Strategic Podcast Network

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Channel • 6 Shows

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Updated Biweekly
Self-Improvement

Self-Improvement

Updated Weekly
Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Updated Monthly
Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Updated Biweekly
Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Updated Jul 29
Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Updated May 20

2d ago

Who We’re Looking For

For over five decades, Strategic Coach® co-founder Dan Sullivan has been coaching talented, successful, ambitious entrepreneurs. In this episode, Dan shares insights from his new book, Who We’re Looking For, as he and business coach Shannon Waller define the kind of entrepreneur who gains the most from joining The Strategic Coach® Program. Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode: How Dan discovered and describes the coaching instinct he was born with.Why The Strategic CoachProgram is designed exclusively for entrepreneurs.How Strategic Coach structures and processes can support an entrepreneur’s lifetime growth.How an entrepreneur’s ambition can create isolation—and what to do about it.How Strategic Coach and its members create a true collaboration, not a transactional relationship. Show Notes: Who you are is often easier for someone else to see, especially when they’re watching you in action and noticing what consistently works for you. Your life is made up of hundreds and thousands of experiences, and the patterns of what works and what doesn’t reveal your real talents and direction. The entrepreneurs who thrive in Strategic Coach are the ones who have chosen to base their income on their own effectiveness in the marketplace. Entrepreneurs have the strongest connection to their ambition because they’ve taken full responsibility for creating their own opportunities and results. Strategic Coach has coached over 25,000 entrepreneurs, and some members have been in the Program for more than 35 years, treating it as their entrepreneurial home. The ideal Strategic Coach member is talented, successful, highly ambitious, and never wants to stop growing their freedom and impact. When the right-fit entrepreneur hears about Strategic Coach, they recognize it immediately as the structure and community they’ve been looking for, which makes getting started simple and fast. In the Strategic Coach community, entrepreneurs collaborate rather than compete, contributing their experiences and insights so everyone grows faster. The biggest danger for entrepreneurs is loneliness, especially when they feel like no one around them really understands their ambition or experience. Most entrepreneurs have had to prove themselves on their own without a process, structure, or environment designed specifically for people who think the way they do. Strategic Coach gives entrepreneurs a space where they can be unabashedly ambitious and surrounded by peers who want them to think even bigger. Fundamental entrepreneurial thinking is different from knowing your industry; it’s a way of seeing opportunities, taking ownership, and creating value regardless of the business you’re in. There’s no point in being a successful entrepreneur unless your success continually increases your sense of personal happiness and agency. Resources: Unique Ability® My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan What Is A Self-Managing Company®? The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management The Impact Filter® Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan
1d ago

How Entrepreneurs Can Publish Books Without It Being A Chore

Dan Sullivan used to write books the hard way: long, lonely hours at the keyboard. In this episode, he explains the small‑book production system he created in 2014—focused ideas, a repeatable structure, and an editorial team that lets him produce a new book every quarter—and shows how entrepreneurs can adopt the same approach. Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode: What first got Dan writing books over 30 years ago.The commitment he made at 70 to write a different kind of book every quarter.Why his new book project stalled just four weeks in.Who the books are for and how they’re meant to be used.How Dan selects each quarter’s book topic. Show Notes: You can choose to write only about ideas your clients have already paid you for and that are proven in the marketplace. Long-term creative goals, like a book every quarter for 25 years, keep you active, productive, and future-focused. Advertising taught Dan to write succinctly by getting a complete message across in just a few seconds or inches of space. Strategic Coach® books are written specifically for Program members and for their associates who may want to join. Every quarterly book follows the same structure, with eight chapters, an introduction, a conclusion, and a consistent layout. Short, focused books can reveal which ideas deserve to become bigger, mass market books. Writing a book entirely on your own is often slow, lonely work that doesn’t suit most entrepreneurs. If you maintain your health, you can keep doing meaningful creative work for your entire lifetime. When a company pays you to advise its people, your recommendations can be constrained by the organization’s agenda. Most entrepreneurs get better results by collaborating with an interviewer or editor who can draw out their ideas. When you’re stuck on a project, asking a capable team member to take over the “How” can instantly create momentum. Resources: The 21st Century Agent by Dan Sullivan The Entrepreneur's Guide To Time Management Wanting What You Want by Dan Sullivan The Impact Filter® Who Not How by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy
Jul 28

Grow Your Company By Growing Yourself, with Teresa Easler

What does it take to build a business around only what you love doing? In this episode, Shannon Waller sits down with long-time Program Coach Teresa Easler to talk entrepreneurship, Unique Ability®, and designing a Self-Managing Company® that supports your best work. Teresa explains how better boundaries, courageous decisions, and seeing your business as intellectual property can change the way you lead and grow. Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode: How Teresa first discovered Strategic Coach® through a surprise cold call from Shannon.How a move and lack of corporate options pushed her to start her own business.How she shifted from a gourmet cheesecake business into high-impact communication coaching.What big decisions she and her husband made to launch their company.What mindset shift led her to create Connect To The Core as a Unique Ability business. Show Notes: Most entrepreneurs can trace their roots back to childhood experiments in selling, serving, and creating value. Sometimes we choose entrepreneurship and sometimes life pushes us into it, but the result can be the same: freedom and growth. You can design a business where you do only what you truly love and are uniquely great at. Real communication isn’t just data exchange; it’s genuine connection and partnership with the person you’re talking to. Entrepreneurs need strong communication both in the marketplace and inside the company with their teams. It’s almost impossible to clearly communicate your value on your own because you’re too close to your own business story. You can decide you won’t work with anyone you wouldn’t genuinely enjoy spending time with. Learning to say no is a courage muscle that keeps your life and business simpler and more profitable. Saying “yes” too quickly creates obligations without real commitment, which leads directly to messes and drama. Treating your ideas and frameworks as intellectual property lifts you out of just selling products and services. When you build a Unique Ability-focused team, you can take more time off while your company keeps growing. Resources: Unique Ability® The Entrepreneur's Guide To Time Management The 4 C’s Formula by Dan Sullivan What Is A Self-Managing Company®?
Jul 22

Why It’s Worth The Entrepreneurial Risk, with Maria Callahan

Maria Callahan owns a tax advisory firm and has redesigned it around entrepreneurial freedom. Here, she shares how shifting from “professional accountant” to “entrepreneur,” pruning wrong-fit clients, and using Strategic Coach® tools helped her build a lean, right‑fit firm where tax season is calm, her time is protected, and the business supports the life she actually wants. Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode: How boredom led Maria to entrepreneurship.The risks and sacrifices she made to start her own business.What first drew Maria into accounting.Why she enjoys working with taxes and tax planning.How Strategic Coach has been a pivotal part of her life over the past few years. Show Notes: Professional accountants tend to get hardwired to believe there’s only one “right” way to do accounting. Strategic Coach members recognize how their industry operates, but deliberately design businesses that operate in a way that makes sense for them. Once you’re credentialed, you can choose to be an entrepreneur whose specialty happens to be accounting. The joy of entrepreneurship is focusing on what you love doing, what you’re best at, and the clients you love working with. Not every customer or client is right for you, and accepting that lets you eliminate wrong-fit work and stress from your business. Sometimes the best move is to stop offering products or services that distract you from what you do exceptionally well. Real leadership involves making time to think about your business, where it’s going, and who will be on the journey with you. Focus Days™ are for money‑making activities, Buffer Days™ are for setup and support work, and Free Days™ are 24 hours with zero work. Either you take Free Days intentionally, or your body will eventually force you to take them. Doing everything yourself is one of the most exhausting and expensive habits an entrepreneur can have. If you never challenge your own beliefs about work and success, you’ll never step outside the limits they create. Strategic Coach members learn from each other because they’re in different industries but face remarkably similar challenges. Resources: Unique Ability® The Entrepreneur's Guide To Time Management Who Not How by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy Tax-Free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright Kolbe Transforming Experiences Into Multipliers The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy The Positive Focus®
Aug 6

Connect The Dots: Make Teamwork Easier And More Successful

Do you take time to connect the dots for your team, or leave them guessing at the bigger picture? In this episode, Shannon Waller explains why context is one of the most valuable things a leader can give. Learn how a few simple communication habits can prevent confusion and missed handoffs, move things forward faster, and give your best projects more momentum. Download Episode Transcript Show Notes: Great teamwork starts with context because people do their best work when they understand the bigger picture and where their piece fits. Don’t assume people already know what you know; this creates confusion, missed handoffs, and unnecessary frustration. Explain why something matters before you dive into what needs to be done so team members can make better, more confident decisions. Point out who’s involved, who decides, and who needs to be kept in the loop so nothing gets dropped. Ask yourself, “What’s missing here?” before you move ahead because one missing person or detail can stall everything. Make introductions and connections for people instead of leaving them to figure out the maze on their own; great leaders remove friction by making the right introductions at the right time. The more context you share, the less your team hesitates, second-guesses, or duplicates effort. When people feel informed and included, they show up more confidently and take ownership of their piece. The goal is not just communication, but momentum: helping the team move faster with less confusion and more ownership. Connecting the dots is one of the simplest ways to make teamwork easier, more strategic, and more successful. Resources: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug Unique Ability®
Jul 2

