Dan Sullivan's Gap and Gain Framework for the Ai Era

What happens when founders adopt Ai faster than their teams?

In this episode of Capability Amplifier, Mike Koenigs and Dan Sullivan explore one of the biggest leadership challenges businesses face today: closing the gap between the excitement of new technology and a team's ability to confidently adopt it.

Using Dan's Gap and Gain framework as the foundation, the conversation moves beyond software and prompts into something much deeper - how entrepreneurs think, how teams think differently, and why progress is measured more effectively when you look backward instead of constantly chasing an ideal future.

Mike shares how storytelling, visual communication, and modern Ai tools are helping founders compress time and communicate ideas faster than ever before. Dan explains why trust, implementation, and measuring meaningful progress ultimately determine whether innovation succeeds inside an organization.

Together, they explore practical thinking tools that help entrepreneurs create alignment, build momentum, and lead their teams through change with greater confidence.

In this episode, Dan and I break down:

• Gap vs. Gain Thinking - Learn why measuring progress from where you started creates more confidence, momentum, and long-term success than chasing an ideal.
• Leading Through Ai Change - Discover how founders can bridge the communication gap with their teams and build trust while introducing new technology.
• Turning Vision into Action - Dan explains how Strategy Circle and Impact Filter help entrepreneurs transform ideas into measurable results.
• Storytelling That Creates Momentum - Why visual storytelling and clear communication help teams align around a shared vision and move faster.
• Ai as a Thinking Partner - Mike demonstrates how Ai can compress time, accelerate creativity, and help entrepreneurs refine ideas into practical solutions.
• Building a Bigger Future - Learn why focusing on today's measurable wins creates lasting momentum and opens the door to greater opportunities tomorrow.
  
  

Whether you're leading a growing company or exploring how Ai fits into your business, this episode offers practical thinking tools that help create momentum without creating chaos. 

TIME STAMPS

00:00 - Why Ai creates a new leadership challenge

03:00 - Understanding Gap and Gain

07:00 - Why founders lose team trus

12:00 - Opportunity versus security

18:00 - Strategy Circle and Impact Filter

24:00 - Storytelling as a leadership tool

30:00 - Pixar, creativity, and communicating vision

38:00 - Time compression with A

45:00 - Measuring progress differentl

52:00 - Dan's daily scoring system

57:00 - Rules, commitment, and momentum

59:00 - Final thoughts on time, value, and leadership 

PS – When you’re ready, here’s how I can help: 

1. Want to discover your next big opportunity? Meet my team for a 60 Minute, 1:1 Idea Deep Dive  here: www.AiAccelerator.com/Ai1k 
2. Ready to reinvent yourself, your business, and your brand, and create “Your Next Act”? Watch this.
   
   

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Creators and Guests

Host

Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach

Dan Sullivan is founder and president of The Strategic Coach Inc. A visionary, an innovator, and a gifted conceptual thinker, Dan has over 40 years’ experience as a highly regarded speaker, consultant, strategic planner, and coach to entrepreneurial individuals and groups.

Host

Mike Koenigs

Mike Koenigs helps business owners and entrepreneurs get paid for BEING, instead of DOING by becoming Transformational Business Influencers, authorities and thought-leaders to create impact, income and a great lifestyle.

What is Capability Amplifier?

Join the eternally curious, interested, and interesting hosts, Mike Koenigs of the SuperPower Accelerator and Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach®, to amplify your capabilities, value, status, and authority on the Capability Amplifier podcast. Ever episode focuses on a new mindset, shortcut or deep thinking exercise that will improve your performance and lifespan. Learn more at: https://www.CapabilityAmplifier.com

Ai Voice [00:00:00]:
Over the past nine months, I've watched something dramatic happen inside businesses. There are team members who've started using AI every single day. They're learning faster, solving problems faster, creating faster, communicating faster, and maybe most importantly, they're gaining courage and confidence in real time. This isn't like the old shift from handwriting to typing, or from typewriters to word processors, or from fax machines to email, or from libraries to Google.

Ai Voice [00:00:26]:
The gap is bigger, much bigger.

Ai Voice [00:00:29]:
AI is creating an orders of magnitude difference in productivity, problem solving, and imagination. But there's another gap happening, too.

Ai Voice [00:00:37]:
Founders and CEOs are getting excited about

Ai Voice [00:00:39]:
AI, experimenting with it, and sometimes using it dangerously, with no real standards, no safeguards, and no guardrails. Then they turn around and expect their teams to magically keep up. The team feels overwhelmed, pushed, confused, sometimes even bullied. They're afraid of being left behind, but they're also afraid, afraid that if everyone starts using random AI tools everywhere, it could damage the business, the brand, the customer experience, and the culture. So the real question is not, should we use AI? That decision has already been made by the marketplace. The real question is, how do we close the communication gap, the education gap, and the courage gap so AI becomes a gain for the whole team. That's what I want to explore with Dan Sullivan today. How do we help more people move from fear to curiosity, from resistance to experimentation, from cha to confidence? And how do we build a culture where AI doesn't replace human capability, but amplifies it? My name is Mike Koenigs, and this is Capability Amplifier with Dan Sullivan.

Mike Koenigs [00:01:54]:
My objective today was, well, one, you and I love stories and entertainment and time compression. So how can we pack in the most value in the shortest period of time? And I've been facing this problem because I'm talking to CEOs and founders all the time. I've been speaking like crazy the past eight weeks, and this is the number one problem that people are struggling to articulate, struggling to deal with right now. And I thought, well, why don't we apply the gap and the gain to AI? Gap and the gain. And I'd like to get your perspective on that setup.

Dan Sullivan [00:02:32]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, just a little, you know, a little bit of definition. Dictionary. Dictionary of what? In Strategic Coach, we talk about the gap and the gain, and it's basically how people measure progress. When they make progress, how do you measure it? And. And how do you feel about the measurement? Okay, so what I'm saying is that there's a switch in the brain. It's One of those switches that clicks on, clicks off.

Dan Sullivan [00:03:00]:
And I say that. Let's just take. I'm going to start with the concept of the gap that you have. We all have ideals. I think ideals are like illumination. You know, we have a sense of the future. It's not a specific sense of the future, but it throws light on where we want to make progress next. And that's where goals come in, because goals are measurable.

Dan Sullivan [00:03:26]:
They're specific goals. And so we set the goal and we make progress with it, and then we achieve what we wanted to achieve. But how do we measure whether we've made progress or not? And if you are measuring against the ideal, you haven't made any progress. Okay. And you're depressed. So you know entrepreneurs. I know entrepreneurs, Mike, who, from an outside standpoint, if you're looking at them from the outside, they look incredibly successful, but on the inside, they feel like failures. Yeah, totally failures.

Dan Sullivan [00:04:04]:
And then they, you know, they. They resort to something that makes them feel better, and they can get addicted out of this, or they can, you know, they can become totally erratic as an entrepreneur and say, well, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to do another business. And they go out. But the problem isn't the business they're doing. The problem is they haven't learned how to measure their personal progress in such a way that they get happy out of it. They don't get happy out of their progress. And so that's one example.

Dan Sullivan [00:04:45]:
And if you talk to any room of entrepreneurs and say, how many of you suffer from this problem? I would say the majority of hands would go up. The other way to do it is to same thing. You got an ideal. The ideal shines light on the road ahead. You set a goal, you make progress, and you achieve the goal. But instead of measuring against the ideal that gave you the ideal, you turn around and measure where you started from. And even if it wasn't as much progress as you had planned, you feel good about the progress, and you feel real good. And then you do it again.

Dan Sullivan [00:05:24]:
You're motivated to do it again. So when I introduced the gap and gain concept, you know, I had a big workshop. I had 50, 50 entrepreneurs in the room. And I said, how many of you do the gap side? How many of you do the gain side? So that's the contrast, the gap and the gain. And I would say it was 85 to 90% gap, okay? And I said, why do you do that? Why do you do that? And they said, well, if we didn't do that, I would become complacent. I know it doesn't make me happy, but if I didn't compare myself against the ideal, I would become complacent. And then I had a short number of people, you know, much shorter list of people who do the gain. And I said, why do you do that? And they said, because I keep growing and I never stop.

Mike Koenigs [00:06:28]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:06:30]:
So I said, if you measured that side over this side over a 30, 40 year period, who would still be going at the end of 40 years? And it was the gain side, not the gap side. So the big thing here, it's thinking about your thinking that basically the problem with AI and all the problems of AI isn't about AI, it's how you're thinking about AI in your brain. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:07:03]:
So let me, let me throw a chink in this and then I want to get into your opinion of how to think about AI, but also how to manage this inside the organization and be able to communicate it and measure the gains and the gaps I want to get into. All right. I always get into, how are we going to fix this? How are we going to create the transformation? But I had another observation. This is a little bit of a setup story. Worked with a client just a couple of weeks ago, and they came in and this was a really, really, really hard problem where a founder had been stuck kind of flatlining their business for a couple of years. And he's also the CTO of a company that is going to be. It's going to have an exit in the billions. But he's also got his baby over here, which is this other company that's been flatlining.

Mike Koenigs [00:08:03]:
And part of it is there's a whole bunch of reasons why this happened. But as I decoded and facilitated how to fix the problems and how to build stuff that would fix the problems, I realized that the environment that was created in the company that resulted in no gains and no measurable gains was it was easy and safe to live in the weeds. And in other words, there was always a reason why we can't and another new thing that they were making and the other stuff that really mattered and pushed the needle didn't get done. And we ended up finding four areas that were measurable, fast, easy to execute, would produce revenue right away. In fact, we found a whole bunch of found money by tweaking one little thing that produced about $125,000 per month in money that required no work. And it was out of the weeds. But the reason I bring this up is when I look at the culture of bringing in AI and the problems with it and where the gaps get created, which is a fast moving founder who sees the innovation, sees the possibilities, sees the potential, and then throws a whole bunch of we have to do this chaos into the environment without any controls, certainly without measurement

Mike Koenigs [00:09:28]:
and

Mike Koenigs [00:09:30]:
it's safe to live in the weeds. The weeds right now with AI are, is anyone can sit down and create a whole bunch of useless slop that never gets executed, never gets in front of the customer and never makes any money. So there's the gap in between of how do you communicate it, how do you create the culture of bridging the gap gain with AI. And again, I know this is just a metaphor for it's just the newest latest thing, except it's moving at I think two orders of magnitude faster than anything else that's ever entered into a marketplace before. So what do you say to that?

Dan Sullivan [00:10:11]:
Yeah, well, I think the problem is that his entire team is walking wounded. They've been beaten up so much by his latest new thing that this is just another new thing and it's impossible for him to be trusted with a new thing that's really going to work. He shouldn't be, if they're going to implement it. He should not be the, he shouldn't even be the salesperson, he shouldn't be the implementer. He needs a, he needs a who. Who actually has been really, really great at take founders ideas and actually implementing them and would be thrilled by the fact that they can use a new technology and a new approach to make some really fast progress really quick. That's my thing. The reason why they're just, you know, they're limping along as a company is they've lost trust that if they commit themselves to this new thing, they're going to be interrupted in three months by another new thing that's going to do it.

Dan Sullivan [00:11:17]:
Okay, that's my attitude. He can't be the sales person on that because there's too much damage that's been done previously.

Mike Koenigs [00:11:29]:
Yeah, that makes sense. So let's talk about the corrective mechanisms to implement. When you, you know, bring in someone they trust, is that typically an outsider? An insider? What, what are the implementation fixes?

Dan Sullivan [00:11:54]:
It depends upon the deal he does with the person who's going to do the implementing. Okay,

Mike Koenigs [00:12:02]:
go on.

Dan Sullivan [00:12:04]:
Well, the whole point is that the way he can restore trust from his team is that he has to have an intermediary that trusts him, but also that the intermediary is trusted by the team. He's new, he's fresh. He doesn't have a. He doesn't have a bad track record. You know, I mean, this is why companies are sold. I mean, basically because the Founders trust gas tank has run out of gas. Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:12:41]:
And then on the same side.

Dan Sullivan [00:12:43]:
And the other thing is, his team are not entrepreneurs.

Mike Koenigs [00:12:47]:
Yes.

Dan Sullivan [00:12:48]:
Okay. They think in terms of security. Okay. Peter Diamantis and I had this discussion, and he says, I believe AI is going to make everybody into an entrepreneur. And I said, no, no, no, no. You can't make an entrepreneur because an entrepreneur leads with security. And the opportunity that they're interested in is the opportunity that gives them more security. Entrepreneur leads with opportunity.

Dan Sullivan [00:13:25]:
Okay. And they need enough security that they can actually pull off the opportunity.

Mike Koenigs [00:13:34]:
Yep.

Dan Sullivan [00:13:35]:
This is yin and yang, you know, this is yin and yang, you know, and, you know, one of the things I have a new quarterly book. You know, I have about five or six where I have. The ideas are just, you know, they're in the nursery and, you know, and, you know, the one that can get out of their crib and walk around is the one that becomes the next book. And this one is called all the Money's in the Obstacles. And it's a strategy circle.

Mike Koenigs [00:14:12]:
Yep.

Dan Sullivan [00:14:12]:
Okay. So you. The strategy circle, first tool. You know, first thinking tool, 1982. And basically what you do is you say, okay, it's a year from now, and you're really happy with your progress. A year from now, you're really, really happy with your progress. Tell me the measurements of the progress. A year from now.

Dan Sullivan [00:14:37]:
That makes you really happy.

Mike Koenigs [00:14:39]:
Yep.

Dan Sullivan [00:14:40]:
And put numbers to it. You know, numbers really make things real, especially as it regards to the future. Okay. Then you come back and say, what's everything right now that stands in the way from us, me making that progress? Okay. So this is partially a strategy circle problem. Yep. Then the other thing is, what kind of game plan do we put together? So my team believes that I'm totally sold on this idea. And then tell them what has to be true for this to become real.

Dan Sullivan [00:15:16]:
Okay. And that's an impact filter. That's another tool. Strategic Coach. Impact filter. And then somebody else is in charge of the implementation of the. So there's some thinking tools that I'd have to pull off for. Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:15:34]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:15:35]:
Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:15:36]:
I mean, I believe that, Mike, that you're doing something extraordinary. It seems to me that you're really entering into the world where you're able to dramatize, put into story form, and put into very Very emotionally graphic pictures so that people can think about their thinking. They can relate to the characters in the picture that you're putting together.

Mike Koenigs [00:16:10]:
Yes. You know, it's another, another experiment and I have, I have a relevant video to play for you that ties to. So I'm going to bridge what you just said because I was thinking about this going, ah, I missed the one big thing. So I'll first of all I'll tell you what I've been doing and then I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do just because of this conversation.

Dan Sullivan [00:16:35]:
I like the video that you did of our podcast.

Mike Koenigs [00:16:38]:
Oh, thanks. Thank you.

Dan Sullivan [00:16:39]:
No, it's great, it's great.

Mike Koenigs [00:16:42]:
Well, that's the way I've been speaking lately and you saw the evolution at. Last at the summit and I used Legos and then unfortunately Iran's been using Legos. I did it first but those bastards started so now I'm using Pixar style movies which are.

Dan Sullivan [00:17:08]:
Pixar is better than Lego. Well, your little shorts, your three minute storyline shorts were Pixar. Yes, Pixar. Yeah. And you've really. I was enormously impressed by the, by the animation that you're capable of right now.

Mike Koenigs [00:17:27]:
Well, I have a new one for you and then I'm going to bridge what you just said because you just gave me an idea about what I've been doing which is I've been making when I'm working with people now, the first thing when we open up a consultation is I'll make a video that solves their number one marketing sales gap and what I would say, vision gap. The thing I haven't been doing is there better future because of that which is capturing enough information. So I want to do an ex. A thought experiment with you right now and I'm going to play this one. This, the framing of this is that well, and I'm going to just play it. It's better if I just play it and I don't mess it up and give you my interpretation first. So here you go. And short.

Dan Sullivan [00:18:24]:
Yeah.

Ai Voice [00:18:26]:
I acknowledge I dreamed too little and thought too small because I lacked the who and the how until now. Back then I would doodle a plan in the dark with a crinkle snap dream and a teeny tiny spark. I'd think maybe someday when I'm older or richer when I gather 10 experts and one giant picture. But now there are robots with giggle brain glow who can help any dreamer dream faster and grow. You can tap on a screen while you sit on your Bed and make dragons, play banjos with pancakes for heads. You can make a new movie, compose a wild song with hippos tap dancing three miles long. You can build an app on Tuesday, launch it Wednesday at noon, design rocket sneakers that can bounce to the moon. You can sketch a dream mansion with a slide through the hall, or invent tiny robots that can clean up it all.

Ai Voice [00:19:21]:
Things that once took big buildings and teams and years, full of meetings and coffee and screams, now fit in your pocket. A magical key, a creativity time machine. For you and for me. The secret's not coding, the secret's not smart. It's opening your eyes and your mind and your heart. Because somewhere inside you are worlds yet unseen, with stories and colors and marvelous machines. So dream a bit louder. Dream wider.

Ai Voice [00:19:48]:
Dream freer. The future's not farther, it's suddenly nearer.

Ai Voice [00:19:53]:
And maybe the biggest, most wonderful thing

Ai Voice [00:19:55]:
is discovering how big a small human can dream.

Dan Sullivan [00:20:00]:
It's fantastic.

Ai Voice [00:20:02]:
Thank you.

Mike Koenigs [00:20:03]:
Thank you. Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:20:06]:
And that Walt Disney's just. He just turned over in his grave. Do you know how many individuals drawings that.

Mike Koenigs [00:20:20]:
Oh, yeah. Oh, God, yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:20:22]:
I mean, that would have. That would have taken six months and. Yeah, 50. 50 illustrators and who knows what else. I mean, wouldn't it? Yeah. I mean, you have a real touch for this. I mean, it's not just the technology is that you have. Yeah, I think it's fantastic.

Mike Koenigs [00:20:43]:
Well, thanks.

Dan Sullivan [00:20:44]:
Yeah. But you did this for thinking it through.

Mike Koenigs [00:20:49]:
I did. Because part of it is how do you compress time? How do you speed trust? And how do you bring someone back to a sense of innocence before the cynicism and the frustration and the anger and the negative emotions get in the way? And I thought, God, I love Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss does that to most people. I think he got canceled along the way. But, you know, to most of us, and even classic Disney, Pixar still has universal appeal. But I think.

Dan Sullivan [00:21:27]:
Well, I think that first of all, Walt Disney was using other people's stories. I mean, first of all.

Mike Koenigs [00:21:34]:
Oh, yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:21:36]:
Pixar created their own stories and apparently the story goes. I don't know if it's mythical, a mythical story, but their first nine movies were worked out in one weekend.

Mike Koenigs [00:21:47]:
Oh, yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:21:49]:
The storylines. I mean, it's like your five that you're doing to compete in Peter's X Prize.

Mike Koenigs [00:21:56]:
Yes.

Dan Sullivan [00:21:57]:
He's got 2,000 in. He's got 2,000 in so far.

Mike Koenigs [00:22:00]:
I know it, I know it. And he's doing the same thing with the hackathon right now with Google support. So you know, part of this exercise and maybe for everyone listening and watching, so you know what's going on is Peter started the X Prize film competition and it is across the reason.

Dan Sullivan [00:22:20]:
And he really explained the reason why he did. I wasn't at a360 when he introduced this, but he said the real reason is that Hollywood is making people frightened of the future. There are no good movies that are making technology positive.

Mike Koenigs [00:22:36]:
Yes, yes. So first of all, being able to tell a better story in a positive light.

Dan Sullivan [00:22:44]:
Well, first of all, have a good story. Everything starts with a really good story and a good story. And everybody is happy at the end of the good story.

Mike Koenigs [00:22:55]:
Yep. Yes. Yeah. And having a journey that's relevant to me instead of one that's crammed down our throats. And we don't have to go down the pathway of why everyone, while many hate Hollywood and well deserved. So for him it's not only creating the story, but also finding talent that understands how to do this stuff. Because just so you know, Daniel, um, I've built tools now that let me storytell really quickly so that each one of those I spend a ma. And most of the time now is spending waiting for the computer to render the story.

Mike Koenigs [00:23:37]:
Cause I. I'll craft, craft the story from an idea and a conversation in 10 minutes and I'll have a script and then I have the AI build storyboards that visually look. And then in the case of ours, I had it model your books cause it was familiar and brand representative. And then I'll have an agent that will do the animation and it can be totally synthetic looking or look photorealistic. And then I've built these tools that watch the video and make the soundtrack and that follows the pacing of the narration and a sound effects track and mixes it. It's mind blowing. And so start to finish, that's about an hour to make each one. And oftentimes I'll create four at the same time and pick the best one for today's it rendered while we were talking, when we just got started, it wasn't even done and I hadn't seen it yet.

Mike Koenigs [00:24:36]:
But they become quite predictable. So back to what Peter's doing that I love is he started with the storytelling first because he's like, if I don't tell a great story about the next business or entrepreneurial opportunity, none of it matters anyway because no one will see it. The second is he's doing the same thing with a nine month or a three month hackathon. The goal is the largest hackathon to identify technology talent that can program with these tools. And then he's going to take the winners from each, put them together and say, now launch a business. And I think that is one of the best examples of collaborative entrepreneurialism I've ever witnessed with time compression. I'm so excited for it and for what happens, because that is the future of education and entertainment and entrepreneurship and technology and programming. And what do you need college for if you can just get people to compress time and do something that matters in three months?

Dan Sullivan [00:25:46]:
Yeah, the. I think. I think the big issue, you know, I did podcast with Shannon. We have a podcast series called Inside Strategic Coach. And one of the things that we talked about was thinking about your thinking related to AI. Okay. And I said, the. The big problem with AI is that the entire structure of most people's education, formal education being the school system, university, college.

Dan Sullivan [00:26:26]:
And I said, but not. But the. Their cultural education convinces. Convinces them that they can there. They have to be good enough to follow orders. I would say most people's family education, most people's, you know, actual formal education experience and then workplace experience, is that. What I'm going to be required to do is to fit myself into someone else's system in such a way that it doesn't cause them any problems.

Mike Koenigs [00:27:13]:
Hmm.

Dan Sullivan [00:27:17]:
Okay. So first of all, we're not talking to everybody, okay? First thing you have to think our book came out. We were number one on Amazon at 10 o' clock the next day. For new books that came out, this is the greater game. John Bowen and I. Yep, yep.

Mike Koenigs [00:27:34]:
I got the book this week.

Dan Sullivan [00:27:35]:
And one of the crucial things that we had to determine. We were about six months into thinking it through, because I was starting, I framed sort of a lot of the context of the book. I framed it and I said, the thing we have to come across, get across very, very quick, John, is that we're all. We're only talking to a small number of people. So I have a concept that came in around 20 years ago into the program. The smaller the niche, the bigger the market.

Mike Koenigs [00:28:14]:
Yep. Huh.

Dan Sullivan [00:28:16]:
Okay. So people try to be all things to all people. Okay. And there's no energy in that. Okay. Because people think hierarchically, okay. And they don't want to be like everybody else. And they want to be.

Dan Sullivan [00:28:34]:
They want to know what. They want to know where greatness lies. Okay? So one of the things I would say is that in the future, what Mike Koenix is showing you here, this is about greatness. This is. Not everybody can do this, but if you're already doing great things and are frustrated because it takes too much time, takes too much effort, you don't have the right resources around. We're not making you great, you're already great. The only question is you don't have the tools, the resources, and especially you don't have the time. So we've solved three problems for you.

Dan Sullivan [00:29:25]:
Because you don't want to work with anybody except great people.

Mike Koenigs [00:29:28]:
Yes.

Dan Sullivan [00:29:29]:
You're not trying to take average to good here.

Ai Voice [00:29:33]:
No.

Mike Koenigs [00:29:35]:
Yeah, it's gotten incredible.

Dan Sullivan [00:29:37]:
Is this useful? Is this useful at all?

Mike Koenigs [00:29:39]:
Yeah, it's tremendously useful, Dan.

Dan Sullivan [00:29:44]:
So we had a discussion, I had a podcast with somebody else and he says, you know, the biggest thing that I'm worried about with AI is all the unemployment. I'm worried about all the people who are going to lose jobs. And I said, no, you're not actually, actually you don't care at all. What you're trying to, what you're trying to get across is that you're a caring person and you're not a caring person. I mean, I've known you for 15 years. Never once have you brought up the subject of other people's employment. All of a sudden you really care about. I say you don't care.

Dan Sullivan [00:30:26]:
If I followed you for a year and measured you minute by minute, you wouldn't spend an hour actually demonstrating your care for other people. What you are is that you're going to be phenomenally successful and you're feeling guilty about your success where other people don't have it.

Mike Koenigs [00:30:45]:
Yeah. Yes. I think there are two observations. One of them ties into what you're talking earlier about college and it's.

Dan Sullivan [00:30:57]:
College is gone. Yeah, yeah, it's gone.

Mike Koenigs [00:31:04]:
Yes. We live in it radically non linear world. So three observations, the first of which is humanity as a whole gave up its agency a long time ago to higher authorities. And you were just talking about that with the church when we just started. Or saying we have to bend to a guru and we have to wait for the wisdom to be passed on to us. There's waiting. What AI does is collapses time and flattens access to knowledge and information. Not necessarily creativity and wisdom.

Mike Koenigs [00:31:45]:
You and I have talked about that before because creativity is future focused, human created. And one of the things it's. AI does not create good jokes yet. It just doesn't. And it makes pretty good music, really good music makes pretty good poetry.

Dan Sullivan [00:32:03]:
Well, music is mathematical.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:05]:
Yes, that's precisely.

Dan Sullivan [00:32:07]:
Jokes are not mathematical.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:10]:
Exactly. Yep. And I, and I, and I think nonlinear jumps. I Was talking to a guy here at I met Dave Asprey's biohacking event right now, and there's 5,000 people here. It's huge. He's done an amazing job. And I bumped into a guy who's in the robotics business. He's making military autonomous dune buggies right now and also involved in plasma energy.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:37]:
Really fascinating guy. And we were just talking about how nonlinear everything suddenly is. And I think when someone says, I'm worried about unemployment, they are looking down the path of a straight line that appears real, not realizing that the universe is always chaotic and nothing's ever as simple or as complex as it appears to be, nor is it going in. If people were great at predicting stuff, we'd know exactly where the market's going to be and everyone would be a trillionaire. I think it's just the same stupid thinking. And I think right now it's easy to live in the fear that, oh, my God, this means that. And this does not mean that.

Dan Sullivan [00:33:24]:
No.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:24]:
So back to the agency.

Dan Sullivan [00:33:26]:
Well, first of all, you're not born with agency.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:32]:
Yes.

Dan Sullivan [00:33:32]:
Okay, so people didn't give over their agency. They never had it in the beginning. Yeah, okay.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:39]:
Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:33:39]:
You have agency, and you'll have a lot more in the future. You wouldn't have done this if you didn't have agency. Okay, I've got agency, but I've really, really had to work. You know, I've had to work 50 years to get to the level of agency. So the big thing isn't that people's agency. This is Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher who got everybody off on there, that all humans are born free. No, they're not. They're born helpless and pathetic and they need really good parents to get anywhere.

Dan Sullivan [00:34:17]:
Okay, so my sense is that nobody's done anything to anybody. Okay? It's just that the only people who do something is people who take ownership for their experience. And it's totally unpredictable. Who's going to do that? And it's not a method. It's just grasping that they have something unique inside of themselves and, you know, and their understanding of their own experience is greater than anybody else's teaching. Yeah, okay. So my sense. My sense is that I, you know, this is the, you know, oppressor victim model.

Dan Sullivan [00:34:59]:
I. You know, the. I mean, it's like what the political parties are doing, you know, that, you know, the current. Current situation, it's that, you know, really, they hate us, but it's becoming visible that they hate us, and so we hate them. So that's basically what's happening happening right now. But my sense is that the big thing here is there's a little message that you have to have right at the beginning when he's got his hand on the, you know, he's writing out. The thing is that, you know, it's a risk doing on, you know, it's a risk working on your dream, but you've tried the other way and it doesn't work. And now you've decided, look, there's new things out there that I can use now that weren't available a short time ago and I can now bet on myself.

Mike Koenigs [00:35:57]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:35:57]:
To create what I want. And it's getting better and better. The more I bet on myself, the more the new technology becomes more useful for me.

Mike Koenigs [00:36:09]:
Right.

Mike Koenigs [00:36:11]:
Well.

Mike Koenigs [00:36:11]:
And as I listen to you right now where I've gotten some new clarity that I hadn't seen inside of the gap in the gain and starting with story, which is something I wanted to entertain and captivate and I made it with you in mind, which is how can I get Dan excited? And I know if Dan's excited, our audience is going to be excited. And planting these seeds are great. So there's this two step process. One of them is here's the thing. So let's say here's the proposed solution to a problem you have. And I like making a movie because when you make something that's two minutes long, both of us see the same vision and then it's easy for us to make it real. And I think, if you recall, I talked about the inside movie and the outside movie. The outside movie is for the market, the inside movie is for the team.

Mike Koenigs [00:37:08]:
But if they're unified, you can light up the team. They see the shared common vision and so does the outside market who raises their hand and says, I want to buy that. What I'm going to focus on from now on is the visionary's dream, which is your greatest, best future projected a year from now or three years from today. It's really encapsulating the Dan Sullivan question in a way that can be measured. So I want to meditate on making the dream and giving you the measurable results also. So what do you do with that?

Dan Sullivan [00:37:53]:
Well, here's the thing. Time is a tool. You know, time got invented. You know, at a certain point people invented time. There wasn't time, there was just a bunch. It was just a bunch of stuff. So. And tell me if you introduced into what you just showed me with the video saying that I believe in one Year.

Dan Sullivan [00:38:20]:
I can do this. Okay, first of all, it's common language. Everybody knows what a year is, and a year isn't too long. Okay. Okay. But are you doing yourself a disservice, Mike, as the magician, because you're the magician in chief here. Are you doing yourself a disservice if you say we can do this in a year, but it actually happens in three weeks? Are you doing yourself a disservice is

Mike Koenigs [00:38:51]:
not if I charge based on value, because who. So I think the value is three times greater if it's done in a third or a tenth of the time and I deliver the outcome.

Dan Sullivan [00:39:06]:
Well, no, it's. It's all win. You know, there's.

Mike Koenigs [00:39:11]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a compounded win.

Dan Sullivan [00:39:15]:
Yeah. The big thing is that time is just a really, really interesting thing to work with because, you know, if you show something happening really fast. But it's an animated film, it's sort of a fantasy thing. Yeah, but how long, but how long does this take? And say, imagine that in one year you can take your idea and it's here right now. It's just a thought on paper, but a year from now, it's full of full blown. It's out in the marketplace, it's making money, Everybody's bought into it. You've allowed them their idea of what a year means, and they're immediately comparing what they got done in previous years and it wasn't a lot. And you're demonstrating visually that they're getting an enormous amount done.

Dan Sullivan [00:40:07]:
I mean, strategy circle is time. All coach tools are time based.

Mike Koenigs [00:40:15]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:40:16]:
At what age are you going to die? I don't know. I say, come on, come on, tell me at what age you're going to die. 85. Okay, 85. God number. How old are you? 50. Okay, we got 35 years. We got 35 years.

Dan Sullivan [00:40:31]:
Let's talk about when you're 84. How do you want to be when you're 84? Really well, you know, really fat, really smart, really rich, great, great relationships. And I feel my whole life has been a total win. Good. So that's why you're at 84. What are the chances you're going to die at 85? Oh, I don't think so. How much longer than 85? 15, 20 years. I say.

Dan Sullivan [00:40:58]:
Which 15 or 20? 20. You were talking 85, now we're talking 105. You got 20 extra years. You didn't have them. What would you do with 20 extra years? I do this and this and this and this and this and this. Good, great. When do you want the extra 20 years? At the end or right now? I'd want them right now. What would you do with the first three years? What are we going to do during the first quarter? Now you know what you're going to do in the first three years with your 20 years extra time.

Dan Sullivan [00:41:28]:
Now what are we going to do? Yeah, so a fugist make the addition of time frames inside. I think you've, you're, you're doubling the tripling 10 times in the impact of them because humans really, really know what a year means. They really know thing and then if you pull it off way faster they say oh my God, time compression but time stretch. They'll do the, they, they'll, they know what time means. You know, they every, everybo knows what time means. You know we've got a great handle on time. So they, they, they collaborate with their time sense, with your, your story sense. How fast could this story be true? And they're selling themselves.

Dan Sullivan [00:42:24]:
You're not selling them, they're selling themselves.

Mike Koenigs [00:42:26]:
Yes. Yeah, we've got a yes. I have one story. You've seen this. But it changed since the last time. Less than a year ago, I spoke at an investor event. I did my AI show and from that someone came out of the audience and said I really want to work with you. And it's like, okay, great.

Mike Koenigs [00:42:51]:
We started a conversation and it turned out that her partner is a very big private equity guy, had been involved in many, many billions of transactions over the past 35 years. And we ended up meeting literally almost no prep for a day. And I had him tell and it took 90 minutes for him to describe how much he'd just disliked the private equity industry business and how it worked and how it takes too long and the due diligence and all the oversight and everything and how we wanted to change it. And he didn't really have a really good solution, but we synthesized something and I made him a four minute video and he was like that, like, okay. And we built a brand, literally built, built an entire brand in a day that he got excited about. But then the next day we took the idea and built a prototype of the software that would speed up due diligence from months to weeks and matchmake what were called active impact investors. So a certain type of investor and a certain type of entrepreneur and we prototyped it enough that we could demonstrate it to his number one connector in some of his best investors. Well, what wound up happening is they over Subscribed a fundraise for the new business and the new business that this app is for from two key things.

Mike Koenigs [00:44:34]:
And they took the prototype that we built and turned it into real software. At that point, I don't get involved in the final mile. It's too much detail and not, not, not your thing. Nope, don't like it. I like the invention part and creating momentum. But as of a week ago, they had their big declaration and now they've got a whole mass of very, very high value investors behind this idea. But it all started with capture a vision and a dream and make it up and make it real enough. So when you see a little mini movie in your head, the reality switch turns on and you live years from now, right now.

Mike Koenigs [00:45:20]:
And making it happen becomes so much easier because they could show an imperfect movie to a whole bunch of the funders and supporters. It's about creating that momentum.

Dan Sullivan [00:45:34]:
Would you say this is more exciting than spreadsheets?

Mike Koenigs [00:45:37]:
Oh my God, it's so better.

Dan Sullivan [00:45:42]:
And yeah, is this better than a deck?

Mike Koenigs [00:45:47]:
So much better. So much faster. What you can do in three minutes instead of 30. But when I listen to this, here's the gap because I've been around you for a long, long time and I can't remember which tool to use when. So when I think about what would the greatest value be? Inside here is. Dan's got this unbelievable series of tools inside of Strategic Coach. And there's solutions to so many mental challenges, but it's like, okay, which one do I use? When. Is there a rubric?

Dan Sullivan [00:46:30]:
No, no, no, no, no. Give me a call.

Mike Koenigs [00:46:35]:
That, that is. Remember when we talked about our, our collaboration and I've, I've been stewing on it for the longest time, like what could create the greatest leverage. I think we may have stumbled on it.

Dan Sullivan [00:46:52]:
So, yeah, give me a call. Yeah, yeah, maybe I'll create a new tool.

Mike Koenigs [00:46:57]:
Yeah, this is, this is good. I always love where these lead. This has been a great, great adventure.

