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.

Wherever you are, make sure you’re there.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Everything in life happens FOR you, not TO you.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Aku belum pernah bertemu orang jelek dan aku tidak menandai atau berprasangka berdasarkan etnis dan keturunan

The things she worried about on a daily basis included but were not limited to: Children starving in Africa. Chemicals in her daughter’s food and drinking water. Corruption in Washington, everywhere you looked. The poor, who no one even talked about anymore. Rape in the Congo, which didn’t seem to be going away, despite so much talk. Rape at elite American colleges, which wasn’t going away either. Plastic. Oil in the Gulf. Beer commercials, in which men were always portrayed as dolts who thought exclusively about football, and women as insufferable nags who only cared about shopping. The evils of the Internet. Sweatshops, and, in the same vein, where exactly everything in their life came from—their meat, their clothes, their shoes, their cell phones. The polar bears. The Kardashians. China. The poisonous effects of Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the seemingly limitless pornography online. The gun-control laws that would likely never come, despite the five minutes everyone spent demanding them whenever a child or a politician got shot. The cancer various members of her family would eventually get, from smoking, microwaves, sunlight, deodorant, and all the other vices that made life that much more convenient and/or bearable. Throughout each day, the world’s ills ran through her head, sprinkled in with thoughts about what she should make for dinner, and when she was due for a cleaning at the dentist, and whether they should have another baby sometime soon. She wondered if everyone was like this, or if most people were able to tune it all out, the way her sister seemed to. Even Dan didn’t care all that much about the parts of the world that were invisible to him. But Kate couldn’t forget.

banjo. A plucked, fretted lute where a thin skin diaphragm is stretched over a circular metal frame amplifying the sound of the strings. The instrument is believed to have evolved from various African and African-American prototypes. Four- and 5-stringed versions of the banjo are popular, each associated with specific music genres; the 5-stringed banjo, plucked and strummed with the fingers, is associated with Appalachian, old-time and bluegrass music, while the four-stringed versions (both the “plectrum” banjo, which is an identical 22-fret banjo, just like the 5-string instrument but without the fifth string and played with a plectrum, and the tenor banjo which has fewer frets [17 or 19], a shorter neck, is tuned in fifths and is played with a plectrum) is associated with vaudeville, Dixieland jazz, ragtime and swing, as well as Irish folk and traditional music. The first Irish banjo player to record commercially was James Wheeler, in the U.S. in 1916, for the Columbia label; as part of The Flanagan Brothers duo, Mick Flanagan recorded during the 1920s and 1930s as did others in the various dance bands popular in the U.S. at the time. Neil Nolan, a Boston-based banjo player originally from Prince Edward Island, recorded with Dan Sullivan’s Shamrock Band; the collaboration with Sullivan led to him also being included in the line-up for the Caledonia and Columbia Scotch Bands, alongside Cape Breton fiddlers; these were recorded for 78s in 1928. In the 1930s The Inverness Serenaders also included a banjo player (Paul Aucoin). While the instrument was not widely used in Cape Breton, a few notable players were Packie Haley and Nellie Coakley, who were involved in the Northside Irish tradition of the 1920s and 1930s; Ed MacGillivray played banjo with Tena Campbell; and the Iona area had some banjo players, such as the “Lighthouse” MacLeans. The banjo was well known in Cape Breton’s old-time tradition, especially in the 1960s, but was not really introduced to the Cape Breton fiddle scene until the 1970s when Paul Cranford, a 6-string banjo player, arrived from Toronto. He has since replaced the banjo with fiddle. A few fiddlers have dabbled with the instrument but it has had no major presence within the tradition.

Who are we, the people who have ADHD? We are the problem kid who drives his parents crazy by being totally disorganized, unable to follow through on anything, incapable of cleaning up a room, or washing dishes, or performing just about any assigned task; the one who is forever interrupting, making excuses for work not done, and generally functioning far below potential in most areas. We are the kid who gets daily lectures on how we’re squandering our talent, wasting the golden opportunity that our innate ability gives us to do well, and failing to make good use of all that our parents have provided. We are also sometimes the talented executive who keeps falling short due to missed deadlines, forgotten obligations, social faux pas, and blown opportunities. Too often we are the addicts, the misfits, the unemployed, and the criminals who are just one diagnosis and treatment plan away from turning it all around. We are the people Marlon Brando spoke for in the classic 1954 film On the Waterfront when he said, “I coulda been a contender.” So many of us coulda been contenders, and shoulda been for sure. But then, we can also make good. Can we ever! We are the seemingly tuned-out meeting participant who comes out of nowhere to provide the fresh idea that saves the day. Frequently, we are the “underachieving” child whose talent blooms with the right kind of help and finds incredible success after a checkered educational record. We are the contenders and the winners. We are also imaginative and dynamic teachers, preachers, circus clowns, and stand-up comics, Navy SEALs or Army Rangers, inventors, tinkerers, and trend setters. Among us there are self-made millionaires and billionaires; Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners; Academy, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy award winners; topflight trial attorneys, brain surgeons, traders on the commodities exchange, and investment bankers. And we are often entrepreneurs. We are entrepreneurs ourselves, and the great majority of the adult patients we see for ADHD are or aspire to be entrepreneurs too. The owner and operator of an entrepreneurial support company called Strategic Coach, a man named Dan Sullivan (who also has ADHD!), estimates that at least 50 percent of his clients have ADHD as well.

You can start every day from now on by identifying a specific danger to eliminate, a specific opportunity to capture, and a specific strength to maximize.

Something Dan Sullivan has noticed in coaching tens of thousands of entrepreneurs since 1974—over 47 years!—is that most of them are mentally “here” but wanting to be “there.” It really doesn’t matter where they are now and how great their lives are, they continually wish they were “there.” Many high achievers have a hard time being “here.” And although it’s great to have goals and vision and be driven, you’re in the GAP if you’re “here” but wishing you were “there.” Playing a longer game allows you to embrace being “here.” Yes, you have goals and vision, but you’re completely happy where you’re at.

You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.” —Meredith Willson

Practice mental subtraction to remind yourself of the GAINS in your life. Create a GAIN Tiny Habit Recipe for getting out of the GAP, such as the five-minute rule the women’s soccer coach used.

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. Learning to clarify what you want without justification or apology is vital to going 10x since 10x is based on want, not need.

What you most want and your Unique Ability are connected. You must embrace that you yourself are a unique individual. You’ve got to value your own uniqueness, which also means valuing and appreciating the uniqueness of everyone else. Committing to your Unique Ability—the thing you want to do and which excites you most—takes extreme commitment and courage. It takes not worrying about what anyone else thinks about what you do and how you live. You’ve got to fully bet on yourself. Although Unique Ability may come “naturally” to you, that is misleading.

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.

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

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

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.

When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.” —Pearson’s Law

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.

Relationships are how you transform as a person. Relationships are how you transcend your current limitations. Relationships are how you produce results. Relationships are the purpose of life.

Clearly a lie,” Dan says. “Samantha and Athena were included because they were Sullivan’s victims, Heather because of the takeover, and Nicole for the trial.

This simple practice will transform your days – and your nights. Capturing your wins for the day puts you in a GAIN mindset and boosts both your confidence and your sense of well-being. This makes for more peaceful sleep. Clearly articulating your goals for the next day allows your brain to start processing them subconsciously, so you wake up feeling a sense of purpose. Instead of merely reacting to whatever comes your way, you’ll have a clear, actionable plan.

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.

No one can replicate you when you’re in the GAIN, because no one has the same experiences you’re having—and no one can transform your experiences into GAINS the way you do. You’ve already made it this far. Look back at where you were when you started. What are you going to do now? How far are you going to go? You get to decide that.

And with every step you take forward, you get to measure backward and become increasingly humbled at how far you’ve come.

When you’re in the gain, you’re never measuring yourself against anything external. You’re only measuring yourself against yourself. More directly, you’re measuring

Your future growth and progress are now based in your understanding about the difference between the two ways in which you can measure yourself: against an ideal, which puts you in what I call ‘the GAP,’ and against your starting point, which puts you

in ‘the GAIN,’ appreciating all that you’ve accomplished.” —Dan Sullivan

Michael’s true brilliance was only possible as he transformed into more of a team player, built around a team system, led by a genius coach.

If we took away everything you went into the GAP about, how much would you have?” “Not much” was their response.

Give Yourself 5 Minutes in the GAP, Then Move Forward

One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don’t worry about, because I have a plan in place if they do.” —Randy Pausch25

In performance psychology, there is a concept known as implementation intentions, which is a strategy to plan for the worst—so you can perform your best.26

It is only through teamwork and collaboration that you can achieve things you previously thought impossible.

probably why you’re unhappy with everything in your life. “You’re measuring yourself in the GAP.

The day you stop racing is the day you win the race.” —Bob Marley

If you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. If you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack.”6

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. 7

the hedonic treadmill.”9 When you’re on this treadmill, you’re working harder and harder to be happy but staying exactly where you started.

The reason the hedonic treadmill exists is because people aren’t taught how to be happy. Ideals are meant to provide direction, motivation, and meaning to our lives. They are not the measuring stick. Our society has trained us to measure ourselves against our ideals, which by definition are unreachable.

Being in the GAIN means you measure yourself backward, against where you were before.

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

The rule is simple: the person who fails the most will win. If I fail more than you do, I will win. Because in order to keep failing, you’ve got to be good enough to keep playing.”12,13

The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.” —Joseph Campbell14

Comparison makes you unhappy, and there’s no end to comparison in the world, if that’s the path you choose.

When Richie talked to his dad, his dad became Richie’s “Who” in showing Richie a more effective way to make money with the least amount of effort. If money is the desired outcome, then what’s the most effective and simplest way for that to be accomplished?

You are 100 percent disciplined to your existing set of habits.

Remember, the goal isn’t to never go into the GAP. Instead, the goal is to get yourself out as soon as you can.

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

Training yourself to be happy is completely internal. There is no external progress, no external validation. You’re competing against yourself—it is a single-player game.”6 Happiness cannot come from something outside of yourself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE DAN KIRKSEN OPENED THE WASHINGTON POST AND started to take a sip of his orange juice. It never reached his mouth. Gavin had managed to file a story on the Sullivan case consisting chiefly of the information that Jack Graham, newly ordained partner at Patton,

business coach Dan Sullivan says, “If you spend too much time working on your weaknesses, all you end up with is a lot of strong weaknesses!

I don’t blame them. After seven weeks, Sarah’s disappearance was a footnote unless something significant happened to draw attention back to it. Nothing had.” “What about the reward?” “That also never came up at trial.” Dan squinted as if fighting a headache. “Given that Hagen’s testimony provided Calloway and Clark what they needed to convince Judge Sullivan to issue the search warrants, Finn should have jumped all over Hagen about every detail, especially because Hagen also laid the groundwork for Calloway’s testimony the next day.” Roy Calloway sat in the witness chair as if he was seated in his living room and everyone else in the courtroom was an invited guest. The rain ticked off the second-story wood-sash windows, sounding like birds pecking against the glass. Tracy looked out at the trees in the courthouse square, their soaked limbs sagging. Smoke curled from the chimneys of houses in the near distance, but the bucolic image only seemed to magnify the illusion that Edmund House had exposed. Small towns were not immune to violent crimes. Far from it. Clark stepped to the railing of the jury box. “When did you next return to Parker House’s property, Sheriff Calloway?

Où habitez vous ? - Dans le cœur des hommes, répondit Sullivan.

Never what? Killed someone? A lot of someones? But you might have. Ever think about that? If you hadn't ended up in Harmony, met the Sullivans, learned how to control the Change?

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?

The Experience Transformer is a thought process that will enable you to quickly transform the intensity of both negative and positive situations into lessons, innovations, and breakthroughs in both your personal and business lives.

However, for many people, their lives are all experience and no learning.

The difference between the two words ‘need’ and ‘want’ is gargantuan. When you need someone, you lose your independence and agency as a human being. Wanting, on the other hand, is the first step in learning how to love someone. The difference between need and want is the difference between codependence and love.