what I mean? There's a lot of ... It's always an issue about when it comes to individual intelligence invariably this subject of IQ tests comes up. Dean, from your familiarity with it over the years or being in discussions, first of all, does IQ make a difference? Secondly, what difference does it make? Just-
Dean: Well, I don't-
Dan: ... two questions-
Dean: This is the thing-
Dan: ... to start us off.
Dean: Yeah. That would be a great discussion, because I don't know. I was really ... It came up on my radar. That was the context of the discussion we were having yesterday was that I had seen a video with Jordan Peterson talking about IQ. I didn't know that it was initiated by the government as a way to quickly sort the military applicants into the officer track or the enlisted track.
I hadn't realized, there's actual things, what do they call them? The testing, not avocation, but there's something ... Maybe it is avocation. Whatever it is ... Aptitude or ... That's not even the right word.
Where they show what sort of jobs you would be best suited to that a lot of them are really a function of IQ which shows capacity for different positions. I didn't realize that.
But there was really in the military ... Apparently, there's no use or no role for people ... Below 85 is the cut off for functional things which Jordan was saying makes 15% or something, maybe one in 12 or one in eight, maybe 12 or 15% of people have no, what the government would deem, no purpose.
Dan: Yeah, so that's one in six or one in seven of the population really.
Dean: Right.
Dan: There's a lot of controversy about it. Over the years, as you imagine, because it's almost like a life sentence one way or the other. Doors open to you or doors are closed to you based on a test.
When I took it, it was like ... I can't remember it being too much more than about a half-hour test, and they had another name for it. There was another name for it, but it was very clearly ... Afterwards, I got a copy of it. Somebody I knew in the army ... I said, "Well, that was an interesting test. I wonder what the score was."
Because they test you, but they don't give you the score, because they're using it for their uses. It's not for your benefit that they're doing it. They're doing it for their benefit. But I tracked it down, and I went through people. Which I think my tracking it down to get my score probably indicated what my IQ score was.
Dean: Right, right, right.
Dan: I had enough IQ to track down my IQ test. But there's a lot of controversy over it. One of the IQ tests that is used in the world right now is called the Wonderlic. It's a person's name, W-O-N-D-E-R-L-I-C, and this is the father of Kathy Kolbe, whose test we really rely on the most which is not an IQ test, but it simply is a test that indicates that if you take action to get results this is how you do it. In other words, if you're going to be successful, you will do it in this way.
It's a terrific test, and we've been using it in Strategic Coach for 25 years. I always tell people it doesn't guarantee success. But if you don't use the test, you're probably setting yourself up for failure if you're hiring someone, and you don't do the test beforehand.
For example, we have virtually identical Kolbe tests you and me. If you looked at the two of us, Dean, I keep searching for a place where we're going to get into a fight, or we're going to have conflict.
Dean: Friction.
Dan: Over the last 10 years, search as I might, I haven't found any area where we're really going to ... ever going to have any conflict.
Dean: Come to fisticuffs or something, yeah.
Dan: Yeah. If it wasn't for our ADD which means that our life is unpredictable, I don't know if we'd really have a very, very exciting relationship.
Dean: That's so funny. I had an interesting thought yesterday after we were together that ... You said something about your new book that you have coming out in the fall. I won't give away what it is, but the basic thing was that it's... Today, you brought everything back to living in this moment like today is the day kind of thing.
I started thinking, we've mentioned that my guiding thing has always been, I wake up every day and ask, "What would I like to do today?" In our discussions, we've ... I've been experimenting with the idea of, "What would I like to do tomorrow?" Is giving some sort of structure to it.
It struck me that the structures to my days as I'm laying things out ... If you say we're writing a movie ... Because, essentially, we have the opportunity to fully script a day if you wanted to. Certain days of our lives are fully scripted. You know exactly what's going to happen. For you, a workshop day, for me, my Breakthrough Blueprint days where they're on the calendar, and that's what the thing is for the day.
But I thought about the levels of ... If we're taking it to that analogy kind of thing that a lot of days, you can wake up and experience your day as an interpretive dance where there's the least amount of structure, and you're just doing whatever it feels like to you.
Dan: Free-form.
Dean: Free-form, interpretive dance through your day. I started laughing about it, because it's really ... That's the least amount of structure, and some people would just love to wiggle out of any form of ... and are resistant to any sort of formal structure. You could reel it into improv where you have a structured...
Dan: Riffs. A context.
Dean: Yeah, riffs. You have a context where ... I look at my Breakthrough Blueprint days are largely improv days, much like your workshops are-
Dan: Yes.
Dean: ...a little more structured improv. They're not rote. Where you are reading from a script, and everything is fully predictable. Each workshop, you're not doing the same workshop for 15 days out of the quarter, or however many workshops you do during a quarter. Each one is different, but they're all in the same context. I would consider that to be like an improv type of thing.
Dan: Yeah, and the thing ... Because I've been doing the workshops ... It'll be 30 years next year, so actually, this is my 115th quarter that I'm in out of ... If it's 30 years, it's 120 quarters, so I'm in the middle of the 115th quarter that started in November of 1989.
There's a basic structure to the workshop which I follow. There's a plan for the workshop, and then a certain number of things that we have to cover. Since I've been taking Adderall, I'm ADD, and, for seven years now since I started taking Adderall, I've always done the structure of the day, but if I do it three ... If I do three of them in a week, I'll follow exactly the same structure, but the actual content will be different. Because the conversation will be different. I'll do things on the smart board differently.
That's all based on the conversation of this group as compared to yesterday, or this group compared to what I'm going to do two days from now. Since it's a different group of people, the conversation around the structure is going to be ... I would say 50% different, questions they'll bring up, observations, experiences they'll talk about. Because I know the structure, I can respond in a very creative way.
Your use of the word improv is exactly what it is. If you take improv comedians who are on stage or improv musicians-
Dean: Jazz, yeah.
Dan: ... you see it a lot in jazz. They understand the structure. There's a structure to what they're going to do. But what they're going to do within each component of the structure is just going to depend upon what's actually being created that day.
Dean: Absolutely. It's an interesting-
Dan: It's like our podcast. It's structured in the sense that we know the exact schedule going twelve months out. We know the topic is related to The Joy of Procrastination, and we've got some things we've created like you not, or who not how, the difference between Cloudlandia and the mainland. There's some riffs that are developing in our conversation, but what we're going to do with them during any one-hour podcast, we don't know until we get into it.
Dean: Right. That's exactly right. That's where I was today, is really realizing that ... I spent some time now, I've got a two-week block here while I'm in Toronto before I leave for London that I'm isolating, narrowing in on what this ... What I can do here.
I had a really great conversation with Eben Pagan last week. We were talking about the 80/20 rule. We'd been having some conversations about mental models, and how the 80/20 rule is basically a mental model for looking at organizing things into that 80/20 category. It almost always falls true. That 80% of the value comes from 20% of things.
We looked at narrowing it down from a task list kind of thing where ... What Eben had been thinking about this overlay of an eye. If you know the shape of an eye, you've got the almond-shape, bigger portion of the whole shape of the eye. Then you have the round iris, and then the pupil in the center kind of thing, which we could call the bull's eye.
Looking at the whole amount, everything that's in our peripheral vision, whether it's this list of 100 things that we want to accomplish. That 20% of that would be the top 20 list of that, and 20% of that would bring us down to the top four or five things that we want to ... Four things that you want to do. Which is like your idea of today that we're focusing the eye on what we're actually going to do today. This is where the attention is.
I found that to be a really great focusing... What a great focusing metaphor too for having it be the eye. Where you're ... Constantly, we have this periphery of things that we want to do, narrowing it down to what are the top 20% of that, and then, today, we're going to focus on these four which are the bull's eye focus for the day.
I really like that idea, because there's so many things that I want to do, as I realized. I start making my lists. I do what I call these 50-minute focus finders where I spend 50 minutes and just list out all the things that are on mind as to projects or things that I want to get done.
I just find that so helpful to have an exhaustive list of the things. Because often when I start going down that path, it's almost like when you start doing it with an eye to figuring out what I'm going to do today, you almost lose steam just even writing out all the possibilities. Because there's so many things. That to really spend some time ... Where that's the purpose is to really get it all out there. That would stack up the, this is what's in my periphery kind of thing.
I find that 100 items is really a good exhaustive list which gets to include some long-range proactive things.
Dan: Let me ask you a question on this, because Eben was talking about 80/20. What I've said is, yeah, you could do a list of 100. But if you did a list of 10, and compared it with 100, would the 10 if I'm ... I say to a person, "Okay, I'm going to let you write a hundred things down that are important." Then I say to the person again, "Okay," and on another day, so I'm comparing 100 on one day, and let's say a week later I say, "Well, I'm going to have you write a list again, but I'm only going to allow you to write ten things that are important," okay?
Dean: Uh-huh.
Dan: My sense is that if I give them a hundred, they'll write down some things that aren't really important and a lot of ... some things that are not important. But if I say, "I'm going to restrict you to ten," my feeling is that what they write in the ten, they would probably hit 80% of the really important things that showed up in that list of 100.
Dean: Yes. I think that's-
Dan: What I mean is that there's just a lot of stuff, but not really important at all in the hundred list. But since I've restricted them to ten, they give it a little bit more thought, and they start being more decisive about what's really important to them. Then if I said, "I'm going to restrict you to five," in the five, would be 80% of the important things in the list of 10.
Dean: Yes. I think ... I wonder though to get to the five-
Dan: What I'm saying is that-
Dean: ... you'd be doing some mental sorting. You'd be doing-
Dan: Oh, yeah, you'd be doing-
Dean: You're evaluating-
Dan: But the brains going to respond to the challenge. In other words, your brain's going to respond to the challenge.
For example, I don't know ... As you're ... Fact Finder in the Kolbe. In Kolbe, you have four ways that you get results. One of them is Fact Finder. The second one is Follow Thru. The third one is Quick Start, and the fourth one is Implementor. An Implementor means people who in order to make a decision have to have hands on. In other words, you're asking them how they get things done. They'd have to actually have their hands on the stuff that they're going to use to get done. I have-
Dean: That's not me.
Dan: ... some of that. I think I have a little bit more than you do in that. Then the Fact Finder and Follow Thru, I think you've got a little bit more finding facts than I do.
Dean: Four, four, ten, one.
Dan: Yeah, and I'm a two, two, ten, four, okay. For me, if you ... We're in a group or anything and ten things are being discussed, within a matter of minutes, I'll say, "This one right here out of the ten is really the most important one. You can skip the other nine, because this is really the most important thing." Because where the short fact-
Dean: Let's get our hands on an impact filter. That's how that ... I see how that follows through, because you're first instinct is to take that idea and make it something tangible. An impact filter is really a tool. It's a physical thing. I see now you're really ... When you explain it like that, that's you're attraction to the impact filter.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Essentially, right? Would you say that, that's true? That, that's an Implementor thing? That your path is from idea to impact ... Like, right away, let's get an impact filter.
Dan: Yeah. Like if I was a cheetah, and there were two cheetahs, so it's one ... If I was one cheetah and the other one cheetah, if we use the Kolbe profile on the two cheetahs, I have a two Fact Finder, and the other cheetah has, let's say, a four or five Fact Finder. I'm going to size up a group of gazelles, and, right away, I'm going to spot a weak one or an old one, and I'm going to go for it. The other one's going to say, "Gee, there's three or four. I wonder which one I should go for." That second cheetah, if the second cheetah is eating at all that day, he's going to be sharing what I killed.
Dean: Yes. That's ... It's really ... That's a good analogy.
Dan: Yeah, because I'm going to be ... Before he makes up or she makes up their mind, I'm already ... I've already bagged one, because there's 50 gazelles, but I've already picked out ... The other 49 don't matter, I'm just going for the one gazelle and doing it.
My tendency is size things up real fast, pick one thing and go for it, and then develop it fully. It's just how I operate.
Dean: That makes so much sense. That's really ... That may be the wisdom of the foundational question that we started this whole thing with of turning to procrastination each day to say, "What have you got for me today?" Because it's already been doing all the sorting and the prioritizing in background.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, and this bothers a lot of people who have a need to get more information, get more information.
I can see it in all sorts of worlds. I can see it in the business world. I can see it in the sports world. I can see it especially in the political world right now, because Trump is an extreme Quick Start in a world of law and Fact Finders and Follow Thrus.
I think he's a Quick Start/Implementor. What tells me that he's an Implementor is because he's always been building stuff on the mainland. He builds buildings, and he builds casinos. He builds resorts. His whole world that he's operating in is the material world of...
I was just taking a limousine drive in New York City, and we went to the Bronx Zoo. It's quite a ways up. Bronx is very, very top of Manhattan. On the way back, we took an Uber. We got an Uber there, and Uber there.
On the way up, we went up the East Side which is mostly industrial, and it's a lot of factories and plants and everything else, and we got to the zoo. But on the way back, we came down on the West Side along the Hudson River. What you're seeing is a lot of apartment, condo complexes, apartment complexes, and buildings. From the Bronx Zoo to getting back to ... We were staying on 56th Street, I counted 15 major developments that had the name Trump on them, which included Trump Tower which is right on 56th.
His whole world, his whole world, and that's just New York City. Then, there's all the other cities, like Chicago ... Worldwide there's lots of cities. He's been a very, very fast Quick Start of spotting opportunities, building developments.
Then he enters into a political world where almost everybody in his world, the elected officials, the bureaucrats, the mainstream media are Fact Finder/Follow Thrus. They get lots and lots of facts, and they have systems.
What I think they found most outrageous about him isn't his political beliefs. Because it's hard to tell whether he's actually a Democrat or a Republican. Because he favors some things which are democratic issues, and some that are political issues.
But my extreme sense is that in their world, you move very slowly, and you check things out, and you get agreement, and he doesn't. He just says, "We're going to do this, and let's get on with it. There's my decision. Let's get on with it." It's the, "You can't vote on it. I'm just going to write up a memo, and we're going to do it, and, yeah, that's it."
My feeling is the outrage against him is that he does things in a way that you just don't do when you're in their world, because it's a Fact Finder/Follow world.
Dean: Yes. Yeah, that's ... It's really ... I'm thinking new thoughts about the Kolbe here. I'm seeing how that really ... How it does tie in with how you ... How your procrastination may present itself?
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Obama who was President before was extremely indecisive, because I think he was a law and Fact Finder/Follow Thru. For example, they had three opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden over a three-year period. At the last moment, he held back, because he wasn't quite sure how it was going to go.
If it was Trump, Osama bin Laden would have been dead the first time they had a chance. He would have been dead. Because he would have mustered all the might and everything, so that you could pull it off.
It's just ... quite apart ... There's people listening that hate Trump, and there's people listening who are for him. I'm not making the point here. I'm just making the point that Trump entered into the world with a set of capabilities, which were geared to the entrepreneurial, to the development world, to the real estate world, to the hospitality world, the gambling world. He brought those skills into another realm where nobody can figure out how he's doing.
The other thing is he's a dealmaker. It's all about deals. If you read his book, he said the first thing you do in a deal is you make an outrageous demand on the other side. You just make a totally unrealistic absurd demand on the other side. It just shocks the daylights out of them, because you know that down the road you're come to a compromise. But you're already 50% into their territories. When you get the deal, it's going to come back towards the middle. But in likelihood, you're going to get more than they get.
Dean: Wow. That's ... It's been ... I remember reading the book when it first came out. I'm going to have re-
Dan: Look at it.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. He's negotiating with Canada right now.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dan: They were-
Dean: He's in Canada right now, isn't he, or is that over?
Dan: Yeah. Well, no, he's on his way to Singapore right now-
Dean: Okay.
Dan: ... to deal with the little guy, the little guy.
Dean: Rocket Man.
Dan: But, anyway ... Rocket Man, the Little Rocket Man. Anyway, he just said about Trudeau, he said, "Well, Justin ..." What he said is really dishonest and weak. One of his advisors said, "Justin's amateur. He's like a sophomore. He's not really geared to actually these negotiation games." He's practically calling him a girlie man.
Dean: Oh, man.
Dan: Justin's kind of a girlie man. Well, the kind of feeling is that people who don't like Justin Trudeau is he's kind of like a girlie man. He's a high school drama teacher who if it wasn't for his father and his mother, he'd still be a high school ... They're just nailing him with the image right off the bat. That's just their first deal. That's just the first move in the deal.
It's just outrageous. Now, he's got to prove that he's a tough guy, or he's a wimp and everything else. But everybody says, "It's just outrageous behavior." No, it's just the first move in a deal. Read the book.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. Then we'll watch now and see how it unfolds.
Dan: Yeah, read the book. He sent the blueprint to you. This is what he's going to do, but none of them live in the world of deal making you see. They think this is really tawdry and below them. What about the ideals here? What about the ideas of global cooperation and getting along? Well, he says, "I don't know anything about that. But I do know that everything's a deal."
Dean: I thought that was an interesting comment you had yesterday about that really government is really just a series of thousands and thousands of deals. That's really what it all is.
Dan: Yeah. The entire structure of government as far as you look related to every single activity is just a set of deals between a somebody and a somebody that happened at a point in time, and it produced this result. I think what Trump does, he's got ... He's got X-ray vision. Where everybody else sees politics and values, he just sees deals.
Dean: Yeah. You see it coming through.
Dan: Basically, he knows who the people are that voted for him. His first thought is, is this deal good for the people who voted for me?
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Who he's representing, right.
Dan: Yeah. But back to Eben, I'm interested. Eben has a really, really great mind.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Every time I am in conversation ... This is Eben Pagan. A lot of people don't know who we're talking about here, but just a really, really interesting ... You knew him a long time ago, didn't you?
Dean: I've known Eben for 23-
Dan: 25-30 years.
Dean: ... years.
Dan: 23?
Dean: 23 years, anyway, yeah.
Dan: 23 years, yeah, yeah. He's just a thinker. He's a good ... He's a world-famous marketer. At the beginning of the internet age and the beginning of the online sales age, he was an 800-pound gorilla. He was making sales in a way that nobody had ever made sales before. He's a terrific star.
One thing I want to talk about here, because it's an idea, and I don't want it to get away. It has to do with structure and, then, becoming creative with structure which I think where the improv is. That you've actually mastered the structure so much that you can actually be free with the structure, because you have a mastery of it.
Dean: Mm-hmm.
Dan: Go ahead.
Dean: Go ahead. No, I was just going to say that I think you're absolutely right, so continue with what you were saying. There's a museum.
Dan: Yeah, so, in France or in Paris, there's a section of the city called Marais, M-A-R-A-I-S, which is French for marsh, so it was marshland that became a part of the city. They filled it in. It's gone through its ups and downs, but right now it's on the upswing, and it's a very fashionable district.
In it, they have a five-story house that is a Picasso ... Picasso lived in Paris for quite a long part of his career. I would say in his 20s, 30s, and 40s, he lived in Paris. You come in on the ground floor, and you go progressively up to the fifth floor in the course of your visit. But on the ground floor are the paintings and drawings he did when he was in his teens and twenties, just about ... You move up a decade in his life, and when you get to the top floor, you're seeing all the paintings and drawings that he's world-famous for.
A lot of young people say, "Well, all you do is take a pen, and you scribble on it, and you sign your name to it. That's what Picasso did." That's their notion of art. You can have cats doing the drawing. You can have cats doing it. You can have chimpanzees doing it, and that's art. That's really what it is.
But if you start on the ground floor, he could do almost photographic quality paintings, his mastery of oils and brushstrokes and everything else. You look at them, he was good as any. He was as good as some of the really phenomenal painters. He had a mastery as good as Michelangelo or Leonardo or Rembrandt or any of the people who were phenomenal for the realism of their paintings.
Every ... As you go up through his age, decade by decade, and you go floor by floor in the museum, it starts to get much more free-form. But the whole point is that he did all the mastery, and then he loosened up as he got older.
To me, that's the appropriate route. I think Jordan Peterson is talking about this in his book and in his lectures. That you can only experience freedom if you at some point had actual structure, and you knew what it was like to operate within structures. Then as you master the structures, then you can loosen up with them, because you can know when to use them, and when not to use them.
Dean: Yes. That's an interesting ... I'm still thinking about this structure element around the limiting to only thinking about or identifying, what are the five things that are in the top right now, as opposed to the periphery kind of thing?
Dan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, you've been so impressed over the years with this movie about the sushi master in-
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: ... Japan, and I'd like you to relate it. That's-
Dean: Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Dan: Yes, and just relate it to how free-form he can be with his sushi now based on his decades and decades of following the rules of great sushi, sushi master.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that ... But the whole thing about even the training of the person coming up behind him. That it's 10 years of learning just how to make the egg, to make the egg be perfect which is a really interesting dedication. I wonder where that comes from. How they channel that creativity within such a narrow band, you know?
Dan: Yeah, well, I think it's the ... If I can use your example, because we were talking about it yesterday. How you analyzed every single residential real estate neighborhood in major cities in the United States and Canada and worked out an eight-stage progression that if you had a single homeowner that homeowner if they chose to stay within a particular part of the city could do so as they went through their life.
Every stage of their life and what they needed could be reflected in a new home sale. If a real estate agent actually understood this eight-stage step, he could have lifetime ... He or she could have lifetime customers, because they could almost anticipate what was going to come next in that person's life five or 10 years down the road.
Well, there's been millions and millions of real estate agents who have been around the world and in every city of the world. They've worked in every single neighborhood in the world, but you're the first one to actually see this pattern and then actually put it into an analytical structure which then became software and then which became a product that people could buy and essentially get exclusive right over certain neighborhoods. Because the sushi master or Picasso or anyone else, Trump-
Dean: Yeah, it's just that longevity. I guess that's the ... Okay, what I'm thinking of as I apply that I think about the very first client on the first day that I had my real estate license. I had shared with you, decided that I would focus on townhouses in Georgetown in Halton Hills, because I was 21 years old at the time and that would be people closer to my age in my world, and that they would move up and buy bigger homes.
Now, I've remained friends and have been friends for over 30 years now with the very first people that I sold a home to. Their journey started out with a condo that they owned prior to me meeting them. They had owned the condo. They sold the condo, bought the townhouse, and when I picked up my relationship with them, they were in this townhouse and made this move up to the detached home.
Then a few years later, I was able to help them get the dream home that they wanted in the country. Then they've raised up their whole family. Three of their kids are out. They had two kids at the time. They've had others, four kids ultimately, but three of their kids are now married. Two of whom have bought their first homes now. James and Ruth have sold the big house that they got in the country and moved to a smaller place.
That whole life cycle of that one relationship is ... It exactly illustrates what you were ... What we were just talking about there over this 30-year period.
Dan: Yes. Yeah, the whole thing is that there was something in the way of your perceiving, and you were very new, it wasn't like you had had a lot of experience.
Dean: No.
Dan: But you saw a pattern.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: That's a conceptual pattern, because there's no evidence of it. But you saw a conceptual pattern, and you were putting five or six different factors together, and you were saying, "There's a whole pattern that I can follow going forward." Nobody else saw it. They did not see it to the degree ... That the only way they could learn it was actually learning it from you.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's been a great thing. The pattern recognition and pattern packaging.
Dan: Yeah. My pattern is really the strategy circle pattern.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: What I noticed is that human's seem to have three fundamental brain abilities. The first one is that they can actually see in the future very vividly a possibility that's bigger and better for them. That there's absolutely no evidence for, in other words, but they can see it. In other words that they can see into the future, and they intellectually engage with that. But more than that they emotionally commit to it. Then that's one ability.
The second ability is immediately all the reasons why that can't happen comes in the form of objections and obstacles into their brain which for most people, it wipes out any ... That feeling of opposition and obstacles actually wipes out any possibility of the vision.
But there are certain people who say, "Oh, the obstacles and the opposition are just raw material in the present that I get to work with to actually transform into that vision." We say that it's actually a pattern that we call VOTA, V-O-T-A. You get a vision. You get opposition, and, then, in your mind, you transform the obstacle into possible action. You take the action, and the action allows you to actually achieve the vision.
I saw that in the early 1970s. I said, "I think this is how things work." 10 years of R&D out in the marketplace, I said "There's one group of people, more than any others that this formula works for," and it's successful entrepreneurs, already successful entrepreneurs who want to be more successful.
Then, the program, Strategic Coach, is just hundreds of variations off that original V-O-T, vision, opposition, transformation, action. I tell people ... We have people say, "There's just an amazing consistency to everything, every tool you come up with in the coach." I've had outside visitors, they say, "There don't seem to be any inner contradictions. Whether it's an impact filter, an experience transformer, a positive focus, everything seems to fit nicely." Well, it all goes back to that V-O ... down the middle of everything is this V-O-T-A thing.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: It's like your eight profit...
Dean: Profit activators.
Dan: ... activators. It does matter what you're working with. That's the main road. You have side roads, and you have service stops, and you can get off and visit. But if you want to get back to the main road, it's these eight profit activators.
Dean: Yes. I'm wondering ... Yeah, that's the construct. That's the music theory that allows ... and understanding how they all play within each other to improvise or to make music from that.
But I'm wondering now, it's ... I've been thinking in the background here about my cheetah ways here. Of coming up, we both have these ideas of being 10 Quick Start, of being able to come up with lots of ideas. Your initial next action of going to the impact filter has been ... How high up is your Implementor? Four?
Dan: Four. But the four ... Again, that's hands-on. It's the hands-on quality.
Dean: Compared to my one, because you're saying they're orders of magnitude, or they're multiples?
Dan: Yeah. It's like the Richter scale. A four is 10 times bigger than a three.
Dean: Okay. Many, many times, many times bigger than my one.
Dan: Yeah, but...
Dean: I'm thinking that through as an interesting-
Dan: Well, here's the difference. If you just take the example of the two of us after a podcast, you were in your workshop. We did a podcast on the Sunday, and the next Thursday you were in a workshop. I asked you to tell the workshop about the who not how thought.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: You stood up and just free-formed, completely clear, completely cogent, and while you were doing it, I was up at the smart board, and I actually diagrammed out what you were saying. That's the difference between a one and a four.
Dean: Right.
Dan: You had no need to draw a picture, and I can't explain the concept without drawing a picture.
