Hi, this is Dan Sullivan, and it's a great pleasure, once again, to be with the Global Technology Scout Coach Explainer, Peter Diamandis. And Peter, we just saw each other a few days ago at Strategic Coach, and I have introduced a concept this year that I wish I had actually come across when I was six years old and started my company back then. And what it has to do with is actually Dean Jackson, who you know very well. Dean and I have been doing a deep dive into procrastination as a positive thing. So I think we may be the first people who see procrastination as a positive thing. And what we've zeroed in on is a phenomenon.
that entrepreneurs, and that's our audience that we talk to mainly, but it's anybody in the world who has ambitions for something that's bigger and better in their life that they don't have right now. And what happens to them when they get excited about something that's big and better, but then they're immediately confronted, they're almost paralyzed by what they've just taken on intellectually and emotionally, because it calls for them to do a lot of things that they're not very good at. So that's the actual trigger for this insight, what we call in Strategic Coach, who, not how. So that's where we interacted a couple of days ago. So I'll tell you, I love the gems that I get every quarter when I come.
to Toronto to hang with you for the day for my quarterly coaching session with the best coach on the planet, Dan Sullivan. And this Who Not How was a big one. I'm a serial entrepreneur and an inventor and a creator. I love creating. And I'll tell you this idea that as soon as I come up with an idea, rather than figuring out the how do I implement it, I have one responsibility, which is who am I going to tag and implement it for me, is a game changer because it ultimately is transformative in terms of my ability to multiplex.
and ability to make stuff happen. So I've got my notes in front of me here, and I came up with two, four, six, seven immediate who's, not how's, on key things. And my job now is to write up an impact filter for each of those individuals and say, this is the thing. This is why it's so important. This is what the criteria for success. And then give it to the who and say, go make this happen. And if you need to hire who's under you, so be it. But love the idea. It's liberating. And the only challenge becomes if it makes me overload my team that much more.
Yeah, well, your team can constantly expand because this is their passion. So, you know, you're not burdening with something that's their passion. The problem is that when I think of something bigger and better, there's about 20% of it that I'm actually good at, but about 80% that would just bog me down, wear me out, irritate me. It just adds to the load of things that I'm already doing. So if I can do a little contrast, Peter, let's say you did it the other way. You had these seven projects. What would your usual experience be after identifying these seven projects? I would list them down and then I would create a TBD list, a to-be-done list.
of all the things I need to do, go and call the lawyer and incorporate, go and determine how much of investment I'm going to make, figure out what we're going to name the thing. It would be the startup sequence that I would create. And ultimately, the challenge is even worse than if I come up with an idea that I want to do. And I'm like, if I'm in a moment of overload, I will drop it right then and there because I know I can't pile something else on. This is asking entrepreneurs to go against the beginning of their career because my experience with almost all entrepreneurs, that they became entrepreneurs before they had help.
before they had actually assistance. So we have this tendency, you know, I'll do this. And I say there's a reason why small entrepreneurs are small, because they take on the entire responsibility of doing how to every new bigger and better goal they have. And what I'm saying is, well, that was necessary right at the beginning. But what we want to do now is make a shift that the moment you get excited about something.
You are the person, because you're the one who's excited about it, to say what the thing is that you're excited about and why you're so excited about it. And then to outline what it looks like when it's completed. You can say, okay, when this is finished, on the day that it's 100% finished, this will be true, this will be true, this will be true, this will be true, this will be true. And you put out the measurements for it. And then you communicate that to someone who's actually got the capabilities to do it. And it's beautiful. And they can measure whether they've done it or not according to your standards because you made it so crystal clear. And they're not guessing at it. So my feeling is that it's an instant multiplier.
of your time, because you've kindly mentioned the vehicle we have in Strategic Coach, the impact filter. It takes about a half hour to do a really great impact filter. Some people do it more quickly. And then you can immediately transmit that to the right people or the people who will find the right people. And one of the who's that's emerged from this exercise is a who that finds who's. Yes, I tell you, and a who that finds who's, this is all Dr. Seuss for anybody with kids, right? Yes. A who that finds who's is amazing, right? It's critical.
