Speaking of Wealth #24 – Entrepreneurs Reaching Maximum Potential

Jason Hartman talks with Dan Sullivan, co-founder of The Strategic Coach®. As an international organization offering practical thinking tools and support, Dan Sullivan has structured his company to help individuals create the personal and professional future they want. Visit: https://speakingofwealth.com/category/podcast/. Dan’s strong belief in the power of the entrepreneur is evident in all areas of Strategic […]

Female Voice: Speakers, publishers, consultants, coaches and info marketers, unite. The Speaking of Wealth Show is your road map to success and significance. Learn the latest tools, technologies and tactics to get more bookings, sell more products and attract more clients. If you’re looking to increase your direct response sales, create a big time, personal brand and become the go to guru, the Speaking of Wealth Show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Speaking of Wealth Show, Episode Number 4. This is your host, Jason Hartman where we discuss profit strategies for speakers, publishers and consultants. I hope you enjoyed the last few episodes. The last one we spoke to Dan Poynter the self publishing guru and you know what he talks about is really a large part of a Democratic Society, I think, because self publishing really allows everybody to get the word out about their topic or their area of expertise. It’s no longer a situation where this is decided by just a few big network media outlets, or a few big publishers. Everybody can self publish now days and get the word out and build their own following, their own tribe as Seth Golden says, their own audience.

So I hope you enjoyed that one and then I hope you enjoyed Episode Number 2, Anne Bruce where we talked about How to Speak for a Living and then Number 1 was with Harvey Mackay. You know him, of course, the best selling author multiple times over, Mr. Swim with the Sharks, Mr. Harvey Mackay. And today I’d like to bring over an episode from one of my other shows, and that is the Creating Wealth Show, which I’ve been doing for abut five years. We’ve got well over 180 episodes now, and this one I thought would be particularly interesting to speakers, publishers, consultants, coaches and so forth, because this one is with Dan Sullivan, the strategic coach, and he talks about business and how to grow your business, how to expand your business. I’ve been following his content for many years since I discovered hi, through Young Entrepreneurs Organization, kind of a sister organization to WPO, Young President’s Organization at their University several years back in New York City. And Dan Sullivan is just a great guy so we’ve got two Dans’ in a row here and let’s go to the interview with Dan Sullivan the Strategic Coach taken from Creating Wealth Show, Episode Number 123. I think you’ll really enjoy this as a speaker, publisher and consultant. We’ll be back with that in just a second.

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Jason Hartman: It’s my pleasure to welcome Dan Miller to the show. He’s the President of 48 Days and he specializes in creative thinking and increase personal and business success, helping people discover their unique natural gifts and integrating them into career choices, new career choices and business choices, Dan, it’s great to have you on the show.

Dan Miller: Thank you Jason. I’m looking forward to talking to you.

Jason Hartman: Well, likewise. Tell us a little bit about what it is you do.

Dan Miller: I am an author and a life coach is usually the tags that I usually hide behind my name. I’ve had the privilege to moving into more and more writing in the last few years, but really not into this kind of space by being a career coach. I discovered there are so many people facing inevitable and relentless job transitions and so I have had the pleasure of many years now working with people who are looking at making those changes. And these are usually people that are not — having not just the job at Taco Bell, but often people who feel trapped by virtue of their academic training. So physicians, attorneys, dentists, pastors, who really often at 45 years old you know, wake up and say, I’m living somebody else’s dream. This is not my dream. Help e make a change.

And so I help people make those changes, see what the opportunities are often by really taking a fresh look at the new kind of work models that we have today available, and they really are exploding all around us, even as we speak. So, it’s not just a matter of where can I go and get a job and have them guarantee me a paycheck. Give me a paycheck on Friday and a 401K contribution and medical benefits. That may not be part of what the new opportunity looks like. But I’m excited about helping people in that arena and then as a result I do a lot of writing. I’ve written a couple of different books that address those kinds of issues and help people what their different kinds of options are.

Jason Hartman: Well fantastic. So Dan, what are some of the new opportunities out there. We live in such an innovative world and I marvel at it every day at how capitalism is such a wonderfully freeing thing for the human spirit and how it just — every possible need any of us could imagine, someone is there to fill it. It’s just amazing.

Bill Miller: Yeah.

Jason Hartman: But with the internet and with the ability to have a home based business, a small business and level that playing field or flatten that playing field a little bit, the little guy really has a lot of opportunities now days, don’t they, probably more than ever before.

Bill Miller: You’re absolutely right. I love the way you frame that capitalism is a free and experience and that it is, and it is — it has never been easier to become a player than what it is today. You know with the internet, and that’s not just a magic pill for everybody, but certainly it opens some doors. It kind of flattens the world so to speak where you can be a player in a real tiny, tiny niche. I mean you can add sun glasses for dogs where you can never justify opening a retail stores for that because there wouldn’t be enough people within a geographic radius, but if you’re on the internet, you instantly have access to the entire world theoretically and you can get a real tiny, tiny portion of the prospects there and still knock it out of the park, and I’ve done that with my own personal books, where I love books.

It would be real tempting for me to open a nice, quaint little book store in Franklin, Tennessee, a wonderful little town where we live. I’m never going to do that. There is no way in the world where I’m going to confine myself to a five mile radius of prospects. No, I have a bookstore on the internet and because of that we get orders from literally all over the world. It amazes me every day. I never seem to be amazed at how we have penetrated into even other countries beyond the United States.

Now, it is easy to start a business. Also, when we used to talk about starting a business, we would think about a bowling alley, service station, hardware store, book store, something like that. Today the most profitable business often don’t have any bricks and water at all. They’re using service information or technology as their key concept and so somebody can become a player right along with a major, major company you can make yourself look like a player in that same space by simply having a nicely designed website and offering service of values to people.

Jason Hartman: And what are some of these innovative businesses? Of course you mentioned kind of sarcastically sunglasses for dogs but half sarcastically, I think. What are some of the really unique things you’re seeing out there, because there’s just a limitless number of ideas, aren’t there? There’s a website for everything.

Bill Miller: There really is and again, I love the web and what it’s able to do. And I’ve seen people take very common ideas and do really well there, but also I don’t want to make that just the cookie cutter solution for everybody. There are opportunities for people who are not text savvy to do something with unique skill that they have and still do extremely well

We have on our property here in Franklin, Tennessee a tree that got damaged in a storm a couple of years ago, beyond restoration and being an old farm kid, I hate losing a tree and I could hardly bear the thought of just cutting this thing down and then having an ugly stump to deal with. So I called — made a couple of phone calls, called the place that replaced my chain saw that aren’t that people that carve in wood. Well, they gave me a number, I called. He gave me another number, I talked to a lady, she said well yeah, I carve in wood but I’ve never done a standing tree. I’ve only done things on my bench in my shop, but if you’re open to it, I’d be happy to come out and take a look with you. I said, well come on out. Well, she did. She carved two faces, one on either side of that dead tree in our yard. Now these — we call it our wisdom garden. We actually created a little garden around it. Kids love to come up and touch these faces about four feet tall. It looks like we’ve got Abraham and Moses looking across our yard in either direction.

So, we took what was going to be an ugly stump and transformed it into a permanent piece of art on our property. Now here’s the think about that lady. She had been a corporate executive, never married, was making a very reasonable income and just realized that her sole was being sucked out as she sat at her cubicle every day, and she kind of tapped into her passion. So, she read one of my books, 48 days to the work you love. She just helped to that. Realized she was off these and started doing this kind of work.

Now, the interesting thing about this is, you would never, ever meet with your high school or college guidance counselor and they would say, you need to grow up and be a tree carver.

Jason Hartman: Fair enough, yeah.

Bill Miller: We are not going to find that in a dictionary of occupational titles. It’s way too individualized, but that’s the thrilling part. You can find something that is so individualized, so personalized that it engages your unique passions, dreams and values and do extremely well. There really isn’t much barrier to entry. That means that it may be intimidating to some people, think gee I’m not an entrepreneur, I’m not a Donald rump, a Ted Turner kind of person. You don’t have to be. You can shape the idea around what it is unique about you and that’s really where we get the power of thee ideas is in finding things that are enough and to accept. I’m not a tree carver. I couldn’t do that, but for this lady, that tapped into some childhood passions that she had and it was a perfect fit for her.

I’ve got a gentleman who came to me as a — actually as a pastor and he thought he was doing something very Godly but at the same time it was very frustrating just economic living. He was working as a desk clerk at a hotel during week, nights, in order just to keep the lights on in his house, because they were struggling such financial crisis. He came to me and we kind of peeled the onion so to speak, which is always the case. We don’t have to just put something on top of a person and say, here’s the best opportunity or trend. It’s usually a mater of working inward first.

