Architecting 100x Growth: A “How-To” From Legends Dan Sullivan and John Bowen

Speaker A: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today's episode is architecting 100 times a how to from legends Dan Sullivan and John Bowen. It's a conversation with the industry's top coaches and co authors of the Greater Game. I'm, um, Louis diamond and this is the Diamond Podcast for financial Advisors.

Speaker B: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that's at a warehouse, boutique or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we've guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned and each year one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change Firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships. Starting as your strategic partner well before you're even thinking of a move to schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they're headed or trans going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It's the award winning data driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm's appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy@diamond-consultants.com transitionreport.

Speaker A: Most entrepreneurs and many advisors spend years optimizing for growth without realizing they're building a business that still depends entirely on them. Revenue and complexity grow. Enterprise value transferability and freedom often lag far behind. Dan Sullivan and John Bowen argue that the issue isn't effort or intelligence, it's architecture. No doubt these are familiar names in the wealth management industry, but just to set the stage, Dan is the co founder of UH, Strategic Coach and John is the founder of CEG Elevate Group and CEG Insights. Together they spent decades coaching and studying high performing entrepreneurs and advisory firms. Their latest book, One They Joined Forces on the Greater Game, lays out a very different framework for thinking about growth. One built around scalability, transferable value and long term leverage rather than incremental optimization. What makes this conversation especially relevant for advisors is that the framework cuts both ways. It applies to the entrepreneurial clients that advisors serve, as well as to the advisory firms themselves. And in many cases, the same founder dependency and expertise trap that limits a client's enterprise value is quietly limiting the advisor's business too. We talk about the difference between operators and architects. Why 100 times growth can actually be easier than 2 times growth where businesses tend to stall as they Scale and how advisors can start thinking differently about their own firms, particularly when it comes to enterprise value succession and long term optionality. It's rare access to a conversation with two of our industry's legends whose advice and counsel have not only helped to transform the business lives of many of our listeners, but also my own. So let's get to it. Dan and John, thank you both for joining us today.

Speaker C: Thank you Lou. It's a, uh, real pleasure.

Speaker D: I've had the privilege of joining you before, but never with my co author Dan Sullivan. And I'm excited to share what we're doing because I think it can make a big impact in our advisor industry.

Speaker A: No doubt about it. This has been an interview I've been very excited to host. So let's jump right in. Dan Sullivan, I think you are a man that needs little introduction. So many advisors in the industry are fans or clients of your firm, Strategic Coach. But for those who aren't as familiar or need a refresh, can you just give some quick context into why you started Strategic Coach and what the company does today?

Speaker C: Yeah, well, it goes back to 1974. I was a copywriter at BBDO, the Canadian branch, uh, BBDO, big global advertising agency. Still is, but I've been sort of a lifetime, uh, coach. I remember once when my mother finally caught up with what I was doing in life and I was describing what I was doing. She says, well you were doing that when you were a child. You were talking to adults and you were asking adults about their experiences. And she says, so I said, yeah, I could do this when I was 8 or 9 years old. But it took me a long time to get a business model wrapped around it. But I started, I jumped out in 1974 and started coaching anybody. But it actually turned out that entrepreneurs were the best people to coach because they would write a check on the spot and they would make a decision on the spot. And I needed cash flow and uh, I did it. So I've been personally, as a strategic coach, which was named by someone else, you're just out there trying to get cash flow to pay for the rent. So I started in 74 and I was lucky. And it really relates to your target audience. Lou. Right off the bat I got what are called top of the table life insurance agents. And that um, was really, really great because life insurance agents are purely a conceptual business. So someone can get a new idea at breakfast and they can have a new business by dinner time just because they can change their mindset. And that moved on and I did that for 15 years, just one on one, 1970s, 1980s. And then I'd had enough experience that we turned it into a workshop program in 1989. We've been at it ever since. So I was at a talk. Joe Polish is a great friend of ours. Joe Polish with Genius Network. And um, he had a speaker there and he says, you're one of the original gangsters, aren't you? You're one of the first people. And I said, I don't know if I'm the original, but I think I'm the only surviving one. So it's 52 years that I've been doing what I'm doing. And I had the good fortune to meet John around, ah, 2009. Uh, John was that 2009 little economic

Speaker D: downturn that everybody knows about here.

Speaker C: Yeah. And John had a great coaching program and we had a great coaching program. And over the years we've talked a lot about what makes a, uh, entrepreneur exponential in their thinking. And this is finally about two years ago, we decided, let's write a book about this. And that's the new book, which is called the Greater Game. That's where this all started. It's just been a great pleasure because we sync very well.

Speaker A: Amazing. And Dan, I think a lot of people likely know you either from Strategic Coach or. I know, I'm personally a big fan of two of your books and I know you've written others that the Gap and the Gain and who Not How. We're going to talk about your new book, but I think it'll just be helpful. Can you talk about the key premise of some of your prior books? The Gap and the Gain and who Not How.

Speaker C: As a result of my membership, you know, I'm a member in other groups and so I, uh, Joe Polish of Genius Network fame, he's been in my program for 28 years and I've been in his program for 15 years. And there was a writer who was in one of the first Genius Network workshops and he approached me and I create a lot of books, but I create small books and they're self published. I do a book a quarter when I was 70, I'm 82 in about three weeks. So when I was 70 I said, you know, I'm going to give myself a 25 year project. I'll write 100 books in a, uh, hundred quarters. And I have. This is quarter number 47 and I'm writing my 47th book. But they're little books, they're 60, 70 page. They're one idea books and Ben Hardy, who was at that time the number one writer on Medium, which is a, ah, blogging type medium. And uh, he approached me and he said, I know you don't write big books and you don't have publisher books, but he said if you ever did, he said I'd like to collaborate. And that was a great good fortune on my part. So we produced three books in five years. Uh, the first book was who not how, who not how basically says when you have a um, goal, the biggest problem with the goal, you're excited about the goal but you're not excited about doing it. So you find who's who help you and you build teamwork around it. And that was a big seller. And then uh, we had another concept which was called the Gap and the Gain that entrepreneurs, depending on how they measure their progress can be perpetually unhappy or they can be perpetually motivated. And it all depends on how they measure their progress, how they measure their goal setting and their goal achievement. And then the third book, which has really turned out to be the big one up until this book, this book will be bigger. It's called 10 times is easier than two times. So in coach, everybody has a 10 times game plan, whatever number they want to choose, revenues, uh, personal net worth, whatever. You have a framework of 10 times which is sometime in the future. But you use that future framework for deciding what you're going to do today that will end up as a 10 times result. I thought that was going to be our formula for the rest of my life until I met John and then John is a great AI practitioner and I began to realize that that 10 times is now becoming a hundred times for really top notch entrepreneurs. Uh, but the 10 times is easier than two times. And we just crossed the million mark with the three books which is really good and it's great for Lead. We're having people show up and they've really bought into what Strategic Coach is. We have a good sized company, we're not a small company. We have a uh, 120 team members. We're in five centers. Los Angeles, Vancouver, Chicago, Toronto and London, England. But it's been really great because we've really grown with technological change. And it's basically we teach people how to think about their thinking. And Lou, you were in for three years both uh, in person and virtual. So you know what the starting structure of us. But I'm in love with entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are crucial characters on the planet, but mostly they operate alone. And what we've done is Create a community for them.

Speaker A: Um, fantastic. Thank you. Dan and John, I think perfect segue to you because I know you've spent your career serving and helping entrepreneurs as well, mostly within financial services or within wealth management. And you've been very kind to share some of your amazing research on advisors serving entrepreneurial clients in the past. But for anyone who's missed those episodes, similar question for you. Can you share what your companies do? CEG Elevate, CEG Insights, your new research and then we'll dive into your exciting new book.

Speaker D: Uh, thank you Lois. And yeah, no, Dan and I are very excited about just entrepreneurs in general. Dan is because he's working with them directly. The best clients for financial advisors are entrepreneurs, largely if you're going to go high net worth, ultra high net worth. So we have a company, CG Elevate, which is our parent company. Two of the companies that are really interesting for this podcast is CG Insights and this is our research arm. And we'll study about 20,000 high net worth, ultra high net worth clients this year and in depth in 6,000 to 7,000 will do just of entrepreneurs. And this is in the partnership. Lou, I invited you up. We were skiing two years ago in Park City and you couldn't join us. But Dan and I made a deal to do a uh, 25 year partnership studying entrepreneurships, one for strategic coach and his coaching clients. But really the opportunity for financial advisors uh, is probably just as well because I came down, I said, I think dan, you were 80 at the time and I was 69, I'm 70 now and I was skiing with a whole bunch of 40 year olds and they're all going, you guys are way too optimistic. And Dan and I are just getting started on this. And the other company that's applicable is CG Worldwide, where we have the privilege of um, coaching and training some of the top financial advisors are those aspiring and also working with the enterprises to really help move up market and do this great experience.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Dan, question for you. What was the core problem you and John were trying to solve in your new book the Greater Game? What is it that existing frameworks weren't touching? And then John, I have a follow up question for you after that.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, by the very nature of what we do, we're not going for wannabes, we're not going for entrepreneurs who hope to be really successful someday. We're engaging with and we're registering into our, uh, both of our communities, people who are really, they're already great, they're already doing so many things, right? But they're kind of doing it unconsciously. They just have a unique ability for growth. They have a unique ability for networking and expansion. But the very, very core is they've done it on their own, you know, and they've done it out of intuition, and they've done it out of ambition, motivation. But their biggest problem is that they're really lonely. I'm, um, in my sixth decade now of coaching entrepreneurs, and people say, well, what's the number one problem that entrepreneurs face? And I said, loneliness. They can't explain themselves to the family they grew up with. They can't explain themselves with their lifetime friends. They have thoughts about how they're operating, and they take enormous pride in their ability to transform difficulties into breakthroughs. But they don't have anybody to talk to. So what we've created is a community where when you walk in the room, everybody in that room, um, immediately understands you. Everybody immediately applauds what you've done. Everybody is inspired by you. So my framework, as I call, uh, what you've done on your own, you're great. You're a winner already. But who do you talk to? You have to hide a lot of your success because they just won't understand what it is that actually motivates you. And the beauty of the partnership with John is the vast majority of our clients are in 70 or 80 different industries. Industries. So they're not, uh, peculiar. We start off with financial services, especially life insurance. But what I notice is that all the difficulty they get into life is they're trying to communicate with people who don't understand them. And what we're saying is stage one, you did it on your own. You're great by any standard whatsoever. You check all the boxes for being a successful person, but you don't really have any way to actually check out how other people are doing this. And so we've created a community, and John has created a community where people immediately there's understanding. And not only that, but there's opportunity, because they're unique in their own ways. Every one of our entrepreneurs has created a very, very unique pattern of success that if they were with 10 other people, they could learn from this. If they were with 30 other people, they would learn even more. So that's what we've done. So stage two is now joining a community where everybody gets you.