You know, our friend Ari Meisel. Ari is one of the people in the marketplace. It's a who who will find your who if you tell them what it is that you want and why you want it and give what it looks like when it's finished. So, Peter, in a previous podcast here on Exponential Wisdom, you talked about narrow, tightly focused AI programs. So I'm a great believer. I don't care who does it. They can be human or they can be AI. It doesn't really matter to me as long as the capability is there. Well, we have that right now, right? When I ask what's the GDP of Guatemala, and I verbally say that into Google, it's a who that finds or how. So it used to be that before you would have to go to the library and do the research.
the right book or you'd have to convince one of your employees to go and do that. Now we've got Google to do that for you. So we're there in part or with Amazon or any of these AIs. But eventually, I like to think about we're heading very rapidly towards a version of Jarvis, an AI software shell that is always on, always listening to you, always reading what you're reading, your emails and so forth, and with your full permission because it's so empowering. But you can imagine this AI, if you mutter something about, that would be a great invention. And it says, would you like me to assign that to somebody? And you go, yeah. And it asks a couple of questions and it's off and running and someone's...
can play the recording of your experience of discovering it. You know, and pretty soon, a day later, you've got a patent claim list and you're saying, sure, go ahead and pay the AI lawyer the 27 cents it charges you because we've demonetized lawyers. Okay. So I asked you one question about how you would previously operate, but now let's say the next year. So we push out 12 months and Peter, you are completely freed up over the next year from doing any more how on new projects. The only responsibility you have is that you have to give the what and why and the measurements of the project. So what's the difference of that year ahead from previous years? Yeah, I'm just writing that down in my notes. Give the what.
And why? And that really is what comes out of the impact filter and is so important. So, I mean, it's my productivity goes up through the roof, right? It goes up a factor of 10. And one might say, well, you know, if you did it yourself, you'd care more and so forth. But I'm not sure about that because to do anything significant, you need to build a team around something. And this is the beginning of that team. And if you find someone who is truly passionate about it and the why is important for them, then they're going to be spending a lot more time and driving a lot more passion. And they may create beyond your preconceived notions. So ultimately, I think.
we start to choose to do things that are truly what we love to do more than what we feel obligated to do. Yeah. We've had many conversations on this concept. I have to tell you, I've been coaching for 44 years as of August of this year. And if I could go back and change one thing, I would start with this concept in 1974. I'd be 100 times bigger if I'd start with this concept. Because I've done a lot of how-ing over the last 44 years that, in retrospect, I could have found a who to do it. The thing is that with 7.6 billion people out there, there's plenty of who's that would love to work with you if only they knew what it was that you wanted and why you wanted it and could give them some sense of the measurements of what it looked like. I'll give you an example of where I implemented this.
I was thinking of that snap in here. Yes, yes. Someday AIs will be able to do your snap. Yeah, well, I'll just ask Greg to do an audio suite on my snap for me. So coming back, so I have two amazing Strikeforce interns. These are a guy and a gal juniors going into their senior year, and they went through this entire competition to become my Strikeforce interns this summer, and they're awesome. And I've got a personal Outlook database of 12,000 people. And at the end of the day, I wanted to know who inside that Outlook database of 12,000, how they parse into, are they philanthropists? Are they CEOs? And a lot of the information is old, and I don't have an AI I can unleash on it yet.
But I said, guys, one of your jobs is to parse this database, update this database, and so forth. But at the end of the day, I'm going to make this responsibility to you. You're my who. And I suggest that you're not doing the work. So they went over the weekend and went and talked to a dozen virtual assistants out of India and Bangladesh and other parts of the world and lined up four individuals at a fraction of the price that are the who's on their how's.
I commend you because that's a fantastic, you know, we're talking about three days ago that we were talking and already you've implemented it. What's it say about our future? Because as you so forcibly inform people is that there's just an exponential capabilities that are becoming available to us through artificial intelligence where, you know, it may require a human interface before that, but probably at a certain point you'll have AIs that know impact filters. Yeah. It's also the notion that in a world that is globally connected with gigabit connection speeds and where everyone on the planet has access to Google or Baidu or AIs and so forth, the fact of the matter is this one young woman in Bangalore and another young man, I believe in Mumbai, at the end of the day, I can send them the 12,000, or I should say my Strikeforce interns can send them the 12,000 names, titles, and so forth, and they can do the same exact research that we can at a pay which is significantly below the pay here in Southern California. But great for them. But great money for them, right? They bid their own price.
It's awesome. So this is a dislocation, if you would, it's a seventh D of where the work gets done. But at the end of the day, what I know is this behemoth task that I've wanted to do for the last two years. I've procrastinated. Yeah, because the how was just so demoralizing. Yeah, I can see you going through 12,000 names. I can do this. I did five today. Canceled two or three of my speeches and I'll just take the time out. I'll get up early in the morning and I'll spend eight, nine. I can see you doing that. But it was finding my who's and asking them to find their who's all the way down to Whoville.
It definitely made the how happen faster, cheaper than ever before. Yeah. Great, great thought. I want to tell you a little story. So we have a new level in Strategic Coach called Game Changer. And this is where you've got a 10 times capability in your company. So I use your company that you have a 10 times capable inside of Peter Diamandis Global Enterprises. You've got a 10 times capability. But now you just set a goal, and that's just for thinking purposes, 100 times.
higher output. Your timing is your timing, but we're going to go 100 times. But you can't go outside the framework of what you've established as the unique abilities of your company. And it sounds to me like your Strikeforce people already have explored with this. But I'll give you an example. So I have a, he's a wholesale drug provider to pharmacies, and he's been in strategic coach for 26 years. And he started with just a local Montreal business, and now he's in five different countries. And he identified a problem in pharmaceutical industry that it has to do with pharmaceuticals or inside lotions, and it's getting 100% consistency. And it's very, very...
hard for local pharmacies to actually do this. They got to send it away and get compounded. There might be a two or three, four day output. So he started looking for someone who was good at establishing 100% consistency. This guy's name is Tony DeSantos, just a great guy, born in Brazil, grew up in Montreal. And he just started exploring the internet. And he came up with a Japanese company, 100 year old Japanese company. And their expertise is at maintaining 100% consistency of precious metals when you put platinum and gold together. So he took a trip to see them. And he said, I don't know if you guys are interested in this. And he had an impact filter. This is what I want to achieve. And they said, well, we'll try. And within 18...
months, they had created his technology. Now, they were used to consistency with another kind of liquid, but there was a resonance between what he was doing. And he's got a worldwide patent on this now. And in one year, he's taken his revenues up 20% just because he was able to... And they did all the thinking work on this. They did all the engineering work. And he got this new capability. And it just fits normally in his normal sales process, his normal client development process. But here's a case that if he had tried to do that inside of his own company, it would have been a forever project. Yeah.
But somebody out there knew how to do this. They had 80 percent of the solution already with what they're doing. And it's four steps faster than any similar process that the pharmaceutical industry already has. And I said, if you can state the what and you can state the why and say what it looks like when it's 100 percent good, you can put it out into the worldwide Internet. And there's somebody out there that says, I know how to do that. So, you know, the reality is this is what XPRIZE is all about. Right. So we the XPRIZE Foundation, which I'm proud to have returned as the CEO of now for the last couple of months.
and for the next foreseeable future. And also at HeroX, which my dear friend Christian Cattaccini runs, is we say, this is the target. This is the what we want you to achieve. This is why it's important. And we're looking for the who that will pull it off. And we get hundreds of who's that we run in parallel with each other. And the first who to how wins. Yeah. And I just want to say something about your first project over the weekend. That was what, of your time, maybe a half hour, hour? It was exactly a half hour on Friday after our coach session. And then it was a half hour this morning just to...
get their thinking over the weekend, greenlight a budget for them, and now they're off and running. Yeah. So all the time they're putting in on it and all the time that's being done around the world to sort out the 12,000 contact list, that's your time added to your time. You just acquired all that time. So I talk about scarcity to abundance, and I talk about how we're going from energy scarcity to abundance and water scarcity to abundance and resource scarcity to abundance. And people keep on asking, what about time? How do you make abundant time? And you've given me the best answer just now that I've said, yeah.
Because we're not all born with the same 24 hours in a day to achieve things. Some of us are born with workforces of a thousand people, eventually a million AIs that can achieve the things that you want. Yeah, I mean, it's that multiplier factor, but it comes from your intentionality. So I'm putting a lot of things that the number one skill that humans have to develop is actually intentionality, that other people can get the clear contextual picture of what is needed, and then their skills are added to your vision of the future. I'm taking notes for everyone who's wondering what I'm doing right now. The precious learning is from the mouth of Dan Sullivan.
So I love this who, not how. And of course, the problem is I need to overcome a lifetime of howing. And so I need to tell my team, whenever you're howing, Peter, stop and choose a who. Yeah, if you had known this back at Harvard Medical School, they probably would have made you dean after about two years of doing whoing. All of us have painful past history of howing. Yes. So what else, pal, in the impact filter that you prepared here? One of the things that you...
wrote down here that I want to just read because they're important criteria. Always fascinated, motivated. As your who capabilities expand, your future becomes more fascinating and motivating. Talk about that. Yeah, well, you were not fascinated, and I would say this about anyone, why the who, not how, makes a big difference, is that what appealed to you about a bigger and better in the future is the fascinating and motivated part of your brain. And that's kind of, you can visualize it, you can see it, you can actually describe exactly why it's such a good thing. But before this, you were always confronted, now I've got to figure out how to do this. Now I've got to do the developing skills. And so...
A large amount of your future is taken away from fascinating and motivating because it's hard grinding how. And what I would say is I would just like Peter Diamandis for the rest of your future just to do fascinating and motivating with half hour, hour. takeouts to actually pass another project on to the people who would be passionate about doing this project for you if only they knew the what of it, the why of it, and exactly how to be measured when I'm finished. So I just see these multiples of you always staying in fascinating and motivating for the rest of your life. And it has more and more of a multiplier because you would also measure the impact of your thinking and your explorations and your discoveries that you can pass on to an enormous number of people. So that's kind of the vision that I see for you out of it. I mean, those seven projects, before Who Not How, half of them get abandoned. You know, they're on the shelf.