What does make you tick? What puts you in the zone? What is it that when you’re doing that times just flies by? Well, with this young guy, he would talk about talking into a room in their house, closing the door, he’d put on Batavian and a Mozart and he would draw, just these dramatic, abstract paintings. He never sold anything in his life but he would do that just kind of as a personal relation cleansing. Why he didn’t quit while he was doing, everything he was dong, including pasturing a church and for four years he did full finishes where he would use brushes, sponges, rags and produce these dramatic effects on the walls of people’s businesses and homes. But that gave him the freedom to do these really beautiful paintings. Today he doesn’t do full finishes at all. He simply does these paintings. I have one hanging here in my office that he gave me just out of appreciation for the transformation he experienced and it’s a $10,000 painting, which is pretty typical of his work at this point. And here’s the interesting thing about that, if I wanted to just simply address his financial needs, would I have suggested that he become an artist?

Well we know — we hear about artists, starving artists and we have hundreds of them in any City in America, but if that is really his authentic fit, that’s his best opportunity to find work that is fulfilling, meaningful, purposeful and profitable and with him at this point, you know with his income, he has to make his income as 12 to 15 times whatever he ever had made as a Pastor.

We didn’t do it because of the money but the money showed up because it was an authentic fit, and I think that’s what a lot of people are missing, Jason where they’re just trying to do something well, but they don’t really believe in. They think they’re being responsible by just trying to do something to produce a pay check. That’s a horrible tradeoff to make.

Jason Hartman: I remember from years ago, Dan and what you’re saying reminds me of it. One of my great mentors was Earl Nightingale. I’m also a huge fan of Dennis Whatley and Zig Ziggler of course and all those from kind of the old school of motivational speakers and writers and so forth, but I remember one of the things Earl Nightingale taught me many years ago. He said that there are two types of people, two types of actually I should distinguish successful people and one type is the river person and the other type is the goal person, and you are just making me think of that because what he says is he says the river people are those fortunate souls who kind of always know what they wanted to do and what their passion was and all they had to do in life is just be in that river again. So, if it’s music it would be the next Mozart. If it’s painting they could be the next Michael Angelo or De Vinci whoever, and all they had to do is be in it because they were so passionate about it, so interested and so consumed by it, that it really work for them.

And then he says, for most of us though, if we’re not a river person or we haven’t discovered our river of interest yet, and I know you help people do that so, I definitely want to hear more about that. It’s just so incumbent on us to be goal people and set goals and achieve them progressively, but I guess at some point like you say, the goal person that can be a drag maybe if it’s so far out of alignment with ones passion and interest in life, right.

Bill Miller: Absolutely. Those goals are to be getting you closer and closer and closer to what is a true passion. If you’re just trying to again make yourself do that and sometimes people can have that perception of goals that it just kind of forces you to do the right thing. Well, goals ought to be a very true expression of what you really want to accomplish in your life. They just help you get there quicker.

Jason Hartman: Well, how can anyone — I mean, I love the questions you just mentioned. What turns you on, what are you passionate about, what sort of moves you but how can someone really know what their thing is, because I talk to people and I try to counsel them and help them when they come to me with this sort of dilemma of what should I do with the rest of my life or whether they’re young or middle aged or older, people live so long now days and have so many choices that sometimes just the choices can be really daunting. How can someone really identify what’s right for them?

Bill Miller: You know, people struggle with this a lot, where they are still trying to find their passion and purpose, destiny calling, however you want to frame that, but just to make it easy just describe what their passion is, I don’t really understand why it’s so difficult and I work with people. I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I still don’t — it still concerns me and makes me scratch my head to find people who don’t recognize their own passions easier. I mean I have a two year old granddaughter who spends a lot of time with me because her Mama works for me. It’s not very difficult at all to see what her passions are. I mean you walk through a Wal-Mart store, you’re going to know real quick what little Clair or Isabel cares about.

Jason Hartman: For a two year old?

Bill Miller: Yes.

Jason Hartman: Now, tell us about that.

Bill Miller: Well, it’s so transparent. I mean if it’s teddy bears as opposed to doll babies, or if it’ something in the — if it’s being outside, you know rather than being confided inside which is extremely transparent, the foods — she likes the same kind of foods that I do. She goes with me to Mexican restaurants and likes the salsa and chips, but she doesn’t care for peas and carrots. I mean she’s so transparent in the things that she’s really drawn to and yet adults sometimes seem to have just pulled a veiled cloud down over their eyes where they just don’t even really understand what they enjoy and what they don’t.

Now, I understand that life happens and sometimes we can kind of become numb to things like that. I did a seminar not too long ago and a gentleman right in the front row was very attentive during the seminar. I was talking about living out your dreams, holding on to your dreams and living those out and he came up afterwards and he said, you now I don’t really have any dreams. And I said, how is that possible? How can you be breathing the living person and not have any dreams. I said, what do you do? And he described that he’s the pharmacist, has been for 17 years, and what he described was what we refer to as a frog and the kettle phenomenon.

Now, I don’t know if this is exactly scientifically true but it make a good point. We’re told that if you put a frog in hot water, he’ll jump out but if you put a frog in luke warm water and slowly turn up the heat, he’ll sit there and cook to death. And I find that that kind of happens to a lot of adults. They grew up, got out of school, started a life and the changes have been slow and subtle and they just never paid attention to them, but all of a sudden their brain dead. They just don’t really notice anymore what really appeals to them.

I have here on our property where I do my coaching and most people come in, at least for the first part of that process. I often take them on one of my nature trails, we just go for a walk and if I see a busy CEO, I see the $400,000 a year CEO and he doesn’t notice the squirrels. He doesn’t see the beautiful red cardinal sitting in the bush as we walk by, he doesn’t notice the neighbor’s horses who are paying together. It gives me a real good indication of why his life is so dull, I mean unless they just to stop seeing things around them. So my encouragement again, without making anybody feel guilty is to pay attention to those things that are right under your nose. Be reminded again of what it is that you rally enjoy. What brings you joy? What puts you in the zone? We talk about half way to being in the zone. What is it that does that for you? I can’t imagine people not having those indicators. That’s why I prefer to work with people who have had little life experience. It’s tough to do this when they’re 20 years old, but by the time somebody’s had a little life experience, then we can look back and we start to see al those bench marks, those recurring things and it’s in those that we get more and more confirmation. This is what’s going to make sense for you.

This is the kind of work you ought to be doing. This is how you ought to be working with other people, this is how you ought to be leading. We get all those kinds of things just by peeling back the layers of life that have already happened and looked at those.

I tell people Jason, the 85 percent of the process of having the confidence of proper direction comes from looking inward. Fifteen percent of the application, that’s the easy part but a lot of people go directly to the application. Who’s hiring? What’s the best franchise they can possible get into? What are the trends in business? Those are recipes for what can be very short term solutions and long term frustrations, but if you take a deep breath, look in and take the time to do that, you ought t come out with a clear confidence of having a proper focus that’s going to give you a sense of meaning and apply to work in that area.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, good points. What else do you cover in your work? I mean unique business models, finding what one is truly passionate about and in your body of work Dan, what else is there to it? Is there more?

Dan Miller: There is. I have a lot of moving pieces in what I do. I’m a big believer in having what is commonly referred to as multiple streams of income.

Jason Hartman: Oh, very good, very good. Yes, I like that. I think all our listeners do too.

Dan Miller: Okay, I would become bored quickly if I were doing one thing, even though I enjoy certain things as lot, I do love coaching. I love working with people but I only do that one day a week, so you would say, well why aren’t you doing that five days a week? I mean, it’s extremely profitable, why don’t you do that five days a week? No, I could not bring the same kind of energy and enthusiasm to that process if I had non-stop clients sitting in front of me five days a week. So I do it one day a week then I have time where I do just writing. You know I allot a certain amount a certain amount of time for peaking. I have had the pleasure of working with a lot of coaches. We have a coaching network and here’s — it may seem to be kind of an irony in the business model but it’s been extremely successful for me and that is I’ve had a lot of people over the years come to me and say Dan, I want to do what you’re doing. Show me how to do what you’ve done. Well you could think that that that’s going to mean I’m going to have a lot of competitors. I’m creating my own competition enough to be in the market, but that’ been an extremely profitable area for me to specialize in. So, I have a lot of people who are also coaches that I work with. So not only do I work with individual clients but then I also coach coaches. I think you can find those kinds of opportunities in any given industry, in any given position where you just find creative ways to provide value.

So yeah, I have a lot of — I mean I have a difficult time saying no to all the new opportunities that are appearing just in what I do and really I’m just an author and coach and you would think well, gee those things are kind of slow right now.

Here’s an interesting component on that. I have coaches contacting me right now saying, Dan, how can I possibly make a living as a coach because you know right now we’re in a recession and people only purchase the necessities, nobody’s going to spend money on coaching when times are as tough as this. And I’m thinking, you’ve got to be kidding me. We’ve had over three million people lose their jobs in the last 24 months, how can this be the greatest time in history to be a career coach? Isn’t this like shooting fish in a barrel? But see here’s what happens and if you’ve been listening to people like Dennis Whatley and Earl Nightingale, Neapolitan Hill and all the people that you mentioned previously, you’ll understand this principal

Those same people who say, how can I possibly make it as a career coach when times are tough, guess what happens when things turn around and we’ve got full employment,? They’re going to say, oh my gosh, who needs me now? Everybody’s got a job. See, the mentality that precedes circumstances.

Jason Hartman: Certainly I completely agree with you that there is much to be said for the concept of this self fulfilling prophesy and you know we used to have this Senator here in California, S. I. Hayakawa years ago read a rather renown book about it and it’s a great quote. He said the self fulfilling prophesy is something that is neither true nor false, yet it is capable of becoming true if it is believed and that’s exactly what you’re saying.

Dam Miller: Absolutely

Jason Miler: People make it true.

Dan Miller: And there’s an agreement by Henry Ford that’s similar whether you think or think you can’t in either way, you’re right.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, yeah, absolutely,

Bill Miller: Yep, and I find that to be so true in times like these. I mean everybody wonders if these are the worst of times. Well, they’re just times. We’ve been through this before but I find in this particular time and everybody knows that of course new building construction, housing construction is in a tag. I saw one of my friends this morning who is in that space, he builds, high end homes. He says he’s trying to avoid answering the phone because he’s so far behind on work that he’s committed and has so many people knocking in his door to have them build new homes for him. You have to — we’ve got to be careful of these generalities. There are people who are doing — I talked to a friend in the mortgage business recently, and again, they’ve been really hammered hard. I said, you know how are things going? I expected him to say of man, I’m barely squeaking by. He said, I’ve just had the best month I’ve ever had in my life. He said, with the rates we’ve got now we’re ding refinances faster than we can get people out the door. No matter what the industry, there’s still opportunity if you see a different way. I mean, we know that car sales are really in the tank right now, especially American made cars and then of course, motorcycles are down, not as much as cars because a lot of people have discovered that motorcycle are more economical. But here’s an irony. Are you familiar with Jessie James, he makes high end customized motorcycles. They start at $150,000.

Jason Hartman: Wow!

Bill Miller: Now surely you would think well he’s toast in this kind of economy. No, he has a four year waiting list. A four year waiting list. If he stops selling another one, right now he would work for four years just trying to fore fill the orders for bikes that start at $150,000. And we just have to be careful about these generalizations.

Jason Hartman: Sure we do.

Bill Miller: And look for opportunities and recognize opportunities that other people don’t see.

Jason Hartman: Now Dan, I hope you’ll forgive me but I want to play devils advocate for just a moment.

Bill Miller: Oh, go for it.

Jason Hartman: Because I think there are sort of two sides to this issue. So, a couple of things, number one is people who are listening to this will say, come on, be a realist and what I find most the time is realism is just an excuse for pessimism. So, I want you to know where I’m coming from that I say this. However, isn’t this sort of discontent, sometimes the thing that gets the person to jump to the new better opportunity. On one hand you want to say look, the old saying, there are no small parts only small actors. Right, that’s a valid thing. And there’s opportunity in every business, I’m sure, but if someone today is just fighting the tide in a changing industry or in the job market where jobs are being outsourced to India, China and wherever else, the whole impieties to make the leap to something new is to be discontented, right.

Bill Miller: That’s exactly right.

Jason Hartman: So, where is the balance in this thinking — in that?

