Entrepreneurs need to be ambitious. But what happens when you achieve your ambition? In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain the drawbacks of having ambition as a destination and describe the incredible benefits you can expect when you see ambition as a capability.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why Dan sees ambition as an internal capability.
• Measurements you should be making every day.
• What’s made Dan’s life simpler over time.
• How Dan gifts Strategic Coach® members extra years to their entrepreneurial lives.
• What you need to avoid to be continually ambitious, and why.

Show Notes:

• Ambition is a capability, not a destination.
• Simply by continually improving your ambition each day, you’ll experience exponential growth over time.
• Dan Sullivan feels more ambitious at 80 than he did at 50.
• To strengthen your ambition, it’s important to measure your daily accomplishments and strive for continal growth.
• You can measure your progress not just in achievements, but in the ability to accomplish more in less time with greater impact.
• Ambition itself should be measured in terms of increased capability and confidence.
• Simplifying life by eliminating distractions (like television) can reclaim valuable time for personal development and ambitious pursuits.
• Surrounding yourself with growth-oriented individuals, often younger, can inspire and fuel your ambition.
• To be continually ambitious, there are three things you should avoid: celebrity, retirement, and legacy.
• It’s important to focus on being useful and impactful in the present rather than worrying about future legacy.
• Viewing ambition as a capability can also help you feel more fulfilled personally—and have a greater impact on your community.
• Every day, ask yourself what you can do so that you’re more ambitious tomorrow.
• Being around people who aren’t invested in growth is an obstacle to your ambition.

Resources:

CliftonStrengths®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

For many entrepreneurs who achieve business success early in their lives, repeating that success can be difficult. It’s called the success trap, and in this episode, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller explain what the success trap is, why it’s difficult to escape, and how you can safely avoid falling into it.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why some entrepreneurs eventually go on auto-pilot.
• How experiencing a crisis can actually be beneficial to an entrepreneur.
• Why Dan doesn’t take people who are growing and succeeding in their thirties as seriously as people who are growing and succeeding in their sixties.
• How inheriting wealth can lead to a success trap too.
• What’s allowed Dan to be fitter, healthier, and more ambitious at 80 than he was at 50.

Show Notes:

Entrepreneurs who are motivated solely by status will stop once they reach a certain point.

You can lack purpose and the motivation to keep growing yet still find it hard to make a change because the money is good.

Setbacks can be a wake-up call to reinvent yourself and reclaim your drive.

Success is comfortable, while failure is scary, painful, and frustrating.

Failures are prompts for new learning.

Entrepreneurs who are successful over the long haul have learned how to turn failure into a new form of success.

When someone’s successful early in life, it can be difficult to tell how much of that success was due to their capabilities and character and how much of it was simply investment from others.

For some, entrepreneurism is a freedom only from where they came from.

Status-motivated entrepreneurs are very boring, and usually a bit depressed.

Creating wealth is only valuable because it makes you more capable and confident as an entrepreneur.

You need resistance in order to grow.

Growth has to come from within.

For growth-motivated entrepreneurs, the lifestyle that comes with success is just a happy by-product of their drive, not the destination.

Ambition isn’t a destination, it’s a capability.

The best entrepreneurs want better teamwork so they can achieve greater success, growth, and freedom within their business. But teamwork is even more important and valuable than that. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Shannon Waller discuss the many ways entrepreneurs can take advantage of teamwork, and outline the extraordinary benefits that come with having great teamwork at your company.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• How Dan involves himself less and less with what Strategic Coach® team members are doing.
• Why Dan doesn’t worry about how team members achieve results.
• What opportunities open up for entrepreneurs when they rely on team members.
• The greatest compliment Dan can give a team member.
• How Dan communicates the goals of a new project.
• The three questions Dan asks himself every time he gets an idea for a new achievement.

Show Notes:

The more you work on teamwork, the more you can refine what you’re uniquely good at.

It’s useful to think of your entrepreneurial business as a theater production, regardless of what industry you’re in.

There’s a vast amount of teamwork happening back stage in theater to make the whole production work.

Teamwork on your projects can improve but only if you’re improving too—and providing maximum support to your team members.

We are taught from an early age that we have to do the work on our own goals ourselves.

Instead of taking on an activity yourself, ask who can do it better than you.

At the heart of it, Strategic Coach is designed to get you to think about your thinking.

When you decided to become an entrepreneur, you declared to the world that you’re not going to play other people's games—you’re going to play your own game.

By communicating clearly, you leave so much room open for teamwork.

Generally, when entrepreneurs have a big possibility and they're uncertain about it, they get paralyzed.

Uncertainty is not a lack of confidence. It's just a lack of knowledge or information.

A lot of entrepreneurs live their lives very certain, but not confident.

Don’t try to sell your team on an idea until you’re sold on it yourself.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

Blog: Your Business Is A Theater Production: Your Back Stage Shouldn’t Show On The Front Stage

Book: Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Tool: The Impact Filter™

The Kolbe A™ Index