Casting A Winning Team In A Tech-Driven Marketplace

Gord Vickman: Welcome to the next episode of Podcast Payoffs. So glad you're with us today. Dan Sullivan here with me, Gord Vickman. And Dan, we're going to give the brand new quarterly book a little bit of love. It's called Casting Not Hiring. It's available now. Go to strategiccoach.com. Click store. You can buy a copy if you'd like. There's also free downloads if that's how you prefer. There's an e-book. There's a softcover book. you can get it how you'd like. And this was a concept that was coined in your collaboration with Jeffrey Madoff. You have a podcast called Anything and Everything that's available on the Strategic Podcast Network. Jeff mentioned it, and then you fleshed it out, and now it's a book that we can hold in our hands.
 
Dan Sullivan: And we have a major market book contract, and this book will be coming out as a major book near the end of 2025.
 
Gord Vickman: So we can't assume everyone listening knows what this is about. So, Dan, top line, Casting Not Hiring. What's going on?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, I think it's right on the front cover as growing your company with a theatrical approach rather than a corporate approach. And one of the things I've noticed in my 50 years of coaching entrepreneurs, that a lot of entrepreneurs who start a small business aspire to have a large corporate company. Some of them aspire to have a public corporate company where they make a pile of cash and then get to retire at 50 and work on their golf handicap in a golf community where they're surrounded by retired corporate executives. Sounds like a blast. But the big thing is how they treat people when they bring new people into their company. And there's two possibilities. You can hire them, which is the corporate model, or you can cast them, which is the theatrical model. And Strategic Coach, which is now 35 years old, and we're not a little company, we're what's called a medium-sized company because we have 120 team members. You yourself are a living successful example of not being hired into Strategic Coach, but being cast into Strategic Coach. We cast you into Strategic Coach. So the whole thing is we create a book where you should treat your entire business as a theatrical performance, which means there's a constant series of new projects, just like there's new plays in theater, there's new productions, and that produces a much more impactful entrepreneurial company than if you think you're a little corporation.
 
Gord Vickman: Because ultimately the people you bring into your organization, entrepreneurial organization, they have to play nice with the people who are already there.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, the people you bring into the organization are the organization. Because, I mean, I meet a few people in the public. I mean, I have people that I coach, but the vast majority of encounters between my company, our company, and the public is our team members.
 
Gord Vickman: So they have to be in symphonic harmony with each other for good teamwork. And, you know, the corporate approach is you're hiring for the role and then there's the hierarchy and then there's the bossiness and then there's the title obsession. I'm sure not all corporations, but most of the ones that I'm familiar with, you think of the Patrick Bateman, American Psycho, his business card is better than mine. You know, that's how a lot of them seem to work. It's crisper. The font is nicer. A preoccupation. Not so much teamwork, but it's like stabbing you in the back as many times as I can to get where I want to go. But that's not how a theatrical production works. And Jeff Madoff, that we mentioned earlier, has a long background in theatre with the Lloyd Price musical, which is now, I think you mentioned it was moving to London.
 
Dan Sullivan: It looks like it'll be full-blown in London, in the west end of London, which has more theaters than Broadway in New York. Broadway is usually pointed to as the big theater country, but London is actually a bigger theater company than New York is.
 
Gord Vickman: We'll put a link to that down in the show notes of this one if you're curious to learn more about Jeff Madoff and Personality of the Lloyd Price musical.
 
Dan Sullivan: It opened in Philadelphia. I saw the first productions just off Broadway in New York when they were just doing it for the first time, then they got a three-week gig in Philadelphia, and then there was a 10-week run in Chicago. Very successful, great reviews. But Jeff lives about half a mile from Broadway in New York City, so he has aspirations of seeing his play at one of the major live theaters in New York City. But London is the equal of Broadway.
 
Gord Vickman: One piece of trivia that blew my mind that I don't know how I stumbled across it was, on Broadway just means the size of the theater, does it not? You don't have to literally be on Broadway in New York City to be on Broadway. It just means the size of the theater. Am I off on that?
 
Dan Sullivan: It's sort of like Times Square. You have Times Square, and it goes out for about a mile from there, and you have 30, 40 theaters in there. But the closer you are to the actual street Broadway, the more you're on Broadway. Lots of them are century-old theaters. These are big theaters. In London, they vary tremendously in size, but there's very famous theatres in London that might seat 300, where in Broadway they might seat 2,000. But to be in the West End of London, a West End theatre, is the same as being a Broadway theatre.
 
Gord Vickman: So Dan, you and Jeff had the conversation, this was a few months ago, and you sort of serendipitously gave a name to something that I can confirm that Strategic Coach has been doing for a long time because prior to me coming onto the team here and working with you, I met lots of people at Strategic Coach. It wasn't just like a hiring manager in an ill-fitting gray suit sitting across a long boardroom table. I must have met about 12 different people before. So I can confirm that I firmly believe now that I was cast as opposed to being hired. Now, I wasn't called that at the time because the name hadn't been coined yet, but I was thinking, okay, so there's probably entrepreneurs in the past who may have tickled this concept, again, not calling it as it's called right now, Casting Not Hiring. So I went digging a little bit to see what kinds of entrepreneurs we could have fun with. And I came up with a few names here. So Walt Disney, okay, Walt Disney had his Imagineers. He gave new names to people on his team, combining imagination and engineer, that were working on projects directly with him, because he was casting them. And Walt Disney also was famous for giving animators assignments that matched their personality. So if there was an animator that was particularly goofy, he would be animating goofy characters. And if there was an animator that was a bit surly or grumpy, who was really talented, they would animate kind of the grumpier characters. Because he thought that if you had that element, if that was part of your personality, your natural way of being, you would bring that into the character and you would do a better job. Now, would that not be a pretty perfect example of casting as opposed to saying, you do this, you do this, you do this?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, one of my favorite examples to go along with the Walt Disney one is the movie Casablanca, which is one of my favorites. It's certainly in the top three all-time movies that I've probably watched ten times. But there's a very striking difference in the movie between the dramatic scenes, you know, because it takes place during the Second World War, and Casablanca and Morocco is a city controlled by the French who are collaborating with the Germans, with the Nazis. The Nazis are there. And it has to do with undercover anti-Nazi work. So there's a lot of drama in it. So there's violence in the movie. And there's love scenes, and it's Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, you know, one of the most famous screen romances of all time.
 
So they had two writers. They had a violent scene, you know, action scene writer, and they had a love scene writer, because one writer couldn't handle the breadth of experience, the contrast in experience. But the whole movie, I mean, you can just see all the characters. You can just see how they did a great job with all the actors, including the bad people and the good people. The emphasis in casting is on the uniqueness of the individual and the role. In hiring, it's the job that matters and can we get somebody who can do the job. Therefore, your work experience, your education, everything matters. But in casting, that's important that you've acted before and you've done a variety of roles. But the most important thing is, do you match up? Not only with the role we're asking you to do, but do you match up with the person that you're going to be working with, you know? And the team members, I mean, we work together, but you work far more with other people in the company than you do with me. It's just that all of ours are recorded. Yes.
 
Gord Vickman: It's on the record. Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: We have a tool in the book called The 4x4 Casting Tool. It's sort of a unique book in the sense that we ask you to do the tool before you start reading the story. You'll completely grasp what the book is about if you actually put down somebody that you're thinking about casting in a role in your entrepreneurial company, there's 16 boxes that you have to, it's four questions, four, four, four, and they're unique. Nobody who's ever come on board has a form filled out for what they're expected to do has ever seen anything like this. I think it's a truly unique way to really guarantee the success when you bring someone new into your company.
 
Gord Vickman: Thomas Edison did not have a 4x4 Casting Tool, but he had his insomnia squad. He's another entrepreneur that I dug up. So Edison, when he had a really complicated project that he wanted to complete and he wanted it done very quickly, he would go to his team and he would find seven people. And now, of course, he knew their backgrounds and he knew what they were capable of. So he would assemble teams of seven, and he would always be there. So he's skin in the game. He wouldn't pick seven people and put them in a room and just say, work on this until it's done. You're not eating, you're sleeping. But he would be right there with them. So he'd assemble these insomnia squads to get through a problem. They would sit in a room. They would barely eat. They wouldn't sleep very much, and they were all there voluntarily, but they were cast because they wanted to be part of that team that would join him for this next big breakthrough. And I thought that was really interesting because, you know, prior to me learning that and researching a little bit, I had no idea what the Insomnia Squad was, but he had them. And apparently he would do it all the time. He would just assemble seven people.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, he had all sorts of projects. Yeah. He didn't sleep very much. He would go to sleep, and he would have two metal dishes, one to his right and one to his left. He would go to sleep with steel balls in his hands, and when he fell asleep, the balls would hit the steel bowl, and he'd wake up, and then he'd start working, and then he'd get really tired, and he'd do it again.
 
Gord Vickman: That's a good way to die, but hey, if you're a workaholic, and that's what you really want to do.
 
Dan Sullivan: He was mostly deaf. He had a childhood accident where he lost his hearing. He never went to school. He was educated at home by his mother, who was a good teacher. My farm where I grew up was two miles from where Thomas Edison was born, so I know that. Milan, Ohio. Very famous little town because of him.
 
Gord Vickman: Two more entrepreneurs, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, may be considered creepy, may be considered ingenious, but they were notorious for knowing a lot about the people on their teams. Some of it might have been what would be considered normal back then, perhaps an invasion of privacy. But Henry Ford would know a lot about the personal lives of the people that would be working for him, like his managers, probably not the factory line workers, but he wanted them to pry a little bit And the reason was he wanted to know who would be a good fit for this part of the line, who would be a good fit for this part of the line, who has personal things going on in their life that maybe they wouldn't be so good for this particular shift, or maybe this person, I don't know whether it's a new baby in the house, whether it's something going on. But he knew what was going on in the outside world of the people that were working for him. Carnegie was notorious for promoting from within.
 
So when he'd bring people in, he would learn a lot and he would have the people working closely underneath him learn as much about the people that were working one level below and so on and so forth because he was very mindful as well of who was being moved into different positions within the company because he loved promoting from within, but he wanted to know who would be a good fit for this. So these are just four examples that I dug up of people who had been, again, tickling that concept of casting. Like they didn't call it casting back then, but they understood way back then, you know, because we're talking about them a few years after they've passed along to a better place. Clearly, they were doing something right because legendary entrepreneurs change the game, change the world. People will be talking about them for generations.
 
Dan Sullivan: Here's the thing about this. I think that it's been practiced all through human history. Okay, you want the right person in the right position for the right activity. I mean, that probably goes back as long as there's been humans, you know, but there wasn't a name for it and it wasn't applied specifically to entrepreneurism. I think this happens in corporations, especially as you get closer to the top. But they don't have a name for it. They call it hiring or they call it headhunting or anything. And I think it makes a big difference that we are relating this directly to theater. And I wanted to ask you a question. You had a lot of experience of being in different positions before you ever got to Strategic Coach. And you've been in your eighth year now. So what would you now with that experience and comparing it to your being in other organizations? If you had three things, it's radically different how it proceeds by coming in this way compared to the other ways.
 
Gord Vickman: Okay, so this is easy. I can just sweep this right off the 4x4, which was the first thing. Clear expectations upon coming in, not having any worry. Because you know what? It's strange starting a new role. I had come into Coach after a period of working for myself. I had been doing audio projects, both live recording and post, working for myself for a number of production companies. And then when this opportunity came along, I thought, this is something that's really interesting to me. I researched Strategic Coach. I knew a little bit about you. I learned more about you. I thought this is a project that is worthwhile. That is something that I would like to pursue. I didn't need a job. I had one, but this is something that I wanted to do. So 4x4 tool lands on my lap. I said, let's work on this right now. Didn't know if the job was mine or not, but it all worked out in the end. So that's number one, clear expectations on day one, not having to spend any time wondering if I'm doing the right thing or not. Number two, there's something that's not so much taught, but it's a process that we go through. It's called Collaborative Way. I don't want to get too much into Collaborative Way. If you could ask Perplexity, what is Collaborative Way? But it's a mindset, and it's a series of, how would you describe Collaborative Way? A way of dealing with interpersonal issues in the workplace and to assume the best intentions. from others. Am I off base there, Dan? That's pretty much … I haven't done it, so I'm ...
 
Dan Sullivan: Okay. I'm the one person in Coach who didn't do it.
 
Gord Vickman: Okay, in that case, I just described it perfectly. That was a perfect description for what Collaborative Way is. Yeah. There we go.
 
Dan Sullivan: By the way, Collaborative Way is not a Coach-created process.
 
Gord Vickman: It's from the outside. Yes, it's a process that was brought into Coach. And, you know, it's assuming the best intentions, assuming that everyone has good motivations, assuming that people are in it for the same reasons. We're all trying to achieve the same goals and no one is out there to stab you in the back. I'm oversimplifying it. I apologize, but it's not a podcast about Collaborative Way. What I'm suggesting is, you know, upon our orientation, when we came into Coach, those little one day things that they ask you to participate in and Collaborative Way was one of them. And that was just we are a team here and we all get along. And if you have an issue with someone, it's best to take it up with that person. And gossip is not going to get you anywhere. And talking behind people's backs, while that may be effective in corporate environments, it gets shut down very quickly here. So there's sort of fresh air inside Strategic Coach that there's a pretty good assurance that if something goes wrong, you're not going to have an entire gaggle of people talking about you behind your back, which is something that a lot of other people worry about in different organizations. And the third thing of being cast, the autonomy to make the decisions that you know or you suspect. Let me pull that back. Not know, but that you suspect will move something forward. So … Not suspect, bet. Bet.
 
Dan Sullivan: Guesses and bets. You're not suspecting, you're betting this is going to be appreciated.
 
Gord Vickman: Yes, I bet this is going to be appreciated. I bet. I'm guessing and I'm betting that this is going to be an effective way to market this podcast, or I'm guessing and I'm betting that this is going to be an effective way to assist one of our coaches via some form of content, whether it's a video or a podcast. Sometimes it works as well as we expect. Sometimes it blows away our expectations. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. But at no point are we ever sitting around thinking that we're going to be shamed, scorned, and punished if it doesn't work out. Now, we're not talking about tanking multiple six figure marketing campaigns, but I'm talking about this is like tinkering stuff, right? You try something and it doesn't work. People will go, oh, okay. And Shannon Waller, your co-host, your friend, your long-time collaborator, co-host on the Inside Strategic Coach podcast, little shout out to that show. It's wonderful. If you haven't checked it out, do it after this one's over, please. You know, when things didn't work out, Shannon will go, okay, well, what did you learn from that? Well, I learned this, this, this, this. Okay, well, are we going to do it again? Probably not. Well, how come? So helping your brain flesh it out. And then you leave there and everybody feels good. And it's like, okay, well, we just learned one new way that is not going to be effective in the future. And I'm not going to be stressing out. And I'm not just talking about me, but other people. My feeling is and my sense is that other people don't dedicate a lot of mental energy to worrying about some kind of repercussion that they may suffer if something that they had bet on and guessed on doesn't work out as well as they had hoped. So there's my roundabout. You asked for three, and I gave you three.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, one of the things here is that also The 4x4 Casting Tool is really created like I created the one for you, but as you go forward, you're creating the ones for you. You know, I'm just setting up the framework, but it's a unique relationship between you and me that I'm designing it for. And I tell you right on the sheet of paper, I mean, I expect you in all situations to perform with these attitudes. I expect you to always be demonstrating these results, but you're getting better. But if you really want to knock it out of the park, here are four ways you can really be a hero to me. And the other thing is, these are four ways, they really drive me crazy. And even if you're doing all these other things right, I'm probably going to fire you. Okay. And these are four ways. Don't go here. This is the third rail of the subway. Do not touch this. And the two things that I just mentioned, being a hero and drives me crazy is never talked about in job interviews. But how you get rewarded when you're in the job totally depends on how you're being a hero and how you get fired from the job, as always, you're driving me crazy, but it's never discussed.
 
Gord Vickman: Strategic Coach is always all the tools are positive. There's no tool that's called like, why is today miserable? You just get it out. No, all the tools are positive. It's forward thinking. So if you're asking yourself, if you're familiar with Strategic Coach and Dan and the tools, you might say, well, why do we need a fourth quadrant anyway? Why would you even go there? That's going to freak people out about how they can get fired. People are going to focus on that. And I've heard you tell entrepreneurs, Dan, that the fourth quadrant is there because I'll paraphrase, but it's like, how many times have you had someone on your team that did everything you asked them to do, but you still fired them anyway because they drove you crazy? What if you just put that down on paper to allow them? So it's actually, you're helping that person. It's not dragging it into a negative area. You're just telling that person, you know, this is going to drive me crazy, so don't do this.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's like, you know, in electrical settings, do not touch this. You'll be electrocuted. I'm just telling you how you could be electrocuted. Yeah, don't touch that. And I'm not going to change. These always drive me crazy. And I'm not seeking counseling for this. I'm not going through therapy or anything to get better at this. This is the way I'm always going to be. And just don't go there. And it's kind of funny. You've never done anything where I would send you a note. But I have had people, and I sent them a note, on your 4x4 Casting Tool, consult quadrant number four and number three. They do it and they read it and they come in. They said, yeah, yeah, I understand. I'll stop doing that. Didn't have to tell them what they were doing. It was already written on their casting sheet. You know, you're getting close to there. I'm just telling you, don't go there. Third rail.
 
Yeah, but here's the big thing, because our podcast is really about technology. My sense is the world is becoming and will always be even more so pervasively technological. Technology is on all sides of us. You and I are creating this on a very, very advanced form of technology. I love it. Ours is really live theater because we're creating this as it's being recorded and people are going to watch it and they'll know immediately that this was freeform. This was created on the spot and all my podcasts are. But there's so much that's packaged in today's world, and you're being presented with images which are rehearsed and packaged. And my sense is, as we go along and things become more technological, that actually live theater becomes a more valuable experience, both to be part of a live theater experience and to witness a live theater, and that actually the way to really differentiate you in the marketplace is not to be more slickly, corporately technological, but actually to be more theatrical.
 
Gord Vickman: Yeah, I remember, I don't know where I heard this, where I read this, it's just something that's stuck in my brain, but someone who is liked by a group of people, when they see that person, man, woman, child, make a little mistake, it endears that person to that group even more. Whereas the person making the tiny boop, I'm not talking about burning down the building or sinking the ship, but so picture a person, man or woman, liked by another group of people. That person makes a little mistake and says like, oh, my bad. It actually endears that person to the group even further. They like that person even more now because they've been humanized, because they see a bit of vulnerability in there.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, not only that, they watch how the person responds to their own mistake. And that tells you worlds about how this person is with themselves, and are they easy with themselves? And it tells you how they'll be with you if you make a mistake. You know, a lot of the banter that goes in my Free Zone, I zing people and people zing me. Just a classic case. I made a mistake in describing something in the last workshop that was pointed out to me and then I said it the other way so I was correct, you know. And I treated the second one as if well, of course, of course it's this way, you know, even though I had just made a mistake 30 seconds before, you know, and I was confident about when I was making the mistake and I was confident about my new explanation. And everybody laughed. And I said, see how quickly I adjusted to that? And I said, you know, Mrs. Sullivan didn't raise her fifth child to be an idiot. And somebody immediately said, no, it happened naturally. Oh, happened naturally. And everybody looked at me and I said, that was so good. I said, whoa, that was such a great designer. But I had done it to him about two workshops ago, and I think he was just looking for payback time. And they knew that, you know, so it was, we get him back and everything like that. But yeah, it's cool.
 
Gord Vickman: My grandfather said, if you can't laugh at yourself, you have no business laughing at anyone else. Wise words from a man when he was around, had a great sense of humor. Dan, let's wrap because this was a fun episode. Hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed making it for you. Dan, I am an entrepreneur. I am super jazzed about this concept of Casting Not Hiring. I have no idea where to start. What do I do?
 
Dan Sullivan: I think that the book that we've just written is unique. You know, I do a little bit of research about people who have talked about this and everything, but nobody's applied it to entrepreneurism. They apply to secrets of being a great presenter or putting on a good show or a good production. But when nobody talks about this should be the central way that you're thinking about your entrepreneurial business. And I think if you grasp this, you're going to want the book. It's easy to read. It takes about, at most, an hour and a half to read the book. And it's got an audio track. It's got a video track. It's got a coaching session in it. First of all, I'm very confident that, you know, we produce about 10,000 of these, which we do for our own community. And this time we took it to a publisher and they said, we love this book. And our previous big books have sold 200,000. I think this is going to be our first million-dollar seller. I think the word of mouth on this book is going to be extreme. It's very interesting.
 
I was at a conference, Joe Polish, Genius Network. This was maybe a month ago in Scottsdale in Phoenix. There was an early round investor there, and the early round investors are the people who really make a lot of money. I just met him, and we were talking, and I said, I'll show you a book I just created, and I showed it to him, and he looked at the cover, and he says, oh, this is great. The words Casting Not Hiring, everybody understands it. I've never met anybody when I, even telling them the name, I said, I got a new book out, it's called Casting, Not Hiring. They said, oh, that is so good. So I think, we have great theater just the way we put the book together. I mean, people just really get it. And then, you know, I showed him the 4x4 tool and he said, you know, I'm invested in about 25 start-up companies. I'm going to buy these and give them out to every one of the founders and say, read this book. We're going to talk about this book because he said the way that start-up entrepreneurs bring people on board in the first three months determines whether they're going to be successful or not.
 
Gord Vickman: Hmm. So did you get equity in any of his investments?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, I know how to make my own money. I don't need anybody else's money, but I'm really interesting. Just his instant response. He wasn't even talking about his own organization. He was talking about organizations. He said, if they grasp this, he says, I'm pretty confident about how they're going to grow.
 
Gord Vickman: That's very cool. Very cool to hear that, Dan. That's neat. If you want your copy of the book, strategiccoach.com. Just click store. It's available for you. There's an ebook. You can get your soft copy there too, and let us know how you want to receive it. And it's really easy to get. It's a great read. It's a fast read. Hamish McDonald, shout out. Cartoons are awesome again, as always. And Dan, that's about all I got for today. So, Dan, thanks so much. Always a pleasure. If there's someone in your life, a colleague, a friend, someone you really care about, who you think could glean some value or just really enjoy this episode, please do share it with them. We always appreciate it. Dan, always a pleasure. Thank you.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thank you.