Ambition's Enemies (and How to Beat Them) with Dan Sullivan & Mike Koenigs

What if I told you your biggest obstacle to growth isn’t competition or burnout – but other people’s envy?

In this powerful new episode, Dan Sullivan and I unpack the hidden forces that shape (and sometimes sabotage) entrepreneurial ambition and reveal how to protect, amplify, and sustain it for life.

Dan also debuts his brand-new “Four-Day Future” method for staying focused, fulfilled, and future-ready.

SHOW NOTES:

• Ambition is the fuel that powers entrepreneurs but it’s also fragile – Dan Sullivan reveals how to safeguard your drive from the silent forces of comparison, guilt, and envy.
• We explore why envy is the most dangerous ambition killer, how modern culture has engineered it into our daily lives, and what you can do to stay immune. 
• Dan unveils his newest framework, The Four-Day Future a simple but profound way to measure progress, recalibrate quickly, and keep your ambition expanding at every stage of life.
• You’ll also hear how Dan’s recontextualizing Strategic Coach’s entire curriculum to help entrepreneurs turn every “thinking tool” into an “ambition tool.”
• Whether you’re an established founder or just reawakening your drive, this episode is a masterclass in staying focused, fulfilled, and fearless no matter what the world throws your way.
  
  

KEY INSIGHTS & TAKEAWAYS:

Ambition Is a Capability
Dan shares how ambition isn’t about chasing goals it’s about building the capability to think bigger, act faster, and stay confident through every stage of growth.

The True Enemy of Ambition: Envy
Discover how envy operates like gravity pulling ambitious people down, and how to protect yourself from its influence (especially when you’re tired or doubting yourself).

Socialism, Social Media & the Envy Machine
Dan explains why modern culture is engineered to make you feel guilty for succeeding, and how to escape that mental trap.

From “The Gap” to “The Gain”
Learn to measure your progress backward (not forward), and instantly turn frustration into fuel for the next level of growth.

The Four-Day Future Method
 Dan unveils his new tool to measure progress and recalibrate your goals in real-time, staying focused, happy, and ambitious every week.

Ambition Killers vs. Amplifiers
 Mike and Dan break down how guilt, fatigue, and overcommitment can kill drive, and how mini-calibrations and micro-wins keep ambition alive.

TIMESTAMPS:
[00:00:00] Introduction: Why NASA is betting on Ai to reach Mars by 2040
[00:01:48] The biggest challenges: health, food, sanitation, power, mental health
[00:06:20] How a simple brainstorm led to CoughSense - an Ai-powered astronaut health app
[00:09:04] The “Genius Stack” Framework: stacking 10+ Ais for breakthroughs
[00:13:12] The truth about trusting Ai platforms (and why speed beats loyalty)
[00:16:13] Turning ideas into code prompts (even if you can’t code)
[00:19:52] Testing 10 Ai coding tools in parallel - winners and losers revealed
[00:26:47] What my son built with Ai at 23 (and why it landed him equity in a company)
[00:30:45] The Americium Story: turning nuclear waste into power for space exploration
[00:38:22] Ai storytelling: from scripts to synthetic video to pitch decks in minutes
[00:44:20] Why founders must lead by example - culture, behavior, and mindset shifts
[00:47:08] The Four Quadrants of Ai: Superpowers, Marketing, Top-Line Growth, Automation
[00:53:20] Real stories from Ai Accelerator Live - teams, families, and breakthroughs
[00:57:59] Final message: The 18–36 month window before Ai becomes non-optional

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

1. Want to discover your next big opportunity? Meet me for a Cup of Coffee at my Digital Cafe (this is where we can meet): www.MikeKoenigs.com/1kCoffeeCA
   
   
2. Ready to reinvent yourself, your business, and your brand, and experiencing a massive personal and professional breakthrough? Watch this.

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

Mike Koenigs [00:00:00]:
All right, here's a big idea. Was envy engineered by socialism or a byproduct of it? Well, today we're going to tap into ambition creators, ambition amplifiers and ambition killers. And Dan is going to go through a process and a system he's developed that amplify his ambition, keep him on track. And it's brand new. He's never shared it before. In fact, today I was the first one he shared it with. So what you can expect out of this episode is the nuance of being as ambitious as possible and not letting the gap get in the way of your gains. So Dan, what are your biggest takeaways and why should people stick around and watch or listen to us today?

Dan Sullivan [00:00:45]:
Well, I think the big thing that I think that really ambitious people who I have surrounded myself with over a 50 year period and that there's, you know, there's all sorts of psychological and emotional skills that you have to be developing along with your ambition, you know, and you know, it's possible that your ambition can make you very, very unhappy for periods of time. And you gave me a lot of insights about the whole thing, that it's there. It's not really external obstacles that are getting in your way. It's how you're measuring your own progress and how you're measuring your own ambition. And that came through very, very clear. Clear to me. And anyway, you know, you're never learning less, that's for sure.

Mike Koenigs [00:01:42]:
So here's this episode's all about getting out of your own way and making a discernment between when someone else is getting in your way or when you're getting in your own way and noticing what, when that's happening and how to measure it and how to make constant forward progress to create a better future for yourself. You're going to enjoy this episode, so stick around. Just a couple weeks ago, Dan presented an idea at Genius Network and it's all about ambition. How to accelerate and amplify your entrepreneurial ambition. And he said to me, I am focusing right now on being positioned as the world's number one authority on entrepreneurial ambition. In fact, it's so important to me we are making the focus of Strategic Coach on that as our clear differentiator. What makes us unique and different. And there was one big thing that Dan presented at the Last Free Zone, which was about a week later, that really rocked my world.

Mike Koenigs [00:02:59]:
And it is a single distinction that changed the way I think about how I think, how I interact with other people. And it's also a great test. You are going to find out what that is in this episode. So, Dan, why don't you talk a little bit about positioning yourself as the world's leading expert on entrepreneurial ambition and why that's important, why it's such a meaningful topic. Because I'll have to admit, I didn't get it, but now I see how it fits into, really, the four Cs and all of the core learnings and teachings. Yes.

Dan Sullivan [00:03:38]:
Yeah. Well, it actually prompted me. We had a big conference Strategic Coach. It was the first big outside of our workshop center conference that we've ever had. It was in Nashville at the wonderful Music City Center. And we had a lot of. A lot of Strategic Coach clients there who I've never coached. So we've been.

Dan Sullivan [00:04:05]:
Last year we were 35 years that we've been coaching entrepreneurs. We've grown a lot. They've grown a lot. But I had someone there who is 25 years in our program, but I had never met him because we've got. Right now we have 16 other coaches besides me. And we're as of next January, we're in five cities. We've been in Los Angeles, we're in Chicago, we're in London in the UK, we're in Toronto at the main center, and we're starting in Vancouver in January. And so he came up to me and he says, but, you know, he says, what it really impresses me is that you seem really ambitious at age 80.

Dan Sullivan [00:04:48]:
So I was celebrating my 80th birthday, and he says, so what's your ambition going to be when you're 90? And I said, My ambition when I'm 90 is to be more ambitious than I am at 80. And he said, ambitious about what? And I said, whatever's going on when I'm 90, I'm going to be ambitious about it. And I walked away from that. And I said, you know, that's the first time that I've ever described ambition as a capability. In other words, it's not ambitious to do this or ambitious to do that.

Mike Koenigs [00:05:24]:
It's.

Dan Sullivan [00:05:24]:
It's just that your ability to be ambitious has grown because looking back, I'm way more ambitious at 80 than I was at 50. When I was 50, I mean. And I began to realize, Mike, that there's a connection between your capabilities and your ambition. And that when you develop much greater capabilities, it gives you the chance to be much more ambitious because capabilities are based on proven results. You've done something, you know you can do it, and that gives you the confidence to think even bigger. And further ahead. So I just began playing with, playing with the idea over the last year. And that's kind of what has led to the presentation that you saw in at Genius Network.

Dan Sullivan [00:06:20]:
And I've been playing with this, but I've been thinking, there's a lot of coaching companies in the world. Coaching's become a really big, big deal. As a matter of fact, there's a statistical, there's a statistical upward curve that shows the fastest growing industries in the world and the number one fastest growing industry in the world is information technology. You know, it's IT technology. It makes sense. You know, every, everybody can tell. If you look at the top 10 corporations in the world compared with 30 years ago, the biggest corporations in the world are it. They're related to information technology.

Dan Sullivan [00:07:03]:
And. But the second one is coaching, the second biggest industry. And people said coaching, coaching what? And I said coaching everything. And I said. And the, the reason why coaching is so big is because of information technology, because information technology is not great at itself. And so people, there's an intermediate area between technology and teamwork because the two multipliers we have in our lives are one, technology is a multiplier, everybody knows that. But the other one is teamwork. But there's a connector that you have to have between one multiplier and the other multiplier because they don't naturally associate with each other.

Dan Sullivan [00:07:48]:
And coaching is the, the medium. You know, it's the medium. So anyway, that's what led me to this belief. But you know, we have coached so far 25,000 entrepreneurs in 36 years. And but out of our conversations with them, we've created thinking tools. Okay. Which I'm going to change to ambition tools as a result of this, because I think every one of our thinking tools actually, it actually enables people to be more ambitious. It actually makes them more confident about being ambitious.

Dan Sullivan [00:08:29]:
They look bigger, they think more imaginatively, they have greater confidence to take action. And so that's really where I am right now. And I've been at the coaching of entrepreneurs for more than a half century. And I. But the other thing is that we found that the patent bureau in Washington really, really loves our ambition tools. So we've gotten, as of Today, we have 78 patents.

Mike Koenigs [00:08:57]:
Unbelievable.

Dan Sullivan [00:08:58]:
And got four of them yesterday. So patents. I said, if, if the patent bureau is applauding what we're doing, I think it's real.

Mike Koenigs [00:09:12]:
Yeah, it's. So let's talk a little bit about the enemy of ambition and that big idea that you shared, because there were two big takeaways for me. One of them is when I'm feeling discouraged. And it's not because I don't have enough money or business, but I'm definitely feeling a sense of doubt and I feel like I'm losing energetic momentum and it's like I feel like quitting. I go through cycles like that and it's always before I have some kind of a breakthrough. But it's that experience of self doubt and I can't even tell where it's coming from. It's just like, ugh. I just don't want to take the risks, put myself out there, or I need some kind of a break or a rest.

Mike Koenigs [00:10:10]:
And then what happens is something happens and usually don't even know where it's coming from. A breakthrough and my ambition gets topped off again. So I know a lot of founders and it doesn't matter. You know, they get to their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, they have a big win and they're like talking about retiring. So that's always a topic of discussion at Strategic Coach. But also it's the enemy of ambition that you tapped into. So I'm asking two questions at the same time, like I always do, and I do have a AI generated image to support this that I built in the background. But I.

Mike Koenigs [00:10:50]:
I'd like you to talk a little bit about the enemy of ambition and also how to conquer that. How do we cultivate it, especially when we're feeling stuck.

Dan Sullivan [00:10:59]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, we've kind of known for all of human history and before human history what the enemy of ambition is. And I'll leave people hanging here for a few minutes, but I just want to say that in life there's two possibilities of how you compare your progress, how you compare your progress. Okay. And one of them is you compare yourself to other people. Okay. And that, I would say is the dominant way that people measure their progress in life is that they compare themselves to other people. Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:11:45]:
And I'll come back to that. The other way of measuring your progress is to look backwards at where you started, you know, where you started the project that you're on, or you're aiming for something bigger and you achieve it. And the moment you achieve it, you turn around and see how far you've came. So the first one, you measure your against other people and you're measuring your insides because it's a feeling, you know, it's an internal feeling, emotional feeling. And you're measuring against other people, but you're measuring your insights against other people's outsides. And people tend to put on their best performance. We're all actors on stage. And so you measure someone and they seem really happy, they seem really confident, but you're not feeling that.

Dan Sullivan [00:12:42]:
You're feeling doubt. You're feeling. And the other thing is you're measuring yourself against an ideal in the future, and it looks like you haven't made any progress. Other people observe you and they say you've made a lot of progress, but inside, it's measuring yourself against the horizon. When you're walking, you never seem to make any progress. And we call that the gap, your gap. There's always a big gap between what you achieved and what you wanted to achieve. The other one is called the gain.

Dan Sullivan [00:13:13]:
And you always feel that you've made a gain, and it makes you happy. So people who continually measure backwards against their gain always feel that they're getting more ambitious because they're constantly making progress, they're feeling good about their progress. People who measure against other people and measure against the ideal never feel they're making any progress. And at a certain point, they just have to stop because it's too hard to keep going where your best efforts, your top talents, are just not producing any satisfaction, where the other one produces constant satisfaction, you get more confident, you become more committed, you're more courageous and taking new challenges. So I just wanted to say that now, going back to your statement about the discouragement or the doubt, there is a gravitational force in the world that's created by everybody who wants you to stop growing. Okay? Okay. So you're now embarking on the most exciting part of your entire career so far, because you've become very, very skillful at using AI and you can produce amazing results now that are exponentially greater than anything you can do before. And there's a lot of people in the world, they don't even know you, but they know people like you.

Dan Sullivan [00:14:41]:
And people like you, they want you to stop doing what you're doing. So they're envious. They're envious. Okay. So the enemy of ambition is other people's envy. Okay. And that. That's the difference.

Dan Sullivan [00:14:58]:
And the biggest commitment that I think. Yeah, that's it. Ambition and envy.

Mike Koenigs [00:15:07]:
Yep.

Dan Sullivan [00:15:09]:
So the big thing is that these two forces are always at work in the world. We go back to the Bible and Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve's two sons, Abel seemed to be more able, and Cain hated it, so he killed him. And the way he stopped Abel from becoming even more popular or more skillful or anything, he killed Him Envy kills. Envy wants capability to stop. Joseph and his brothers, Joseph. There was 12 brothers. Joseph was the favorite of the father, and he gave him a beautiful coat, the coat of multicolors, many colors. And they killed.

Dan Sullivan [00:15:55]:
They threw him in a pit, and they took his. And they told the father that he had been killed. And they wanted to kill Joseph. Joseph was a thing. He had more capability. He had more ambition. He had a bigger future. So we live in a world now where as much ambition we have, a world where technology is allowing people to become more ambitious.

Dan Sullivan [00:16:19]:
And at the same time, the greater capabilities of people using technology is making envious people really angry and more desperate to stop people from being more ambitious. And the way that one way of stopping you from becoming more ambitious, Michael, is to make you feel guilty about it.