Dean: I gotcha.
Dan: But you can use words, and you can tell stories. You're hypnotic when you talk. Certainly, I'm hypnotized. I'm like an entertained cobra when you're talking.
Dean: That's funny, I love that. That's a-
Dan: I don't bite when you're talking.
Dean: That's funny. Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, but the first thing I will do if somebody is explaining something is go and actually draw a picture, try to find a picture to do it. My first instinct is to ... with my hand use pencil or markers to actually create a visual of what's being talked about, so that would be the difference. That would be the difference. I feel not up to the task of explaining it if I can't visualize it.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: You know have no problem with that whatsoever.
Dean: Right, but I am visual and appreciate that, because I tend to draw things out myself as a way of thinking them through. But you're right. When I get the idea conceptually, that's enough in a lot of ways.
Dan: Yeah, but here's the thing, here's the thing. You do that for the benefit of others.
Dean: Yes, yes.
Dan: I do it, first of all, for the benefit of me.
Dean: Ah, right. Mine it happens inside, I get the clarity.
Dan: You don't need it for yourself, but I need it-
Dean: No.
Dan: ... for myself. I have to see it visually.
Dean: You're right. That's the thing, I try and interpret it for others. That's just to be able to share it and simplify it that way. But first of all is to try and simplify it with my words with metaphors and stories, yeah.
Dan: It's interesting, and it just is what it is. It just is what it is.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dan: Now, this is how I've proceeded in life. The moment that I got huge graphic capabilities ... Very, very interesting when Babs and I started the company, the very first person we hired was not a secretary. It was an artist.
Dean: Ah-ha. That's ... yeah. There's something ... I'm trying to look at where ... If I were to build out the 10 Quick Start support system to compensate for a one in Implementor or to shore up a one Implementor where does that go.
Dan: I would ... The route that I always tell people, because I'm a half-way creature there. I've got enough artistic skills to support a completely different other activity, but I don't have the artistic skills to make a living with my artistic skills.
Dean: Mm-hmm.
Dan: The main reason is I wouldn't have the fascination and motivation to actually get better at it. In other words, it's not a path in life that I would get better. But fortunately, I've got enough that it's useful to my conceptual ... Both of us have conceptual careers, be it we're basically knowledge and idea packagers and sellers. My graphic capabilities are supportive of that. Fortunately, they were very supportive at the beginning of my career. In other words, I didn't have to wait 10 or 15 years to get an artist. I was born with one.
Dean: Right, right, right.
Dan: The big sprawling diagram I have in the Toronto office across from the-
Dean: I love that.
Dan: Well, that was me just freehand. That was just freehand, me writing with pen in 1982, and that diagram just launched us. People found ... I've met people who were one-on-one clients in the 1980s who still have that diagram on their walls.
Dean: Wow.
Dan: That was 30 years ago, 35 years ago that I drew it. They say, "That was such an interesting piece of artwork."
That's what really launched us was that ability for me just to draw that up. I did it basically in about three or four hours on one afternoon. I remember actually doing it on a dining room table with tracing paper and just a fine black pen that you buy in art supply store. The thing is that you use whatever capabilities you got to make progress, and then you combine with other people's capabilities.
Dean: Yeah, I'm wondering.
Dean: That is. I'm excited about reading that this afternoon too. That's going to be my treat here. I'm wondering, now I've been thinking since you mentioned it, about this idea of are you better off only writing, only thinking about the 10 as opposed to 100 where we started out this idea of the exhaustive-
Dan: Well, I think.
Dean: That kind of thing.
Dan: The 10, the 10 has 80% of the value of the 100.
Dean: You're right. There'd probably be nothing that you would leave out, I don't think. It's not something at the last minute, probably number 99 on your list of 100 is not going to show up as in the top 10 as an oversight in a way.
Dan: Well, who cares?
Dean: Right.
Dan: From my standpoint, who cares? Because, it will give you enough to work on usefully. You can repeat the exercise two weeks from now, and there will be new things on the list that have occurred-
Dean: Ah-ha.
Dan: .Because you've made progress. My feeling is ... It's the whole thing is people in this coach program, you have free focus and buffer days, and we're quite specific about it. Somebody says, "Well, what if I have a great idea on a free day, and it's a great business idea?"
Dean: Right.
Dan: I always tell people-
Dean: Is that a rare-
Dan: ... you can't control what your brain thinks. Then I'll say to them ... They said, "What should I do if I've got that great business idea?"