Failure Is The Fuel To Power Your Next Breakthrough

Failure never feels good, but trying to dodge it or downplay it keeps you from learning what you most need as an entrepreneur. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explore why you should let failure be failure, fully feel the emotion, and then transform that energy into better thinking, better timing, and bigger progress. Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode: Why people sometimes avoid thinking about a failure. Why you should allow yourself to fully experience your first failure. Where entrepreneurs set themselves up for the most unhappiness. The new Strategic Coach® thinking tool that shows you how you handle your failures and your breakthroughs. Show Notes: If you don’t learn from your failure, you’ll fail the same way again. When you fail, let yourself feel the full negative emotion once, then use that energy to decide what you’ll do differently next time. A person who keeps failing at the same thing with no learning and no change in behavior becomes a failure in that area. Repeated failures in the same way can start to erode your sense of who you are as an entrepreneur. Every failure is sending you a message about your thinking, preparation, or timing, and your job is to pay attention to it. How you handle your failures and your breakthroughs determines whether you’re actually functioning as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurism is a daily back and forth between breakthroughs and failures, and both are raw material for new capabilities. Many people try to avoid intense emotion, but dodging the feeling of failure also cuts you off from the insight it could lead to. Most people measure their progress against an ideal, but an ideal is not reality; it’s an unreality that guarantees disappointment. Often the “failure” is not the goal or project itself, but an unrealistic deadline or short game that ignores the actual capabilities and resources you have. Your emotions aren’t attached to what happens outside you; they’re attached to how you choose to think about what happens, which means you can respond creatively instead of reactively. Resources: The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy What You Can Learn From Failure
Jul 29

How To Redefine Your Future Starting Today

AI is redefining what’s possible for experienced entrepreneurs who are willing to think differently, experiment, and take risks again. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explore how AI multiplies both success and dysfunction, why the real edge now belongs to seasoned founders, and how to use AI so your future is bigger than your past. Show Notes: Many successful entrepreneurs start avoiding situations where they could fail, believing they’ve already had all the breakthroughs they need. The real risk isn’t AI itself, but refusing to reinvent how your entrepreneurial life and AI work together. Like the internet in the mid-‘90s, AI can multiply the success you’re already achieving if you choose to engage with it. The comforts of time, money, and experience can quietly erode your willingness to take the risks that create your next breakthroughs. The advantage is shifting toward older, more experienced entrepreneurs who combine decades of judgment and pattern recognition with AI’s raw intelligence. AI is even surprising its creators, which means there’s no established playbook—only entrepreneurs willing to think and experiment. A fast-growing group of entrepreneurial 10‑ to 20‑year‑olds is bypassing formal education and building businesses directly with AI. Experience plus AI creates a “jetpack effect,” letting seasoned entrepreneurs take ideas much further and much faster than ever before. Resources: My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan Unique Ability® 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy The Greater Game by Dan Sullivan and John Bowen The Greater Game Dashboard The Impact Filter® The History of Money: A Story of Humanity by David McWilliams Casting Not Hiring by Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff
May 19

