Join Dean and Dan as they catch up after a summer of travel, and talk about procrastination and normalization.
Links:
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep045
Dean: Mr. Sullivan.
Dan: Mr. Jackson. Long time.
Dean: Reunited.
Dan: Reunited. And very interesting. I was in Arizona since Sunday, and if you spend a week where it's 110, and you get back to Toronto and it's 80, it's a marvelous experience.
Dean: It gives you a new appreciation. I understand. I'm in Florida right now, and it's hot and humid. Normally, of course, I would be in Toronto, but my operations guy, Stewart, got married in Ft. Lauderdale last week, so we came back for that. Yeah. What a shock, when you're ... I've been in very temperate London and Amsterdam and Toronto and California, and it's been nice, you know? And now ... But there you go. I'm on my way to Australia next week.
Dan: Oh, yeah? Well, it's just coming out of winter in Australia, so it's quite cool, by their standards.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: You know, it's really interesting how long it takes you to get used to something. So we arrived late at night, and when we arrived ... Well, not late at night. It was like 6:30 in the evening, and it was 113 in Phoenix. And we came out, it was like a blast furnace. You just felt like it was a blast furnace. And I said, "How can people actually operate?" But within about three days, it was still in the 108, 109 during mid-afternoon, I had gotten used to it in three days. My body had fully adjusted in three days. And when we left yesterday morning, it was like 101 at noon.
Dean: Quite cool.
Dan: Well, actually, yeah. It kind of felt ... I said, wow. This is very tolerable at 101. And it's kind of interesting, because I've had the opposite experience. I used to, when we first started Coach in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I would go to western Canada, and then I would go to Alberta to Edmonton, which is probably one of the most northern, fairly large cities in the world. It's six, seven hundred thousand people, and it was 42 below zero.
Dean: Wow.
Dan: 42 below zero. And it's interesting, because when it's 40 centigrade, it's also minus 40 centigrade, it's also minus 40 Fahrenheit. They actually meet. The two scales actually meet at minus 40. So Americans say, "Yeah. That's Canadian. That's minus 40 Canadian." I said, "Well, it's also minus 40 American." And again, the first time you would go out, you say, "Well, you know, I can take about three or four minutes of this, and I have to get inside somewhere." But within about three days, if you were bundled up correctly, you know, you had to watch your face-
Dean: Right.
Dan: .That your nose but within about a half hour, I could go walking for about a half hour in it. So it's really, really fascinating to me how fast we can take something that's completely shocking and make it normal.
Dean: I think our brains work that same way.
Dan: Yeah. And it's normally ... I think perhaps one of the greatest abilities that human beings have is that they can normalize, kind of absorb-shocking experiences, provided you give them enough time to adjust.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Wow.
Well, I can tell you that ... I'm just about, as I said, to head to Australia, but I've checked at least two corners of the globe and the direct procrastination word is spreading at least to the London and Amsterdam corner of the world. And, I was recently out in California, and it's spreading out there. So I'll just go check on Australia, and I'm pretty sure that we're going to find the same thing. So we've got at least three corners of the globe.
Dan: Yeah. And I have Australian clients, and it's one of the ones I go for immediately. Because you're known in Australia, and I'm known in Australia. So if they see two people that they follow, and they're on the same project, it's not doubling up. It's like four times, you know?
Dean: Oh, there we go. I love that.
Dan: ...more attractiveness.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: Yeah. And people, you know, what I get ... like I have a series of podcasts, and you do, too ... But this one kind of engages people, because one thing that keeps coming back to me is the sheer unpredictability of where the conversation is going to go. And therefore, they're kind of on their mental toes, if I could use that term. They're kind of on their toes to say, "Where's this going to go now?" Because I don't have the feeling that either Dan or Dean actually knows where it's going to be going.
Dean: That's true. And I do have a couple of things that I want to talk about today.
Dan: I'm all ears.
Dean: So I have been thinking about, and one of the discussions that we've been having as I was talking with different people over the summer here, is this, the 80% approach. I really look at it as a speeder-upper of implementation. It's almost like this idea of facing procrastination with the first item being brainstorm makes it so easy to tackle anything. And I look at this 80% approach as really getting something out there. I'd really taken this sort of ... I don't know what the right word is, but I want to say a critical eye to different situations and seeing how much better the 80% approach is to almost anything else.
You know, it's so funny, because I've run into people who are ... I think the counter to it is perfectionism. Right? This wanting to make sure, and get everything completely right before you put it out there. But really underestimating the value of getting it out there, as an 80% version of it.