Dan Sullivan [00:47:04]:
Yeah. You know, maybe it'll be you're creating something new. Maybe I'll create something new, you know. Yeah. But I think the big thing here is that I want to tell you about my. I'm just about a year, and a half, half year now with my. There is no tomorrow. There's just great yesterdays.

Mike Koenigs [00:47:24]:
Yes.

Dan Sullivan [00:47:25]:
And it's very. Year and a half. No, a year. Half a year. I started.

Mike Koenigs [00:47:30]:
Yeah. What the hell? I just lost a year here. I remember six months ago. Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:47:34]:
Yes, I started. I started in November. It's May so it's six months and one of the things that's really interesting about it is every week is more productive. But I, but it's easier and easier to do because I have a scoring system.

Mike Koenigs [00:47:55]:
So something for people who don't know, don't ever reference.

Dan Sullivan [00:47:59]:
It's a book called Yesterday's Create Tomorrow. Okay, so that's, that's it. So basic thing is that when I turned 80, I'm now 82. When I turned 80, I said, you know, I'm free and clear, I can do anything that I. After 80, you have permission to do anything you want, you know, so, so I said I'm just going to take, you know, I'm just going to take a couple years and not pay any attention to tomorrow, but I'll use today to create such a great day that first thing tomorrow morning. This is a great yesterday. Okay. And we're writing the next book.

Dan Sullivan [00:48:46]:
So we're, we just finished chapter, the third chapter of the book, Yesterday's Great tomorrow and, but after we finish the introduction, I mean it's an exciting idea. It's an intriguing. I won't say it's an exciting idea. It's an intriguing idea. And especially in a future based culture, strategic coach entrepreneurism, you know, everybody's in love with future. And I said, you know, the future doesn't pay. The future lives rent free in entrepreneurs brains. It doesn't pay for.

Dan Sullivan [00:49:20]:
The future doesn't pay for its rent. Okay, so anyway, and I said this whole process starts with one day where from the time you get up in the morning till the time you go to bed at night, you write down everything you do. You only have to do it today. But take a day and just everything you do, it doesn't matter what kind of day it is. I brush my teeth, I shaved, goes down on the list. Okay. Everything else after meals I always wash the dishes. So wash the dishes goes down.

Dan Sullivan [00:49:55]:
All I want is one day's audit of activities so I can look at it. And then I'm going to create a system that some of these activities get a 1 score, some of them get a 5 score and some get a 10 score. Now go through and give a number to everyone, then add them up at the end of the day. And my first day had a 70, I had a 70 score. Okay? I said I got a 70 score. So I've got a baseline score. And what's really interesting, I do it the next day and I'm immediately motivated to get a better score. By day 10, the day is about what kind of score am I going to get today? It's not about what I'm doing.

Dan Sullivan [00:50:41]:
It's how do I get a higher score. I'm on day 175 right now, and my scores the first day was 70. Now I'm getting two 50s. I'm getting two 80s, and I'm just looking. I said, that's not a good enough activity. It doesn't give me a good score. And the scores become more impactful inside of coach in terms of teamwork, in terms of creativity. Okay, so I've got 175best.

Dan Sullivan [00:51:09]:
Yesterday's momentum. Okay, that's. It's really great. And what, two months ago, my ADD disappeared.

Mike Koenigs [00:51:21]:
Yep.

Dan Sullivan [00:51:22]:
Because ADD is falling in love with a future that doesn't exist. Once you emotionally engage with something that doesn't exist, it bothers you. Entrepreneurs. If they only had one of these, it wouldn't be a problem. But they have 15 of them. And every day your future love affairs with something that doesn't exist is competing for your brain space. Anyway, I'm just going to tell you that.

Mike Koenigs [00:51:55]:
Okay, so I have a closing question. We'll wrap up this episode because we have another one we're going to do. I'm curious if you compare the first day or the first week compared to now. What have you created that are your top two or three highest scoring activities? Where do you give yourself the most points? So if you're starting at a 70 and now you get two 50s, clearly you're either doing more activities or higher scores.

Dan Sullivan [00:52:28]:
Yeah. Using quad to create a whole chapter of a book and, you know, takes about, you know, takes about 30 minutes. 30 minutes. That. That gets a. That gets a 20. That gets a 50. That one activity going from thought to finish, all written out, ready to record and everything, that's a 50.

Dan Sullivan [00:52:52]:
The other thing is doing work on the book with John Bowen for two years. And then yet, Wednesday, Wednesday, Gord Vickman comes in. He says, we're number one on Amazon. I said, that's worth a 25.

Mike Koenigs [00:53:09]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:53:09]:
Just the news that were number one. I said, that's a 25. I said, yeah. So the other thing is that having a great thought about something can get you a score. Okay, here's another thing, is that we had an experience in January. We were in Chicago end of the week, flying back to Toronto, and it was just a bad day for air travel. It was a bad day for o'. Hare.

Dan Sullivan [00:53:37]:
It was a bad day for Pearson, the airport here. And what should have been a three Hour trip was a ten hour trip. Okay. So. And I had a sense, you know, I've had days like this before and I said, you know, I'm going to be as long as this takes and whatever happens, I'm just going to be cool and calm for the entire period. I'm just going to say this, you know, this is just a general fuck up, you know, today. And I'm not going to be bothered by anything. I'm not going to get excited about.

Dan Sullivan [00:54:10]:
I got my novel, I'm reading, I'm reading a detective story. I said I'll read my novel and everything like that. I gave myself a 50 for that entire experience.

Mike Koenigs [00:54:23]:
Being cool as a cucumber.

Dan Sullivan [00:54:26]:
Yeah. So anyway, what your mind starts going, it wants new things to score and it wants today's score to be better than yesterday's score. But sometimes I'm on a real scoring week and I said, if I have a lower score day, it doesn't really matter. And I get 10 points for that thought. Yeah. So. And no points ever come off the scoreboard.

Mike Koenigs [00:54:52]:
Yep. Dan's rules.

Dan Sullivan [00:54:54]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:54:56]:
I love it. Well, I think this has been. Oh, go ahead.

Dan Sullivan [00:55:00]:
Okay. Three things that are. Well, let me put it this way. If there was a rule that you didn't have that you now have a rule on approaching your magical projects, what would be one rule for me?

Mike Koenigs [00:55:18]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:55:20]:
All the rules are for you.

Mike Koenigs [00:55:22]:
Okay. So for me, it's being able to create an incredibly exciting future based upon a series of questions that I can illustrate to someone in an hour that changes their mindset or their perspective of what's possible. Okay. And I always love that.

Dan Sullivan [00:55:49]:
Of course, the rule has to represent sometime something you're going to do next time that you haven't done. Done so far.

Mike Koenigs [00:55:55]:
Oh, okay.

Mike Koenigs [00:56:00]:
So far.

Mike Koenigs [00:56:00]:
Next time that I haven't done so far. Well, I always like creating faster, better, more impactful. So something, something better than the last one.

Dan Sullivan [00:56:14]:
What about a change in their commitment? Is there any change in there you have to see? And I find, I find dollars really work well.

Mike Koenigs [00:56:26]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:56:26]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:56:27]:
Well, to me it would be. If they say, holy cow, will you make that real for me? So it's really a sales tool.

Dan Sullivan [00:56:36]:
Yeah. But I'm talking about a dollar. I'm talking US dollars. I like us.

Mike Koenigs [00:56:44]:
Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:56:45]:
So. So no, you don't have to, you don't have to say it and have it. I have the exact number in my head. I just want you to have a number in your mind. Yep. As a matter of fact, I'd Prefer that you didn't.

Mike Koenigs [00:56:58]:
Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:56:59]:
Say it on camera. You know, I have.

Mike Koenigs [00:57:01]:
I have the exact number. I know exactly what it is.

Dan Sullivan [00:57:03]:
Yeah. What's that. What's that number do for you? Yes or no? They're willing to pay it or they're not willing to pay it?

Mike Koenigs [00:57:09]:
Mm, yes. Yep.

Dan Sullivan [00:57:11]:
Good.

Mike Koenigs [00:57:11]:
Yep. Yeah, totally.

Dan Sullivan [00:57:13]:
That's it. A lot of people. Yeah. You know, the book I came out with last quarter is called you didn't. You didn't get it because you were.

Mike Koenigs [00:57:24]:
Oh, I wasn't at.

Dan Sullivan [00:57:25]:
You were on a birthday boat. You were on your.

Mike Koenigs [00:57:27]:
That is. That is true. That is true. I don't miss. I don't miss strategic coach meeting. This one I did remember.

Dan Sullivan [00:57:33]:
I can't remember you missing. Except when you had. You were almost dead with cancer.

Mike Koenigs [00:57:38]:
There was that part. That was that part. Yeah. I didn't miss. Didn't miss a whole year. Missed a couple of.

Dan Sullivan [00:57:43]:
But it's really interesting, I find when I get it sounds like an argument I'm having with someone, and I say, you really have strong feelings for this, don't you? You have really strong feelings. And I said. And they said, yeah. I said. Now, are your strong feelings a guess or are your strong feelings a bit? Because there's a difference between a guess and a bet. A guess and bed is a powerful thought, but a bet is actually money. So what I want to know is your point of view, because a lot of it's politics. They're talking about politics.

Dan Sullivan [00:58:24]:
Well, this is what's going to happen in November in the midterms. And I said, is that a guess or is that a bet? Okay. And I said, because I have 10,000 that says you're wrong, you know? And I just wonder if you have 10,000 that convinces you you're right. And nobody's got the 10,000. They just have a strong opinion.

Mike Koenigs [00:58:45]:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's good. That is a great gamification strategy.

Dan Sullivan [00:58:53]:
Yeah. So.

Mike Koenigs [00:58:54]:
Huh.

Dan Sullivan [00:58:55]:
Yeah. I love what you're doing, Mike. You know, I'm. I have to tell you, I'm so thrilled. I can't compare it to anything else in my life.

Mike Koenigs [00:59:11]:
Wow.

Dan Sullivan [00:59:11]:
You're pulling off stuff that I've just never seen in my life. So anyway, I don't know if that. I don't know if you take that as a compliment or not.

Mike Koenigs [00:59:23]:
I take it as a great gift. I received the gift. Thank you.

Dan Sullivan [00:59:28]:
It's magic to me, what you're doing.

Mike Koenigs [00:59:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. To me too. That's part of what makes my day better. Is it's like, I wonder if it's possible to do that. It's like, holy cow, I didn't think it was possible. And when I see you, I'll tell you another crazy story that happened in 48 hours that was a similar magnitude. But we got to bring this episode to a close because we got another one due to.

Mike Koenigs [00:59:56]:
And I think it should be the one about zeros.

Dan Sullivan [00:59:59]:
Yeah, Zero. Okay, great.

Mike Koenigs [01:00:01]:
Zeros are great ideas. All right, so. Well, I don't know about you witnessing this episode with Dan and me. I had a transformation. I hope you did too. I think Dan did as well. And that's the whole goal of every capability amplifier episode. So one of the things that I'd suggest you do is if you aren't already a member of Strategic Coach, get your ass on over, fill out an application, and join it.

Mike Koenigs [01:00:27]:
Because this is the kind of thing that happens every single quarter. And I think the best business investment and personal investment you can make in yourself is to join Strategic Coach. All right, well, we've had another great episode. Dan, any closing thoughts before we wrap this one up?

Dan Sullivan [01:00:43]:
Yeah, I think the big thing is to use time and money as more and more of the structure. I mean, the technology, you gotta. You have such a handle on it. Nobody would question it. But I just think that you. What you have to add is a time structure and a money structure to it, and I think it'll. Because people understand money and, you know, and they either buy or they don't buy. And if they buy, it's a hundred percent commitment.

Dan Sullivan [01:01:13]:
If they don't buy, you, you haven't wasted time.

Mike Koenigs [01:01:16]:
Yeah, I'm going to flex that muscle a lot more. I've gotten out of the habit of it and.

Dan Sullivan [01:01:21]:
Oh, you've been experimenting.

Mike Koenigs [01:01:23]:
Yeah, yeah. Not blaming. Everything's fine, but you're right, you're experimenting. Thank you, Dan.