Bill Miller: How many times — I mean I hear from people — I heard from a lady today who said how can I possibly be created when we’re struggling so much financially? But here is the challenge in that thinking, when someone is not struggling financially, it’s very easy to become contented with the status quo and just continue in doing that. A [inaudible] reaction from almost everybody who loses a position and then we hear from lots of them is thinking, oh, we’re going to have to take the kids out of private school, turn back in the cars we have, give up the vacations here, stop with our country club membership. They always think less. And yet you know what, 18 months after that I so frequently hear you know what, that’s the best thing that’s every happened to me because it forced me to look at new options. I realized I was not taking advantage of opportunities I had and I’m in a much better place today than I was then. I mean I hear that just so often it gets old and hearing it, so it does it require disaster to force us to be creative —

James Hartman: Sometimes.

Bill Miller: — for better — I hope that it doesn’t.

Jason Miller: Right, but sometimes it does. It’s a wake up call.

Bill Miller: I want people to take the initiative but it is difficult to take the initiative when things are going well and thus a lot of times in retrospect, it was what it appeared to be something unfortunate or unwelcome at least prompted somebody, than take the initiative and they end up in a better place. I don’t want to minimize it all the challenge that a lot of people are facing right now with hard times and it may be difficult to think creatively when the mortgage is due three days from now or three days from ago, and you thinking, I’ve just got to do something, but still in that space is a time where expect to be creative. Expect new ideas. Expect to see things that you’ve never seen before. Be reading, talking to people, going to workshops and seminars that are everywhere and don’t cost anything. You know, get on the internet and listen to podcasts like this. Get new ideas so you can take a fresh look at who you are, what you’re prepared for, what you can move into in the next season of your life.

If somebody had a job for 20 years, and I’m working with a gentleman right now whose had the same job for 25 years and now it’s clear they’re trying to get him to quit on his own initiative so they don’t have to give him anything that they would have to if they fired him. Anyway, that’s a real common scenario being played out. Well, he’s terrified, at least he was until we started looking at this. I said, my gosh, you’ve had the same job for 25 years. You’ve really haven’t had much of an increase in compensation. Now, he’s paid pretty well, but — and it really hasn’t been dramatically tough. Do you think that you perhaps are a different person than you were 25 years ago? Are you more skilled than you were 25 years ago? You know, opportunities changed where you would be more of a player. I mean, there’s all kinds of things in his favor and I think he can walk out of that and double his compensation even if he just wants another traditional job.

Jason Hartman: Sometimes that layoff or getting fired from that job, like you said, it’s the best wake up calls. It’s unfortunate and unwelcomed but so many times and we’ve all heard the stories, Dan about how that lead to the inspiration that really created some great new thing for the person going through it. I can’t remember who it was but they say there’s basically two ways people get motivated either by inspiration or desperation.

Bill Miller: That’s true.

Jason Miller: And I know there are a lot of desperate scenarios out there today, no question.

Bill Miller: I ought to probably throw in here too. I mean, I wasn’t exactly born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I mean, I haven’t been where I am for a long period time. You know, what people see of me today you know as a successful author and coach — you know we’ve got other company interests and things like that, that’s happened pretty quickly.

I mean, I’ve had a period of time and I was 42 years old when this happened, When I was 42 years old, I crashed and burned big time. I mean I came out of a business disaster. I owed the IRS and vendors about $450.000 and I thought it’s never going to get any worse than this. But at that time, I knew I had a couple of clear options. I could go get a job. You know, I could go get a job teaching at a university and get my $60,000 or whatever, you know and be okay with that, but I knew with what I was facing in terms of repaying debt that I owed, I would never see the light of day if I did that, if I just got a traditional job. I wouldn’t live long enough to have any kind of a life and repay my real obligations. I knew I was going to have to do something creative again.

So even in that space as desperate as I was and believe me we were. The IRS took our house, our cars. I didn’t have a car. I borrowed a car from a friend, an old beat up rail trap car just so I can get from point A to point B. I started from that but I resisted doing something just traditional even though our utilities were shut off and all the horrible things that you hear about. But I jumped back in as a creative person actually in that space. I needed income quickly and I took a position in sales, totally commission. No guarantee, no base, no salary, nothing. Totally commission, just give me the opportunity and I went out and did my best and started creating income very quickly again, not that that was my dream position. It certainly was not in any way but it was something that I could do immediately and it allowed me to start thinking again long term, what am I going to do? Where am I going to end up a year, three years, five years from now? So, developed over time, but I have been in a place where you know I hear these people talking today, gee, I’ve got $15,000 in debt and I’ve just lost my job you know where they’re giving me a severance package with six months of income and I’m thinking, geese.

