How do you tell a real opportunity from an expensive distraction? Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff explore why big ideas like Segway and Quibi fell short despite big-name backers and huge budgets, and explain how to look past the hype, ask better questions, and focus on what your customers actually want.

Show Notes:

Even in a good year, only a small share of IPOs turn out to be good investments.

Some investors aren’t betting that an idea will work—they’re betting they can get out before everyone else realizes it won’t.

Sometimes, the promise of what a product could do is easier to sell than something that already works.

Quibi had big names and plenty of money behind it, but it was solving a problem people didn’t have.

If you’re doing something new, there may not be credentials for it yet, but customers who keep paying you are a good sign.

The entertainment business is all guesses and bets, and past success doesn’t guarantee the next hit.

For every invention that takes off, there are plenty that don’t.

Sometimes, people try to sell you on who else has invested rather than on the idea itself.

A great demo gets people excited, but a lasting business needs customers who keep coming back.

Before you put your money in, ask who gets paid even if the idea doesn’t work.

Resources:

Most companies hire to fill jobs. The best leaders cast to build greatness. Casting Not Hiring offers a new way to build a team that performs together rather than a collection of people who simply function on their own. Order Casting Not Hiring now.

Learn more about Jeffrey Madoff

Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach®

Most companies hire to fill jobs. The best leaders cast to build greatness. Drawing on Dan Sullivan’s decades of coaching entrepreneurs and Jeffrey Madoff’s experience as a director, producer, and creative leader, Casting Not Hiring offers a new way to build a team that performs together rather than a collection of people who simply function on their own. Order Casting Not Hiring now.

Activities that were once inherently social in the 1950s and ’60s have become much more solitary. Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff discuss the changes, technological and otherwise, that have altered the way we work, play, and socialize.

Show Notes:

In the mid-to-late-20th century, you generally had to go somewhere and deal with someone in person if you wanted to do something.

Over the decades, technological advances didn't just make our lives more efficient. They progressively automated, individualized, and digitized tasks that used to require a community to get done.

The attitude of the marketplace is: if they’re going to do it, we’re going to make it easier for them to do it.

TV was called the window on the world and the vast wasteland, and both of those statements were true.

Thanks to targeted ads and content suggestions, where you used to be the observer and the spectator, you're becoming almost the subject of the activity.

The difference between how much viewer research is being done now compared to the 1950s is enormous.

Audiences are so splintered now that TV can't aggregate the kind of viewer numbers they used to be able to.

The introduction of credit cards allowed people to live beyond their means, which caused other kinds of problems.

Resources:

Learn more about Jeffrey Madoff

Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach®

AI may seem ubiquitous, but most people are still in the early stages of figuring out how it can create practical advantages in their lives and businesses. Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff discuss the gap between a new technology’s initial promise and its real-world results, using AI and electric vehicles as examples.

Show Notes:

When a new technology enters the marketplace, customers aren’t interested in everything it can do; they’re interested in how it relates to what they’re already doing.

Users of a technology are often less interested in its creators’ vision than in how it can benefit them personally.

Once people become aware of a new technology, they look for ways it can give them a short-term advantage.

Tremendous amounts of money have been invested in the electric vehicle industry, but it hasn’t yet delivered on its initial promise.

When the full production cycle of an electric vehicle is considered, it may be no more energy-efficient or less polluting than other cars.

The stock market’s way of measuring productivity doesn’t account for the changes taking place in the small-business market.

The United States hasn’t reduced its dependence on foreign oil and may be as vulnerable as it was 50 years ago.

The U.S. is now the world’s largest energy exporter.

Resources:

Guessing & Betting Confidence by Dan Sullivan

Casting Not Hiring by Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff

The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs

Learn more about Jeffrey Madoff

Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach®