Dan Sullivan Quotes

Always make your future bigger than your past.

Questions are infinitely superior to answers.

Surround yourself with people who remind you more of your future than your past. —Dan Sullivan

People who spend most of their time putting out fires are usually also the arsonists.

A painting is never finished—it simply stops in interesting places.

Wherever you are, make sure you’re there.

The way to measure your progress is backward against where you started, not against your ideal.” —Dan Sullivan

Someone once told me the definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.

Surround yourself with people who reminds you more of your future than your past.

We remain young to the degree that our ambitions are greater than our memories.

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.” —attributed to Mark Twain

Results, not effort, is the name of the game. You are rewarded in life by the results you produce, not the effort and time you put in.

If greatness is your goal, it can only be achieved today.

Happiness is not something you pursue. Happiness is not somewhere in the future. Decades of scientific research is clear on this point: happiness is where you start, not where you finish.

What are YOU trying to accomplish? Do you have Whos in your life that give you the perspectives, resources, and ability to go beyond what you could do alone? Or are you keeping your goals so small to make them easier to accomplish them on your own?

So in a world where everyone is competing with their answers, how do you differentiate yourself from everyone else? With a question.

Specifically, what dangers do you have now that need to be eliminated, what opportunities need to be captured, and what strengths need to be maximized?

autonomy without clarity is ultimately a disaster.

The only way to make your present better,” said Dan Sullivan, “is by making your future bigger.

Passion is when you are committed to something with no guarantee of any return. ~ Dan Sullivan

The 80 Percent Rule: Done is better than perfect. Dan Sullivan explained, “Eighty percent gets results, while 100 percent is still thinking about it.

If we were having this discussion three years from today, and you were looking back over those three years, what has to have happened in your life, both personally and professionally, for you to feel happy with your progress? Specifically, what dangers do you have now that need to be eliminated, what opportunities need to be captured, and what strengths need to be maximized?

That’s what real leadership is: Creating and clarifying the vision (the “what”), and giving that vision greater context and importance (the “why”) for all Whos involved. Once the “what” and “why” have clearly been established, the specified “Who” or “Whos” have all they need to go about executing the “How.” All the leader needs to do at that point is support and encourage the Who(s) through the process.

That’s what real leadership is: Creating and clarifying the vision (the “what”), and giving that vision greater context and importance (the “why”) for all Whos involved.

When you choose freedom over security, then you embrace a life where you choose exactly what you want, rather than vying for what you think you need.

Maybe it was because I was always trying to fill a spiritual hole with a material thing.

Everything in life happens FOR you, not TO you.

your attention is the most valuable property you can ever possess.

It’s more satisfying to be useful now than to be remembered later.

Personal confidence comes from making progress toward goals that are far bigger than your present capabilities.

Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.

Three great obstacles to progress: guilt, envy, and resentment.

Sometimes the greatest scientific breakthroughs happen because someone ignores the prevailing pessimism.” –Nessa Carey, British biologist1

It can be easy to focus on How, especially for high achievers who want to control what they can control, which is themselves. It takes vulnerability and trust to expand your efforts and build a winning team. It takes wisdom to recognize that 1) other people are more than capable enough to handle much of the Hows, and 2) that your efforts and contribution (your “Hows”) should be focused exclusively where your greatest passion and impact are. Your attention and energy should not be spread thin, but purposefully directed where you can experience extreme flow and creativity.

Being in the GAIN means you measure yourself backward, against where you were before. You measure your own progress. You don’t compare yourself to something external. You don’t measure yourself against your ideals.

An obvious challenge people face is that they don’t know what they want. They’re far too busy justifying what they think they need. They haven’t learned to be brutally honest with themselves and others. They’re still living in fear.

The Transforming Self is different from the Authoring Self in that rather than being individualistic and competitive, it is more relational and collaborative. When at this higher level, you engage in collaborative relationships for the sake of transformation. All parties have their own perspectives, beliefs, and agendas. Yet they come together for the purpose of having their own views, and even their own identities and sense of self expand. The whole becomes new and greater than the sum of all parts.

Yet Trump still lacked a big-name, credible Washington attorney on his personal legal team, one with the backing of a powerhouse firm. In an all-hands-on-deck push, Trump’s advisers reached out to Ted Olson, A. B. Culvahouse Jr., Emmet Flood, Robert Giuffra, Paul Clement, and Dan Levin. All of them followed Sullivan’s lead, giving a polite no.

Looking back over the past quarter, what are the things you have achieved that make you the proudest? What are the current areas of focus and progress that make you the most confident? Looking ahead at the next quarter, what new developments, projects, or goals are giving you the greatest sense of excitement? What are the five new “jumps” (progress) you can now achieve that will make your next 90 days a great quarter regardless of what else happens?

Transformational Relationships, as opposed to Transactional ones, are entered into for the purpose of change and growth. In Transformational Relationships, all parties give more than they take. There is an abundance mind-set, and an openness to novelty and change. Rather than viewing people or services as a “cost,” as in the transactional mind-set, everything is viewed as an investment, with the possibility of 10X (10 times), 100X, or even bigger returns and change.

1. Connect with Your Why Start by identifying your key motivations. Why do you want to reach your goal in the first place? Why is it important personally? Get a notebook or pad of paper and list all the key motivations. But don’t just list them, prioritize them. You want the best reasons at the top of your list. Finally, connect with these motivations both intellectually and emotionally. 2. Master Your Motivation There are four key ways to stay motivated as you reach for your goals: Identify your reward and begin to anticipate it. Eventually, the task itself can become its own reward this way. Recognize that installing a new habit will probably take longer than a few weeks. It might even take five or six months. Set your expectations accordingly. Gamify the process with a habit app or calendar chain. As Dan Sullivan taught me, measure the gains, not the gap. Recognize the value of incremental wins. 3. Build Your Team It’s almost always easier to reach a goal if you have friends on the journey. Intentional relationships provide four ingredients essential for success: learning, encouragement, accountability, and competition. There are at least seven kinds of intentional relationships that can help you grow and reach your goals: ​‣ ​Online communities ​‣ ​Running and exercise groups ​‣ ​Masterminds ​‣ ​Coaching and mentoring circles ​‣ ​Reading and study groups ​‣ ​Accountability groups ​‣ ​Close friendships If you can’t find a group you need, don’t wait. Start your own.

If you look at the estate planning industry today, the basic strategy begins with identifying the number of heirs. Why? To divide the estate up amongst as many heirs as possible, utilizing all the gift and transfer techniques. One of the first rules of war is to “divide and conquer.” And so, if I'm dividing the assets up, I'm setting that family up for failure. Our findings show that in all too many situations, traditional planning has done more to destroy families than taxes will ever do. Traditional estate planning operates around the four D's: Divide the assets, defer those assets downstream as far as possible, then dump them on what most times are the ill-prepared heirs, and watch those ultimately dissipate. It's been said that only two percent of family wealth ever makes it past the third generation. So I think that's all you need to know about the effectiveness of traditional estate planning.

He ran long at the White House, and arrived late to his next meeting with Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan and Frank Ruggiero—their first major strategy session on Taliban talks after the secret meeting with A-Rod. She was waiting in her outer office, a spacious room paneled in white and gilt wood, with tasseled blue and pink curtains and an array of colorfully upholstered chairs and couches. In my time reporting to her later, I only ever saw Clinton take the couch, with guests of honor in the large chair kitty-corner to her. She’d left it open for him that day. “He came rushing in. . . . ” Clinton later said. “And, you know, he was saying ‘oh I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’ ” He sat down heavily and shrugged off his coat, rattling off a litany of his latest meetings, including his stop-in at the White House. “That was typical Richard. It was, like, ‘I’m doing a million things and I’m trying to keep all the balls in the air,’ ” she remembered. As he was talking, a “scarlet red” flush went up his face, according to Clinton. He pressed his hands over his eyes, his chest heaving. “Richard, what’s the matter?” Clinton asked. “Something horrible is happening,” he said. A few minutes later, Holbrooke was in an ambulance, strapped to a gurney, headed to nearby George Washington University Hospital, where Clinton had told her own internist to prepare the emergency room. In his typically brash style, he’d demanded that the ambulance take him to the more distant Sibley Memorial Hospital. Clinton overruled him. One of our deputies on the SRAP team, Dan Feldman, rode with him and held his hand. Feldman didn’t have his BlackBerry, so he scrawled notes on a State Department expense form for a dinner at Meiwah Restaurant as Holbrooke dictated messages and a doctor assessed him. The notes are a nonlinear stream of Holbrooke’s indomitable personality, slashed through with medical realities. “Call Eric in Axelrod’s office,” the first read. Nearby: “aortic dissection—type A . . . operation risk @ > 50 percent”—that would be chance of death. A series of messages for people in his life, again interrupted by his deteriorating condition: “S”—Secretary Clinton—“why always together for medical crises?” (The year before, he’d been with Clinton when she fell to the concrete floor of the State Department garage, fracturing her elbow.) “Kids—how much love them + stepkids” . . . “best staff ever” . . . “don’t let him die here” . . . “vascular surgery” . . . “no flow, no feeling legs” . . . “clot” . . . and then, again: “don’t let him die here want to die at home w/ his fam.” The seriousness of the situation fully dawning on him, Holbrooke turned to job succession: “Tell Frank”—Ruggiero—“he’s acting.” And finally: “I love so many people . . . I have a lot left to do . . . my career in public service is over.” Holbrooke cracked wise until they put him under for surgery. “Get me anything you need,” he demanded. “A pig’s heart. Dan’s heart.

Look, there’s absolutely no pressure for you to work with us. This is a two-way interview, and we are both evaluating if it’s a great fit. If you choose a different advisory firm, we will be absolutely fine. We only want to work together if we are excited and 100 percent on the same page for goals and expectations. Being aligned and upfront with each other from day one is crucial to a successful long-term relationship. And in the end, that’s what it’s all about.

You have an ideal in your mind, and you’re measuring yourself against your ideal, rather than against the actual progress you’ve made. This is why you’re unhappy with what you’ve done, and it’s probably why you’re unhappy with everything in your life.

10x quality and transformation is how you race to the top. 2x quantity and competition is how you race to the bottom. Atomic Habits

10x quality and transformation is how you race to the top. 2x quantity and competition is how you race to the bottom.

In the book The Dip, Seth Godin explains the importance and benefits of becoming the best in the world at what you do. As Godin explains in The Dip: “The rewards are heavily skewed, so much so that it’s typical for #1 to get ten times the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the benefit of #100.

The GAP is a habit. It’s a habit we can fall into literally hundreds of times per day. We can spend hours each day in the GAP—unhappy, resentful, regretful.

A core aspect of hope is pathways thinking,23 meaning highly hopeful people continually adjust their pathway until they ultimately find and create a way to their goal, even in the direst of circumstances.24

Almost nothing works for 10x growth, which means if you take it seriously, you’ll have to be a lot more honest about everything you’re now doing. You’ll also have to be far more choosey about the paths you take forward, because only an extremely limited set of approaches or conditions have any connection or efficacy for such a transformation.

To go for easy and simple, you’ll have to let go of everything in your life that is needlessly hard. More specifically, you’ll have to let go of everything you don’t truly want. 10x filters-out literally everything that isn’t 10x, which is most things in your life. If you’re willing to commit and let everything go that you don’t really want, then your life will be infinitely easier, simpler, and more successful than it’s ever been.

In other words, the easiest way to get 2x growth is by going for 10x, because 10x forces you to stop almost everything you’re doing, which is ultimately a waste of time anyway.

It’s not effort that matters, but where that effort is directed.

According to research in economic decision-making, if a person feels they’ve been given an unfair deal, they will often reject the offer entirely, even when doing so leaves them with nothing rather than something.14,15,16 Research shows that people with low emotional intelligence are highly sensitive to “fairness violations.”17 They really want everything to be “totally fair” or “weighted in their favor” or they’ll be upset—essentially throwing a tantrum to get what they want or trying to prove that they’re in control.18 They quickly get emotionally attached to what they believe “should be theirs,” and if they don’t get that, they break down. They go into the GAP because

The more you transform your experiences into learning and growth, the objectively better your experiences will become. By continuously learning, you’ll be enabled to do what your former self couldn’t do. You’ll be able to create what your former self couldn’t create. You’ll be able to have what your former self couldn’t have.

The past is nothing more than the meaning you ascribe to it. Traumatic experiences can be changed. They are not fixed.

What is your long game? When you’re playing the long game, you’re doing what you love.

An ideal can’t be measured. It’s there for emotional, psychological, and intellectual motivation, but it’s not there for measurement.

Social media is articulately designed to subconsciously manipulate people’s identity, their desires, and their behaviors

Social media is articulately designed to subconsciously manipulate people’s identity, their desires, and their behaviors. Put more directly, social media is designed to stop people from becoming self-determined.

By eliminating justification, you recognize that all the energy you were spending comes back in the form of creativity, innovation, and cooperation.

if you’re continually stressed or upset, you’re wearing your physical body down.

prolonged and extended exposure to stress overwhelms your system, which then has to compensate and overwork (i.e., “toxic stress”), which shortens your lifespan.2

being in the GAIN is restorative, healing, and empowering.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Michelangelo continued to take on projects far beyond—impossibly beyond—his skill level. Most people are afraid to commit fully to the 10x process because it inevitably requires letting go of your current identity, circumstances, and comfort zone.

How This Book Will Change Your Life “Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it. This is a power and intelligence that must be continually renewed, or it will die.” — ROBERT GREENE24

It’s scary letting go of the 80 percent because the 80 percent is your comfort zone. It’s your security blanket. It’s what you’ve already mastered and can basically do on autopilot. It’s your paycheck. It’s your identity and how you’re known. It’s your story and your habits.

There’s a quiet confidence that comes from running your own race, from no longer measuring or comparing yourself to others. The philosopher Seneca called it euthymia, which means “That you’re on the right path and not led astray by the many tracks which cross yours of people who are hopelessly lost.”18

Exposure to short-term stress can actually strengthen your cellular response (i.e., “hormetic stress”). Hormetic stress promotes longevity by activating defense mechanisms in your body. However, prolonged and extended exposure to stress overwhelms your system, which then has to compensate and overwork (i.e., “toxic stress”), which shortens your lifespan.2 Put simply: if you’re continually stressed or upset, you’re wearing your physical body down.

Your behaviors before bed are coded into your long-term memory.1 While you’re sleeping, your brain processes everything you experienced that day. But not everything equally. This is why top-performing athletes—like Michael Phelps, the most winning Olympian of all time—create visualizations of success just before they go to sleep.

A fundamental aspect of flexibility is what psychologists call pathways thinking, and it’s the ability to find or create many workable paths to a given outcome.10 The more flexible you are as a person, the more willing you’ll be to try multiple approaches to getting where you want to go. The more rigid you are, the more dogmatically you’ll try forcing the same approach even when it proves unsuccessful. As Einstein is credited with saying: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

Research shows that applying implementation intentions increases your self-control, even when you’re in bad environments.27 Rather than wearing out your willpower and watching yourself fail, you have a pre-planned response that takes the guesswork out of your decision-making. When you have a pre-plan for how you’ll deal with obstacles, then you won’t get thrown off when you’re in a situation and tempted to sabotage your goals.

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting, and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been.” —Dr. Daniel Gilbert, Harvard psychologist8

The past, and how we view it, is more a reflection of where we currently are than of the past itself. As the psychologist Dr. Brent Slife states in the book Time and Psychological Explanation (emphasis mine): “We reinterpret or reconstruct our memory in light of what our mental set is in the present. In this sense, it is more accurate to say the present causes the meaning of the past, than it is to say that the past causes the meaning of the present. . . . Our memories are not stored and objective entities but living parts of ourselves in the present. This is the reason our present moods and future goals so affect our memories.

When you’re in the GAP, you have an unhealthy attachment to something external. You feel you need something outside of yourself in order to be whole and happy. You need to have a million dollars. You need that person’s approval. You need that position or promotion. You need to be a particular size or shape or to look a certain way. When you’re driven by need, rather than want, you have an urgency and desperation to fulfill that need. The problem is that “needs” are unresolved internal pain, not something you can solve externally. Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, said, “All progress starts by telling the truth.

Happiness is a byproduct of realizing that you are the destination. You are enough and you have enough. You are worthy of love. Your viewpoints and judgments of your own experiences are infinitely more important than anyone else’s judgments of you and of your experiences.

Psychologists have separated needs and wants into two core types of passion: obsessive and harmonious.13 Obsessive passion is highly impulsive and fueled by suppressed emotions and unresolved internal conflict. You become obsessed with something to the point of an unhealthy desperation. You believe you need it, and can’t be happy without it. Obsessive passion is regularly associated with addiction. Also, when you become obsessively passionate about something, you lose sight of the other areas of your life.

Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” –Anne Sweeney, American businesswoman and former co-chair of Disney Media

Your happiness as a person is dependent on what you measure yourself against.

When you draw on a memory, you always do so from the perspective of your present self. Psychologists call memory a “reconstruction,” because it is always reconstructed based on your present views, which influence how you see and perceive past events.14,15,16 As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., stated, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

The British philosopher Alain de Botton said, “Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.

If you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. If you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack.

Ideals are like a horizon in the desert. No matter how many steps you take forward, the horizon continues to move out of reach. Psychology has a term for this moving horizon, hedonic adaptation. It’s the tendency of humans to quickly adapt to where they are and what they’ve got. It leads to never being satisfied, and to constantly seeking the next thing.

Everything in life happens FOR you, not TO you. Nothing can stop you so long as you transform every experience into a GAIN.

To make a goal effective, you’ve got to test its outer-limits. Push it out as far as you can. Only once you make your goal impossible will you stop operating based on your current assumptions and knowledge.

How have you grown as a person over the past three years? What are the biggest things you’ve learned in the past 12 months? What are 10 important things you’ve accomplished in the past 12 months? What meaningful experiences have you had in the past 90 days? How are you clearer on your goals and vision than you were 90 days ago? In what ways is your life different and better than it was 30 days ago? What important progress have you made the past seven days? What progress have you made in the past 24 hours?

Nothing happens until after you commit, and it’s only after you commit that you know what freedom feels like. As the popular saying goes, “Everything you want is on the opposite side of fear.”10

right seat means that each of your employees is operating within his or her area of greatest skill and passion inside your organization and that the roles and responsibilities expected of each employee fit with his or her Unique Ability®.1 This is a concept created by Dan Sullivan and is a registered trademark of The Strategic Coach, Inc. In the book Unique Ability, authors Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller explain that everyone has a Unique Ability®. The trick is to discover yours. When you’re operating from within your Unique Ability®, your superior skill is often noticed by others who value it. You experience never-ending improvement, feel energized rather than drained, and, most of all, you have a passion for what you’re doing that presses you to go further than others would in this area. When this combination of passion and talent finds the right audience, it naturally creates value for others, who, in return, offer you greater rewards and more opportunities for further improvement. It’s like your personal core focus. When a person is operating in his or her Unique Ability®, he or she is in the right seat.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

The results are clear: mental subtraction is one of the most effective science-based techniques for boosting gratitude and happiness.

The way to measure your progress is backward against where you started, not against your ideal.

There is no way to happiness—happiness is the way.

You’re in the GAP every time you measure yourself or your situation against an ideal.

I don’t think we set and achieve goals in an effort to become happy. We do it because we are happy and want to expand our happiness.

Even religion, which is supposed to bring people hope and healing, can be a reason people go into the GAP.

Maybe he didn’t get the memo that God is in the GAIN, not the GAP.

Winners don’t have a to-do list. They have a ‘done’ list.”10

Being in the GAIN makes you psychologically bulletproof.