Speaker A: Interesting. And that's the premise of the book. We don't want to have people not buy it. But what is the greater game? What's the game that folks are playing and pursuing. And how do you make it greater?

Speaker C: I tell you what I've always been lacking. I'm sort of intuitive like most entrepreneurs are. We've done about 300 times growth since we started the program, but it's intuitive. I don't have any research to back this up. I'm low on fact finder. I find, generally speaking, the best facts are just the facts that I make up. But at, uh, a certain point, you'd like to have some actual research to back me up. So I've gone as far as I can go with our company without real research. And then John comes into the picture, and now we got some real research. And I will say this. This is generally true. It's not just a problem with me that I don't have research. I find the, uh, entrepreneurism as one of the least researched subjects on the planet. And John comes along, and he's done all the backfill for how entrepreneurs actually perform. And I've got research to prove it.

Speaker A: Perfect. So, yeah, John, question for you. So what is the greater game? Um, and then how do you think it relates to what financial advisors have been missing?

Speaker D: One of the things that we as financial advisors all want to work with people who have already won. And there's no better group than entrepreneurs, uh, successful entrepreneurs. If we look at people with 25 million or more of investable assets, across all households in the U.S. 90% are entrepreneurs. And at the 5 to 25 million of investable assets, it's 3 out of 4. So CEG Worldwide, we've always wanted to really understand advisors. And we said, you know, we'll partner with Dan and his passion with entrepreneurs. We'll go ahead and study them so that we can bring insights on how we can better serve them. And very first thing we want to do is understand, you know, there's very different stages that we see of, uh, entrepreneurs. And we talk about the. The whole concept of, uh, the greater game. And the idea here is we wanted to identify. And I'll share some PowerPoint slides. I know a lot of us are listening, and I just want to walk through this, but Lewis will have it in show notes. His team will. We really saw four areas. The first one was level one. Stage one was foundation for Freedom. It's. They had ambition, the vision, but they really needed security. And, uh, Dan calls this, and I love this term, cash confidence. But it's really using a financial advisor to have security. And one of the things, uh, the last time I was on with you, Louis, we Talked about there's 59.2% of entrepreneurs who want to switch advisors because they don't believe they have that security. And that's kind of the foundation. And this is why you're never going to read a more friendly financial advisor book for entrepreneurs than this. Because in our coaching program, we're developing workshops and so on to bring this message out. And then the second level is where now we saw. And there were four levels. And this was really. Dan and I identified five points. Four percent of these entrepreneurs that were just killing it and they were going through all four levels. The second level was energy for expansion. They were very motivated. You know, they were excited about getting up and, and really the intellectual property. And Dan's been one of the big leaders in this is so much of what we know. And, uh, as I go through this too, I want every one of the advisors to think about it's not only your entrepreneurial clients. This is for you too, is having this intellectual property, getting it out of your head. So your business is not, uh, founder dependent or personality dependent. You've got this enterprise. And then the third level where it really took off was collaboration and multiplication. And Dan talked about the power of community. And this is so big. And for advisors, the community is often working with other professionals. The accountants, the attorneys, the investment bankers. Matter of fact, when we survey, we found that 40% of the people with 25 million or more that they invest with an advisor came through an investment banker. So creating that community, teamwork, having the right team, and then autonomy. Can you step away from your practice? The entrepreneurs step away 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, making that independence, moving from the founder dependent to the enterprise. And the last level was exponential. And this is, you know, all along the way, the AI opportunities to accelerate this and augment this is really real. But the agency where, you know, the blue ocean, creating new markets, then getting the commitment and courage. And at each of these levels, we saw different entrepreneurs just really taking off. And one of the things that's so important, Louis, for what we're talking about today, is advisors. All are ready to treat stage one, the foundation for freedom, but they don't really understand the other stages. And that's really what entrepreneurs want. So if you want to work in this market, it's very important for you to understand what you can do to help. You know, the difference is often for an entrepreneur, a three to five multiplier versus 15, the level one or stage one to stage four. And this is where it gets really exciting.

Speaker A: Yes, this would be A question for John. You found, and he's mentioned it, that only 5.4% of entrepreneurs operate as architects versus optimizers. Can you explain the difference between those two Personas?