Dan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know what.
Dean: And just how much more relaxing it is to go that way.
Dan: I had a discussion with one of the game changer participants and he's creating a new program, okay? And it's entrepreneurism for 16 to 24 year olds. What he's ultimately going to do is create a profile almost like Kolbe. Let's say Kolbe or Wonderland or Myers-Briggs, and it determines whether you actually have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. You'll get a score on it. I'm very intrigued by this project of his, because there's a lot of people who, first of all, there's a lot of talk at the academic level right now, high school, community college, university, "Oh, we're going to have whole departments now that are going to prepare people for entrepreneurism." And this is being taught by essentially people who aren't entrepreneurs, you know, professors and academics. Union members who belong to teachers' unions and prepare their students.
Dean: The bureaucratic approach to entrepreneurship.
Dan: That's right. That's right. Make it systematic. Bring system and well, bring perfectionism to entrepreneurism, to use your term. You know, we're going to bring perfectionism, so they're going to pay us $100,000 so that when they decide to be entrepreneurs, they're going to be perfect entrepreneurs. You know?
But he's going off by himself. His plan was to go out by himself for a year, sequestered, to actually think through and create the complete curriculum. Now, he's got an enormous amount of entrepreneurial experience, and he's got an enormous amount of experience coaching entrepreneurs, in terms of setting up their organizations and everything. And I said, "Does this actually work for one person? I know you want this to work for millions of people, but does it actually work the one person?"
He said, "Well, you know, you can't think at the level of one.
Dean: Oh, no.
Dan: And I said, "Well, here's a thought." I said, "In the next 10 minutes, could you brainstorm just what you think the criteria would be for someone ... you know, what would the categories be, what would the criteria be, that you would get scores on? Let's say there were eight to ten criteria, and you would have to have a certain cumulative score. Let's say they give a score of 10 to each of these, so there were 10 of them, so you'd have a score of 100. What score would the person have to get to indicate that, yeah, they were very much entrepreneurial minded? And, not only that, but they have sort of a sense about it that it's got to be entrepreneurism, because they can't put up with anything else." Anyway. So I said, "Could you brainstorm that in about 10 minutes?"
And he said, "I could get five or six of them right now."
I said, "Good. Why don't you just write down five or six of them. Write it on a sheet of paper, and go out and start talking to some entrepreneurs, and see if they think your six are really crucial."
And he says, "No. I'm not ready to go out and talk to people yet."
And I say, "But ultimately, you're trying to create a product where you're out there talking to people. So what's crucial is that you're out there talking to people, not what your content is."
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dan: And I said, why don't you just write them up, roughly, on a sheet of paper. Go to Starbucks. Invite people that you know are really good entrepreneurs, but they're kind of thoughtful entrepreneurs. In other words, they thought about their thinking of why they became entrepreneurs. Have about 20 of these discussions, and keep improving your sheet of paper 20 times, and then come back. I said, "Would that put you ahead of the game?"
He said, "Nah. I'm not at that stage yet."
And I just see this grueling stage that he's putting him through, where he'll have it all perfect. He'll have it packaged. He'll have it written up. He'll have it ... He'll probably have videos on it. He'll have audios on it. He'll probably have software for it, and he hasn't actually started the discussion yet.
Dean: Right. You know, it's an interesting approach, because you're ... Maybe that's the thing, because perfectionism in that kind of level is thinking about from the top down, almost like thinking about it at scale, rather than thinking about it as the unit of one. You hit it on the head with the idea of, do you have something that would work for one person. That would be far more valuable, far more insightful, to take one entrepreneur, or one aspiring entrepreneur, and assess that they have what it takes, and then document the whole process of taking them through what would be the program.
Dan: Yeah. Well, let me ask you the question. We won't go for 10 criteria, but if you look at your own history, Dean, what was the criteria that, if you hadn't really maxed out on this criteria, you would not have become an entrepreneur? Not 10 things, but one thing. What would one thing be?
Dean: Of something that would have stopped me from being an entrepreneur?
Dan: If you didn't have this capability, whether it was just internal drive or it was actually a marketplace capability. But if you didn't have this capability, it would have dissuaded you from being an entrepreneur.
Dean: I never gave it that kind of conscious thought. But I would say maybe being able to talk to people, I'd say, would probably be-
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And so my feeling is that he's not practicing probably what the number one criteria to be an entrepreneur is: you're willing to actually just take a very simple idea and go out and see what people think about this.