Mike Koenigs [00:16:43]:
Which seems to be true.

Dan Sullivan [00:16:45]:
You're getting too far ahead. You're just getting too far ahead. You're leaving everybody behind, and they're. They can't stop you because you're talented. They can't stop you because you're ambitious. They can stop you by making you feel guilty about your privilege for your capabilities.

Mike Koenigs [00:17:04]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:17:05]:
And I would say at a certain time, you might get tired one day or, you know, you've just kind of emptied your tank doing something new, bigger and better, and you're just susceptible, and you get some of their envy on you, and you feel more depressed. You should stop. You should stop now, you know? Yeah. So that would be my interpretation of the diagram, is that there's forces of envy. Now, here's a little thing that came because I've been studying this for 50 years. Why are some people just always getting better and more ambitious? And I've dealt only with entrepreneurs for the last, last 50 years. But here's the thing that I notice, is that they stopped. For example, somebody will join our Strategic Coach program, and they just take off like a rocket.

Dan Sullivan [00:18:07]:
The concepts that we have. You know, their life gets simpler. They get better team around them. They become clearer about what their unique ability is. They start understanding better the kinds of problems they can solve. They go through the first year of the program for workshops. Comes to the end of the four workshops, and they say, okay, you want to renew into the next year? And they said, nope, nope. I just want to use what I've had so far.

Dan Sullivan [00:18:35]:
And our program advisors, who are the internal salespeople who encourage people to stay in the program, they'll say, there's something wrong with the program. You know, we need something wrong with the program. I said, no, there's nothing wrong with the program. They have five close relationships out in the world who are telling them, stop growing. You're making us uncomfortable with your growth. So.

Mike Koenigs [00:19:03]:
What you're talking about is ambition being killed from outside and versus the within. At least that's my interpretation of it. So that's part one. The part two is you talked about how you use envy really as your own ambitious ambition multiplier. You've got a self correcting mechanism for that. And can you talk about those two things?

Dan Sullivan [00:19:37]:
Yeah. The big thing is that they would like to have you internalize their unhappiness. In other words, they would like to convince you to take. They know they can't stop your talent, they know they can't stop your creativity, but they can make you feel unhappy about the fact that you're creative and that you're successful. Okay? So they've internalized it. Okay? So they have a lot of stories about why it's unfair that you should have the advantages that you have. Okay? So that's pretty easy to understand. But the.

Dan Sullivan [00:20:17]:
The interesting thing about it is there was this massive book that came out of Germany and it was translated into English about five years ago. And it's called Envy. You know the word, the German word for envy. And it's 24 chapters and each of the chapters stands on its own. And they just take all the different ways in which human beings can use envy to stop other people's progress, to take away other people's satisfaction, okay? And it's a totally negative mindset because they don't want what you have, Mike. They don't want your talent, they don't want your successes. They want you not to have them. It's not like jealousy.

Dan Sullivan [00:21:06]:
Jealousy is very different. Jealousy as Mike is really good at this and it inspires me. I can't be good at what he is, but I can be good at what I am. So jealousy can actually be a positive motivation as long as I'm not directing at competing with you in what you do really well. If I use it in my own life to compete, then jealousy is good. Envy is totally negative, okay? Envy is like drinking poison and waiting for you to die. It's totally negative, okay? But it comes totally out of self comparison. These are not people who measure their progress by looking backward where they started.

Dan Sullivan [00:21:50]:
They're measuring their progress against you and they're being outpaced, they're being outdistanced by you and it makes them miserable and they want you to stop. This book is very interesting. Helmut Schoeck is the author. It's called Envy, I remember. Yeah. And he said, you know, it's really interesting that when you look at humans writing about envy, all through history, as long as there's been writing where the stories were told, you've always had envy as a major aspect of human. Human society, the way they interact with each other until 1850. And he said, after 1850, there's no more writing about envy.

Dan Sullivan [00:22:39]:
He says, psychological journals. You go to a psychological journal, jealousy will be in there, but envy won't be in there. Okay? And he said, because something explosive happened in the first 18, the 1800s. You had the industrial revolution, and you had all of a sudden that it became unpredictable. Who could use new technology to become very rich and powerful, okay? And it was very disruptive to the existing society. And they created a institution to stop other people's progress. And that institution was called socialism. Socialism can stop any opportunity for individuals using a new technology to suddenly expand their perspective, expand their, you know, their success and everything like that.

Dan Sullivan [00:23:37]:
Our society is very socialized. I mean, using the word socialized, the socialization is that it's all about, now we should have total equality. Nobody should have outcomes that are better than any other outcomes. And it's just, you know, it's the air we breathe now, these. And they're very, very unhappy because this new technology, I think the society is becoming very politically polarized right now. Emotionally polarized right now is because these new technologies, especially the one that you're getting very good at, are just escaping all controls, just escaping. So that's really why it is. And so what we do in Strategic Coach, we develop ambition mindsets in such a way that the envious people's mindsets can't get inside your mindset.

