Dan Sullivan [00:00:00]:
Different roles that men and women play, but roles boys play is really crucial that boys, you're expendable. And so right off the bat, you can't do it alone. You have to. You have to have buddies, you have to have team members, you have to have gang members to get anything done that you want to do.
Mike Koenigs [00:00:19]:
I think it began the era of feeling and being lost in American society. We're living with the consequences of team playing, shared ideals, and the beginning of a lack of a compelling future that I've seen get worse.
Dan Sullivan [00:00:36]:
What I've noticed is that entrepreneurs, if you're a male entrepreneur and you have a real great ability to work with women, you're way ahead of the other men. And if you're a woman entrepreneur and you're really good at working with men, you're way ahead of all the other female entrepreneurs.
Mike Koenigs [00:00:55]:
I think there is a quality blindness. What matters most is teamwork and capabilities.
Dan Sullivan [00:01:03]:
And projects, you know?
Mike Koenigs [00:01:05]:
Yes. Okay, so a couple weeks ago, you and I were enjoying a steak dinner and a bottle of wine in Phoenix, and we were brainstorming ideas for the podcast, and you said, teams or gangs? How do young men congregate? And I was like, well, that's interesting. And we started talking about. I said, no, no, no, no, no. Let's wait and do an episode. So set us up. Why is this so fascinating to you, and why do you think it's so important, especially now?
Dan Sullivan [00:01:48]:
Yeah, well, about 25 years ago, I read a book. It was by a philosopher, and he was, you know, kind of giving a sense of where the 20th century was going to go. We were probably in the late 1900s when he wrote the book. And I forget his name and I forget the book, but I do remember the point that he made that the entire nature of a society from the very, very beginning is, how do young men congregate? Because young men are going to congregate. Young men are pack animals. And. And so he said that if you want a really prosperous society, a very creative society, very. A very productive society, you'll make sure that your men, your young men, boys, really congregate in teams, okay, that are beneficial to the public, because if they don't, they'll congregate in gangs, which are not beneficial to the public.
Dan Sullivan [00:02:56]:
And he said, the entire future of your society really depends upon how you. What you do with young men. Now, that was 20, 25 years ago. And, you know, other people with gender distinctions and, you know, gender concepts would make a big deal about that. But I think it's still true. And I'll actually use an example from this year with Caitlin Clark, who is I think one of the greatest athletes I've ever seen in my life. She's a woman's basketball player, All American at the University of Iowa, broke the all time scoring record, the University of Iowa. And she came into elite.
Dan Sullivan [00:03:42]:
She's white, She's a white player. And she has a number of distinction. One is she has a boyfriend which not all the athletes in the Women's Basketball association don't necessarily go in that direction, but she, she, she had such a great impact was that of the 20 most televised games during the year, they play a 40 game season, about half the National Basketball association. Out of the 20 video casts of her, quite 19 of them were her. Okay. And the other one was some other team playing, but 19 of them. And when they got into the playoffs, her team lost really quickly. And then the attendance at, you know, the grab.
Dan Sullivan [00:04:39]:
And the reason is she's playing a woman's sport, but she plays like a man. Okay? And here's the background to it. When she was a young girl, she took, excuse me, in Iowa and there were no women, there were no girls teams, so she played on boys teams. And so for like the first five or six years, she was just playing against boys who were stronger than, faster than she was, bigger than she was. And she learned how to play a man's game because she was on a, on a men's team and she, and yeah, and women's basketball, she's just an incredibly better passer. She's a, she can shoot from mid court. She can shoot instantly. Now that's just to set up what we're talking about.
Dan Sullivan [00:05:33]:
I mean, I, I, I don't watch, never in my life did I watch women's basketball. But every time there was a recording, you know, YouTube recording of one of her games, I would watch it and I said, she's just amazing. She's just amazing. But the reason she's amazing is that she played against boys for the formative part of her career. And boys play very, very different than girls do. Okay. One is that they play that not everything that happens with girls is played. And so I'm just going to make a statement.
Dan Sullivan [00:06:09]:
I can see because I was born in the 1940s, that I remember growing up, the moment that you got together with other boys, you got something together, you had something going and immediately there was a leader of the pack. Somebody was the leader of the pack and the organizer and everybody fell into place as the Boys and my experience was girls didn't do that, you know, and now that's from the 1940s, but I think this started about 300,000 years ago. And you know, and it's life and death with boys because boys are the expendable. You know, you, you can lose men, but don't lose the women. You can't build a civil station. You can, you can lose a lot of men, but you can't lose a lot of women, you know. So I think that different roles that men and women play, but girls and boys play is really crucial that boys you're expendable. And so right off the bat you can't do it alone.
Dan Sullivan [00:07:15]:
You have to, you have to have buddies, you have to have team members, you have to have gang members to get anything done that you want to do. So. So that's my non provocative.
Mike Koenigs [00:07:26]:
While you're describing that, I did a bunch of research and I'm going to throw out some of the research here because one of the things that propagated this conversation is something that I would have ruffled my hackles when I was 18 years old. And now as a 58 year old with a 22 year old son, I see the genius in it and I also see the genius of your past having served in the military during wartime. My dad served in between Korea and Vietnam and he grew up on a farm. And so I'm going to make a couple statements that may further this conversation. One of them is Albert Cohen studied delinquent subcultures examining how working class youth form gangs as a response to status frustration. So let's just say that we can put that into a box and then another one. The idea of this is, Aline Badeau said emphasized the importance of collective action, commitment to ideals which could be channeled into positive team building rather than gang activity, which really reflect what you just said. And then the.
Mike Koenigs [00:08:53]:
I'll take this from my own point of view and it'd be like, okay, what, what frustrates young men? And when you see it in any kind of big city culture and when you're looking at homelessness, it's a lack of a compelling future. That's what ultimately comes down, you know, you come down to. And the power of. If I combine this back to the Dan Sullivan question is, you know, helping someone imagine what three years from today would look like if it were satisfying personally and professionally. I think the first thing one needs to do is, you know, imagine what a compelling future looks like and then providing a mechanism to provide resources to get there, which is, you know, first of all working as a team, not as a gang, gang being. It's going to get there through ill, ill gotten mechanisms versus positive ones by winning and having a collective ideal. And then in the military, you know, there is a lack of a rite of passage that has existed in our society I would argue for probably 50 years. So as a 58 year old I had Cub Scouts, I had boy Scouts, but I lived in an awkward time between where I was around young people who I can remember.
Mike Koenigs [00:10:23]:
There were friends in my neighborhood whose older brothers died in Vietnam and they were very angry deviants and definitely violent, drug prone and angry and they didn't, I don't think they had a mechanism to understand why and I, I saw that, that energy and I also think it's a byproduct of, you know, I'm tech, I'm not a really a boomer, I'm not really a Gen Xer, I'm sort of a mushy middle. So I never related to either group and, and a lot of people my age feel the same way. It's sort of like we just, we weren't anything except I think it began the era of feeling and being lost in American society. So we're living with the consequences of team playing, shared ideals and the beginning of a lack of a compelling future that I've seen get worse, not, not necessarily better.
Dan Sullivan [00:11:31]:
Well, you know, I think things are really getting, you know, as I mentioned our 10 times connector workshop this morning, I mentioned, I think we're in a flux period right now.
Mike Koenigs [00:11:48]:
Yes.
Dan Sullivan [00:11:49]:
And, and it was, you know, the history of the 20th century was just really big. Major wars was one aspect and Korea was a small war, Vietnam was a small war compared to the first two wars. And then you had the threat of a really colossal war between the Soviets and the Americans and now we're back to medium sized wars again. You have Ukraine, the stuff that the Israelis are involved in and it's very different. But one thing I, I would say that I have paid a lot of attention to Israel and you know, from an early age my mother was very pro Israel and, and so I, I've done a lot of reading and I've gone to Israel and if you take the average 22 year old Israeli, let's say girl or man, but you know, man or boy, man or boy, girl or woman, but they're 22, you're a woman and you're a man and compare them with a 22 year old American, they seem 10 years older. The Israelis seem 10 years older. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that military service is compulsory. And you know, at 18, you, the women go out for two years and the men go out for three years and it's just mandatory you go there and you can choose not to, but you might as well leave the country if that's true, because no doors will open to you in the future if you haven't served in the military.
Dan Sullivan [00:13:36]:
And we discussed this at dinner in Phoenix, Scottsdale. And you know, I, I was drafted during, just after the Vietnam War had really kicked up. It was, it had gone really big in 1965. So I was drafted and I went through basic training and you know, advanced training and then I went to South Korea and you know, and it was a, I, I liked the experience. I enjoyed. Yeah, you know, I enjoyed. Yeah, it's like a two year tax basically in the way. It's a tax on time and you know, and you can get killed.
Dan Sullivan [00:14:20]:
I mean the 50,000 got killed in Vietnam and, and, but I never gave it a thought because I was born during the Second World War. I have three old, one, two, three, four, three older brothers and one younger brother who was in the military. And you, you knew people, you knew people had been in the First World War, you knew people had been in the Second World War. And I was just familiar that if you're an American and you're called upon, you, you go off and yeah, you do it. So I, but it's a function of me being born in 1944 and you being born at a later period where this was a very contentious issue. A very controversial issue. And, and it hasn't been solved. It hasn't been solved.
Dan Sullivan [00:15:14]:
You know, I will tell you, the army that exists today is a lot better army than the army that I served in because it's all volunteer, it's an all volunteer army now. And actually that a lot of people think it's, you know, it's poor people, but actually the demographics of the people who go into the army is slightly above in education and slightly. And better in background than the general population. And actually Latinos are much bigger percentage of a much bigger percentage of the U.S. armed forces. You know, Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, they're a larger percentage than their proportion of the population. Yeah. And actually a lot of people don't know this, but if you're an illegal immigrant and you go down to a recruiting station and you re, you know, you go into the military, you volunteer to go into Army.
Dan Sullivan [00:16:17]:
This would be army.
Mike Koenigs [00:16:18]:
That's a damn good deal, citizen. And it's a great deal. Okay, so here's what I did as you were talking. I was capturing everything you said, some of the themes and my. One of my best.
Dan Sullivan [00:16:37]:
You know, you're the only person that I allowed to do this.
Mike Koenigs [00:16:40]:
Yeah. To. To capture the themes and take lots of notes and do back.
Dan Sullivan [00:16:45]:
Well, I know I'm being recorded. I know that dwarves and elves are reconfiguring my words. They're creating products. You know, you're the only person I love doing this and Because I enjoy the experience.
Mike Koenigs [00:17:01]:
Yeah. Well, here's what emerged because there's some interesting conversation points and one of them was. And some of these are reflections from some other interviews we've done. But so some of the themes that popped up is social structures, institutions, economic opportunities and social mobility, positive outlets and mentorship and collective action and group identity. So those are the big words. Here's the little word versions when I think about. Because I can't help but say, okay, how do we solve this? How do we actually make it better and improve it? And what can we do to do that? You and I did an episode a while ago about clear collar workers. That's what we called it.
Mike Koenigs [00:17:50]:
This notion of AI apprenticeships which could produce a compelling future in social mobility. This last weekend I watched an interesting documentary about a city in China called Chongqing. I'd never heard of it before. It's got 34 million residents in it and it's the giant city in China no one's ever heard of. But I think what I saw there, because they interviewed a lot of young people now, of course they basically said, yep, we had to deal with the Chinese censors. So, you know, the ones that made it on screen are party admissible. But what you could c despite the editorial is the kids they interviewed, you could tell they at least believed that there was a chance of upward mobility. And there they're pretty open.
Mike Koenigs [00:18:50]:
Like they'd allow kids to perform music of their own creation. Some of them had tattoos, which is forbidden. You can't be a civil servant and have a tattoo. In general, they were doing jobs, app related jobs of food delivery. In other words, they could work on demand and some of them would have two or three jobs. But still they felt like they were actually in control of their future. And when you look at. So just separate.
Mike Koenigs [00:19:26]:
That was just the only China reference I'm going to make. But this notion of the benefits of teamwork, which if you're in into sports, there's that, I think the opposite of that is dopamine addiction. Whether it's phones, easy sex, easy access to porn, and we'll say human avoidance, which is a epidemic level amongst young men especially, which has created what's known as the incel culture, which, you know, arguably the majority of mass shooters are what are known as incels. Frustrated boys who live in a fantasy world where they have been playing so many video games they can't tell the difference between real life and fake life and never have sex, so they don't know how to approach a girl. They, they, you know, they'd rather live in a little world of fear and not practice disappointment. So. Yeah, yeah. And I, I can't help but.
Dan Sullivan [00:20:34]:
Yeah, yeah, speaking. They have absent parents too. You know, they, they have parents who, you know, both, both the parents work and they never, you know, they never really got going. Yeah, yeah. You know, the, the big difference between being, let's say 10 years old in 1954 and the being 10 years old in 20, 24. So that's 70 years. So I was 10.
Mike Koenigs [00:21:03]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:21:03]:
1954 is that. And I grew up on a farm. I grew up, you know, I'm a farm family. I'm a fifth child in a farm family. Yeah. As soon as you could walk and talk, you had roles that you had to do on the farm. Okay. So the biggest knowledge that I would say 10 year olds have today, that, that they don't have today, that I had when I was 10 years is you were, you were necessary and you were useful and you had a role to play and you were part of something bigger.
Dan Sullivan [00:21:42]:
Okay. And that, that was the farm, you know, the teamwork that was required on the farm, and it was the teamwork that was required to be in the family. You know, everybody, you, you all had jobs and you were useful. And Peter Zion, the great expert on geopolitics, he said, you know, first of all, children are free labor on the, on the farm. In the 1940s, you could not run a farm without children. And I think my parents bailed on the farm when I was 11 years old because they could see the four older ones had no interest in continuing on with the farm and that they, they just were not going to have the labor that they needed for the farm. But children today are expensive furniture. I'm using Peter Zion's comment.
Dan Sullivan [00:22:40]:
You move into the city and first of all, you don't have the space, they don't have the freedom in the city that they had on the Farm. I had massive freedom on the farm. As long as I stayed inside the boundaries of the farm, I could do anything I wanted. But it was, you know, it was 80 acres and 10 acres. It was the greatest playground you could possibly have for me. For me. But right from the beginning, I had jobs to do. The moment I could carry something or I could do something, I, I had jobs, you know, and I think that sense of usefulness as part of something, as part of a teamwork, that, of something bigger is very important for boys.
Dan Sullivan [00:23:23]:
It's very important for boys.
Mike Koenigs [00:23:25]:
I, I would say, you know, the extent of my. So I spent quite a bit of time on the farm that my dad grew up on in McIntyre, Iowa, and I spent, I always spent at least a week, if not two weeks with my grandparents until my grandfather died of a stroke. And so I remember the farm life and I also remember the stories. And my two brothers didn't have that experience.
Dan Sullivan [00:24:00]:
They're younger, right?
Mike Koenigs [00:24:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm the oldest of four, and my, my sister's three years. My next brother's three years. The next one's just, just shy, too. So I, I, I look back and I'm, I, like, I, I, you know, I'm always comparing, I'm always thinking about, like, what were the qualities of farm life that benefited me besides the fact I learned how to drive a tractor when I was probably 10 or 11. You know, I can remember, you know, barely touching the pedals on a John Deere and learning how to, you know, break each wheel in the back. Right.
Mike Koenigs [00:24:38]:
And not get, and not fall down and get crushed myself. You know, it's like there's a couple times I almost fell off and I would have gotten rolled over, but, but I do think that again, it's this, this notion of there is no choice, you are needed, and the family depends upon your behavior to survive. Mindset is, which, again, just comes to a purpose and, and when you had.
Dan Sullivan [00:25:11]:
Role models too, you know, and I knew what an adult looked like. I knew the stages of what it meant to be an adult. And, you know, there was, there was an increased usefulness to be an adult. You had to dress a certain way, you had to behave a certain way, you know, and, you know, I'm talking about things I knew when I was 10 years old. And, you know, and you admired, you know, there were older people that you admired, and there were other people, older people who paid attention to you and interacted with you. And I'm not saying that that's uniformly changed in today's world. But I think it's, it's changed enough that we've created a real social problem for young people and yeah, you know, they have talent. I think gaming has really, really picked up part of the slack there.
Dan Sullivan [00:26:06]:
I think, you know, it's one of the big complaints about women, you know, that gaming is a man's world. And I said it's just the latest opportunity for boys.
Mike Koenigs [00:26:17]:
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Dan Sullivan [00:27:26]:
Men will congregate. I mean it's, you know, it's in the genes that were established a hundred thousand years ago. This is, you know, you can call it a social construct but it isn't, it's in the genesis. We're expected to take a bullet to protect the women. Yeah, yeah. And any man who doesn't do that isn't worth being a man.
Mike Koenigs [00:27:50]:
Right. So those are wonderful fighting words in this day and age. I was running through the filter of the world I was raised in and then the world of now. And you can see how all these mixed confusing messages destroys an identity of the masculine and, and purpose entrepreneurism. Yeah, I think that's a, that's a.
Dan Sullivan [00:28:19]:
What do you notice about any strategic coach workshop that you've ever been in?
Mike Koenigs [00:28:26]:
Oh, besides the, the shared common value system, whether you're a man or a woman.
Dan Sullivan [00:28:34]:
The women are exceptions.
Mike Koenigs [00:28:36]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:28:38]:
Oh, they're lucky.
Mike Koenigs [00:28:40]:
That's true.
Dan Sullivan [00:28:41]:
They're lucky exceptions because they've learned how to access how males do things. You know, I mean I, I, right from the beginning people say you got to have a all women workshop. And I said yeah, I said well it's for entrepreneurs. And I don't care what shape they come in. I don't care what size, I don't care what skin color, I don't care what they've come. I don't care what they find attractive. They're entrepreneurs. I said the whole basis of Strategic Coach is entrepreneurial.
Dan Sullivan [00:29:12]:
And if you're a woman and you're in a workshop and you're the only woman with 35 men, count your lucky stars, you've got an advantage that not many women have.
Mike Koenigs [00:29:22]:
Yeah. So I'll.
Dan Sullivan [00:29:25]:
You can hang out with men.
Mike Koenigs [00:29:26]:
Yes. So let me give you this is. And that is. I've realized this before as I sat in the room, but I did an experiment. So we were both at genius network, the 100k group. And I've done this before at Strategic Coach too. And now I'm a lot more on purpose about it. So when I, before I arrive, I send out a message on the variety of WhatsApp groups we all belong to.
Mike Koenigs [00:29:54]:
And I invite people to dinner and I'm making a much more concerted effort to arrive a day early and then the other days and organize dinners or even breakfasts. And I get everyone together and I've got a ritual series of questions that I always ask, which I say, even if we know each other, sometimes the conversation changes. Introduce yourself, where you're from, what do you do? And then I do a classic. One of the biggest things that to me this is like family prayers. We used to open and close with family prayers during dinner. So the Dan Sullivan family prayer is the equivalent of positive focus. So in one or two minutes, share something positive that's going on in your life. And then the next one is where do you need support or help? And then the last one is like you had a share an intellectual gift.
Mike Koenigs [00:30:53]:
It could be a tool, software, a recent learning book that's had a profound effect on you. And then we usually close with some sort of fantastic entertainment book or movie. And that's a 90 minute dinner if you've got like eight people. And what I found is inside of that conversation what we have in common. I see this amongst Strategic Coach members, certainly Genius is how much we have in common about our family origins. And you really do see and I asked you this, so I'll have you reflect back. You've done surveys, but also just intuitively know what the general mental makeup is amongst the entrepreneurial audience. No matter what race they are, country they came from, what are their common shared origin stories.
Mike Koenigs [00:31:57]:
And this is far more than 80%. This goes beyond the Pareto. I'd say 85 to 90% that you see amongst members, whether they're 30 year old members or approaching 80 years old.
Dan Sullivan [00:32:11]:
Yeah, well, the big thing was a early personal confidence that you had something that was different and even if it cost you socially, you were willing to stick with the thing that you're doing. See, I think the big thing, you know, there's the time that parents really have with their children where there can be a really strong relationship. Graded is age one to ten. Okay. Age one to ten, and it's mostly mom, but as you get to five or six, it becomes dad. Okay. And that's your reference point. That's your reference point.
Dan Sullivan [00:32:57]:
And you're looking to mom and dad, especially how mom and dad get together. You know, are they together as a couple or not? That's a huge learning. But once you hit 10 and you're in school now, you've got a lot of little creatures with their parents faces, you know, and they're not your parents, okay? And then you go sideways, you go vertical till 10, and then you go sideways, you go horizontal from that point forward. And now it's what your role. And, and I think entrepreneurs declare independent. I think it's between 8 and 12 is the crucial period where entrepreneurs sort of declare personal independence from what's happening around them. And they start 8 to 12. 8 to 12.
Dan Sullivan [00:33:47]:
8 is just the end of your major relationship with your parents. That's it's starting already. And 12, it's how you relate to the fact that you're in this highly social, peer, peer situation with other people. And in my own experience, I was going my own Way at 8 and at 12 I was still going my own way. And as a matter of fact, I went to a 25th year reunion of my graduating class at 18. I graduated from them and I came back at 43. I haven't been to many reunions and you know, if you haven't seen, if you haven't talked to anyone for 50 years, there's a reason. Actually, about, actually about 50 reasons, but one will do.
Dan Sullivan [00:34:49]:
And Babs had come with me. It's the only time she ever came with me. And you know, Babs is sort of like an exotic creature from the, you know, the locale where I grew up and the social structure where I associate. So she was tired, we had driven all day and she went to bed and I was sitting around, there were drinks and people were talking and they were talking about high school romances and you know, where teachers got into trouble because they were Crossing the line and everything. And I was sitting there, and I talked to a woman next to me. It was a very nice person. And I said, you know, Teresa, I had no knowledge that any of this was going on when I was going through high school, because I was on the football team, I was on the basketball team. I was, you know, I was in track.
Dan Sullivan [00:35:45]:
I was an altar boy. And, you know, it was Catholic school, so I was an alder boy. And I bond to scouts. And. And so I had all these team activities that I was involved in. And Theresa turned to me and she says, you know, Dan, you know what? You can ask everybody in this room what our general impression was of you. For as long as we knew you were just waiting for the bus out of town.
Mike Koenigs [00:36:15]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:36:16]:
And five days after I graduated from high school, I moved from Ohio to Washington, D.C. d.C. And I was on. But there was a singularity of purpose that I had as a child and that the things that I was interested in were more interesting than what other people were interested in, you know?
Mike Koenigs [00:36:35]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:36:36]:
So. And I. I think that's. You asked the question about entrepreneurs, whether they're 30 or whether they're 80. I think they had that to lesser degrees, but it was strong enough for them to take a different route.
Mike Koenigs [00:36:54]:
Okay, so two. Two observations, totally preparing for our escape, as long as we can remember is I. I don't know if I've shared this with you before. And then I want to ask you, because while I was. You were taking a lot of notes and writing something down. I want to go back to what you were writing down. But from the time this is going back into the. Let's say I was 11, 12, 13.
Mike Koenigs [00:37:22]:
I had a backpack in my closet, always packed, ready to run away from home. And the first thing that I was.
Dan Sullivan [00:37:34]:
Did you have the fake body that you could put in your bed? Oh, yeah. Prison break me, you know. Yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:37:41]:
Yeah. No, I used to practice. That was always one of my little practice activities around age 7 or 8. Yes. So, you know, hide underneath the bed and wait for my parents to check and see if I could get away with. It was. But I had. You know, I belonged to Boy Scout, so I always had all kinds of survival gadgets.
Mike Koenigs [00:38:02]:
And I used to. I used to go out, you know, because we lived in the. In the country. I'd go out and. And fill up my backpack full of things, and I'd disappear for hours and go light a fire and make my own food. And I'd go catch a fish and cook it, and you Know, I want to make sure I could survive if zombies ever came. This is before I knew of even zombies, The. The.
Mike Koenigs [00:38:26]:
The mythology. But I do think that that's what I really related to. What was that?
Dan Sullivan [00:38:32]:
Zombies are a myth.
Mike Koenigs [00:38:34]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you've been to LA lately. But I'm curious because there was a moment ago when I was asking you the last question, I saw you rapidly writing something down, and I'm just curious where you went, because something hit you and your body language is more intense than intense than normal. I just wanted to circle back to that.
Dan Sullivan [00:39:05]:
No, I'm just looking for new. New tools.
Mike Koenigs [00:39:08]:
Oh, okay.
Dan Sullivan [00:39:10]:
But one of the things I wrote down is what I like about coaches. There's no end to coach, you know, like, you know, I'm looking for the situation in life and create. And you realize you have to create it. It's, you know, it's. It's not off the shelf. The situation doesn't come in standard sizes, you know, so you, you know, but my big thing is that I believed at 20, and this is really the beginning of what is now strategic. Coach. I.
Dan Sullivan [00:39:47]:
I said to myself, there's got to be a different kind of educational system where what you study is your own experience, and you turn your own experience into lessons which are good for you, and then you check out to see if the lessons you're learning are good for anybody. And I was on my way to Outward bound at age 20, which is. Which for me was like adult boy scouts. And I was there with 72. I was one of 72 in Scotland in 1964. All males. All males. And we formed into teams the first day you were put into a team, and then 12 teams competed with each other.
Dan Sullivan [00:40:32]:
And you didn't have to teach the men, the boys there, you know, I was one of the youngest ones at 20. It went up to 22. Most of them were older than me. And. But the first day that they said, okay, we're going to form into six teams, and the boys knew exactly how to do it. They knew they knew exactly how to do it. And then there was a more or less team leader, and we all knew how to do it, and we had each other. You didn't have to teach us how to compete because that congregating was just, you know, it just came naturally.
Dan Sullivan [00:41:12]:
That wasn't true for the girls. They had cliques. They had cliques.
Mike Koenigs [00:41:18]:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:41:19]:
Yeah. And the cliques were that you were in the clique, and you look down on everybody else's clique. So there were all these cliques. And when I went back 25 years later, the men got together, they talked, they chat and everything else. And the same wars that the women were having at, you know, eighth grade, you know, the, in throughout school, those wars were still going. Now here's, I think that was a social structure that they were responding to. So I don't think this is natural, but the women were not told to congregate. They were told to be pleasing to men.
Dan Sullivan [00:42:00]:
They were told to be pleasing, you know, and you were very restricted in 1950 of what your role was going to be as a woman. Men were not restricted that way. So there's part of this. It's just cultural, it's just social, it's political, it's economic. But the one thing I do know is that generally speaking, I think men make very, very bad women and I think women make very bad men. When you try to cross over and be that other gender, I think it's very difficult to pull it off. And it's very difficult. But I think one of the big things that I think the U.S.
Dan Sullivan [00:42:46]:
as bad as it is in the U.S. i think the U.S. is ahead of the world in this because the two wars meant that there was a shortage of men. When the men are away, the women have to do the work, but they've always done the work. And I think that the two wars, the two big wars and then the, the fact that women are now in the competitive marketplace for all jobs with women, with men is, you know, it's part of the change that they're going through. And the other thing is that birth control made a huge difference. I noticed. Right.
Dan Sullivan [00:43:28]:
Came in in the late 60s, birth control with the pill. And what it meant was you couldn't blame your pregnancy on a man anymore. And I think that made a huge difference. I, I think women are, personally, I think that whatever the problems are with men today, I think the problems of women are multi dimensionally greater than being a man. Because on the one hand you're a woman and you have the biology of a woman, but on the other hand you have to compete with men now in the, in the workplace. And yeah, so I think it may be a hundred year thing, you know, 1960 to 2060, before this gets sorted out. I don't think it's going to get sorted out in the next 10 years or the next 20 years. Okay.
Dan Sullivan [00:44:29]:
Wow. But the one thing that is a bypass to all this.
Mike Koenigs [00:44:35]:
Yeah. That is the. Okay. I'm still digesting the hundred year challenge and the responsibility and the disorder, I have not examined this through. So if you just imagine that we just looked around the corner and I'm looking down a brand new funhouse mirror and I'm looking at a kaleidoscope I hadn't explored before, hadn't tried these crazy pants on. It was like you just gave me new clown pants. But so I don't know, I've got nothing to say except I just have to sit with that one a little bit and look at my, the reality I've lived in and the reality I think I see and just try it on for a little while. But that's because again, I, I was, I was born in 66, so I grew up in that new reality and it just, it wasn't different to me.
Mike Koenigs [00:45:48]:
Although I think energetically society was changing, but I was completely oblivious and unaware.
Dan Sullivan [00:45:58]:
I'm going to introduce another curveball here.
Mike Koenigs [00:46:02]:
Okay.
Dan Sullivan [00:46:04]:
What I've noticed is that entrepreneurs, if you're a male entrepreneur and you have a real great ability to work with women, you're way ahead of the other men. And oh yeah, you're a woman entrepreneur and you're really good at working with men. You're way ahead of all the other female entrepreneurs. Okay? So my big sense is I live, I work in a company that has 120 team members.
Mike Koenigs [00:46:32]:
Oh yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:46:34]:
And we have 90 of them are women. You know, 90 except for 1, 2, 2 team leadership roles. All, all the leaders in our company are women. I've been to meetings with 15, 15 people in our company and I'm the only male. Okay. And I don't, you know, I don't, you know, they're just, they, they have unique abilities. They're team members, we have projects, and that's the batters. And the other thing is, so I think the real gifted people going forward is that first of all, you're comfortable being a man or you're comfortable being a woman, because I think that's important.
Dan Sullivan [00:47:23]:
But you find it very, very easy to do teamwork with the other gender.
Mike Koenigs [00:47:30]:
That I, I completely.
Dan Sullivan [00:47:38]:
You don't need. Yeah. I mean, when you're in coach and you see who's, who the team members are.
Mike Koenigs [00:47:44]:
Yeah, I, I, and this is so, I will say sex blind, colorblind country blind. You know, I have two Canadians who work for me. I have Spaniards, Polish, German and US. It's pretty much, oh yeah, it's 50, 50 international. And I think that's more the norm than not. You know, when I talk to a lot of, well, we'll say Virtualized coach members, those who don't have big physical offices anymore, that's the norm. And I'd say that amongst most entrepreneurial groups I belong to and, and the. And the type of relationships we have with our female counterparts as males, I see that as being consistent, too.
Mike Koenigs [00:48:40]:
So I talk about it a lot and I always tell my team I actually want more women in my organization. I think there is a certain balance that we need and want, and at the same time, you don't have the same power struggles. But. Yep, I just feel that's true. I think it's more true and.
Dan Sullivan [00:49:13]:
Good. Yeah, no, I just think it's always going to be a dynamic, you know, it's always going to be a dynamic because biologically we're, you know, we're just very, very different. And that, that didn't develop in the last 10 years or 50 years. It developed over the last 300,000 or whatever the number is. And, you know, and you don't look at things the same way. You don't organize things the same way. But I think in the era we have now, let's call it a combination of entrepreneurism as one domain and the other one is technology that I think it's possible to create great teamwork regardless of who the team members are today. That wasn't possible.
Dan Sullivan [00:50:03]:
25.
Mike Koenigs [00:50:04]:
Yeah. I think there is a quality blindness. And what we, as entrepreneurs, what matters most is teamwork and capabilities, and that's.
Dan Sullivan [00:50:19]:
And projects, you know.
Mike Koenigs [00:50:21]:
Yes.
Dan Sullivan [00:50:22]:
Yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:50:25]:
We need a deadline and a customer.
Dan Sullivan [00:50:27]:
And you have an audience and there's. There's cash flow.
Mike Koenigs [00:50:34]:
Yeah. The great score bar. Scoreboard in the sky.
Dan Sullivan [00:50:39]:
Yeah. And I just think, you know, as. As an American, I think we have an advantage because I think our. The, you know, the operating system that got established, you know, 250 years ago is a flexible system. It has, I mean, it hasn't changed much. It's still, you know, the operating document is four pages longer after 250 years. You know, they, you know, they make adjustments and everything like that. But it says if you're an individual and in 20, 20, 20, 24, you're an individual and you got some thoughts.
Dan Sullivan [00:51:24]:
I mean, you know, the, the great example is Taylor Swift and what she's done, you know, and I mean, she's not. I mean, there were other great singers, and I don't think she's the greatest singer. Okay. But her sense of what she can do with her talent and the way she's organized her talent and the degree which she owns the results of her talent is unique to the 21st century. And I don't see any man pulling it off the way that Taylor Swift has pulled it off, you know, and, you know, and. But she's in her mid-30s now and she's got. There's a biological ticking clock right now and I'm sure she's. Oh yeah, he's feeling the pressure of that in the way that no 35 year old male star would feel.
Mike Koenigs [00:52:23]:
Right. Yeah, she is a. Although I would, I would. What I would put outside the wheel of normalcy is she is a manufactured character, both of her own design and probably, you know, whoever else. I don't, I don't remember how much her parents were involved. You know, Miley Cyrus was another one who's an absolute men, you know, a Mickey Mouse club member. She had all the makings of a child star. Just very similar to what Similar background.
Mike Koenigs [00:53:12]:
Oops, just one second here.
Dan Sullivan [00:53:15]:
Yeah, that's okay. That's just part of the podcast. Mike. Just. I just want to let everybody know. Mike disappears.
Mike Koenigs [00:53:21]:
One of my cameras filled up. So, yeah, I had it running in the background. But yes, I think we're. This is. I, I'm looking forward to seeing how this collision works itself out of culture and language and the common language of entrepreneurship.
Dan Sullivan [00:53:47]:
Well, I think it's solved on an individual basis. I don't think we can solve it on a collective, you know, they pass all sorts of laws, but everybody who succeeds has created a, you know, a personal bypass to all the discussions, you know, and, you know, so any. Anyway, but I'm conscious, I'm conscious of it. And the other thing is that as the leader, the. But the other thing is the, the person who runs Strategic Coach is a woman. That's Babs. Babs runs it. And there's no question anyone's mind that Babs runs the company, but I run the what's on stage.
Dan Sullivan [00:54:34]:
You know, I'm the, I'm the creator of what's on stage. And you know, and that's, that's just the way it is. It's a function of what my unique ability is. It's a function of what her unique ability is. But I think, Mike, in the case of your own son, I think the big thing is that, you know, teamwork, you know, I profited enormously from Outward Bound and I think Outward Bound is a great program. You know, he can do it at the age that he said. But I just think it's. I think, I think boys crave teamwork.
Dan Sullivan [00:55:19]:
I think they, they Crave being in an organized situation where everybody has to kind of put their abilities in to create something bigger than themselves and. Yeah, I don't know.
Mike Koenigs [00:55:36]:
You know, I, I, I think you're right. And what I've noticed amongst his peers is technology got in the way of that. And still in a war now, Covid.
Dan Sullivan [00:55:51]:
Got in the way.
Mike Koenigs [00:55:52]:
Yeah. All those things mounted and they, I think he's really growing to learn it now, and it's more meaningful at 22. And that's a big yes.
Dan Sullivan [00:56:10]:
Yep, yep.
Mike Koenigs [00:56:11]:
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan [00:56:12]:
So, you know, and you know, yeah, everybody has to, at a certain point say, I've got to do, you know, I've got my way and I've got to turn it into a growth system.
Mike Koenigs [00:56:27]:
Yeah, yeah. It's hard, it's hard to compound that alone. And, you know, I'll have all these factors, so. Good. Well, let's bring this one home. This was another super interesting. I did not expect it to go in the direction it did, but it's always nice to sprinkle in the history and the backstory. So do you have any summary if you are God for a day and you were going to throw out one course solution, going back to the title of this, which is about young men and gangs versus teams, and you're gonna throw out a solution, what's your solution to teams or gangs in collaborating other than encouraging entrepreneurship? And somehow my interpretation of your interpretation that I think I heard is celebrating the, the differences between the sexes and creating more entrepreneurial, collaborative opportunities.
Dan Sullivan [00:57:34]:
But yeah, well, I would say that appreciate the differences, but congregate around the basis of unique ability, that everybody has a unique ability. And we live in a golden age where almost every unique ability can find, you know, can find a team, and every unique ability can find a way of getting paid for their teamwork. And I think that's just totally, totally available to everybody. But you got to see a picture that life is bigger than just you. Life is bigger there. There's big things that you can contribute to as part of a team. But if you think it's all about future.
Mike Koenigs [00:58:25]:
Well spoken. This is a lot to think about. I'm gonna have to replay this in my head and it's gonna be some sleep learning. So a lot of big ideas here. But thank you, Dan. This is a super fun episode and, well, for everyone listening.
Dan Sullivan [00:58:45]:
Sa.