It bothers you that you didn't get to them. Yeah. And I would sometimes get a who, but the clarity of you're my implementor and here is the why it's important, what it is and what it looks like when it's finished. That clarity of the most incredible tool of the universe, the impact filter with that. I mean, I probably got an impact filter when he was creating the heaven and the earth. I'm guessing. Yep. Yeah, she probably did. Anyway. Okay. Here's the next item on your impact filter list around the who, not how. Multiplying your who networks. As long as you can keep adding new who's, your future continually grows. It's so true.
So you want to just mention anything on that? I mean, this is what Google and Jeff Bezos, this is Larry Page and Jeff Bezos building incredible organizations under them. Yeah, they're who networks. What they've developed is tremendous who networks. And this is what creates abundance. I was telling people periodically we get complaints in our workshop about what Amazon is doing to them. And I said, you know, you've got to come to grips with this thought right now. Amazon's either going to be on top of you or you're going to be on top of Amazon. And I said, treat Amazon like a utility. OK, it's just out there. Use it. You know, I've got a phenomenal client in San Diego who just with a little bit of software and a neat idea.
produced like a $40 million a year profit business just by using Amazon. He said, Amazon is one of my who's. So the question for retailers and everybody else, every other business, when you come across a big giant like Alphabet or Google or Amazon, I said, how could this gigantic corporation be a who for me that just makes my life incredibly simpler? Stop talking like a victim. Don't be a victim. Stop holding on to your hows and figure out what hows Amazon can produce for you.
Yeah, their goal is to become a platform that you create wealth on top of their platform and then you create wealth for them. And that's, of course, what has been happening over and over again. Every web browser is a platform. And it's true. And ultimately, I mean, the reality is eventually we're all going to have armies of AIs who are our who's and they're going to do it at a de minimis. I mean, again, Google is a who for your search products and Amazon is a who for your delivery network. You don't realize that when you are going on and doing those keystrokes and ordering your coffee.
for your coffee maker at home, that's a who that goes out, finds that specific brand, and delivers it to your home, where it used to be you doing that. It's just going to get a lot more injected into everything that you want or need or desire. I just want to make one point here, and it has to do with the educational system. And my observation, except if your children are in exceptional schools, where they get this who, not how idea, the vast majority of school systems are to embed people in a lifetime how. Okay. And if you take them right from junior kindergarten to the last year in graduate school, they are kept away from doing hooing with other people. And they're saying, we're going to grade you on your ability to how in this particular area. Yeah, it's a problem, right? Because for the rest of our life, we're told to collaborate when you're in school. That's called cheating. Yes. You know, and I love the example you gave about, was it Warren Buffett talking at Harvard Business School?
Oh, no, that was Ross Perot. Oh, it was Ross Perot. Okay, so tell that one. Yeah, well, Ross Perot, who's famous for his two presidential runs, but he was a billionaire several times over because of EDS. He was giving a commencement speech. I'm not sure which, but it was one of the business schools. And he said, first of all, he says, just as a starter, I'd like all the A students in the room to stand up. And of course, they were in the front, and they all stood up. And he says, let's give him a big hand, all the A students here. And he says, okay, next order of business, I'd like all the C students to stand up. And they were all in the back, and they stood up. And he said, no, I'd like the A students to turn around and look at your future employers, all the C students.
And he said, that's who you're going to work for, because a lot of the C students were C students because they'd already started businesses. And that was your experience of going through medical school. You already had the companies out there. So my feeling is that the people who master who, not how, in any line of business are going to create the opportunities for other people. Yeah, it's really about, it's important for you to be brilliant, to be hard driven, to be ethical, to be visionary, to inspire, to guide, to do all those things. But if you've got an incredible team behind you, it enables you to do a thousand X or a billion X more than anybody else. So one of the experiences I recently had.
pal that was amazing, was an individual who I'm super excited about, a guy named Philip Rosedale, who's the creator of Second Life, and he's the CEO of High Fidelity, a company I've invested in and an advisor to. He invited me to go into High Fidelity and to give a keynote lecture. And I had an extraordinary experience. not getting into an airplane, not flying someplace, not getting in front of an audience of a few hundred people, but instead doing this completely in VR. And it was mind blowing. I'd love to share this with you on our next podcast and talk about where is VR today and where is it going in the near future? And how is it going to change where we are, what we do and who we do it with? Are you open for that? I'm totally excited about it because not getting on airplanes is one of my future goals. All right, pal. This was a fun conversation. Thank you for that gem. See you very soon. Thank you, Peter. Take care, Dan.