Anything And Everything

Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff discuss a Fast Company article that asks whether “AI psychosis” is affecting business leaders and draws on a psychiatrist’s experience with a dozen hospitalized patients. They question the comparison, explore how pressure to embrace AI can affect business decisions, and explain why faster answers don’t replace your own judgment. Show Notes: The Fast Company article makes a big leap from 12 patients’ experiences to claims about millions of business leaders. Before accepting a claim, ask who’s being studied, what context is missing, and how key terms are being used. Creating something new often starts with believing in an idea before there’s proof it will work. Pressure to appear up to date can lead companies to exaggerate how much they’re using AI. For some people, joining the AI conversation is more about fitting in than using the technology, or a fear of missing out. An answer from AI shouldn’t go unquestioned just because it sounds confident. Good research means asking strategic questions, checking sources, and not stopping as soon as you receive the answer you want to hear. AI can help you work faster, but you’re still responsible for checking what you put out into the world.  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 thrives 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®

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® 

The most important technologies do more than change what we can do; they change how we think. Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff explore what the number system, the wheel, and personal computing can teach us about AI, why platforms matter, and why human conversation remains essential as technology moves forward. Show Notes: The 10-digit number system was a profound cognitive breakthrough that became the foundation of modern economics. Once people understood the number system, they could think in entirely new ways, including in terms of negative numbers, billions, and trillions. Major breakthroughs are often cognitive before they become technological. The wheel existed long before people used it for travel because the roads needed to support it did not yet exist. It took roughly 300 years for both the wheel and the 10-digit number system to become widely used. The personal computer companies that won were not necessarily the first; they were the ones that created platforms others could build on. AI has many competitors, but the dominant platform has not yet clearly emerged. New ideas don’t exist in isolation; they reshape the way we think about everything that came before them. AI can make individuals more capable, but conversation and listening remain essential to culture, community, and progress. Every new answer creates new questions, and human skills will always matter in finding the right ones. Resources: God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O’Gieblyn Learn more about Jeffrey Madoff Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach® 

Predictions about how AI will affect jobs tend to swing between dystopia and utopia. Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff share a grounded perspective on how AI is affecting work today, how entrepreneurs are experimenting with it, and why the best opportunities will still belong to those who take ownership of their skills, relationships, and future. Show Notes: When it comes to AI, we’re still in the surprise phase, much like past moments when new technologies first appeared. Today’s AI fears mirror the 1950s predictions that television would eliminate movies, which shows how extreme forecasts about new technology often miss how markets actually adapt. America has repeatedly adapted to major new technologies because its consumer base and appetite for innovation are so large. AI is creating a new level of visibility into a company’s numbers, shifting entrepreneurs from monthly to weekly measurements so they can course-correct faster. Strategic Coach® members are still hiring humans in their companies, using AI to increase efficiency rather than replace people. Most entrepreneurs are using AI personally to think through ideas, research, write, and journal more effectively but haven’t yet integrated it fully at the organizational level. Historical shifts show how technology reshapes work: in 1900, half of U.S. workers were in food production; today, it’s a small fraction as new kinds of jobs have emerged. In today’s world, individuals carry far more responsibility for planning their own future than previous generations did. Employers who don’t actively look out for their people can’t expect loyalty in return, especially in a marketplace where talented people have more choices than ever. Resources: Your Business Is A Theater Production: Your Back Stage Shouldn’t Show On The Front Stage The History of Money: A Story of Humanity by David McWilliams  Learn more about Jeffrey Madoff Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach®

Can AI ever become sentient? Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff unpack the fundamental differences between computer intelligence and human consciousness, and explain why emotional connection, meaning, and responsibility must remain human capabilities. Show Notes: AI, as we use it today, operates on very clever and very fast uses of language, not feelings. You can be conscious without sentience, but you can’t have sentience without consciousness. Throughout history, when something new isn’t fully understood, people tend to treat it as spiritual or even religious. Calling AI “magic” is brilliant marketing because it sidesteps the need to explain how it actually works. Emotional attachment to AI is risky because the system can’t receive empathy or respond as a sentient being. AI tools continually get better at learning how you use language and mirroring your patterns. Many AIs feel complimentary and helpful by design, which is how they draw you in and keep you engaged. Enterprise‑level users want to push AI further and further because any profit depends on scaling these capabilities. Under the hood, AI is just math and code, which most people find neither intuitive nor very interesting. Much advertising, including tech marketing, plays on the idea that you’re not yet the person you want to be and that their product will close the gap. Resources: Learn more about Jeffrey Madoff Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach®