Speaker D: Well, I'm going to set up the research and let Dan, you uh, know, really bring it home. But Dan and I came up with this framework, the greater game and the 10 multipliers. And we've got that and we're putting it in order and we wanted to really confirm and everything we do is empirical research. So we reached out to a thousand very successful entrepreneurs. 10 16. And it became very clear that the 5.4% of them were actually executing on all these levels and they were just distancing everyone else. And what we, we came up with and you know, and this was, Dan uh, mentioned it earlier the, his book 10x is easier than 2x. But we said, you know what we're seeing and we've got a whole bunch, I think it's 26 stories in the book of entrepreneurs. We're seeing so many people blow this out that 100x is easier than 2. And it forces a whole different mindset where if you're optimizing you're, you kind of look in incrementally. But when you step back as an architect, big picture. Wow. Huge opportunity both for entrepreneurs and advisors that are entrepreneurs to make a real big difference. This is something you've really coached to and had the privilege of working with thousands of entrepreneurs, helping them on that journey.

Speaker C: Yeah. One of the things that was confusing for me, Lou, when I first started coaching because everybody who came into coach, you remember when, you know, you came into your first Chicago workshop, that everybody in the room was motivated. I'm not a motivational speaker. Uh, I don't have to motivate the entrepreneurs who are in coach. They're already motivated. It's the problem is the focus of their ambition and focus. And what we discovered was that there were two types that showed up. I didn't really understand it, but they're what I call status oriented entrepreneurs. And what they are, when they were a kid, they didn't have anything. Their family wasn't at the top of the pole when they were born. They grew up in a certain community, but there were certain people who lived in the right part of town and they had really big houses and everything about their lifestyle was way above everybody else in the lifestyle. And they saw the lack of what they had because of the way they were born that they were going to match it. But the matching was based in not only what the big home looks like, they've got other homes, they've got vacation homes, they belong to clubs. There's clubs for the winners and the losers aren't part of those clubs. Golf courses and boating clubs and everything else. And what I noticed was their motivation was simply to get to that point where they had the same sort of status and they're interesting for a while, but once they've gotten to that level of status, they're not interesting anymore. They go on cruise control at that point and they just want to stay within that framework. But the really interesting entrepreneurs, and we really highlight them in the book, are people. It's just about growth. So when they get to one level, they say, that's great. Okay, now I've got a new baseline and now I want to grow even further. And we have one story very, very interesting. When he came into my Chicago workshop, I met him and he said, well, you know, he said, I've got a big engineering company. This is Paul Van Dyne, he's out of the Quad City area of Iowa. Um, and he says, my ambition for your program is for three years. I'm just going to plan my retirement. And I said, well, we've got some thoughts about that. So I said, just do your first workshop and we'll talk about it 90 days from now. And he came back and he had an entirely different game plan. And he's grown basically 250 times in his last 13 years. He's completely transformed the industry that he's in. And he had this growth. So what we're looking for in the greater game, we're looking for those entrepreneurs who are already successful, but they don't see any stopping point. They'll grow to one level. And then they say, okay, that's the new baseline. Now, uh, I grow to another level. Meanwhile, three years ago, what happened is the world got a new capability called AI. AI, you're not talking 10 times if you use it properly. I mean, a lot of people are in the very early stages here, but we can see the ones who are applying it for growth. John has set up an entirely research structure just to measure the people. And what are the people who are just motivated by growth. They don't see any stopping point, they don't see any retirement age they're destroying. They're in better health now than they were when they started their ambition. One of the great breakthroughs we're having now is the impact of AI on physical fitness and health right now. And so you have 70 year olds now who are way more ambitious at 70 than they were at 50. So we think a whole new world is being created in front of us. But there isn't the research to measure what the real winners of this new game are actually doing. And the greater game is a lot of strategic coach thinking tools. But it's also the phenomenal research that, uh, John is doing. And we're measuring exactly what are these people who just constantly grow, what are they actually doing?

Speaker D: Louis, if I can jump in, I want to go back to Paul just for a second because he was going to do something classical and even when I, Dan is also my coach and I was going to do something similar. Paul told Dan that he was going to retire at 65 and his wife and he were going to open up a little mom and pop coffee shop. And the reason so many of the entrepreneurs are caught in the kind of a 2x optimization is they're grinding it out. They're working harder to be more successful and the desire to do that isn't very high. That's why you retire. On the other hand, what we found, the ones working on 100x are building platforms and ecosystems. They're architected. And as we were writing the book, CEG grew by 58%. I'm going to give a lot of credit to the book because as, ah, Dan and I were working on the processes, I wanted to walk all the talks. This is where the world is changing. I want everybody to think, as a financial advisor, you're being served twice, one with a greater gain. They don't care about a few basis points on returns. That's table stakes. So much of the level one is taking care of the investment side, mitigating taxes, taking care of the heirs, protecting the assets. Some charitable planning, maybe shoot in, some succession planning. I can tell you only 6% of the entrepreneurs actually feel they're getting that from you. But that's only level one. If you can help them from each of the stages, stage one through four, and help them create that vision, they're going to love you to death. Because many of them want to continue in this path and create tremendous value, bigger impact. Not creating legacies in the sense of enduring legacies, but active legacies. And, uh, you know, like last year, my wife and I set up a private foundation. I called it the Greater Game Foundation. I just love this so much that the difference that you can make, and I want to do it while I'm living, not why, you know, I'm gone. Tyson. I think that's one. Dan And I very much share.