Dean: Yeah. That's a really, you know ... I think that's the number one thing, I think, for young people as aspiring entrepreneurs, I would say. I mean, it's really interesting that we're raising kids counter to that. Right? The whole idea of teaching kids at young ages to not talk to strangers. Don't talk to strangers.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Right? And your neighbor?
Dan: Stay in your safe space, you know?
Dean: Right.
Dan: Protecting them. Yeah. Don't come into contact with people who have ideas that challenge your ideas.
Dean: yeah. That's really-
Dan: You know, it's really interesting.
Dean: The interesting thing is everybody ... It's strangers who have ... It's your ability to talk to strangers and, you know, sell them on your idea that's going to be the entire success of your entrepreneurship.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my friends are very supportive, but they won't write me checks.
Dean: Well, some of them do.
Dan: Yeah. I mean, no. It's just that. Some of them do, but you have to realize that I've created my criteria that my friends are people who write me checks.
Dean: So good.
Dan: But, isn't that true for you? Well, not really. You hang out with a lot of people. But you have to have a certain number of people who write you checks as part of your friendship circle.
Dean: That's true. You're absolutely right.
Dan: Let's go back to the 80%. I want to add three more thoughts to why the 80% works better than ... And that is, it's the factors that I use in The Moving Future that entrepreneurs need to create their own confidence. Essentially, one of the dividers I would say between the entrepreneurial and the non-entrepreneurial portions of the population is that entrepreneurs have the ability to self-generate their own confidence, where other people require being surrounded by other people who encourage them and support them in order to be confident, or feel confident. Just putting that out as a thought.
Dean: Mm-hmm.
Dan: And I'm going to say that there are three things that are required in order for you to be able to generate your own self-confidence. One of them is you have the ability to generate your own sense of morale based on achievements. In other words, that you have this ability to look behind you and say, "Hey. I just did three great things, and this is real progress." So it's the opposite of the gap. Instead of measuring yourself forward against an ideal, which is perfectionism, you're looking backwards and saying, "Hey, I just did three things that are kind of moving me in this direction, and I feel really good about those. So I've made real progress." So that's morale.
The other thing is that I've got some real movement going and I feel a real sense of momentum. So I have morale and momentum, and now that I'm at this stage, where I have a higher morale and I've got a sense of momentum, now I'm really motivated to go with something that I wasn't even thinking about a month ago, but now I can see that this is possible, and this would be even more progress in the future.
So your 80%, when you brainstorm ... For example, when you brainstorm immediately after 10 minutes of brainstorming, you have a sense of morale that's up. There's a sense of momentum, because in the brainstorming you've been able to identify two or three things that are really crucial that are actionable. And now you can see that you can go further. And then, if you go further, and you involve other people, now you've got a real chance of maintaining or creating even higher morale, momentum, and motivation. You can't do anything if you're just talking to yourself.
Dean: Yes. I think there's something to that. Anything that's going to be so much better if iterations are done in real time, as in proven version one of something, rather than trying to do the iterations in a black box and then bring out the perfect thing.
I saw a really great illustration that showed what the minimum viable, like how to think about that, as opposed to ... You know, if your end goal is that you've got a car, then the progression isn't to get the seat and then get the steering wheel and then get the wheels and then get the body. That's not the progression. The progression they were talking about, they showed as the illustration, was start with a skateboard and then add a handle, and then add a seat, and then build a body around it.
Dan: In a manageable, like a manageable motor to it.
Dean: Yeah. Each of those iterations, that you're starting with something that is beginning with the end in mind, which is the outcome of being a conveyance. You know? From better than walking. And so that, I think that same thing.
You think about how an entrepreneur program would be so much more realistic if it was, just like you said, outlined and brainstormed and outlined what the criteria are. Find a small handful of entrepreneurs right in your hometown, right where you are, and go through ... Invest in getting the outcome with them, and documenting it. That is much more interesting, you know?
I'm modeling this with the Listing Agent Lifestyle approach that we're taking here that I did the book, The 90 Minute Book, the Listing Agent Lifestyle. Get that out there. I'm generating leads. I'm generating conversations with people who want to have that discussion, that that's what they're interested in. And I'm doing a podcast to document the whole thing as we go. And, if I want to, I could have a big book at the end of this that would be far greater than locking myself away to then just come up with the book in a vacuum.
Dan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Dean: And the outcome is what…
Dan: Yeah. It's really interesting thing is I have a rule that the marketplace is my 50% partner. It's my 50% creative partner. In other words, I got an idea. I think I have a sense of how my idea could be useful. But the only thing that really tells me it's useful is if I go out directly to the people who, if they were really interested in my idea, they would write me a check for the idea.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Okay. So that's my criteria. It's not just the marketplace, it's the actual people who are the target check writers for my idea. I'll tell them about my idea, and then I say, "Would this idea be useful enough for you that you'd be willing to write me a check?" That's one of the steps that I use in my creative process of whether it's even worth my time to continue working on the idea.
If I don't very quickly get feedback from an actual check writer who says, "Yeah, I would do it, but I'd like to see some changes. I'll tell you how this could be more useful to me." And then they write down three or four improvements. That's gold. For me, that's gold-
Dean: Yes. Yes.
Dan: Because probably I'm off track in some way. And probably in some ways I'm on target. So all I want to do is eliminate all the ways that I'm off track and expand where I'm on target. And I can only do that by actually talking to people who would be actual check writers. In other words, at a certain point I could take it back to the person, and I'd say, "Look. I've made all these improvements. What do you think?" He says, "Yeah. I'll write a check for that."
Dean: Yeah. Yeah. Real time, real, practical, in-the-field feedback.
Dan: Yeah. Because, you know, it's a fundamental reality point in the world. You either come to grips with this, or you don't come to grips with this, that things are only what they're worth in the marketplace. Namely, that someone would pay you for it.
Dean: Yeah. I agree. I'm wondering if I'm so biased to, or attracted to, the 80% approach because of my preference to achieve excellent results with what seems like little effort.
Dan: Well, first of all, it's a great success formula, because ... I mean, it's almost like I want as little effort on my part before I receive eagerness on other people's part.
Dean: Yeah. And focus really on ... That's kind of the thing. It's like every ... I kind of look at the ... We were having a discussion in London about this. Like if I look back on the things that I've sort of innovated, or had a contribution to, in the internet marketing world that ... You know, when I look at things, going all the way back to the opt in page that is the only option for somebody to leave their name and their email address ... So the shortest, simplest landing page as the winning thing ...
I've always looked at that as I'm starting from the outcome backwards. I'm not trying to build and pack in the most information or the best stuff that you can put on a home page. What I'm looking at is what's the best outcome that I could get? And that would be that somebody leaves their name and their email address so I can start a conversation with them. And then work backwards from that. Well, what's the simplest thing that I could do with that?
And that carries through on all the things. The nine word email values of looking and saying, what's the best way to get somebody to respond to an email? Well, the best way is to send them an email that seems like it's the only email that you're sending. What would the email that you would send to one person?
Dan: Yes.
Dean: And so I look at that, because it's interesting that your question about the entrepreneurship program is do you have something to be able to get that result for one person. Most people think, when they think about scale, they think about that it's different when your intention is to scale. It's almost that they think that the starting point has to be different when your outcome is a widely scaled thing, that they're thinking big. I'm just wondering ... I'm looking for examples to-
Dan: Yeah. It's really interesting. We were just at Genius network on Thursday and Friday and Kevin Harrington was there. It was very intriguing, because I'd met him before, but I hadn't seen him talk. And of course he is one of the original parents of infomercials, starting in the 1980s. He's really ... I mean, when you hear the history of infomercials, he's kind of Edison along with Tesla and-
Dean: Yeah, yeah. I know exactly. Yeah. He's a good buddy of mine. We play a lot of golf together in Florida.
Dan: Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not ... I'm shipping coal to Newcastle here, but the thing I got about it, is because of his worldwide fame now, because of Shark Tank, he goes all around the world and meet with business groups and then he's got a lineup of people who think they have an idea for him. And he said, what I've learned to do that these trips are ... First of all, he says, 99% of the ideas aren't any use to me. But he said, they're trying to find out something from me. I want to find out something from them. So what I'm doing now is I'm intrigued about something new in the marketplace that seems to cost way too much money and seems to have way too much work attached to it. And I just want to find out who's working on it. So he says, I'll go out on a big trip and everybody I meet says, I'm not really interested in your idea, but do you know anybody who's working on this. And so they'll have his perspective on a different topic.
So he'll just have these conversations. So instead of him ... Because he's already got a magnet that's bringing people to him, because of his 30 year reputation and he's high profile and everything else. So he said, I've got a magnet. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, you know. I'm conceptualizing what I learned from watching Kevin talk.
And he says, you know, these people really, really, really, really want to talk to me for their interests. And I can give them advice. I can tell them the next step. And he says, that's very useful for me. But he said the big thing is looking for names of people who are working on a particular thing. And I want to see if anybody's breaking through to make something 10 times faster, 10 times cheaper. And he said, maybe not one person is doing it, but if I put four or five of these, maybe we can come up with an entirely new solution. Ten times as cheap, ten times as fast. That's really his part, which is a real ... That's an exponential breakthrough.
So, anyway. I just said, of course. But he's having a conversation with the marketplace. I mean, he's taking advantage of the vast information networks that there's people out there with mass amount of information that isn't particularly useful to them, but it would be particularly, phenomenally useful to me. And since I'm giving them something of value, simply by talking to them, I'd like them to give me something valuable because I'm talking to them. They're talking to me. You know?
And it just seemed to me to be a pure entrepreneurial approach to ... And, of course, his track record is phenomenal on how many companies he's taken to 100 million or above. You know? Just pretty well from a dead start.
Dean: Yeah. That's absolutely true. Startup plays. But that's really the whole thing that the ... It's all got to start with that route. It's got to start with the ability to get results from one person. Even a company ... It was fascinating to me to watch Ray Dalio before he wrote his book, Principle, had a video that kind of went viral that explained how the markets work. It was really an interesting thing that any market is just a kind of overall view of millions of micro-transactions between one person and another person. And that's really where the whole thing starts.
I've taken to calling that, getting that right, as the what I call the scale ready algorithm. If you don't have the equation that works to give one person the result, it's not going to scale to get a hundred people the result, or a thousand, or ten thousand, or a million people.
Dan: Yeah. And we've had this ... You know, it's really funny. A marvelous story. I was in, probably five, six years ago, in Genius Network. And Joe had invited this guy to Genius Network because he had suddenly inherited 27 million dollars, 28 million dollars. And this had profoundly transformed this individual, which I guess 27 or 28 million dollars inheriting would probably change some of your thinking about the future, do you think?
Dean: Yeah, I think so.
Dan: Yeah. I think so. So anyway, what he had hit on, he was going to take his experience of getting this sudden wealth, and he was going to turn it into a coaching program that would involve everybody that you would need, because he was sensing support that he needed. And he was going to now create this program to go worldwide for people who got sudden wealth. It could be lottery winners, could be inheritance, could be any number of different situations where people got sudden wealth.
And the track record is usually it really screws up people's lives. If they didn't have any prior preparation skill wise, mindset-wise, to do this. So I was sitting at the back of Genius Network, and Dean Graziosi was right next to me. So people were giving him various ideas on how to do this, and I said, and I brought up, and that's why I'm so strong on this particular message. So he was talking, and I said, "Well, how many people do you think are out there who could do that?"
And he says, "Well, it's in the tens of thousands every year. Children who get sudden wealth, lottery winners, all sorts of things. People who create something and then they get big checks and everything like that."
And I said, "What are you doing?"
And he says, "Well, I'm hiring writers. I've got artists. I've got software designers. I've got everything like that."
I said, "What you know so far, could you sit down with one person and coach them through to a successful capability? Really give them an ongoing capability that would allow them to deal with a new situation?"
He said, "Oh, no, no, no." He says, "You got to go big with this." He said, "I'm going to go big."
And I was just sitting there.
Dean: No, no. You got to go big.
Dan: Right, you know? It's going to be about two or three years on his part, where he is the only proof of concept, based on his own experience. But he's creating a huge infrastructure around him, a huge talent core of people who are on payroll, and they're going to produce this, but it'll probably be two and a half years before the marketplace actually sees this.
And Dean Graziosi, he didn't say it to this guy, he didn't want to, he said, "I've only got two pieces of advice for him." He says, "Take the 27 million and put it in a government CD. And buy a German Shepherd that won't let him out of the house for the next 10 years." He says, "He's going to go through that 27 million."
And I asked Joe about it. It took him three years to go through his 27 million.
Dean: Wow. Really? Wow. See, that's amazing, isn't it?
Dan: Yeah. And then he was right back. So he resolved that problem of having too much wealth suddenly. He resolved that in three years.
Dean: Wow. I think that's really ... I see that happening a lot. If we take it in startup world, in the business world, that there's a big difference that I think perfectionism is kind of the approach of raise the money first. Where bootstrapping is really kind of a getting the iterations right.
I wonder, looking at that, if there's something to that. That having the money is almost covering up the fact, or giving a false sense of peace for working on taking a long time to get something out into the world. Whereas without the money ...
Joe and I had Daymond John on the I Love Marketing podcast, talking about his book, The Power of Broke. The interesting thing was, his whole empire started out selling hats on the corner in his neighborhood. That's really how it all started. He would build something and see what the market wanted.
I'm really fascinated with those kinds of genesis things. I've watched that Steve Madden documentary. Steve Madden, the shoe manufacturer. In New York, it's really interesting, because he has a studio that he can go from an idea to custom making the prototype shoe and getting it into the store and seeing how people react to it before ever going into production on something.
Dan: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really, really interesting. But I'm just saying that when you take these fast steps and you shorten the time it takes you to actually have a selling experience marketplace, you know, a selling experience being you're offering something. You're getting two things. You either win, which somebody's writing the check, or you're getting a lesson on the person not writing the check is telling you something of value for you to improve what you're doing. In other words, you're improving the viability of the product.
And the faster you can get from your idea stage to that actual interaction with the marketplace, the more you'll be able to maintain morale, momentum, and motivation. But the longer you go, the longer you go between your idea and a point in the future when you're going to go into the marketplace, you're reducing morale, momentum, and motivation.
And what's interesting is, your personal sense of morale, momentum, and motivation is actually 50% of what convinces the other person to buy.
Dean: I think you're absolutely right. I think that's true. You kind of gauge somebody's authentic enthusiasm and confidence in something. You're absolutely right.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: That's really-
Dan: Well, you're half of the product. I mean, you're half of what's being purchased.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: It's like buying stocks. You know, the stock's worth this much. And I said, well, you know, a stock is just people saying, "If I buy it at this, it's going to be much bigger." They're not buying your stock. They're buying a possible future experience that they're going to have for themselves. So I was just taking a look, because Elon Musk is going through this thing where he's thinking about taking Tesla private, because his experience in the normal problems of being an actual public stock and that is to get short ... you know, lots of people are shorting you, and you've got to show results every quarter. You know, that's the rules if you're going to be a public company. And he's going back.
So they were interviewing people who owned Tesla stock and saying, are you going to sell when they put out the price? Musk actually mentioned a price. $420 per share, which might put him in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission, because he ... The stock went up by about 11% when he came out and ... He actually did it in a tweet.
Dean: Oh, boy. Because he's the market. Right.
Dan: Yeah. The FCC had some thoughts about putting out a price in a tweet. So, anyway. He's going to have some conversations with the FCC. But the interesting for me was they interviewed people who had anywhere from 20 to 80 thousand dollars at present value stock. Well, you're going to sell it, because you'd have to. You'd be given an offer, and then afterwards ... I mean, you'd have to sell. Or you could be included in a pool of people who are going to hang onto it, and they would be part ownership parts.
And this one person says, "I'm not investing in Tesla." He says, "I'm investing in Elon Musk." And every person who says that they're going to hold on to their stock said, "I'm investing in the man, not in the actual technology. I'm investing in the man."
So the interesting thing is what that tells me is that a considerable portion of any offering in the marketplace is the way to buyer in the seller. And if you have high sense of morale, momentum, and motivation, my feeling is that takes up the value of the personal component of anything that you're offering them in the marketplace.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And the fastest way to do that is get the 80% version and start having the conversations about it.
Dan: Yeah. Because you're getting fed, because first of all, you're growing, you're learning. You're coming across knowledge that you have not anticipated. Oh, geeze. I didn't think of that, you know. Oh, my golly! That completely transforms what I'm doing! Well, you can't have that, talking to yourself.
Dean: Yeah. I think your right. And the conversations we were having, both in London and in Amsterdam, were specifically about books, too, about this approach of doing ... Because I'm such a big believer in 90 Minute Books, in doing the small versions. You've been doing a book a quarter now for ... how many quarters in a row have you done that? I've lost track. What are you up to? 11?
Dan: No. In 15 quarters ... The next one is already at the printers. So we have 14 books-
Dean: 14 books.
Dan: ... in 15 quarters.
Dean: Yeah. And every one of them ... I mean, you're taking this approach of the 80%-
Dan: Oh, yeah.
Dean: ... the 80% approach to the books. I've noticed even the iterations are going out that book number 15 is now ... Each phase, you've had conversations with people, and you realize, okay, it's useful to have a scorecard with the book. It's useful to have the audio book. It's useful to have the other ... Each one is kind of getting-
Dan: It's got a video. It's got a video. And now we're cross-relating them to some downloadable thinking exercise you can do from the program. For example, the one that's coming out in September, it's my plan for moving to 156, so this is generated by 25 years of conversations with thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs about the exercise that we have in Strategic Coach called the Lifetime Extender which has not changed at all in 25 years. The first iteration that we're proud of was 80% good in 1992 and we're 26 years down the line, and the actual thinking exercise has changed maybe 20% over the 26 years. That's an enormous amount of market research. It just works.
And our surveys, by our clients who've been in the program a long time, we've asked them which concept, if you really say, "This has changed my game the most," the Lifetime Extender would always be in the top five. So that's just shifted my whole notion of what my lifetime gain looked like.
So that's coming out in September. And we have the download of The Lifetime Extender. You can actually download this, and in one of the chapters, I actually walk people through now this is how you fill this in. And so what it does is it ... We're just saying what would get them ... We're picking up different ways that people actually approach new knowledge, new information. Some people do it by reading. Some people do it by listening. Some people do it watching video. The scorecard might be a way that they can actually get a handle on it. And then if we give them the actually exercise that generated the book, that'll give them ... If you do it on the ebook form, you get all that stuff. There's no cross for any of that stuff. You can just through it. 'Cause I'm not in the business of making money on books. I'm in the business of generating registrations for The Strategic Coach program.
Dean: Yes. Yeah. That is so great. I mean, when you look at that whole evolution of it. You could literally ... There have been people who have taken four years to write one book. You know? To get their big tome, the big masterpiece, the definitive work.
Dan: Not even the book, Dean. It's book. It's like book in 15 foot, neon letters. Their life is book. You know? And they've been at it for 45 years. And I say, "Well, when is this book actually going to reach the marketplace?"
"Well, I just have a few more chapters to do."
And then you talk to them a year down the road, and I said, "Is the book ready?"
And they said, "No. There are just a couple of things that I learned now that I've got to include."
I said, "This is a forever project, isn't it?" Book is synonymous with your lifestyle. I mean, on your gravestone, it'll say, "Too bad he didn't get the book finished."
Dean: Oh, man. Yeah. That's something. I'm excited to see your plan for living to 156.
Dan: Yeah, well, you know, the interesting thing is in the program, I have this guy who started off as a chiropractor. He lives in Utah, Regan Archibald. Terrific guy. And he's got a whole series of multidisciplinary medical clinics in Utah which includes the complete gamut of nontraditional health practices plus doctors, MDs. He's had me on twice, podcasts, you know, where we really just talk for an hour.
But in each of them, he wanted to know what my thinking is about this plan for living to 156. And he said, the reason I want you to know that is my listeners have told me that was the greatest podcast we ever listened to. And the podcast itself, I actually changed a lot of thinking on people's part, just how I approached the whole notion of living a life which is essentially the statistical average for a male in the United States. 78. It just happens to be that right now, it's 78. So twice that is 156.
My whole logic and my whole rationale and what I do on a daily basis to stack the odds in my favor, that might be a possibility. And so when I told him in July that this book is now coming out, he said, "I'm going to buy 2,000 copies right away."
Dean: Wow. That's awesome. But that's a conversation you've been having for a long time.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: I just-
Dan: And in 25 years, there's been a lot of medical and technical breakthroughs on the cutting edge of longevity. Because a lot of people, you know, are ... First of all, it's a keen interest to entrepreneurs who don't retire. Yeah. Go ahead.
Dean: I sent you an article this week. I'm not sure whether you got it, because you were out in Phoenix. But there was that study, a scientific study that shows there's a 51% increase in mortality risk for retirees.
Dan: Oh, yeah. Well, there's an interesting statistic. It has to do with social security. So social security, having some money after you're retired, when in 1936 ... I think it's 1936, 1937, I'm not quite sure of the year. But they did a study of all the social security department or agency or whatever it is in the U.S. government on the sixtieth anniversary, so this is 1936 to 1996, so it's 60 years. And they had one phenomenal measurement, which I found really interesting. And it was, on average, the number of monthly checks that got sent out to everybody that was receiving social security over that 60 year period, and it was 29 months.
Dean: Wow. Overall. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dan: Because they were getting it. So it got triggered at 65, and, on average, people were living less than three years after retirement.
Dean: Wow. I wonder what that number is now. I guess, because since longevity's gone up-
Dan: Yeah. It would be quite a bit higher now. But you don't know. I mean, I don't know. Because it may be that ... I mean, do you know how much social security you're going to collect, Dean?
Dean: I don't specifically know, no.
Dan: No. And before I asked the question, had you ever actually thought about it?
Dean: No. And you know, the recent interest.
Dan: No, no. I ask entrepreneurs, what's your social security? And they say, social security. Oh, oh yeah. I guess because it takes a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself, we're employees of our company, and because we're an employee of our company, you have to take social security out of your thing. And I said, you know, I haven't the foggiest idea. I said you know, I've really comprehended.
It was kind of funny. You know Jeff Maddow, of course.
Dean: I do, yeah.
Dan: Yeah. And Jeff has got a great new Broadway play that's right in the opening stages.
Dean: Wow! That's great.
Dan: Yeah. And he's going to open in Chicago in February, and he's going to open in New York at the very famous Apollo Theater in Harlem.
Dean: Wow, wow, wow!
Dan: Next June or July. And it's the musical life story of Lloyd Price, who was probably one of the most significant of the crossover stars who went from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s. Kind of a very, very influential, but nothing's really been written on him. And he's still alive, and that's the key point, is that Jeff knows him personally, and has worked with him on the story.
They have like a 20 minute start up presentation where you just have the actors onstage. And the music, of course, is there real music, so it's already been written. It's already been market tested.
Anyway, I was talking to Jeff and I said, "I'll invest in that." So I came back, and Babs was excited about it. So anyway, I came back and I said, I was just lucky. I said, perfect. Because I'm 74 now, so you know, I have to get my social security money transferred over to another, when I was 65. And I said, I wonder how much is in the social security fund. And I came back, and I talked to our bookkeeper, and she said, "Well, there's the thing," and I said, "Well, I'm just going to take it out of my social security fund, and pay Jeff."
Dean: That's awesome. I love it.
Dan: I found some use for my social security money.
Dean: There you go. Oh, that's so great.
Dan: Yeah. It actually felt good that all these years I've been creating this fund that will help with creating the ... it's going to be for the Broadway play.
Dean: Oh, there you go. Perfect. And that's kind of the thing, right? As entrepreneurs, it's kind of funny, because it's not ... We don't even think about that as a thing. I was sharing with some of the guys at my country club, you'd call it their allowance. They use it as their per diem.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: When the check comes, it's just their walking around money, you know? It's just kind of funny. They don't need it. They get the check, and they basically cash it and then just having fun or whatever at the golf course.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Fake money. Fake money.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Dan: Let me ask you a question now. You kicked off the conversation today with the 80% thing. So anything gets expanded in your thinking about the 80%.
Dean: Yeah. Oh, it's been an hour already. Holy cow. Yeah. You know, I think that confirmation that I think that taking the 80% approach as a way of getting into conversation, getting your actual thing in the hands of people who are going to be using it, rather than hiding away from them and bringing something that you would view to be 100% complete ... It just seems like there'd be far more usefulness, far more rewards for the users in the marketplace. And at the end, a far better outcome than hiding away.
I'm trying to think of things where ... You know, we've got to mention that we were talking about it with books and that was what my initial thing was. I just can't, for the life of me, kind of figure out a reason to really do 100% book, or think that way. I don't know.
Dan: Yeah. And it's really interesting. I have a team, as you know, and that's in one of my books. There's actually a cartoon depiction of all the team members. In addition to myself, there's probably nine other people.
Dean: It takes a village.
Dan: A crucial contribution on the book, and one of my things is to keep them away from perfectionism. You know?
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I said, this is version one. We'll get it out there. As we have conversations with people about the book and everything else, they'll be a growing amount of feedback that we said, you know, if we ever do a second version of this, we can include that as feedback. But don't worry about it now. Let's let all the improvements for this version of the book come from the marketplace. They won't be our improvements. They'll be the marketplace's improvements.
Dean: Right. Right. I like that. I'm going to carry on.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I'm going to carry on with that approach.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. And the thing is that every time I've tried to be more prepared for a first conversation, I've always regretted it.
Dean: Mm-hmm. There's wisdom in that.
Dan: Yeah. Just drawing a diagram.
Dean: A man with experience.
Dan: If I just draw them a diagram and talk to somebody, and then showed them the diagram in the conversation, I would have been weeks and months ahead, instead of getting ready for that first conversation.
Dean: I agree.
Well, I quite enjoyed our reconnection.
Dan: Yes, indeed.
Dean: I guess we'll talk. I was just going to say, we'll have one more before I head to Australia. And then, very exciting, I got confirmation that we'll do our live one in September.
Dan: Yeah, I'm very excited about that. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I'm very excited. Very excited about that.
Dean: Me, too! Okay, Dan.
Dan: Yeah. Our first in front of an audience, an actual live audience.
Dean: That's right. I like it.
Dan: Yeah. And no preparation is needed.
Dean: None. It'll be great.
Dan: All righty.
Dean: Thanks, Dan. I'll talk to you soon.
Dan: Have a great week.
Dean: You, too. Bye bye.