Mike Koenigs [00:24:35]:
Do you believe envy was engineered into socialism or a byproduct of it? I'm curious about the then socialism and then now socialism because, you know, we're going through this massive cultural shift. There are an enormous number of triggers for envy. One of them is one of the ultimate envy amplifiers, is social media. It's comparing myself, right? The. The amount of. You think About Instagram and TikTok are literally designed to flip through envious opportunities, either rage or envy. But can you. Can you bridge that gap about, well, socialism, John?

Dan Sullivan [00:25:28]:
And it's always a chicken and egg situation. But my sense is that envy has always existed, but it was mostly local. It was local, you know, it was among the people that you lived with. But then when technology comes along, there's this Capability in people to escape where they live from. You know, farmers who were dirt poor can move to the city because they have technological skills and they have new skills. So all of a sudden you can escape from the captivity of local envy. Okay? And therefore envy had to go national, Envy had to go bigger because people were escaping from the clutches of envy. Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:26:15]:
I think it's always been there, you know, as I said, it goes right back to the first books of the Bible. So it was there right from the beginning. A lot of Shakespeare, if you read Shakespeare, a lot of Shakespeare, there's a lot of envy. And you know, in Shakespeare, all the great writers wrote about envy. Tolstoy talked about envy, you know, all the really terrific writers. So, so my sense is that I've, I've never really experienced envy because I, I was one, is that I've always kind of known how to make my own progress in life. You know, I've always had a good ability. I've always had a good ability to make money, you know, and I've always been interested in what's a solution, what's a problem that someone has that I think I have the ability to solve it.

Dan Sullivan [00:27:13]:
But the other thing is, because I grew up more or less alone, I compared myself to my own progress, not to other people's. I've done that. But what it's given me is an ability as a coach to show people where they should think differently about their own progress. Okay. Yeah, we just had a situation that you've had a tremendous breakthrough in a previous podcast you just had to prove. And what I suggested is you give yourself six months just to enjoy the level of breakthrough you're at, and then six months from later you'll take another jump. But give yourself chance to really enjoy the progress that you've had and test it out and everything like that. And I think I have a real ability to kind of see what would be good for you, to feel confident about the breakthroughs that you're having.

Dan Sullivan [00:28:09]:
And I also asked you the question, with this breakthrough, are you more ambitious? And you said, yeah, I'm more ambitious. I said, that's really good.

Mike Koenigs [00:28:16]:
Yeah, yeah. And all those came from. When I think about envy is an inward, self centered, selfish focus. It doesn't exist in a space of collaboration and creation. Right.

Dan Sullivan [00:28:36]:
That stops collaboration and cooperation.

Mike Koenigs [00:28:38]:
Yeah. And so it's certainly a cure. But going back.

Dan Sullivan [00:28:45]:
It's happiest at the level of, of poverty. It's actually happiest when everybody's poor. It's, you know, it's it's only happy at the level of scarcity, but envious people are miserable people, you know.

Mike Koenigs [00:29:09]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:29:09]:
It's their, their only achievement is stopping someone else. It's not actually them progressing. It's other stopping other people. And I think we've got a really unique handle on this. In Strategic Coach, I think people get more capable, I think they become more confident, but I also think they get happier.

Mike Koenigs [00:29:30]:
Yeah. I think that having tools that give you certainty are a vehicle. And again, I'm thinking through my experience in my coach journey when I'm most uncertain what I'm looking for or less ambitious. Hang on, I'm, I'm trying, I'm trying on lots of different points of view right now and thinking about, okay, when have I been envious? I think it's not envy as much as frustration with being stuck. I, I can't isolate that. It's feeling as though I'm not making movement. That's my gap and then the gain. Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:30:22]:
I would say that you, you're, you got, you're, I think when you get unhappy, you're measuring against some ideal in the future. Yeah. And at the moment that you would like. In every session of a Strategic Coach, we take people backward and said, where were you then and where are you now? Something I said, gee, I mean I, I may, I've made a lot more progress. Okay. And you know, I, I, I can catch myself doing that. People say, well, you probably never get in that gap situation. I said, I do, but previously in my life it would last six months and now it lasts six minutes.

Mike Koenigs [00:31:01]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:31:02]:
You know, I said the moment I started feeling myself tightening up, I go back and said, okay, what kind of progress have you made? Oh, this is great. I've made an enormous amount of progress and I'm free from it. Yeah. We're all susceptible to this.

Mike Koenigs [00:31:18]:
So it seems like what my experience of again, I don't know why this hit me as being so profound. The envy ambition. But what you do is you self calibrate. So envy is, is external and it's comparing. I know when I'm less ambitious in the gap, as you would say, I'm, I'm seeking a higher ideal than I'm in and living not in a space of, of external envy, but it's an internal frustration feeling like I'm not moving forward. So.

Dan Sullivan [00:32:05]:
For you to self, I don't find you envious at all. I never had any experience of you ever stating something or making an observation where I think you're completely free of envy.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:19]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:32:20]:
Okay.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:21]:
I don't know why.

Dan Sullivan [00:32:22]:
Well, and I think you lose a sense of self progress. I think you. Yeah, you, you. Yeah. You know, I, I mean, every day I'm measuring backwards on something, you know, that I say, oh, this is a lot better. You know, every time I, you know, I'm a lesser AI engager than you are. Yeah. And I'm not comparing myself to.

Dan Sullivan [00:32:52]:
So it doesn't bother me but, but I'm always pleased after a day on AI at how much better at the end of the day I was than I when I beginning some new thing happened. And I've never had a day where I didn't feel I was making progress. But you, you've got to take time out to say yesterday you couldn't do this, today you could do it, you know.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's a matter of stuckness versus. And again, that, that would be if, if so if we were.

Dan Sullivan [00:33:23]:
Well, what I would say is your resistance. And you can be affected by other people's envy when, when you're, when you're fatigued and when you lose energy. Yeah. Your defenses are down and you can be stuck by. Okay.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:37]:
Something that, that I, I know I'm oblivious to. So that's, that's something I have to try on and exercise. So here's what I'm going to ask you for right now. So I'm thinking through the lens of the listener, viewer and creating mechanisms to calibrate. So everyone who listens to or watches this show, I know wants to be more ambitious. I truly believe that to be true. And if they are envious, they certainly don't want to live in that space. It may be something that was, you know, a bad habit bred into them, you know, whatever.

Mike Koenigs [00:34:14]:
Whatever it is. And learn to self detect if you are subject to someone else's envy and that energetic plague is, is sitting. I am, I'm. When you said that I'm positive that happens to me when I feel sludgy and I'm like this. I don't feel like this is coming from me somehow. So what's your. What would be your calibration sequence to get out of. Out of it and stay out of it and amplify.

Mike Koenigs [00:34:54]:
We talked about measuring your success inside Coach. We've got 90 day tools. We're looking back. That's part of our experience. It's looking backwards, celebrating. But what's your Dan solvent quick and dirty calibration tools.

Dan Sullivan [00:35:11]:
I've actually just created a new one and I found that the time periods used for measurement are just too long. And so I came up with one which is called the four day future. And I've just been testing it out. Okay. And what you do is that you use one day of the four day future just to set up the next three days. Okay? Okay. So tomorrow is today is the end of a four day period, okay. And I had certain things that I needed to get done on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and I've completed them all.

Dan Sullivan [00:35:53]:
So tomorrow is a day when I just sum up my progress for the last three days and then I set a new next three days. What I'm going to accomplish over the next three days. And I'm now on my tomorrow, I start the 27th that I've done. So I've done 26 four day periods and it seems to work, seems to work really well. And I have to get five things done in a three day period. Okay. And it could be exercise, it could be eating, it could be sleeping, you know, just for the next three days I'm going to make sure I get good sleep, I'm going to eat properly and I'm going to exercise. Another one is that there's always writing projects.

Dan Sullivan [00:36:41]:
I have to get writing projects done because I write a new book every quarter. I'm writing two major books for publishing, for publishers. And I've got new tools I have to create because I've got zoom calls coming up where I test out new tools and everything like that. But every new three day period is a new day. I've got new projects, but they have to be completed within a three day period. And it keeps me from biting off more than I can achieve. So that would be an example of the calibration. And these are ambition tools because it keeps me even when I say I'm not doing this well.

Dan Sullivan [00:37:26]:
I said, well, during the next four days I'll do much better at this. And it gives you a quick way of recalibrating. So that's what I find. Just a interesting experiment. I haven't really, I haven't really done it enough myself to communicate the value of it. Okay. This is the first, the first time I told somebody else about it, but I'm telling you.

Mike Koenigs [00:37:48]:
Yeah, you know, it makes sense. I'm.

Dan Sullivan [00:37:51]:
It means that in a year you have 91 of these four day chunks. So you know, you can have like last weekend I went to a funeral. In two days of my life it was used up with a funeral. But not only that my computer broke. I mean it just died. I just died. My Mac just died, you know, it just went black, you know, there's nothing I could do. And so I was without my computer and I was surrounded by 50 people who are over 70 years old getting ready to die, you know, and I said, I said the next four days is going to be better than these four days, you know, and I just, I just cooled it, you know, I said, just be aware of what's going on.

Dan Sullivan [00:38:38]:
And you know, and we were in Michigan and you can't get here, you can't get back here from there. So we had to drive to Chicago to get a flight to come. So it was, but it was just four days, you know, it was just a four day period. And you know, next four days and this four days, this week have been superb. You know, it just gives me a chance to recalibrate and recycle and upgrade.

Mike Koenigs [00:39:06]:
Good. So what I, what I hear and observe in you was first of all, you, you're constantly measuring forward and backward. And I like this idea of pacing, which is very much what you do. Also, anyone who knows Dan knows that he's constantly scheduled. You've got this philosophy of never leave Dan alone that enables you to collaborate and create with support so things get done important for our high quick starts and low follow throughs. And then one little tip, here's an idea. I always have three laptops and they're always synced and I travel with two of them if I'm speaking or doing something important. So I'm never dead, man, that's the worst.

Dan Sullivan [00:40:04]:
Yeah, that's a useful tip because I didn't know how I would do that.

Mike Koenigs [00:40:11]:
Yeah, you can have, if you've got Dropbox and Icloud, it's always perfectly synced, a total mirror image. And I have three for that reason because I've got two basically identical MacBooks and they're always plugged in, in sync. So when I travel, if I'm traveling for something simple, I have a lightweight MacBook Air as my breakage backup. And if I'm performing, I bring my two big ones that are identical. So never a loss. And, and, but I love this, I love this calibration exercise and it's like, it's an easy commitment. Four days is an easy commitment to make where I think I felt lost and hopeless going back to where I've lost my drive, my ambition and feeling. It's when I feel like a mule and I am over committed for six months and don't feel like there's a way out.

Mike Koenigs [00:41:16]:
And Inside of that, I don't feel like I'm going to make progress. I feel stuck. And feeling stuck is definitely an ambition kilter. It's a future ambition killer. So that's the journey.

Dan Sullivan [00:41:32]:
It's interfering with your ambition.

Mike Koenigs [00:41:34]:
Yes. Yeah, I think ambition, I equate.

Dan Sullivan [00:41:40]:
It's retarding your ambition. You're having thoughts, but you're not able to take action.

Mike Koenigs [00:41:48]:
Yes, flexibility and freedom are ambitious, or a lack of flexibility of freedom are ambition killers. So what I haven't been doing is being conscious of the emotions, the negative emotions I'm experiencing that are causing that ambition or hopelessness. So, okay, that was super useful.

Dan Sullivan [00:42:17]:
And one of the things about that, and I think it's a big change I've made in the last 10 years just in terms of my own personal growth, is that my feelings are 100% my responsibility. They're not somebody else's responsibility. In other words, how I'm feeling about something is strictly my property to deal with. But what I've learned is if you take 100% responsibility for your feelings, then don't make someone else responsible for your feelings. You know, like that I, I'm upset is a different statement. I'm upset is just an observation. You're upset that someone else is upsetting you is blaming. Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:43:15]:
You know, you're just, you're just having a response, but it's the other person isn't the cause. Yeah, yeah. You're just. Our president's got that down.

Mike Koenigs [00:43:27]:
In what way specifically?

Dan Sullivan [00:43:29]:
Well, he doesn't seem to get really upset that much. He doesn't really seem to get upset that much, but he sure upsets a lot of other people. You know, that, you know, it's just really interesting. It's for another podcast. I won't get too deeply into this, but, you know, he's, he's an interesting character. That's all. That's all I can say.

Mike Koenigs [00:44:01]:
Yep. Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:44:01]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:44:02]:
One of.

Dan Sullivan [00:44:02]:
He's very ambitious. He's very, very ambitious. Yeah. And he's far more ambitious this term than he was in his first term.

Mike Koenigs [00:44:10]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, had a sense to regroup and create offensive and defensive, get a resource.

Dan Sullivan [00:44:22]:
Better team, you know, his team and everything. Yeah. Great people.

Mike Koenigs [00:44:27]:
No, we would in math. Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:44:29]:
But anyway, it went back to. The whole thing is that I think that all the thinking that we've done over a 50 year period, but especially the last 36 years, is that I think we're kind of the world's authority on entrepreneurial ambition. I think we've Spent more time thinking about it. I think we've created more ambition tools for ambitious people to have than anyone else. And the bat bureau thinks that our stuff is good.

Mike Koenigs [00:45:03]:
Yeah, well. And I know as a receiver of that, what I find interesting is the greatest incremental gains. Incremental gains come from nuanced tools. And the fact that there's a new tool just like when you revealed your four day methodology just now. You know, once you're on a path and you've had your behaviors and successes confirmed by a market, that gives you an increase in confidence and courage. And then being able to make these incremental shifts with nuanced changes because that, that I think is the art of mini breakthroughs. I think maximum breakthroughs do require a significant boost in capabilities, which we talked about in a previous episode are oftentimes breakthrough technologies. And then being able to create leverage again, it's rewriting your future with these.

Mike Koenigs [00:46:16]:
So I think the psychological gains are where you get the biggest incremental ones. So, yeah, it's super, super nuanced. This has been an interesting, interesting episode. So any other last, last thoughts on just taking an action right now that's going to give you an incremental or a breakthrough gain tomorrow? Like, what are you doing for you for next week?

Dan Sullivan [00:46:47]:
Yeah, the big thing that I'm doing, and this is, I think I can pull it off in three months, is I'm starting right at the beginning of the program with the tools that are strategic coach tools. In the first year of the prep for workshops, there's about 13 tools and I'm recontextualizing them all from the standpoint that they're ambition tools. I'm not coaching the tool because these videos, audio video, they'll be zoom audio video where I just talked, you know, talk to the audience and I'm just explaining the impact of each of these tools. Lifetime extender free focus and buffer days impact filter. You know, I'm just showing them what the impact is on their ambition. And we're going to set these out to everybody in the program. So some people haven't taken these tools in 20 years and they'll get back in touch with these tools again. But we're recontextualizing everything from the standpoint of ambition.

Dan Sullivan [00:47:58]:
You know, that's great.

Mike Koenigs [00:48:01]:
I can see that. So that's going to add to your contribution and you're going to get positive feedback. Dan loves positive feedback and implementation feedback and that speed of that is good and it's going to strengthen your positioning as the ambition Authority, which is going to create more brand awareness and more Strategic Coach customers.

Dan Sullivan [00:48:30]:
It's a new tool of all sorts of new tools come out of it. I think, oh, we need this tool. There's a. Another tool that would. Yeah. So. All right. I wrote please.

Dan Sullivan [00:48:42]:
But you know what's really neat, Mike, is knowing you right at the period when this new amazing technology has appeared on the planet, and knowing somebody who's just totally engaged with it is such a such a pleasure. Well, thank you. And then see what it does to your ambition.

Mike Koenigs [00:49:10]:
Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to our conversation a couple days after this next event because it's been six months since I taught this, our AI program. We've got Gordon, a few people coming here, and in a way, ancient history.

Dan Sullivan [00:49:35]:
Six months.

Mike Koenigs [00:49:37]:
I'm looking at it. And here's the good news. The mindsets I taught are just as relevant now as they were then. And how to approach these things. The tools have changed the amount of progress. And I. I think from an ambition, amplification, possibility, perspective, how much more you can get done knowing less and having a tool that imagines with you faster is remarkable. But nothing matters except the experience that people have.

Mike Koenigs [00:50:19]:
You know, this isn't about me. And I'm in the kind of the last part of finalizing what I'm teaching, and I'm using AI to analyze all of our onboarding conversations to create curriculum that's relevant. So I pay a lot close attention to what everyone needs and wants, and I'm trying to, you know, cast the widest net to create the most impact and value. So ask me in our next recording what's happened since. Because.

Dan Sullivan [00:50:53]:
And.

Mike Koenigs [00:50:53]:
And I think the. That'll also go back to what your recommendation to me, which was, okay, now take six months and celebrate the successes without trying to change a bunch of stuff. I have to really sit with that. And I think sometimes my own ambition and fear that I'm not making enough progress robs from that. That pleasure that that's a Gap creator. So I wouldn't have thought about it without having this conversation, the past two conversations we've had. So thank you.

Dan Sullivan [00:51:30]:
We're all playing with time. Yeah, we're. We're all playing with time and gravity. Yeah. Well, yeah, but, you know, the. The forces of envy are losing right now, and they're desperate. They're very angry.

Mike Koenigs [00:51:50]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:51:51]:
And there's, you know, they've worked for years and years to get control of creativity, and now the creativity is breaking out all over the place.

Mike Koenigs [00:52:01]:
Yeah. Well, they are not our audience or our customer base, so I choose, I choose to give them nothing and I'm going to keep it that way, so. Well, great.

Dan Sullivan [00:52:13]:
They have nothing and I'm willing to give them more.

Mike Koenigs [00:52:16]:
Yep. Yeah, that's good. Glad we're on the same team. All right, well, let's, let's wrap this one up. Once again, I hope you enjoyed the nuanced conversation here. And also if you're listening and you're not part of Strategic Coach, I hope this gives you some inspiration to pick up the phone and make a call, go to the site and book a conversation and become part of the family because you'll spending time with these tools and it's the best investment I make every year for me. And the people you meet are the some of the closest, most like minded folks you'll ever have the the pleasure of getting to know as well. So can't recommend it highly enough.

Mike Koenigs [00:53:05]:
That's our job. Get more people inside. Strategic Coach. Thanks for listening. Yeah. See everyone on the next episode.

Dan Sullivan [00:53:12]:
Okay, team.

Mike Koenigs [00:53:14]:
All right, well, let's wrap this one up. Once again, I hope you enjoyed the nuanced conversation here. And also if you're listening and you're not part of Strategic Coach, I hope this gives you some inspiration to pick up the phone and make a call, go to the site and book a conversation and become part of the family.

Dan Sullivan [00:53:36]:
Because.

Mike Koenigs [00:53:38]:
Spending time with these tools, it's the best investment I make every year for me. And the people you meet are some of the closest, most like minded folks you'll ever have the pleasure of getting to know as well. So can't recommend it highly enough. That's our job. Get more people inside Strategic Coach. Thanks for listening. Yeah. See everyone on the next episode.