Speaker A: Awesome. Um, you wrote the book 10x is easier than 2x, but now you're claiming 100x is easier than 2x. How can that be the case?

Speaker C: The interesting thing, one of my points of proof on the original idea, the 10 times mind expander, I use a lot of what the entrepreneurs have already done to prove the future. In other words, I said, you'll remember the exercise, Lou. And I said, I want you to pick your best number. Like everybody's got a best number. It's revenue, it's net worth, whatever. And I said, I just want you to multiply by 10. And immediately there's this reaction. He says, you know how hard it was to get to just where I am 10 times? And I said, well, you've already done 10 times. You've probably done 10 times twice. So let's go back to the beginning. When were you 1/10 of where you are right now? And they can nail it. You know, they can tell you the year, they can tell you the month when they were one tenth of where they were. And I said, let's write the actual structure that got you from 1 10th to where you are right now. And there's five stages. And usually it's an event, it's a new relationship, and all of a sudden they get a big ch. And we measure as entrepreneurs, size of check is a good scorecard. When you're first starting, you got a $10,000 check. That was the biggest check. But about five years later, you get a hundred thousand dollars check. And all of a sudden it seems strange at breakfast, but by dinner you've normalized the idea. Well, um, you know, I know what it's like to get a, you know, a hundred times, a much bigger check, a 10 times check. And so I have them create five growth stages that took them from where they were 1 10th to where they are right now. And, and I said, now let's go back and talk about doing 10 times more. And what they recognize 80% who've got them 10 times, the first time is going to be the same. It's relationship. It's having a great team, it's having a simple approach that always works. And it's about the kind and customer. It's not about them. It's about who is it that you're being a hero to in the marketplace. Because the truth is, people don't want to have a lot of relationships as they grow. They'd like to have one relationship to grow. They'd like to have an advisor who's growing with them. Okay, so. But then John introduced me to the whole world of AI, and I said, we're not talking 10 times anymore. We're talking 100 times. I said, if you apply this new form of thinking, because it is an entirely new form of thinking to what you're doing right now, you can see that 10 times is going to happen just by doing three or four things where you're eliminating waste, you're, uh, eliminating things that just don't work anymore, changing relationships, changing teamwork, changing collaborations in the marketplace. But meanwhile, this new world of thinking is making you healthier, it's making you more fit. So where before you thought you wouldn't have the energy at 70, you now have more energy at 70 than you had at 50. So you're the only one who says when it's going to stop. I'm 82. In three weeks, we're having this thing. I'm 82, and I'm way more ambitious at 82 than I was at 52. And, uh, the world is. Because the world outside, in terms of technological capability and access, is way, way bigger in my 82nd year than it was in my 52nd year. And I love the growth. And I have to tell you that the greatest point where AI is going to have the impact is going to be making money. You know, the big titans, the Metas, the Googles, the Nvidias, what do they have in common? It's about the money. And where AI is being applied most is how you do new things with money. So that's where the Hundred Times now comes from. I've normalized it. I said, we're not talking a, uh, ten times game anymore. We're talking a hundred times game. But the number on the scoreboard isn't the issue. The scoreboard is, are you actually having fun?

Speaker A: Yeah. We call it living your best business life. That's our major barometer in charge. John, I don't know if you could pull up your slides again, but I want to talk about the bridge between stage two in your pyramid to stage three. So that's, um, from expertise into scalable property. Can you explain how this relates to a financial advisor or an independent business owner and why this concept is so important for the valuation of a business?

Speaker D: The book, it's written for entrepreneurs, but I wanted to create some bridges while we're together with Lewis on really what's going on for financial advisors and how you can help them. So if they're at our stage one, Dan, and my stage one of The Greater Game. And they want to go to two, what they're kind of dreaming oftentimes. And uh, we want to help them begin creating the architectural structure. And as an advisor, this is really, you're going to encourage everybody to read chapter two, the Greater Security. It talks about really the VFO virtual family office structure that they want. And, and you got to help them get financially solid building personal wealth outside of the business tax, estate, insurance, business sector. That's what we all do today. Then though, uh, if they want to move from level two to three, what we find over and over again, advisors are not equipped to do this because what we're taking is that founder, where everything's in its head. We're now helping them move from just having that expertise to having scalable property. This is that codifying the process, uh, building IP that's transferable and this is where the real valuation changes. Now I'm not asking financial advisors to be the IP experts, but what the entrepreneurs want is they want somebody to help them curate and then coordinate between each of these levels. We go from three to four, that the founder is indispensable, oftentimes at three. Now we want the team there to be invincible. And it's not just the individual team, you know, as Dan was talking about, it's the community. The collaboration is where this really takes off. The noise of AI, uh, is making it harder to market. But by partnering, particularly as financial advisors, we can very quickly have groups. I mean one of the reasons why I'm collaborating with Dan, I want to work help our financial advisors, uh, work with entrepreneurs. Dan wants that research. So this is the natural collaboration. But they're interested here at governance, self managing teams. I mean one of the things that strategic coach is brilliant at, the pre transaction they want and, and what we find so often is the, the indispensable discount. I mean so many businesses sell, if they sell it all, they're selling for three to five times multiplier. Not advisory, but traditional businesses. Well if you can make it to four, all of a sudden you're now talking uh, 10 to 15 times multipliers. And think of it as if I'm a buyer and I've been involved in 50 some transactions. What happens is if the business is the guy, the gal, they're the business, then you're buying a very expensive job type thing. So let's just keep a simple one there. They're having a couple million dollars of ebitda. Well uh, and let's say the high range of that, you know five times EBITDA is $10 million. Well, the difference at 15 times, you know, 2 million is 30. No. A few basis points I don't really care about. I really care about capturing that difference. There's a machine working without. I can buy that machine and generate that cash flow. And it's also taking advantage of the vision. And then when we get to level four, this is where most advisors make the biggest mistake is I've won, I'm at level four. I've got tremendous wealth, okay. But I'm now looking at significance and I do want to go. It's not enduring legacy. I'm looking for, I'm looking at her active legacy. I'm looking for family governance. Do I to continue to build like Dan. And I'm doing, you know, at 70, I'm building the business so I can continue doing it as long as I want to do it. At the same time, I'm also, and I love the impact we have, and I know you do too, Louis, uh, for the impact you have, why not build a platform that's going to allow you to do that as long as you want to do that. And if you don't want to do it, let's create the most value to transfer. When you start having conversations like that with families, uh, entrepreneurial families, it just changes. And very few advisors can do that. And that's, you know, what we're finding. We have a coaching company, training company, we train those things. You know, they're winning Quite honestly almost 100% of the time because entrepreneurs didn't know that was available to them.

Speaker A: Interesting. It seems like the difference between stage two in your pyramid to leap to stage three or four, that seems like um, a pretty massive pivot point for valuation, for building a scalable business, having a self managing company, et cetera. Do you find or have you seen that advisors or entrepreneurs that are in stage two themselves, they kind of pattern match when they're working with their own clients and kind of manage their own clients into stage two. Or is it not really connected?

Speaker D: I think, uh, once you get at the bigger picture and see the greater game, you can help your clients, uh, that very small percentage. Remember it was only 5.4 of when we surveyed successful entrepreneurs who are actually playing the greater game, all four levels, the 10 greater multipliers. So I think what we tend to do is we get stuck on what we can do and you know, all the training is for level one for financial advisors. We don't know how to guide them through the other levels. And really, you know, the big difference from two to three, Dan and I've talked about this a lot and I think Dan's one of the biggest champions of this is collaboration, putting together strategic partnerships. It could be with your competitors. You know, this is for entrepreneurs competitors. It could be various, uh, vendor partnerships, but the ability to open up markets that way. When you have now put together in level two, the, your IP value creation is huge. For advisors, it's putting together partnerships with centers of influence. When we survey top financial advisors, 70% of their buy best clients came through COI centers of influence with accountants, attorneys, investment bankers and so on. Well, let's do it on purpose, be successful on purpose.

Speaker A: Dan, question for you. In all your experience working with successful financial advisors, insurance producers, probably any entrepreneur, what do you feel are the most common things that folks do unintentionally to really hurt their enterprise value, even long before or if ever they decide to sell their business?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, uh, the biggest thing is they stay entirely within their industry. One of the first questions that we ask our entrepreneurs when they come into the program and where you see it most is in the professions. Lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects. I'll say, well, what is it that you are? And they'll say, well, I'm a lawyer, I'm a tax lawyer. And I said, are you a tax lawyer or are you an entrepreneur who has a specialty in tax law? Okay, it makes a big difference because if you see yourself as a tax lawyer, then you're saying that you're a better paid factory worker, you're a manual laborer. But if you're an entrepreneur, it's a fairly recent idea. In human history there's always been entrepreneurs, but it wasn't until about the beginning of the 1800s that you start seeing this really different class of people in the marketplace who, it didn't matter how they were born, they were taking advantage of some new multiplier technology. Steam power being a great example. Around 1800, steam power came on and um, anybody who had a bright vision for themselves and had, you know, had the wherewithal, uh, to figure out what needs could be satisfied with a new technology. All of a sudden they became rich. They became rich. And it was very disruptive because up until then it was based on aristocracy and you were born into wealth or you're born into poverty. There was no crossover. So what we're saying is anybody who comes in as strategic coach, I said, I'm not going to tell you anything about your particular industry. I said, you know, all the best Practice people in your industry and they have workshops and they have conferences and you go to them. But they don't know how to be entrepreneurs. You know how to create a really well paying job, but you haven't created a company. Company's a totally different realm. And I would say the vast majority of entrepreneurs, 95% of entrepreneurs haven't really created a company. They've just created a really well paying job which requires their presence and their attendance. I said, you don't get any payout for your company. If you're the company. You need to have a structure. I'll give you an example. We started the company in 1989 and we're about 270 times what our first year revenues were. And that was a great year. I uh, was very happy for the first year, but we're about 270 times along the way. What I did is I created other coaches. So it wasn't just Dan the coach. So we have 16 other coaches. And I'll give you a little example. 1994, that year our company did 144 workshop days, 36 per quarter. One coach, me. Last year we did 600 workshop days and I did 12. 588 were done by other coaches. And uh, coaches are great. They're clients who have coaching instincts and they do it. So about four years ago I met one of our clients who's an M and a specialist and I laid out all the facts just in conversation. You know, this is our revenues, we have no debt, it's repeatable income around 70% is repeatable for one year. I put the whole structure together and I said so right off the top. And I don't have any relatives on staff. The first thing they look for any relatives working for you. And he gave me a number. It was a big number. It was probably four times revenue for that year. He said, we got a lot of structures. Then something happened in the marketplace and this is a great breakthrough that the U.S. patent office sometime in the last 10 years recognized that up until about 10 years ago, to get a patent you had to have a technological component for what you were doing. Sometime in the last 10 years the patent bureau has decided that the Internet is the technological component. So they've introduced education and entertainment as patentable processes. So in the last three years we've gotten 82 patents, 82 patents. And these are our uh, thinking tools. You know, you know, lifetime extender free focus and buffer days. You know, the routine that you learn the first three days. And we've got 82 of them. We're averaging about 25. I get a new patent about every two weeks. So I saw this M and A specialist, and I said, this has happened in the last three years. And he said, immediately, it, uh, doubles the valuation of your company. So what John's saying here, as you go through the four stages, more and more, you get paid for your creativity. Retail. You get paid for your retail. But if you structure it, you record it, you package it, it is even greater than what you got paid for your creativity.

Speaker A: Super interesting personal anecdote and appreciate you sharing that, because that definitely did drive the point home for me. I see the applicability to probably any industry, but especially to any financial advisor.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker A: The best RIA firms, the best advisors, they pretty much all start off with a, uh, cult of personality, founder who's the rainmaker. And then the practices that really grow in scale and are valuable are more platforms. That's what private equity wants to invest in. And those are the firms that get the higher multiples.

Speaker C: Yeah. So the big thing is there's a really, really great ip, he's in our program and he's made the breakthrough. And he's the first IP lawyer that doesn't charge by the hour, he charges by the patent. If the IP lawyer charges by the hour, it's a very slow patent. If he charges by the patent, it's a very fast patent. But the big thing, he showed a slide that in, uh, just big corporations, 1980, you took big corporate Fortune 500, the S&P 500, more than 80% of their valuation was tangible. It was property, it was real estate, it was fleets, it was equipment. Last year, 80%, more than 80% were intangibles. It was your ideas. Intellectual. If you look at Elon Musk, it's all intellectual capital. If you look at Meta, you look at anything, it's intellectual. Uh, it's not tangibles. So we've entered into that new world and AI introduces that, uh, new world. It's new processes, new structures, you know, new approaches, and it's really interesting. It's hard for entrepreneurs to get their idea that your creativity is actually property.

Speaker A: It sounds like the ultimate challenge for anyone listening is translate your process, your ideas, the stuff that you're doing by instinct, as you both had said, and turn it into something patentable or something repeatable that another advisor, another executive, another owner can pick up and deploy and scale.

Speaker D: We share the process in chapter four. It's the fourth greater multiplier, and we actually share caudwell the attorney that Dan's talking about, his story and the value creation, he's now the major player in that space. And this is where we as advisors were given a two for Dan and Lewis, is that you can help your clients, but you can do this yourself too. You've been involved in a number of large transactions. The difference. I had a $2 billion advisory practice. I sold in 98 and we sold for 16 times earnings. And a big part of it, we were in that blue ocean. We had agents we created and strategic process that would run without me. And it uh, type thing. And it continued to grow and went for about tenfold what I sold for a number of years later. This is something that's very real.

Speaker A: Absolutely. How about for the. They got two more questions for you guys. I know you're both, you're both busy. For an advisor who feels like they've won the growth game, right? They, they grow 10, 15, 20% per year. They're charged up. They're on the Barron's list, the Forbes list. They're hitting their aum. Um, milestones. They built an amazing team. They have have a family member in the business. They have everything that anyone could want. What does the next game look like for them? What's the next frontier? Once you've achieved all those things that from the outside looking in seems like you have it all, what's the next game to play?

Speaker D: Well, we're going to both say the greater game, but the.

Speaker C: Well, tell them about the dashboard, John, because, uh, the book is just part of the deal here. It gives you the landscape. There's a great tool that comes with the book. So tell them about the dashboard.

Speaker D: Really what we wanted do is make this, you know, to create kind of a community just around the book. And Dan and I and team built a dashboard, uh, we call it. We were very creative on naming the GreaterGame dashboard.com you can go in and we're now doing studying every month over 500 successful entrepreneurs. We have that data in here. You'll be able to see how you compare at each of these stages, the four stages, the 10 multipliers. And you're going to get specific recommendations for this is for entrepreneurs. But it's again, you should do it. If you're a financial advisor, you have an equity ownership, you should definitely be doing it as well. And one of the things that we see over and over again, and Louis, you probably see this a lot in the conversations. You know, they have advisors, uh, who have already won. They don't know what the next game is. And it's easy to check out at that point, it's easy to frustrate the next generation of leaders and so on. If you take the time to really see what the opportunities are and architect to realize that vision you can create, whether it's selling the practice, creating tremendous value there, or designing a role for yourself. Maybe it's executive chairman type for that business that you can guide it with the vision and what you've brought in strategy. But bring that team up that's going to create so much value, so much impact, and you can design it for the life that you want. And that's where I get very excited.

Speaker A: I can hear the passion in your voice. Dan, let's finish with you. Given all of your experience working with entrepreneurs, advisors, business owners, et cetera, what's the one move that you've seen the most successful entrepreneurs in your orbit make that's changed the trajectory of their firms and their life more than anything else?

Speaker C: I'll answer it in a little, uh, roundabout way. Periodically I have, um, a thinking tool. I said, said. If everything was taken away from you as an entrepreneur and they moved you a thousand miles away, what's the one thing that you would take with you? It has to be portable. So what is the most portable thing that you have that you would start over again with the greatest value that you had created previously? What would it be? And then you would rebuild what you've already created, but you would do it much faster. What would be the one thing? It's an interesting thought, but in our concept, it's called unique ability, that there's something about you as an individual that first of all gave you enough confidence to become an entrepreneur. Because it's risky. It's a risky proposition. You know, it's guessing and betting, and it's risky business. And it's unique ability. So the starting point for all growth in strategic coach is that there's something about you that's absolutely unique. You don't have any competitors on this. And it has two qualities. One is that you're so good at it, you don't take it seriously. I mean, you've done this since you were a child, and it just comes to you naturally. And you don't see the significance of it when you're in coach, you start seeing the significance of it. And the second thing is you just absolutely love doing it. It's, uh, what you love doing most of all. It comes to you naturally. You don't even have to think about it. And then you Begin to realize that anything else you're doing as the founder and the owner of your company, probably somebody else can do. So you're doing 20 things, but really you should be doing three things. The other 17 things still need to be done, but not by you. And that's the breakthrough.

Speaker A: True.

Speaker C: You have to simplify in order to multiply.

Speaker A: I absolutely love that. I know when I was in coach that was, that was my biggest takeaway or realization was figuring out what my unique ability was. Because I think the two components, they're so critical. Just because you're good at something, if you don't like it, then you shouldn't build a company around it. And that shouldn't be what you should be doing. It should be the things that you're world class at, you don't have competition in, but at the same time you actually enjoy it. It lights you up, lets you get out of bed, et cetera.

Speaker C: I've got a uh, client in July, I'll see him in July. And he started with me, this is before I actually started the workshop program. This when I was still doing one on one client. He's a wealth manager here in Toronto and I've seen him every quarter for 39 years and he's way over a hundred times what he was there and he says I gotta get simpler, I gotta get simpler. He says I'm doing too much and everything. So this is almost 120 quarters he's done this. He's 75, he runs six marathons a year. He's automatically guaranteed Boston, he's automatically guaranteed London, he's automatically guaranteed New York and everything like that. And just remarkable getting started. Yeah, he's 72, 73, says, you know, it just gets better as you go along. One, ah, interesting statistic. And I don't think John, I've actually told you this. So the US is the best researched economy in the world. The number of research looking at how Americans perform is really interesting. But they take the decades with entrepreneurs so they have from 10 to 20 entrepreneurs, growth of entrepreneurs 10 years old and then they go up. Through the decades, the biggest percentage of change in any decade is from 70 to 80. There's been more new entrepreneurs growing between 70 and 80 than any other decade as a percentage. And the reason is because it's mostly idea work that we're doing right now. We're not doing manual labor anymore, we're doing idea work. And these are individuals who say I love what I'm doing. I'm um, more useful. They've worked for someone else for 70 years and then they become an entrepreneur and of course AI is helping them do this. So we're in a vastly new world now. 82 years. This is the biggest change that I've seen just in the last three years. It's just a new world and the greater game is now possible. The greater game that John is structure. What uh, he's structured in this game was not possible 25 years ago and it's possible now.

Speaker A: That's a great charge to everyone listening and a good reminder to pick up a copy of his book. I know I certainly will. I would normally ask you where to buy it, but I assume Amazon and just Google it or ChatGPT and I'm sure you can find it.

Speaker D: It'll be in all the bookstores.

Speaker A: There we go. Thank you both.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: As a financial advisor advisor, you hold yourself to the highest standards of integrity, honesty and credibility. You are successful because you take your professional responsibility seriously and are dedicated to your clients. But are you living your best business life? Are your goals aligned with your firm's m or could a better option exist? Should I Stay or Should I Go? Is a book written with you in mind. It's a a self guided journey that walks you through the key steps that we take with our advisor clients. This strategic thought process and roadmap to professional self discovery is designed to help you ask the right questions and think critically and objectively whether you're considering change or not. Learn how to get your copy at diamond-consultants.com/the book.