Jason Hartman: That’s a total blessing. I never had a severance package in my life.

Bill Miller: Well, it’s better because you have it than to be paid for six months to figure out what you want to do with —

Jason Hartman: I know.

Bill Miller: — the next — rest of your life.

Jason Hartman: It’s a great thing. That’s really phenomenal. This has definitely been an inspiring talk and I think one of the things the listeners need to really remember is that gems are polished by friction, steel is hardened by fire and these hardships in life, if handled correctly, they really do lead to greener pastures and better things, and when you look back on them maybe years later, maybe months later, you think, boy I’m so glad it worked out this way. Everything just kind of always works out. So, it’s definitely an inspiring talk.

Well Dan, what would you like people to know just to kind of wrap this whole thing up?

Dan Miller: I’d love to just let people know about some of the things that we have going on that may help them in their own journey. I mean we have a social networking site. I kind of hesitate to call it that because it reminds people of My Space and Facebook where you just go in and put in what you had for breakfast this morning, frankly we’re not real interested in that but it’s an ideal network. It’s 40days.net and it’s just a whole bunch of happy people who have ideas that they’re developing. A lot of them aren’t sure how to do that well, but you know what, there’s a power of synergy and link in arms with other people who are on the same path. So, if they have technology questions, they ask each other. I don’t have to have all the answers and I don’t. If they have questions while marketing, they ask each other. The 40days.net is just a fun place for people to experiment as they move into new creative ideas that they want to develop. We have a lot of resource — of course I need to share with people on those. Got a couple of books, 48 days to [inaudible]. No more Mondays. There’s a more recent one that’s real popular that talks more about these creative ideas like we’ve talked about here, but only encourage people that just — if you loose your sense of hope, you really are dead in the water. But as long as you have a sense of hope, there are so many opportunities today, and I don’t want to be some empty headed optimist. I really am one of these glass half full kind of guys because I just see the reality of what people are able to do out here and we’re hearing from people every day too and I’m thrilled to do so, you know who are saying that for the first time, I really did tap into my dreams and my passions. I would have never done it had I not been confronted with this.

You know I’m so grateful that I’ve been released to really go with my dream and start this next season of my life you know with a sense of purpose.

Jason Hartman: Well, that’s fantastic. By the way, can I ask you, where did the name 48 days come from?

Bill Miller: You know, I’d like to say that it was some kind of a scientific process but it was really more arts than science, but I used to — my business used to be called the business source. Now, if there are any three more generic oatmeal names in the world, I’d like to know what they are, the business source. Nothing unique about them at all and you do a Google search and you’re going to get millions.

This was back in 48 hours was becoming popular as a TV show and I thought, I bet I can get some brand recognition if I use the 48 and I was looking for some kind of a time line because I was becoming increasingly frustrated in working with people who were not enjoying what they were doing. We’d map out a plan of action and two years later I realized they didn’t do anything. Like, oh my gosh, how is this possible? So I decided we need to put a time line and I believe that 48 days is enough time to assess where you are, get the advice and opinion of other people, look at what your alternatives are, narrow down to the best three or four, do a little more research, choose the best one and act.

Now I really stick to that too. That’s — if I work with somebody and we go through that process, just as I described it, we roll into day 49, they haven’t done anything that’s fine. I’m going to be your friend, but I realize you’ve made a choice. You’ve chosen to continue with what you’re doing. That’s perfectly fine. But frankly, I don’t want to invest my time anymore beyond that. Now, that’s the difference between a coach, rather than a counselor too, but I move people through quickly coming up with creative plans of action. I want to see new results and I think 48 days is enough time to do that and it’s just unique enough, Jason, that it gets people’s attention. It’s not something more common like 30 days or 60 days or 90 days, 48, people ask about it, just like you have and then they get excited about the fact. You mean I really can change my life in 48 days? And my response always is, yes you can if you create a plan.

Jason Hartman: Well, that’s giving some people some hope. Dan Miller, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate the inspiration. I know people are facing a lot of difficult times out there today and we want to turn them around and help people turn lemons into lemon aid. So, you help people do that. Thank you so much.

Dan Miller: Well my pleasure, Jason. It was a delight being with you.

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The Speaking of Wealth Team

Transcribed by Debra