Every new technology seems to arrive with a wild promise that it will “change everything,” and AI is no exception. Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff explore how technological breakthroughs really create growth; why consumers, not inventors, capture most of the value; and how entrepreneurs can use AI as a practical multiplier instead of a magical fix. Show Notes: There have been about 10 major technological breakthroughs in the last 200 years, and each one arrived with big promises and bold predictions. When it’s predicted that something’s going to “change everything,” it usually changes only some things, in powerful but often unpredictable ways. The people who profit most from new technologies are usually consumers, not the inventors or platforms. Most consumers use new capabilities to improve what they’re already committed to rather than reinventing their entire business or life. When most people start using a new technology, they tap into only part of what it can do, which leaves room for entrepreneurs to use it more strategically. Founders who bet everything on a new creation often push more extreme marketing claims that don’t necessarily match what real customers want. Any new technology creates new kinds of problems, especially as you expand your number of locations, platforms, and touchpoints. It’s not a bad thing when something gets replaced by something new; that’s simply an evolving marketplace and shifting opportunity. Resources: The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs Casting Not Hiring by Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff Learn more about Jeffrey Madoff Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach®

Sora looked like it would change movies forever, until it didn’t. Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff walk through Sora’s rapid rise and shutdown. They discuss why hype, guesswork, and bad business models caught up with it and reveal what growth‑minded entrepreneurs can learn about value creation, relationships, and using AI as a tool instead of a miracle solution. Show Notes: When OpenAI first demonstrated Sora’s text‑to‑video capabilities in early 2024, the reaction was close to shock as filmmakers suddenly pictured an entire industry being upended. Disney’s three‑year licensing deal in December 2025 made it look like Sora had gone fully mainstream and that traditional film was ready to partner with AI instead of fight it. By January 2026, new installs of Sora had already dropped 45 percent, revealing how quickly hype can fade when there’s no sustainable business model underneath. On March 24, 2026, OpenAI announced it was discontinuing Sora, compressing an entire hype cycle—launch, disruption, and collapse—into less than a year. Behind the scenes, Sora was facing skyrocketing operating costs, legal headaches, union pushback, and an increasingly crowded field of competing AI video tools. Sora’s short life shows that awe is not a business plan, especially when the promise is to replace human creativity instead of support it. If AI eliminates most entry‑level jobs, the big economic question becomes, who will have the income and confidence to keep buying what entrepreneurs are selling? If it seems like you’re getting powerful AI tools for free, it usually means your data, attention, or behavior is the product being packaged and sold. Resources: The D.O.S. Conversation by Dan Sullivan Learn more about Jeffrey Madoff Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach®

How you measure and manage time shapes every decision you make as an entrepreneur. Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey Madoff explore the surprising history of time systems, why time and money are inseparable, and how clearer structures for time create more value, predictability, and profit in your business and life. Show Notes: The earliest timekeeping was based on people’s direct experience of the sun, moon, and stars rather than clocks or calendars. Before standard time, the United States had more than 300 local time zones, which made coordination and commerce chaotic. Railroads forced the creation of shared time systems so people knew when to catch trains and move goods safely. Early American time zones were subjective and local, often set by the nearest town clock tower. Time as we know it is a manmade framework that lets us organize activity, collaboration, and value creation. Whatever system you choose, having a clear, shared structure for time is essential if you want to get things done with other people. Our drive to measure time comes from a desire for predictability, control, and fewer unpleasant surprises. In modern high-velocity trading, advantage is measured in thousandths of a second, showing how tightly time, technology, and money are now linked. Resources: The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs Time Management Strategies For Entrepreneurs (Effective Strategies Only) Learn more about Jeffrey Madoff Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach®