Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Free Zone Frontier

AI is redefining what’s possible for experienced entrepreneurs who are willing to think differently, experiment, and take risks again. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explore how AI multiplies both success and dysfunction, why the real edge now belongs to seasoned founders, and how to use AI so your future is bigger than your past.

Show Notes:

Many successful entrepreneurs start avoiding situations where they could fail, believing they’ve already had all the breakthroughs they need.

The real risk isn’t AI itself, but refusing to reinvent how your entrepreneurial life and AI work together.

Like the internet in the mid-‘90s, AI can multiply the success you’re already achieving if you choose to engage with it.

The comforts of time, money, and experience can quietly erode your willingness to take the risks that create your next breakthroughs.

The advantage is shifting toward older, more experienced entrepreneurs who combine decades of judgment and pattern recognition with AI’s raw intelligence.

AI is even surprising its creators, which means there’s no established playbook—only entrepreneurs willing to think and experiment.

A fast-growing group of entrepreneurial 10‑ to 20‑year‑olds is bypassing formal education and building businesses directly with AI.

Experience plus AI creates a “jetpack effect,” letting seasoned entrepreneurs take ideas much further and much faster than ever before.

Resources:

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Greater Game by Dan Sullivan and John Bowen

The Greater Game Dashboard

The Impact Filter®

The History of Money: A Story of Humanity by David McWilliams

Casting Not Hiring by Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff

Entrepreneurs grow fastest when they combine their unique capabilities with the right collaborators—both human and AI—so everyone creates bigger results together instead of working alone. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explore how teamwork, technology, and ambition multiply one another in the new era of collaboration.

 Show Notes:

Working with AI can feel highly personal because the tools remember your past thinking and mirror it back to you in powerful ways.

Division of labor is still the starting point for creating wealth, but now the labor includes both human team members and AI agents.

There’s a big difference between having a job made up of tasks and having a role defined by the results you create for the team.

When unique capabilities get combined, the result is something that probably didn’t exist yet.

If you automate activities that don’t work, it will just amplify what isn’t working.

For successful entrepreneurs, growth alternates between greater meaning and more money, and AI only matters if it increases both.

Evaluating how someone contributes to teamwork gives you a clearer read on their character than any assessment or profile.

The most valuable team members going forward will be AI-first and AI-native, using agents as collaborators rather than occasional helpers.

 Resources:

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Unique Ability®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Casting Not Hiring by Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff

Kolbe A™ Index

CliftonStrengths®

Innovations in the realm of age reversal are accelerating. Getting physically younger while getting older in years is a real possibility. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explain the advances, discuss what’s needed for further breakthroughs, and share why age reversal developments are critical for entrepreneurs to be preparing for. 

Show Notes:

• Many entrepreneurs retire out of social or societal expectations.
• Setting a goal that might seem crazy serves as a magnet for what you need and as a repellent for what you don’t.
• You treat your remaining years differently depending on when you think you’re going to die.
• Thinking about your legacy means you’re thinking about being gone.
• There’s the expectation in society that once you turn 65 or 70, you don’t take on anything new.
• The solution won’t be possible if you don’t have the goal.
• Medicine is going to become the fastest growing industry in the United States.
• There are thousands of solutions that need to be worked on to enable true age reversal.
• There's been an incredible drop-off in venture capital funding of all areas except health and medicine.
• American progress in all areas is driven by adventuresome consumers.
• Mission alignment is the single most important predictor of success in long-term health-related entrepreneurial ventures.

Resources:

The Strategic Coach® Signature Program

Learn more about Steven Krein at StartUp Health

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein delve into the power of the “When Are You Great?” tool, discussing how it serves as a crucial planning aid and a potent marketing resource. Using real-world examples, they explore the implications for crafting compelling offers, narrating impactful stories, and leveraging a marketer’s secret weapon.

Show Notes:

• To figure out what gets talked about, you have to combine everything you’re telling with everything you’re being told.
• You share when you’re good because you have competition. Others share when you’re great because they don’t think you have any competition.
• Saying when you’re good is trying to make a convincing argument. Being told when you’re great is your compelling offer.
• How you're making people feel transcends what you do for them.
• Your messaging should include both what you do and what happens when someone participates.
• Measuring impact is hard in the short term, but unavoidable in the long term.

Resources:

The Four Freedoms

The Self-Managing Company by Dan Sullivan

The Strategic Coach Entrepreneurial Time System®

The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan

In one of our most popular episodes, Steve and Dan revisit why there’s a big difference between convincing someone with an argument and compelling them to take action with an offer. And in the market world where we all live, people don’t want to be convinced—they want to be compelled.

Show Notes:

A convincing argument is about the speaker, but a compelling offer is about the listener.

In the education system, you convince someone with your argument, but it doesn’t get them to take any action.

Characteristics of a compelling offer are that it happens very fast, and the clients don’t have to do much work to get it.

Humans aren’t computers, but meaning makers.

The basis of a compelling offer is that everyone is thinking in one direction, and then you present a message that changes the way they’re thinking about things.

Data is what you need to make an argument convincing.

Some people see situations in black and white (it happened or it didn’t happen), and don’t see the progress being made.

When you make a compelling offer, people want to be involved regardless of when the success will come. 

When someone is facing a new experience, it will be a good experience if they have something new as a solution, and a bad experience if they don’t.

Resources:

Deep D.O.S. Innovation by Dan Sullivan

You Are Not a Computer by Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explore the powerful 4 x 4 Casting Tool™, which can transform how you integrate new team members into your company—and galvanize your current team members to take ownership of their roles. Discover how treating your company like a theater project ensures you have the right people in the right roles for maximum impact.

Show Notes:

• An entrepreneur's primary job is to push things forward, not get stuck in bureaucratic processes.
• The least productive thing you can say to your team as an entrepreneur is, “I’m unhappy with you, but I’m not going to tell you why.”
• The 4 x 4 Casting Tool tells people how you expect them to show up, how they show progress in terms of getting things done, how they can be a hero to you, and how they can drive you crazy.
• It also empowers team members to take ownership of their roles within the company.
• When someone new joins your team, it's your job to tell them what the game plan is and what's expected of them. People can’t read your mind.
• Traditional job descriptions are impersonal and technical, and they fail to capture the nuanced working relationships that can (and should) develop in a growth-focused team.
• Having a Self-Managing Company® means that every team member is managing their constant growth and contributions in the company.
• You can’t complain and create at the same time.
• Remote work has fundamentally changed team dynamics, and it will take more effort to ensure team members feel connected to each other—and your vision.

Resources:

Anything And Everything Podcast

What Is A Self-Managing Company®?

Unique Ability®

Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson

Entrepreneurial Operating System®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

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

The Impact Filter™

The Great Crossover® by Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss the Free Zone Frontier® and the StartUp Health programs. They both believe it’s crucial to have the right people in the room, sharing their experiences and collaborating. Connecting like this with a community of ambitious, calm entrepreneurs makes it possible to experience five years’ progress in three months.

Show Notes:

• What happens backstage is more magical than what’s seen on stage.
• Gutenberg's invention of the printing press was a revolution that led people to start having conversations with themselves.
• Fifty years into the microchip revolution, a “team consciousness” is emerging.
• In any group, the individuals’ mindsets are the most important factor.
• Entrepreneurs tend to be isolated. In Steve’s StartUp Health and Dan’s Free Zone Frontier, it’s understood that you can't go it alone.
• Belonging to a community of confident, ambitious, and calm peers helps entrepreneurs make the next leap.
• In the Free Zone Frontier, entrepreneurs report making five years’ progress in three months.
• Dan predicts that technology will increasingly go “maximum global,” and that people will stay closer to home and focus on their own communities.

Resources:

Learn more about Steve’s company, StartUp Health

The Strategic Coach® Signature Program

Ever wondered what the success formula is for top entrepreneurs? Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss “The 25-Year Framework” and how it benefits entrepreneurs by helping them prioritize their biggest goals and measure progress every quarter. They explain how having a quarterly rhythm can be transformational, and provide insights into how to achieve long-term goals, adapt to advancements in technology, and overcome crises in the marketplace.

Show Notes:

• Measuring your past progress and planning out the next quarter, every quarter, helps simplify and multiply your efforts.
• This kind of self-accountability and measurement allows for compounding results.
• Growth entrepreneurs must engage in quarterly reflection to achieve their goals.
• Entrepreneurs who treat every quarter in business as a 90-day period of progress, recalibrating and staying committed to their goals, are much more likely to weather market disruptions (such as a global pandemic) and will fare better in the long run.
• Quarterly review and recalibration are essential for achieving not only professional goals, but personal ones as well, and help you build meaningful relationships.
• Your social circle can either support or obstruct your goals. Curate it regularly.
• Avoid making major decisions on Friday afternoons. Everything feels much bigger and scarier when you’re tired from the week, whereas you have a fresh perspective and more energy at the start of the week.
• To reach your quarterly goals, you must commit to weekly improvements.

Resources:

The 25-Year Framework by Dan Sullivan

The Strategic Coach® Program

StartUp Health

Free Zone Frontier by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management (Free Days™)

Should businesses be focusing more on engaging their customers virtually or in person? Since some customers prefer one and some prefer the other, you’re alienating people if you go too far in either direction. Dan Sullivan and Steven Krein discuss the incursion of digital elements into various aspects of human life and what this has your potential customers feeling—and seeking out.

Show Notes:

There was an industrial phase where everything old was torn down to build something new. And then there was pushback.

A good city is for both the people who live there and the people who only come for a few hours, then go home.

There’s a 50% renewal rate for Strategic Coach® clients who stick to virtual, and a 75% renewal rate for Strategic Coach clients who attend in-person workshops.

Some people have decided to just not travel anymore.

Virtual strengthens what happens in real life; it doesn’t replace it.

Testing something out on 50 people gives you a good idea about whether it works.

People are now pursuing what they’re interested in, and it’s harder to get their attention for what you want to share with them.

News stories disappear from public discussions much faster than they used to.

In the 1940s, the notion that you were supposed to enjoy your work didn’t exist.

There’s become a complete disconnection between higher education and the job market.

When people don’t know where they’re headed in the future, they go back to what they know and defend it.

Resources:

Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

The Transformation Trilogy set by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Unique EDGE® Program

For most people, entrepreneurship used to feel out of reach. Now, technology has provided the necessary tools for anyone to start a company that has all the potential to give them freedom. Dan Sullivan and Steven Krein discuss the many invaluable ways AI can be used by business leaders, and how it’s opened doors for dreamers. 

Show Notes:

Entrepreneurism by its very nature creates disruption and inequality.

Entrepreneurs like talking to other people who are entrepreneurial about their ideas in order to develop them further.

AI is creating a whole generation of people learning how to learn differently.

It might be more interesting to consider what using AI does to your brain versus what it does to your business.

Ten years from now, everybody's going to be using AI just as a matter of interacting with their computer.

People who would never use ChatGPT are going to have AI built into what they’re already doing on their phones and computers.

AI will eventually become so normal that it’ll become boring.

Resources:

Perplexity.ai

The Kolbe A™ Index

The Impact Filter™

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

Book: AI As Your Teammate by Evan Ryan

The Transformation Trilogy: Who Not How, The Gap and the Gain, and 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

As of this year, Dan Sullivan has been a business coach for half a century, and Strategic Coach® has been helping entrepreneurs lead their best lives for 35 years. In this episode, Steve Krein and Dan discuss the inaugural CoachCon event that recently took place in Nashville, how the three-day conference came together, and the secrets that made it a resounding success.

Show Notes:

When people are committing to an event that requires traveling, they give it a lot more thought than they did before COVID.

You’re going to see that almost all businesses have three tracks: a technology track, a teamwork track, and a coaching track.

Technology does not coach itself. Teamwork doesn't naturally expand itself.

Dan sees it as a form of progress when great things can be created in his company that he has no involvement in.

Most conventions and conferences are overloaded with content with no time to think.

What gets talked about in free periods during conferences is a more important takeaway than anything heard in the panel discussions.

Sponsors of communities are not always authentic members of those communities.

If people have a great experience, they'll tell a few people about it. If they have a bad experience, they'll tell a lot of people about it.

Resources:

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

The Impact Filter™

The Strategic Coach® Program

Visual Capitalist

Ever been to a concert where everyone sings along to every song? That's the power of community. Dan and Steve explore the emotional side of entrepreneurship, discussing the benefits of building a strong community. It’s an environment of shared language, shared opportunities, and shared experiences where everyone can gain and grow.

Show Notes:

In any community, shared language and experiences create an environment where people feel more comfortable.

When you bring entrepreneurs together, there’s a shared language and also shared challenges that they’re all deeply familiar with.

When entrepreneurs share networks, it’s an instant capability.

Entrepreneurs can have shared opportunities not only individually, but collectively.

Questions are more powerful than answers.

Technology is actually about taking things that already work and putting them into a new form.

You can create a new lesson and a new course of action out of any three of your past experiences.

You want your existing clients to be part of your marketing team.

When you get involved with investors, there are two numbers that really matter: 51% and 49%.

Resources:

The R-Factor Question®

The Entrepreneurial Time System®

Unique Ability®

Genius Network®

Abundance 360®

The daVinci50 Mastermind®

Perplexity.ai

The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Your Life As A Strategy Circle by Dan Sullivan

No one can control the future, but something we can do is make sure we have a great past. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss how a good life is when you focus on making every day a great yesterday.

Show Notes:

Entrepreneurs often fall in love with exciting future possibilities and end up pulled in 10 different directions at once.

When you commit to creating great yesterdays, you naturally think less about abstract futures and more about the quality of what you’re doing right now.

Today is real. The future exists only in your mind.

Like strengthening a muscle, you get better at creating great yesterdays the more you practice it.

Seeing each day as tomorrow’s yesterday changes your behavior, even in frustrating situations like travel delays or schedule disruptions.

Thinking of today as tomorrow’s yesterday increases your intentionality, so more of your time goes to activities that compound.

As a result of new technologies and tools, what you can accomplish in a single day is radically different from a few years ago, which makes your daily choices even more important.

Many entrepreneurs suffer from too much opportunity and too much achievement, which makes it hard to stay grounded in the present.

The greatest challenge that entrepreneurs face is loneliness, but Strategic Coach gives ambitious entrepreneurs a community where they feel understood and can talk freely about their goals and successes.

Resources:

The Entrepreneur's Guide To Time Management

Unique Ability®

The Impact Filter®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Casting Not Hiring by Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan

Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan

The 4x4 Breakthrough

Serial entrepreneur Lior Weinstein returns to the show. Teaming up with Dan and Steve, he shares his systematic approach for tackling business challenges and leveraging AI alongside human capabilities. Three entrepreneurs operating at the top of their game promise valuable takeaways to transform pains into new revenue streams and fuel your success.

Show Notes:

Every company has a history and constraints they bring along.

Good marketing requires empathy.

Too many entrepreneurs overthink, overengineer, and overbuild.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, it’s better to build the website before building a product.

When an amazing technology launches, people make predictions without appreciating or understanding the actual engineering problems that underpin the technology. 

The rate at which the open source community is creating competitive products is incredible.

You’re only as smart as the quality of your questions.

Search engines are becoming answer engines.

We're going to learn more and more about human intelligence by interacting with AI technology.

Resources:

Book: The 4 C’s Formula by Dan Sullivan

Article: The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Unique Ability®

Perplexity.ai

Book: The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein welcome Lior Weinstein, a serial entrepreneur who specializes in simplifying complex concepts into actionable steps. Lior shares his background, starting in Israel and moving to the United States, where he expanded his entrepreneurial career after serving in the IDF's Intelligence Corps. Lior's experiences taught him about teamwork, tackling big missions, and winning with small teams.

Show Notes:

• Strategic Coach® clients learn to prioritize being happy first.
• Focusing on meaningful relationships is the key to personal happiness and business success.
• Adopting an owner’s mindset in consulting leads to deeper problem-solving empathy and holistic client solutions.
• Curiosity is essential because it fosters innovation, adaptability, and continuous learning.
• When you’re not focused on short-term profit, it’s a lot easier to engage on all sides.
• Meeting in person isn’t a requirement for most knowledge-based businesses.
• Entrepreneurial community is a powerful multiplier that can accelerate business growth, innovation, and shared success.
• You don't have a community unless you have a common language.
• It's difficult for most entrepreneurs to avoid tunnel vision when they encounter a problem.
• Looking toward the future is something entrepreneurs do organically.

Resources:

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Podcast: Anything And Everything with Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff

Article: The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Unique AbilityⓇ

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

Total Cash Confidence by Dan Sullivan

The Impact Filter™

Many entrepreneurs don’t hire well, and those that do mostly dread the activity. Dan Sullivan aims to change that. He explains a mindset shift about hiring differently as entrepreneurs, exploring how thinking of hiring as casting a play creates a new perspective on team building and collaboration.

Show Notes:

• Most entrepreneurs view hiring as a cost rather than an investment.
• An entrepreneur’s attitude toward hiring shapes the future of their relationship with their team.
• The notion of casting, as opposed to hiring, highlights the importance of finding the right fit for a role within the team.
• When entrepreneurs view the hiring process as casting, they shift their focus from simply filling a position to selecting individuals who will fit well within the existing team dynamic.
• It also helps them identify areas for improvement, reallocate roles, and ensure that the team functions cohesively toward common goals.
• It pays to view your business as a theater production, where the success of the team depends on how well each member fits into their role and collaborates with others.
• It doesn’t matter what anyone is doing on their own. It’s all about how you’re producing something as a team.

Resources:

The Impact Filter™

The Front Stage/Back Stage Model®

Unique AbilityⓇ

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein delve into the power of the “When Are You Great?” tool, discussing how it serves as a crucial planning aid and a potent marketing resource. Using real-world examples, they explore the implications for crafting compelling offers, narrating impactful stories, and leveraging a marketer’s secret weapon.

Highlights:

To figure out what gets talked about, you have to combine everything you’re telling with everything you’re being told.

You share when you’re good because you have competition. Others share when you’re great because they don’t think you have any competition.

Saying when you’re good is trying to make a convincing argument. Being told when you’re great is your compelling offer.

How you're making people feel transcends what you do for them.

Your messaging should include both what you do and what happens when someone participates in it.

Measuring impact is hard in the short term, but unavoidable in the long term.

Resources:

The Four Freedoms

The Self-Managing Company by Dan Sullivan

The Strategic Coach Entrepreneurial Time System®

The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan 

The end of a year and the beginning of another is a great time to reflect and plan. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss effective ways entrepreneurs can look back on what’s happened and look ahead to what they want to accomplish, sharing insights from their own experiences running successful businesses.

Highlights:

A lot of people feel uncomfortable talking about long-term planning.

You can use the new year to reflect on the progress you've made over the last 12 months and what you need to do over the next 12 months while fitting it into the context of what your long-term mission is.

You can reuse your past any way you want.

It’s much easier to think about 25 years as 100 quarters: a quarter is enough time to get stuff done, but not so long that you’ll lose your way.

No one can predict the future. It’s all just guesses and bets.

Consistency over time in your past is crucial for building your future.

For the most part, entrepreneurs starting a new business don't have any structure or process that works.

There's a quick deviation from values sometimes when you're trying to just get financial return.

The more you plan backwards from the future, the better you get at it.

Resources:

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Learn more about Steve Krein and StartUp Health

The Strategic Coach® Program

Learn more about Unique Ability®

No matter how long a company has been around, it’s vital that everyone is clear on and maintains their core values. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explain why this is so important, discuss why all team members need to be aligned, and share some of their own companies’ core values.

Highlights:

In the U.S., core values used to be structured into the environment you lived in.

Reminding team members of the company’s specific purpose can help avoid distraction.

The value reinforcement of a company today is 10 times more important than it was in the 1950s.

You either do or don’t have passion for, have conviction for, and are inspired by a mission.

People who aren’t aligned with a company’s mission wreak havoc during times when things shift.

Company leaders need to represent the values they want their team members to have.

Every entrepreneur is in the continual process of hiring or removing wrong-fit people.

In a period of high flux, you go to the organizing structure that actually works.

Resources:

Everyone And Everything Grows by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management

“Geometry” For Staying Cool & Calm by Dan Sullivan

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Strategic Coach® is approaching its 50th anniversary, and Coach co-founder Dan Sullivan is coming up on 50 years of coaching entrepreneurs. In this episode, Steve Krein and Dan share some of the significant changes to entrepreneurism that have happened over the past 50 years and what the future holds.

Highlights:

Steve and Dan discuss what is currently the number one resource on the planet

If you look at cultural heroes in the business world and American life itself, they’re the great entrepreneurs.

The original definition of an entrepreneur is someone who takes resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity.

If you don’t have an appreciation for what it means to be an entrepreneur, it can look intimidating and mysterious.

Government, corporate, and large non-profit bureaucracies see unpredictably innovative entrepreneurs as their main enemy.

Big breakthroughs in technology empower entrepreneurs, not large bureaucracies.

When single individuals and small groups create something that goes viral in the marketplace, it upsets everything.

Most of the obstacles to becoming an entrepreneur that existed 50 years ago have been removed.

Resources:

The Strategic Coach® Signature Program

The Impact Filter™ tool

Article: The Four Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Learn more about Steve Krein and StartUp Health

My Plan For Living To 156  by Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein continue their discussion about the power of thinking tools and how they can help entrepreneurs achieve their goals. They explore the importance of tension, shortcuts, and tools in simplifying complex problems and generating new opportunities for yourself, your team, and your clients.

Highlights:

• Strategic Coach® began with The Strategy Circle®, the primordial entrepreneurial thinking tool.
• All Strategic Coach tools share the VOTA structure: Vision, Obstacles, Transformation, Action.
• By combining opposing thoughts, entrepreneurs can generate new ideas and surprising insights.
• Tools are shortcuts to help people do things faster and more efficiently.
• The best tools, Dan feels, are axiomatic, like the self-evident truths that Euclid established for geometry.
• All sales conversations around Strategic Coach begin with a conversation about the prospect’s D.O.S.® (Dangers, Opportunities, Strengths).
• Dan discusses his latest book, which is about the unique culture within the Strategic Coach team, and uses the process of this book’s creation as an example of that teamwork.
• The speed and decisiveness of entrepreneurs require coaching and tools that can keep up with their fast-paced thinking and decision making.
• Individuals coming to entrepreneurship from a scientific or academic background may be shocked by the speed at which things happen in the business world.

Resources:

StartUp Health

Video: How To Transform A Negative Experience

The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management

Your Life As A Strategy Circle by Dan Sullivan

The Impact Filter

How do you find great people to join your organization? How do you train them, coach them, and guide them? The answer lies in what makes Strategic Coach® different from all other companies. In this first episode of a two-part series, Steven Krein and Dan Sullivan share the thinking tool culture of Strategic Coach, how it has transformed Steven’s StartUp Health, and how you can use it to upgrade any organization you choose.

Highlights:

Strategic Coach team members use the same tools as our members do.

Thinking tools are at the core of StartUp Health’s value creation and scalability.

Entrepreneurs can’t have a more confident future until they have a more confident past.

Your past experience is your property, so you can do anything you want with it.

Your past is there for learning.

You’re always either on the winning team or the learning team.

Thinking tools are structured forms, either digital or on paper.

You can’t change past events, but you can change your interpretation of them.

Never fall in love with your tools until the check writers fall in love with your tools.

Resources:

StartUp Health

Video: How To Transform A Negative Experience

The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management

Your Life As A Strategy Circle by Dan Sullivan

The Impact Filter

Most entrepreneurs believe they have to be in constant competition. But there’s a much more enjoyable way to live your entrepreneurial life to achieve bigger and better results: you can enter a zone of collaboration with like-minded people that’s entirely free of competition. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explain how to start. Hint: it’s all about simplifying before multiplying.

Highlights:

Finding collaborators who think the same way as you do is one of the most important activities an entrepreneur can undertake.

Don’t fall in love with an idea until customers fall in love with it.

You can’t have simplicity in your entrepreneurial life and complexity in other areas because the complications will catch up with you.

You need both simplification and multiplication to constantly grow.

Most people are too close to cash flow urgency to be able to even think about collaborating.

Once you’re in a competition-free zone, you can continually expand it for the rest of your career.

Uber and Airbnb started off as Free Zone Frontiers, but got really complicated because they got a lot of headwind from who they were disrupting.

Apple has been the best company at maintaining the quality of “Free Zone Frontiering.”

There are people who don’t see Amazon as a competitor, but as a capability.

If you don’t know up front what success in a project looks like, it’s dead on arrival.

Things that are currently underestimated or not even known are going to become entrepreneur capabilities in the next decade or two.

Technology companies are really hard-pressed to keep up with what people actually want to do.

If you create a disruption, you aren’t responsible for it causing a loss for someone else.

Resources:

Simplifier-Multiplier Collaboration by Dan Sullivan

Free Zone Frontier by Dan Sullivan

The Impact Filter™ tool

Total Cash Confidence by Dan Sullivan

In one of our most popular episodes, Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein reveal why every entrepreneur has something to offer clients, but most attempt to make convincing arguments rather than compelling offers. They explain the differences between the two approaches, how to reframe everything as a compelling offer, and why this step is critical to sell your solutions.

Show Notes:

A lot of the turmoil that entrepreneurs go through makes up the length of time before they can get to a sale.

Entrepreneurs trying to make a sale have been trained by their industry to argue against the way things are done and argue against competitors.

The school system teaches students that the more convincing you are with your arguments, the further up you're going to go in the academic world.

A compelling offer is when your client has been exploring something, they don’t have a solution, and you come in with something that exactly matches their thinking.

An investment is a bet that something is going to be better than what’s out there.

When making a compelling offer, you don’t talk about what your competitors are doing, but about the difficulty the client is facing in getting something they really want.

Innovations have value if the customer says so.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs are creative without having any appreciation of what they've created.

Resources:

The Profitability Packager

The Impact Filter®

Who Do You Want To Be A Hero To? by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

Innovations in the realm of age reversal are accelerating. Getting physically younger while getting older in years is a real possibility. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explain the advances, discuss what’s needed for further breakthroughs, and share why age reversal developments are critical for entrepreneurs to be preparing for.

Highlights:

Many entrepreneurs retire out of social or societal expectations.

Setting a goal that might seem crazy serves as a magnet for what you need and as a repellent for what you don’t.

You treat your remaining years differently depending on when you think you’re going to die.

Thinking about your legacy means you’re thinking about being gone.

There’s the expectation in society that once you turn 65 or 70, you don’t take on anything new.

The solution won’t be possible if you don’t have the goal.

Medicine is going to become the fastest growing industry in the United States.

There are hundreds if not thousands of parts that need to be worked on to enable true age reversal.

There’s a paradigm now that all disease is simply an aspect of aging.

There's been an incredible drop-off in venture capital funding of all areas except health and medicine.

American progress in all areas is driven by adventuresome consumers.

Mission alignment is the single most important predictor of success in long-term health-related entrepreneurial ventures.

Resources:

Learn more about Steven Krein at StartUp Health

My Plan For Living To 156  by Dan Sullivan

The Strategic Coach® Signature Program

A lot of entrepreneurs are scared right now, while others are excited, feeling like this is the best time to be innovating and creating value. Why these opposing mindsets? In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Steven Krein explain why some people are experiencing anxiety about the future while others are staying cool and calm.

Highlights:

Some people see “scary times” as opportunities.

The people who we expect to be in charge are responding not only to an event, but to other people’s responses.

The majority of people are less prepared now for something different to happen.

Strategies, tools, and concepts have prepared Strategic Coach® clients to not be shaken by whatever happens.

If your confidence comes from inside yourself, you can find a way to be confident in any situation.

When people feel uncertain, they hold onto their money.

Entrepreneurs should have enough security to go one or two quarters without worrying about cash flow.

In uncertain times, it’s your job to keep your team members’ confidence up every day.

Make sure you come out of uncertain times with the same team power you went into it with.

When your clients are uncertain about their futures, your job is to enable them to create a new future for themselves.

Everyone is 100% responsible for their own feelings.

If you’re immersed in just getting your job done, it’s easy to ignore what’s going on in the outside world.

Resources:

StartUp Health

The Dan Sullivan Question by Dan Sullivan

“Geometry” For Staying Cool & Calm by Dan Sullivan

The Strategic Coach® Signature Program

Scary Times Success Manual  by Dan Sullivan

The Positive Focus®

Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan

Capitalism—And Everything Else  by Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan and Steven Krein discuss Dan’s latest quarterly book, Capitalism—And Everything Else, and explain what capitalism really means, why many people believe they don’t like it, why it’s misunderstood, and its five growth stages.

Highlights:

Some people incorrectly approach capitalism as a rival to ideologies like communism and fascism.

Capitalism isn’t in competition with anything.

Capitalism involves capitalizing on your own talent and time, your production, your abilities, your profitability, and on living in a world of greater prosperity.

Communism, feudalism, fascism, and Nazism aren’t methodologies, they’re ideologies.

If you multiply the impact of your uniqueness over a span of years, you’ll have done it through the methods of capitalism.

There’s a deep emotional element to success from capitalistic activities such as building a business and entrepreneurship.

Systems that are anti-capitalist in their ideologies invariably use capitalist methods to achieve success.

Wherever capitalist methodology is followed, things improve.

Some people are bothered by capitalist methodology because it demands extraordinary individual accountability.

Philanthropic efforts often fall flat because they don’t operate within a capitalistic framework.

Resources:

Capitalism—And Everything Else by Dan Sullivan

Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan

The Strategic Coach Program

Steven Krein and StartUp Health

Ever wondered what the success formula is for top entrepreneurs? In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss the “25-Year Transformation” and how it can benefit entrepreneurs by helping them prioritize their biggest goals and measure progress every quarter. They explain how having a quarterly rhythm can be transformational, and provide insights into how to achieve long-term goals, adapt to advancements in technology and crises in the marketplace, and maintain a transformational mindset.

Highlights:

• Measuring your past progress and planning out the next quarter, every quarter, helps simplify and multiply your efforts.
• This kind of self-accountability and measurement allows for compounding results.
• Growth entrepreneurs must have a quarterly reflection to achieve their goals.
• Entrepreneurs who treat every quarter in business as a 90-day period of progress, recalibrating and staying committed to their goals, are much more likely to weather market disruptions (such as a global pandemic) and will fare better in the long run.
• Quarterly review and recalibration are essential for achieving not only professional goals, but personal ones as well, and help you build meaningful relationships.
• Your social circle can either support or obstruct your goals. Curate it regularly.
• Avoid making major decisions on Friday afternoons. Everything feels much bigger and scarier when you’re tired from the week, whereas you have a fresh perspective and more energy at the start of the week.
• To reach your quarterly goals, you must commit to weekly improvements.

Resources:

StartUp Health

The Strategic Coach® Program

Free Zone Frontier by Dan Sullivan

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy

Unique Ability®

The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management (Free Days™)

Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss the Free Zone Frontier® and the StartUp Health programs. They both believe it’s crucial to have the right people in the room, sharing their experiences and collaborating. Connecting like this with a community of ambitious, calm entrepreneurs makes it possible to experience five years’ progress in three months.

What does it take to make a significant impact in battling a disease? In this third episode of their three-part series, Dan Sullivan, Steve Krein, and Dr. Timothy Nelson discuss the innovative model Tim has developed for combatting congenital heart disease, the incredible commitment from others that it’s taken to reach this point, and how many other areas of medicine could be influenced by the work he and his partners are doing.

An astonishing discovery has taken the concept of stem cell usage and regenerative medicine and put it permanently on the map for future generations. In this second of their three-part series, Dan Sullivan, Steve Krein, and Dr. Timothy Nelson discuss the latest breakthroughs and possibilities that exist in stem cell research. Free Zone collaborations are making it all possible!

Dr. Timothy Nelson is an entrepreneur with a specialty in curing congenital heart disease. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein chat with Tim about the discoveries and motivations that led him to this position. Tim explains how he and his team are on a mission to leverage the philanthropic community to focus on rare diseases that are too often neglected. Join the show to learn about some incredible, and almost inconceivable, breakthroughs that have occurred in just the past few years.

Why do some startup companies continually grow, while most fail? You need more than a great idea. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein discuss the successes of Steve’s unique, collaborative StartUp Health network, the mindsets entrepreneurs need in order to achieve the greatest success, and the things they do that most entrepreneurs won’t even think about.

On the cutting edge of the construction, Carson Holmquist creates the most value for his clients by exploring opportunities in off-site and modular construction. In the second episode of a two-part series, Dan Sullivan, Steve Krein, and Carson explain how to innovate when an industry feels too established for any wholesale change.

Wondering how you should be using AI and what will it mean for the future of your business? While the technology feels new, this kind of moment isn’t. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explore how today’s AI wave mirrors past major technology shifts, most notably the dot-com era 30 years ago, and what we can learn from those transitions.

Show Notes:

AI has quickly become impossible to ignore. If you’re not using it at all, you may already be relying on tools that are becoming outdated.

Every major technological boom in history has also come with a bust—and AI will be no different.

At its core, innovation isn’t about inventing something from nothing. Every new creation is simply a new combination of things that already exist.

AI dramatically shortens the distance between vision and execution—often eliminating barriers that once required teams, time, and resources.

AI changes how feedback works. You no longer need as many people—or sometimes any people at all—to test ideas, refine thinking, and move forward.

To use AI effectively, you must be clear about what you want. The tool amplifies intention; it doesn’t replace it.

Of all the goals someone can pursue, making money is one of the most harmless.

It’s unpredictable—and potentially dangerous—when consumers suddenly gain powerful new capabilities.

The faster you make a thoughtful decision about how you’ll engage with AI, the more freedom and leverage you’re likely to gain in return.

Resources:

Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan

Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future by Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato

Unique Ability®

Free Zone Frontier by Dan Sullivan

Carson Holmquist is a true innovator in the field of construction, and a member of the Free Zone Frontier program at Strategic Coach. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein share what has allowed Carson to thrive, in what ways everyone involved is benefiting, and how he sees the future of modular construction.

Every entrepreneur has something to offer their clients, but most of them attempt to make convincing arguments rather than compelling offers. Dan Sullivan and Steven Krein continue their conversation and highlight the differences between the two approaches, and how you can use this to effectively sell your solutions.

There’s a big difference between convincing someone with an argument and compelling them to take action with an offer. And in the market world where we all live, people don’t want to be convinced—they want to be compelled. Join Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein to learn the differences between convincing and compelling, and the very different effects each has on your customers and clients.

Too many entrepreneurs don’t spend enough time focusing on issues related to their intellectual property early on in the development of their companies. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein share why you need to value your ideas, and the steps you need to take to protect that value.

In this constantly changing political and economic landscape, entrepreneurs can benefit greatly from understanding intellectual property. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein continue their discussion with Keegan Caldwell, founder of one of the fastest-growing IP firms in the world, about what entrepreneurs should know when it comes to their IP.

The importance of intellectual property is undeniable, but not everyone knows as much about their own IP situation as they should. In this second episode of a three-part series, Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein chat with Keegan Caldwell, the founder of an intellectual property law firm, who explains how IP law can benefit entrepreneurs beyond just protecting their creations.

There are many exciting ways in which entrepreneurship and law overlap. Dan Sullivan, Steve Krein, and special guest Keegan Caldwell discuss the issues from all sides, including intellectual property and how lawyers and entrepreneurs can best communicate. Keegan helps clients defend their intellectual property assets. Have a listen to hear how that’s done!

Age reversal has been a hot topic for about 20 years, and there are more factors at play in its advancement than you might think. In this episode, Dan Sullivan, Steve Krein, and guest Regan Archibald talk about the great strides that have been made and what needs to happen for even further advancement in this field that will impact us all.

It’s possible that, through the right set of circumstances, health-care advancements can allow people to have longer lives. In fact, all of the necessary ingredients already exist. Dan Sullivan, Steven Krein, and special guest Regan Archibald discuss what needs to happen in order for health care to help people extend their lives.

Join Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein as they revisit one of the earliest episodes to share the mindsets that were critical in the creation of the Free Zone Frontier. You’ll learn how to start thinking 100x about your company, and how that opens up enormous possibilities. To have a huge impact, you need to think huge. And taking your business to that level might be easier than you think.

The world’s changing faster than ever, and predicting what’s next is tougher than it used to be. But some entrepreneurial truths hold steady. Dan Sullivan and Steven Krein explore how staying ambitious, embracing fresh possibilities, and surrounding yourself with the right people lets you keep setting bigger goals no matter what the future brings.

Show Notes:

New technologies unlock new entrepreneurial capabilities, giving you more ways to grow.

Economic policy shifts, like recent tariffs, signal consumption is now more important than production in the U.S.

The U.S. is the greatest consumer economy in the history of the world.

Over just the last six months, the strength of your consumer base became the new measure of future success.

Predicting the future based only on past trends is getting harder, as possibilities matter more now than probabilities.

Rapid change means it’s a whole new game; fresh opportunities are opening up for the next decade and beyond.

Retiring can create social friction because if you’re working and your friends aren’t, you have less in common to discuss.

Ambition is the opposite of envy.

Surround yourself with other ambitious thinkers; your environment shapes how far you’ll go.​

Resources:

Always More Ambitious by Dan Sullivan

Ambition Scorecard by Dan Sullivan

Unique Ability®

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

Bill Of Rights Economy by Dan Sullivan

While it can take years for an entrepreneur to establish credibility in their industry and marketplace, it can be destroyed in moments. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explain why credibility is so important for entrepreneurs, various ways it can be established and built on—and the risks of losing it.

Cash and confidence are rewards for entrepreneurs, but there are steps that need to be taken before they appear. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explain the process that you will need to go through to create something profitable and the dangers of skipping important steps.

There are many overlaps between entrepreneurship and both American business and American politics. Dan Sullivan, Steve Krein, and guests Matthew Pinsker and Howard Getson discuss the entrepreneurial mindset and structures displayed by Abraham Lincoln and other former U.S. presidents.

While many entrepreneurial companies eventually get stuck in their growth, Paul Abel devised ways and designed systems to help others avoid traps and bypass competition. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein continue their conversation with Paul about his strategies and why they’re so effective for modern entrepreneurs.