How To Create A Company That Top Talent Never Wants To Leave

Every great entrepreneur wants (and deserves) to have a dependable team around them so they can be freed up to develop new ideas and focus on growing their business. But how do you get one? After all, the first question most entrepreneurs ask when they join The Strategic Coach® Program is, “Where do you find such great team members?” In this episode of Inside Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller finally answer this question in-depth. From identifying and nurturing Unique Ability® within a team and creating a positive and collaborative work culture to investing in team members’ growth, Dan and Shannon share everything that makes Strategic Coach® a magnet for skilled and passionate talent—and how to become one too. Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode: The number one tool necessary for building and maintaining a great team.How to determine if an activity is right for a person.Why Strategic Coach team members don’t really need to be managed, monitored, or motivated.How Strategic Coach creates an incredible sense of safety for its team members.The two things that team members are looking for.Why you should think of hiring someone as an investment, not a cost. Show Notes: At Strategic Coach, you’re always either winning or learning. There are a lot of Coach tools that support having a great team. Everybody's on their own unique growth path in terms of who they are and the kind of work they’re most likely to enjoy and excel at. Strategic Coach team members can continually focus their time at work on doing what they’re excited about. The moment someone is hired, Coach invests in learning about who that person is and how they can grow their skills. At Strategic Coach, if something doesn’t work, the system gets blamed, not the individual. The four core values of Strategic Coach (PAGE) are: positive and collaborative teamwork, being alert, curious, responsive, and resourceful, getting results, and providing an excellent first-class experience. Strategic Coach has uniformly very helpful and very positive staff. Some Coach clients have been with the company for 15, 20, 25 years, and so have some team members. The educational system generally disparages successful business people. Almost all Coach team members are directly in contact on a person to person level with the company’s clients. A team member can’t be at their best if they don’t feel safe. If you want great team members, you have to be a great entrepreneur. And that also includes being a great person. Great team members who want a bigger future aren't interested in being with someone who doesn't have any future. If you're going to be able to attract and retain the best people out there, you can’t have an entitled attitude. Resources: Unique AbilityⓇ Article: Your Business Is a Theater Production: Your Back Stage Shouldn’t Show on the Front Stage The Team Success Handbook by Shannon Waller Everyone And Everything Grows by Dan Sullivan Who Not How by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy
Jan 13

How Great Ideas Win With Technology And Perfect Timing

Wondering how you should be using AI and what will it mean for the future of your business? While the technology feels new, this kind of moment isn’t. Dan Sullivan and Steve Krein explore how today’s AI wave mirrors past major technology shifts, most notably the dot-com era 30 years ago, and what we can learn from those transitions. Show Notes: AI has quickly become impossible to ignore. If you’re not using it at all, you may already be relying on tools that are becoming outdated. Every major technological boom in history has also come with a bust—and AI will be no different. At its core, innovation isn’t about inventing something from nothing. Every new creation is simply a new combination of things that already exist. AI dramatically shortens the distance between vision and execution—often eliminating barriers that once required teams, time, and resources. AI changes how feedback works. You no longer need as many people—or sometimes any people at all—to test ideas, refine thinking, and move forward. To use AI effectively, you must be clear about what you want. The tool amplifies intention; it doesn’t replace it. Of all the goals someone can pursue, making money is one of the most harmless. It’s unpredictable—and potentially dangerous—when consumers suddenly gain powerful new capabilities. The faster you make a thoughtful decision about how you’ll engage with AI, the more freedom and leverage you’re likely to gain in return. Resources: Thinking About Your Thinking by Dan Sullivan Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future by Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato Unique Ability® Free Zone Frontier by Dan Sullivan
Jul 14

The Entrepreneur’s Playbook For Mastering AI Without Anxiety

AI can do a lot of tasks that used to take human effort, but it can’t think about its own thinking. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain why the right response to AI is to become more conscious, discerning, and intentional so you can use technology with clarity and purpose. Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode: Why so many people feel confused and overwhelmed by AI.Why the way most people are reacting to AI is completely normal.How new technology has increased both personal freedom and global complexity.Why AI isn’t the cause of big changes in the world, but the result of them.What “mechanical thinking” means, and how it explains what AI actually does best.What humans can do that AI will never be able to do in the same way.How The Strategic Coach® Program helps you access your own experience and get clear about your thinking. Show Notes: AI is doing work that people used to do manually, but that doesn’t make it original thinking. A lot of everyday thinking is repetitive and mechanical, which is exactly the kind of work AI can handle well. Every interaction with technology that we take for granted now might have been a troubling experience when it was first introduced. AI isn’t new. It's just entered the realm of cognition. Most people think about only three things: things, people, and other people’s thoughts. The fourth level is thinking about your thinking. If you think about your thinking, you’ll become very discerning and masterful in how you use AI. Everyone uses AI for different reasons. A lot of AI’s capabilities probably don’t serve your purposes. To use AI effectively, you need to be clear on your reasons for using it. AI is trying to keep up with humanity, not the other way around. Resources: Shannon Waller’s Team Success Podcast

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