I just ask them, I says, "Well, is having a really great idea a frequent experience for you or a rare experience for you? Because if it's a rare experience, by all means, declare that a focus day and just develop that idea. Because you never know when you're going to get another great idea. This may be once in a lifetime. But if you're the sort of person who just has a lot of good ideas all the time, don't worry about it. Just take your free day. When you get back there will be enough good ideas to work on."
It gets a laugh. But there is this desperation on the part of people that they have to be alert. They have to be on duty all the time for the really big idea, or the really big-
Dean: I agree.
Dan: ...opportunity and everything else. I said, "Well, why don't you train yourself just to have a lot of good things, and then you don't have to get freaked out that you're missing some." When you're swimming in a river, you're missing most of the water.
Dean: That's true. I didn't get to the ocean. I went to the beach, I only touched a fraction of the sand.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, so much water I've missed in my life.
Dean: So much water I've missed.
Dan: One thing about breathing, think about breathing you didn't use all the oxygen in the ... You miss some.
Dean: It would be much faster. I need to experiment with that, because the ... I sat down today to start with my exhaustive list here for the 20... While I'm here for this two weeks to select myself the best things that I really want to get done in this two-week period knowing that I've got some of the day. I've got my Breakthrough Blueprint for the next three days. Then I have a period of time between then and my workshop coming up towards the end of next week.
I think you might be right that... Well, I know for sure you're right that the... I'd be better off really limiting it to a top 10 list and then zoning in the eye on, what am I going to do today with that?
Dan: Yeah, and I think you can give your mind directions on this. In other words, you can actually state at the top of the list, "I'm going to come up with 10 things that are 80% as good as a list of 100." Because our brain is amazingly directable. You're giving your ... It's almost like you're giving your brain an instruction of how to operate. "I'm going to come up with the 10 best things I should be focused on that would be 80% as good as a list of 100." Immediately, your brain-
Dean: I want it in-
Dan: ...says, yes sir.
Dean: ...in 10 minutes.
Dan: I want in 10 minutes. One Jackson, one Jackson, you can't do 100 in one Jackson.
Dean: No, you need five Jacksons to do 100.
Dan: You need five Jacksons, yeah, so you could use those other four Jacksons for something else.
Dean: To get started on number one.
Dan: You get 80% as good in one Jackson, and you get four Jacksons in change.
Dean: That's right. That's right. You can make a down payment. You get that towards the ... You get 20% of the whole thing done in the remaining four ... That makes a lot of sense. I'm excited. That's my afternoon.
Dan: I've just come up with a new form of cheetah entrepreneurism as we're discussing here today.
Dean: I like that idea.
Dan: If you're really a top-notch entrepreneur cheetah, you have four or five hunting cheetahs around you. What you do is that all you do is say, "That one, that one, that one, that one, and that one." Each of them knowing that they're going after another cheetah, so they get five. Your five ... 100 cheetahs go and get five of them, and then they ... You bring in your cheetah packagers, and the cheetah packagers, maybe they're chimps, but they come in, and they actually package the five gazelles. I got them-
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: .And then you market this to lazy cheetahs, lazy lions…
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: ...leopards. It's just doing what and why, and it's not doing how.
Dean: I love that. Cheetah marketing. The cheetah profit.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, see you're into this cow stuff, moo-
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But I'm more of a cheetah type-
Dean: You're more into the apex predator-
Dan: Apex predator…
Dean: ...marketing.
Dan: ...yup, yup.
Dean: That's funny. Remind me, Dan, that the next time that we do this ... I'm going to try and remember this myself that I want to talk to you about the Steve Madden documentary that we watched a couple of weekends ago. There was something about making it up, making it real, making it recur. It was really a great ... I really identified with the way his model. The way he does things. I want to talk about it on one of the next episodes.
Dan: Okay. Yeah, I believe it'll be two weeks from today, because-
Dean: Okay.
Dan: ...you're in. Because you're-
Dean: No, it's going to be longer-
Dan: When are you going to London?
Dean: I was going to say, it will be longer than that, because I leave after ... I leave the evening of our next luncheon, so I leave the 23rd. I'll be in London.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Okay, good. Because I'm going to send an email to Stephane, and I'll send it to you. I'll trade your two email numbers and-
Dean: Yeah, that's perfect.
Dan: So that you can get in touch with each other.
Dean: ...connect with him. Perfect.
Dan: Yeah, okay? Anyway, we'll see you in a couple weeks.
Dean: Okay, thanks, Dan. Bye.
Dan: Okay, bye.