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CAPABLEISM

Understanding your entire life as endlessly


expanding capabilities.

Dan Sullivan
Cartoons by Hamish MacDonald
Six Ways To Enjoy This Strategic Coach Book
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is not just a recitation of the printed words but an
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Hamish MacDonald Christine Nishino
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Jennifer Bhatthal Peggy Lam
Capableism
Every individual strives to become more capable.
I believe this is essential to what it means to be
human.

Capitalism and other political systems are really


sub-systems of what I call Capableism, a powerful
instinctive drive in humanity to constantly increase
human capability. In this short book, I share the
importance of using and growing your capabilities,
and show how, by combining our capabilities with
those of others, we can expand everyone’s future.
Indeed, this is what drives all progress in the world.
TM & © 2018. The Strategic Coach Inc. All rights reserved. No part of
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without written permission from The Strategic Coach Inc., except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cartoons by Hamish MacDonald.

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This publication is meant to strengthen your common sense, not to


substitute for it. It is also not a substitute for the advice of your doctor,
lawyer, accountant, or any of your advisors, personal or professional.

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Contents
Introduction 8
Capableism Creates Capitalism

Chapter 1 14
Everything Starts With Capability

Chapter 2 20
Everything Comes From Capability

Chapter 3 26
Everything Grows With Capability

Chapter 4 32
Being A Committed Capableist

Chapter 5 38
Multiplying Your Capabilities

Chapter 6 44
Combining Capabilities With Others’

Chapter 7 50
Reviewing Your Capability Past

Chapter 8 56
Expanding Your Capability Future

Conclusion 62
Increasingly A Capableism World

The Strategic Coach Program 68


Expanding Entrepreneurial Freedom
Introduction
Capableism Creates Capitalism
You understand that the center of all positive
progress in the world lies in everybody’s daily
desire to increase their individual capabilities.
When people argue about capitalism, socialism, and many
other isms, they’re actually discussing subsystems of a
much larger reality, which is that human beings have always
been striving to increase their capabilities in one way or
another. To reflect this, I coined a new term: Capableism.

I want to overthrow this “ism versus ism” way of thinking


because I don’t think it produces anything useful. We need
a bigger way of looking at humanity, and I see it as being
based on individual striving Capableism, and then constantly
building out to greater and greater levels of cooperation.

Capableism is a purely positive and benign thought about


human beings that essentially involves everyone’s striving
for increased capability. It transcends political views and
recognizes the essence of human nature. Some people get
it wrong and see other people as their competitors, but my
feeling is that even the most competitive person in the world
probably spends 95 percent of their time cooperating so
that greater progress can be made.

There’s a direct connection between your personal capa-


bilities and the Capableism of the entire human race. If you
want to understand how the individual comes to grips with
the overall world, it’s the understanding of their own unique
capabilities and then how those unique capabilities can
become teamwork with others.

8
Capableism

Subsystem of something much bigger.


Capitalism is an operating system that transforms every-
one’s useful capabilities into greater economic value. But it’s
a subsystem created out of Capableism. It’s based on the
fundamental nature of humanity: billions of individuals who
are all striving to make their capability greater.

The individual is the operating unit of humanity. You can’t


really talk about humanity unless you talk about individuals,
and so I like to just start by saying, “How do individuals oper-
ate?” Consciously or unconsciously, they want to expand
their capabilities to achieve things, to control things, to make
their lives more comfortable, and to be happier.

The system that they’re operating under doesn’t really


matter; the striving is what’s powerful.

Everybody from the very beginning.


People don’t need to be taught to strive. Babies start
striving for things as soon as they’re born. Long before
they’re actually conscious of what they’re doing, they
develop powerful abilities to communicate to get what they
want, to move to get what they want, and then even to
cooperate to get what they want.

So for all this political and philosophical talk about isms,


they’re just organized ways of directing people’s capabilities
related to economics. But science is a subsystem, tech-
nology is a subsystem, religion is a subsystem, the various
kinds of political systems are subsystems.

The fundamental system is actually the Capableism system.

9
Introduction

This includes every human being right from the beginning of


time. Indeed, I can’t imagine what human means outside of
this striving for greater capability.

Your connection with everyone else.


You share a common purpose and meaning with every per-
son who has ever lived on the basis of your capabilities and
theirs.

Capableism is our connection to every other human being,


and it’s through using our capabilities and the combining of
our capabilities with other people’s that we connect.

The fundamental medium of communication among human


beings is actually the joining together of capabilities in order
to create larger capabilities. No matter how different our
individual capabilities are, what we have in common is the
striving for increased capability.

Increasing capability drives all progress.


I don’t think you can truly recognize the value of someone
else’s capability until you first find the limits or boundaries
of your own. Once you’ve done that, you can have a bigger
goal that your capability will only take care of part of, and
so you’ll have to go looking for capabilities that are different
from yours to achieve the goal.

It’s this increasing capability, both on an individual basis


and a combined basis, that progress thrives on. All of the
progress humans have made in the past, all of the progress
that’s being created in the present, and all of the progress
that’s going to occur in the future is a function of individu-
als taking hold of their own capabilities and then seeing the

10
Capableism

great value in the possibility of combining their capabilities


with those of other people.

The factor that makes sense of everything.


While a lot of people see the world as being chaotic and con-
fusing, I see an immense amount of collaboration and coop-
eration going on among people with different capabilities.

I had this great feeling one night when I was in Times


Square in New York. It was a weekend night, and it was very
crowded. I don’t know if you could have gotten any more
people in the area, and there was a lot of noise.

I thought to myself, “It’s just all teamwork. The whole


thing is just teamwork.” All of this was being held together
through the cooperation of different capabilities, and that
included the shows people were seeing, the restaurants
people were going to, the entertainers performing out on the
street, the tour buses taking people around, and so much
more. I saw the amazing teamwork of human beings.

Whenever I travel to some other place and there’s an enor-


mous amount of people, I always find it really friendly. I see
that it’s just all teamwork. I may not understand exactly the
activity that they’re involved in, but I do understand how
they’re going about the activity and why they’re going about
the activity.

So much of the complexity and confusion of 21st-century


life becomes increasingly clear and simple as you contin-
ually focus on developing and expanding your capabilities
and cooperating with those around you.

11
Introduction

12
Capableism

13
Chapter 1
Everything Starts With Capability
You realize that everything you need to have a
bigger and better future is already available to you
in your existing set of capabilities.
You might find it surprising to learn that you already possess
everything you need, and you might not even be aware of all
the capabilities you have.

We’re all born with capabilities, and those capabilities


develop over a number of years thanks to our natural striving.

When you first learned how to crawl, then how to walk, and
at some point how to make your way up and down stairs,
those were capabilities that developed before you likely
thought of them as capabilities.

Taking seriously what you have.


The real breakthrough that I see is taking your capabilities
seriously.

This means first taking all of the senses that you were born
with seriously, and then taking seriously the abilities you’ve
learned.

I liken it to getting dealt a hand in a card game. The truth


is that the best poker players in the world don’t get dealt
better hands than the poorest poker players in the world;
they just know what to do with the cards they’re dealt. They
know better than most people how to play the cards they
get, and also what it looks like to the other players when
they look at the cards they’ve been dealt.

There’s a deal in every area of life. Every individual gets


14
Capableism

dealt a hand, and it’s what you do with what you’re dealt
that determines how well you’re going to do. It’s partially
what cards you get, but it’s mostly how you play those
cards.

If you don’t take your own capabilities seriously, you’ll end


up wishing you had someone else’s. But this is a rejection
of who you are in favor of someone outside of yourself, and
that’s a real formula for unhappiness.

All you can do is recognize and utilize your own capabilities


as best as you can—and combine yours with others’.

It comes alive when you value it.


You can only use what you have. We all want to get better at
what we do in order to create a bigger and better future, but
before we can get better at something, we have to recog-
nize what it is we can already do.

The way to increase any one of your existing capabilities is


by first appreciating its unique value to you. Any capability
of yours will come alive the moment you value it.

But it requires a mindset of paying attention to and taking


seriously the capabilities you have.

Capability improves when you use it.


As soon as you value and use your capability, no matter
what it is, it will improve.

It’s a real power to be able to improve any one of your


capabilities at any time, and using them is the way to do it.
Another way to get better is to combine your capabilities

15
Chapter 1

with someone else’s. In this way, you’re both building on


what you have and creating something new that wouldn’t
have been possible otherwise.

But you have to recognize and take control of your own


capabilities before you can combine them with someone
else’s.

You have great capabilities as a child.


Your greatest and most valuable lifetime capabilities were
already there in early childhood. There are two examples I
can give from my early life experience.

Before I was even in first grade, I recognized that I could


think about my thinking. I could step back and see how my
thoughts were forming, and I could play with my thinking.

When I entered first grade, I realized that none of the other


kids did this. Not only that, but I had the sense that my
teachers didn’t do this either.

I didn’t feel weird about it. I actually thought of it as a neat


advantage that I had. With this ability to think about my
thinking, I’ve never been bored, and I’ve never felt lonely,
because all I have to do is flash back and do some thinking
about my thinking, and life becomes interesting again.

This capability that was there from my childhood grew as


I got older, and as I took it more seriously, I developed my
entire career around it. All of the thinking tools that I coach
in my workshops have come from this thinking about my
thinking capability.

16
Capableism

The other example is that I could converse with adults from


very early on. I think the two skills go together, as the think-
ing about my thinking gave me confidence to ask adults
about their experiences.

Children have great capabilities, and what they sometimes


lack is the opportunity to test out their capabilities in a great
number of experiences because they’re under the direction
of adults, and they’re limited in their interaction with others.

The environment they grow up in and whether they’re given


encouragement to develop their capabilities also plays a part
in whether a child will grow and take their abilities seriously.

Everybody’s unique capability path.


Everyone is born into different circumstances than everyone
else, and everyone has different capabilities to start with.

The way in which you recognize, develop, and utilize your


particular capabilities is uniquely different from the way
anyone else has done it—from the beginning of time.

You can admire someone else’s capabilities, but you can’t


imitate them because you don’t know what unique things
got them to where they are. To have their capabilities, you’d
have to have been them and lived their life from the very
beginning.

A key thing to do on your unique path is to recognize the


capabilities you have and then to value them and improve
them to the point where you can think about how you might
be able to combine a capability of yours with a capability of
someone else’s in order to create something even greater.

17
Chapter 1

18
Capableism

19
Chapter 2
Everything Comes From Capability
You realize that who you are, who everyone else is,
and the world around you are always the result of
the constant expansion of human capabilities.
At seventy-three, I’m the result of all the capabilities I’ve
developed over the course of my life. Strategic Coach
started with two people, and now we’re 130 people. Every
time I now start a new workshop group, it’s achieving reve-
nue that’s equal to everything we made during the first three
years of the company.

When you look at facts like that for yourself, you have to
appreciate that the acquisition of capabilities is the constant
factor for all of that growth.

Part of that involved my own internal capabilities, and those


are what allow me to take advantage of external capabilities
all around me.

If the organizing principle of Capableism is striving for capa-


bility, then it’s very easy to use that to look at how people
develop or don’t develop, whether they have great success
or not. The people who recognize this are incredibly suc-
cessful, and the people who think there’s something else
going on usually run into complexity and confusion.

You are what you can achieve next.


Who you are is what you’re capable of doing next, and
who you are right now is the buildup of this capability you
have. And it’s both personal and social. In the social sense,
humans are uniquely gifted at tapping into capabilities out-
side themselves.

20
Capableism

That’s the fundamental mindset. You’re either good at that


or you’re not good at it. It all depends on how you’re looking
at yourself and how you’re looking at your relationship to
other people.

If you accept that who you are is the sum total of the capa-
bilities you’re using right now, it becomes a platform for
going further and expanding those capabilities.

Who I am is what I’m personally capable of doing. I’m also


a function of what I’m capable of tapping into with other
people. That includes my network and my relationships and
my ability to exercise teamwork and my ability to research.
It’s all of those capabilities of not only my own personal
capabilities, but those I can access.

Reevaluating who you’ve always been.


If you assume this mindset, you have to get rid of a lot of
other mindsets. The conditions that you were born into—
whether your parents were rich or poor, whether they took
care of you or didn’t take care of you—these are all very
interesting accidents. But they don’t actually tell you how
you personally grow.

When people don’t look at capability as the explanation for


why they are the way they are, they can invent a million dif-
ferent reasons for it, none of them useful and none of them
accurate. Capability explains why you are who you are and
what you’re capable of doing next.

This way of looking at things is blame-free. You either devel-


oped the capability or you didn’t develop the capability.

21
Chapter 2

You’re either accessing someone else’s capability or not.


What’s valuable about your past are all of the capabilities
that enable you to be where you are today.

Understanding what everyone else is.


This operating principle that allows you to accurately assess
how you’ve grown and become who you are can be applied
to everyone.

All the people you’ve ever known, and all the people you’ll
meet going forward, are explained by how they uniquely
expand their capabilities.

When someone tells me about their situation, I always ask


what capabilities they have that they can utilize and what
capabilities of other people they have access to. No other
question I can ask has as much of a clarifying, motivating,
or energizing impact.

Endlessly simple, and forever.


I can approach any human being in the world, regardless
of their background or belief system, and say, “What’s
the capability going on here?” It’s a very humane way of
approaching people because you disregard all the accidents
and just look for the operating principle with this individual.

Every person recognizing and valuing the ways they’re


unique empowers and enables them. The strongest power
you have going forward lies in your unique capabilities.
Only you can tap into what you know is true about yourself.

For it to mean anything, it has to be brought out into the


world and combined with the unique capabilities of other

22
Capableism

people, but you have to show up first, ready to go with your


capabilities.

You can take great comfort and confidence from the simple
understanding that everything in the world is continually
being created from the endless combining of everyone’s
individual capabilities.

We’re all in the same game.


This doesn’t work if you think in terms of standardized
capabilities, as in going to college to train for a certain
profession. That has nothing to do with what your unique
capabilities are. You can have 50 students in a course learn-
ing the same thing and each of the 50 has completely differ-
ent unique capabilities that are not part of the conversation
of the course.

This is why people get very confused about the market-


place—they want to have the capabilities that other people
value and can put a price on, but that has nothing to do with
what one’s actual capabilities are.

All of the complexity and confusion of human affairs comes


from not understanding that we’re playing our entire lives
within the Capableism game.

You’ll notice that the person who gets the furthest ahead is
the person who takes their capabilities the most seriously.
This is because it’s our unique capabilities on which we
base our growth, our development, and our expansion.

Not everyone is born with the same capabilities, but it’s a


level playing field for everyone.

23
Chapter 2

24
Capableism

25
Chapter 3
Everything Grows With Capability
You understand that all the growth you’ve experi-
enced is the direct result of increasing your own
capabilities and taking greater advantage of
everyone else’s.
At Strategic Coach, we recently had a November and
December that included a similar number of client registra-
tions to a November and December in a previous year. But
in that previous year, we were charging $3,000 per person,
and now, the average is $13,000 per person.

This much bigger win comes down to the phenomenal


amount of growth of capability that’s taken place within the
organization.

I think of the many individuals we have in the company who


get to focus on just one area of activity—the thing they do
uniquely well. And as they grow into that area of activity, we
free them up from everything except their area of unique
capability.

The kind of growth we’ve experienced as a company


happens because greater capability is our goal.

The goal that always expands itself.


When your goal is to expand any kind of capability, your
achievement is always much greater than what you visual-
ized at the beginning.

People usually express their goals in dollars or in acquisi-


tions or in status. I’ve very seldom heard people express a
goal as a higher capability. But having the goal of increasing

26
Capableism

a capability has a much higher payoff than any other type


of goal.

It’s also much more integrated with your past; it’s an exten-
sion of what’s happened up until now. You wouldn’t be able
to make the jump in capability that you wanted to if you
didn’t have the capabilities you’ve already jumped to.

What your happiness is all about.


If you have the mindset of constantly developing your capa-
bilities, and they keep expanding both within yourself and in
your connections with other people’s capabilities, this leads
to happiness.

Indeed, I believe that the source of all human happiness is


the experience of growing personal capability.

You can grow your personal capability as an individual, as a


group experience, as an organizational experience, and as a
societal experience. No matter how you do it, it makes you
more alert, curious, responsive, and resourceful. It reinforces
an incredible number of great qualities inside you and your
ability to relate to other people.

Joy of getting bigger and better.


There’s a feeling of pure joy that comes from expansion.

And your expansion of your capabilities doesn’t inconve-


nience anyone else; you’re creating more space for yourself,
but your space doesn’t encroach on anyone else’s space. If
anything, it can increase their space. If you get bigger and
better, my chances of doing the same improve.

27
Chapter 3

That’s if you’re focused on capability. However, someone


else’s greater capability might undermine your status, so
that’s an important distinction to make. Status is not a
capability.

To experience the joy of growing, you have to recognize that


it’s endless; there’s no scarcity when it comes to people get-
ting bigger and better, so there’s no reason to see someone
else’s growth as a threat.

There’s also no chance of blaming outside sources for


anything, because you’re recognizing that it’s within each
individual to focus on growing their own capability.

By its very nature, if you understand and accept this, your


future is always going to be better than your past.

Every gain creates ten more.


Every time you make a single improvement to any one of
your capabilities, you’ll find that you’re quickly motivated
to make many more. What I notice every time I increase my
capability is that all of a sudden, it expands 360 degrees
around me, and I see possibilities all over the place.

You have to be careful because you still have a limitation


of time, but if the possibilities you see are in other people’s
capabilities, then you can work on them simultaneously.
And when you create a situation where your capabilities are
available to others, unexpected things will happen, many of
which will require little to no effort or time on your part. You
can have a lot of growth of capability happening as long as
it’s jumping from you to other people. You can have multi-
dimensional growth of the capability.

28
Capableism

When you take 100 percent responsibility for your unique


capabilities, all of a sudden you get access to the capabili-
ties of the universe. Doors open without your having to open
them. It’s like a signal goes up that this person is a player.
And all players want to play with other players, because
they have their minds in the right place.

Sensing growth on every side.


Every time you experience your own growth of capability,
you also immediately can see how and where others are
growing their capabilities. I’m 100 percent committed to the
development of my own capabilities, and as a result, my
attention to other people only has to do with their unique
capabilities.

The only thing I want to know is whether they’re as com-


mitted to their own capabilities as I am to mine. I’m just
interested to the degree that they’re serious about taking
ownership of their unique capabilities and have that as the
organizing principle of their life. That’s my sensing device out
in the world. It’s like a Geiger counter. If I get close to some-
one who’s really working on expanding their capabilities, it’s
ticking like mad, and with some people, there isn’t even a
trace amount; you don’t get even a vapor that they’re taking
responsibility for or feeling ownership over their capabilities.

And there’s nothing to be done about it; it’s either true or


it’s not true. You can’t create it in someone for whom it’s
not their frame of reference. But for the people for whom
it’s ticking, you can reinforce the idea and then create an
environment that brings it out.

29
Chapter 3

30
Capableism

31
Chapter 4
Being A Committed Capableist
You permanently simplify your understanding of
what your whole life is about by making the single
activity of growing your capabilities the central daily
focus of everything you do from now on.
The idea of making the growth of your capabilities the daily
focus of your life might make you nervous at first, but let
me put your mind at ease by saying that it’s really only the
first step that might be risky and require courage. Soon
after you’ve taken that first leap, you’ll experience why this
works.

Within the first 24 hours, you can start getting the rewards
for focusing on your capabilities and not using anything else
as your primary goal. All you have to do is be committed
to the jump and be willing to go through a short period of
uncertainty.

It’s that simple.

Simplicity from choosing one thing.


Everyone is striving for simplicity, but the trouble is that,
often, people are looking for the answer outside of them-
selves.

What’s distinct about Capableism is that the answer is not


outside of you until the answer is inside of you—and then
the outside becomes a treasure trove.

The difference between experiencing complexity and sim-


plicity everywhere in your life depends entirely on perma-
nently choosing to be always growing your capabilities.

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Capableism

You still have to work, you still have to problem solve, and
you still have to go through trial and error, but you know that
you’ll always be starting from where you’re capable. And
because you’re working with your capability, you’ll immedi-
ately see where the line of your capability ends and some-
one else’s capability is required.

Whole life purpose and meaning.


A lot of people are of the mindset that once they under-
stand the purpose and meaning of life, they’ll start acting. It
doesn’t work that way.

You have to be in motion, you have to be committed, you


have to be courageous, and the purpose and meaning will
arrive to you as a by-product of your forward movement.

A lot of times, people can remember events in their lives


when they were taking advantage of what they had and they
just went for it, and they recognize it as a happy time—and
yet they’re not getting the lesson.

Why was it happy and purposeful and meaningful? Because


they were focusing on their capabilities. This is what created
the happiness in all of those situations.

Single activity, endless dimensions.


There’s no end to the possibilities when you operate this
way, because the moment you grow your capability in any
way, it reshuffles what’s possible.

If you take your directions from anything other than your


unique capabilities, you’ll run into dead ends. You’ll have
thoughts like, “I’m getting older; I can’t do that anymore.”

33
Chapter 4

But your capabilities will never tell you to retire. They’ll never
tell you that you’re falling behind. They’ll always tell you to
go bigger and get better. When your capabilities are your
focus, all you’ll think about is how you can expand, where
you can go, and who you can combine capabilities with.

Growing your capability in any specific area of your daily life


automatically identifies where you can make even greater
progress, and this process is endless.

Today’s focus creates tomorrow.


You’ll never get tired of being committed to growing your
capabilities because today’s improvements will always make
tomorrow’s possibilities even more fascinating and motivating.

The abilities I’m focused on today are creating a completely


different tomorrow for me, so there’s no reason to worry
about tomorrow. If you’re worried about tomorrow, it means
you’re not creating tomorrow.

This can be hard for some people to accept because when


we’re children, we tend to believe that somebody else will
protect us and save us. Capableism is the ultimate adult-
hood. It involves accepting that our tomorrow is up to us
and that how it looks depends on what we focus on today.

Growing forward transforms yesterday.


At the same time that today’s activity is creating the pos-
sibilities for tomorrow, it also creates the meaning and the
purpose of yesterday; the backward explaining of your life
comes from your forward movement.

When you’re dealing in capability, you can see all over your

34
Capableism

past how this one thing led to this other thing, and that
other thing led to another new thing. Disparate experiences
will form into a network, and your life will become integrated
around this theme of capability.

Your past becomes tremendously enjoyable when you look


at it from the standpoint that abilities developed years ago
are making things possible right now.

The path ahead of you becomes crystal clear, and so does


the path that led you here. With capability at the center of
everything, you’ll see how you have already created your
own reality and how you can continue to do so.

Giving yourself permission to do this is part and parcel of


having the commitment and courage to do it.

A lot of our thinking about courage is tied to an exaggerated


sense of our own importance. You might be wondering,
“What if I don’t pull this off?”

Well, each of us is one of 7.5 billion people on the planet.


If you do an experiment with your life, the world will not be
threatened. You’re part of a big school of fish. So give your-
self permission to play the cards you have how you want to
play them and to maximize their value.

If you focus on your own unique capabilities, you’ll have the


best possible influence on other people. Also, you can give
permission by demonstration for others to focus on their
own unique capabilities.

35
Chapter 4

36
Capableism

37
Chapter 5
Multiplying Your Capabilities
You grasp at a fundamental level that the essence
of each of your capabilities is to expand where it
is right now, especially by using it to unpredictably
multiply the usefulness of many others.
Think of each of your capabilities as a Lego block. They can
be built upon and combined in myriad ways to create some-
thing completely new and different.

Consciousness plays a key role in this because in a cer-


tain sense, you don’t actually have the creative use of each
block until you’re willing to focus on it, saying, “I have this
capability.”

Once you recognize what you have to work with and build
with, your thinking will naturally move to considering what
blocks you can combine with what other blocks. You don’t
get that combining ability until you’re willing to say that you
actually have it. The capability isn’t going to do too much
until you identify it.

Everything can be multiplied.


Think about how we learn how to write. We start with the
letters of the alphabet, and it takes us a while to grasp the
26 building blocks. Once you get them, you can write sen-
tences and paragraphs.

Single Lego blocks and individual letters of the alphabet


have their uses, but it’s using them in combination that really
makes things happen. Similarly, each one of your capabil-
ities has the power to make all of your other abilities more
useful and productive.

38
Capableism

Your confidence about doing more comes first of all from


your willingness to go inward and see what you’re capa-
ble of doing. You have to give meaning and importance to
what’s inside, and this expands your consciousness to go
outside.

When you’re willing to identify one of your capabilities, you’ll


then ask yourself, “What others are there?” You’ll find that
you have perhaps ten or 15, and you’ll say, “They’re separate
right now, but can I put the capabilities together in certain
ways?” What happens then is that the overall, combined
capability level goes up. And it creates uniqueness. Nobody
else will identify their capabilities in the same way as you,
and nobody else will combine them in the same way.

Every capability is combinable.


The moment you identify two capabilities, you’ll have a
natural desire to combine them into something that’s bigger
than both of them and that you couldn’t have created
unless you had developed those first two. This is what I
did when I combined my capability of thinking about my
thinking with my capability of asking great questions in
order to become an entrepreneurial coach and develop The
Strategic Coach Program.

It’s your increasing clarity about each one of your capabili-


ties that enables you to combine it with a growing number
of others, making all of them more powerful in every area of
your life.

I’ve sat down with salespeople and asked them, “When


you’ve been really successful, what have you done? What
process brought you from the first meeting to the point

39
Chapter 5

where you got a check?” I can talk to them for a half hour
and pick out five or six things they always do when they’re
successful. I tell them, “These are the building blocks. Any
day in which you put these six building blocks together,
you’ll probably achieve the result you’re looking for, and
you’ll learn other things along the way because you’ll begin
to bring in other capabilities to that basic process.”

If they stick with these building blocks that work, they’ll put
each prospect they speak to through the same process.
And if the person doesn’t respond to the process, it proba-
bly won’t be a sale, so it makes sense to end the interaction
and move on to the next person.

Many people who aren’t successful aren’t sticking up for


their own capabilities. They aren’t willing to admit that their
most important capabilities are the ones they discovered
and developed on their own and then gave importance to.
They’re always looking at someone else’s capabilities or
opportunities, but they can’t do what someone else can
do. They can only be a mediocre version of the successful
person next door.

Always be expanding something.


Your growing sense of the unique value of all your capa-
bilities means you can always be expanding your overall
improvement and impact in every new situation you enter
into. Every time you combine your capabilities, you create a
little bit more future for yourself because you increase your
confidence.

Wherever you see uniqueness in people’s performance in


any area of life, it developed in this way. There were rudi-

40
Capableism

mentary building blocks that got put together uniquely,


and they were responding to experience, restrictions, and
opportunities.

Being predictably unpredictable.


When someone identifies a capability, it happens without
anyone else knowing. They develop a standard approach to
doing it, so the process becomes predictable to them, but
the result of it is unpredictable to everyone else. For those
who take their building blocks seriously, they can be at this
endlessly throughout their lives.

When these capabilities surface, people wonder, “Where did


this come from?” but it’s been a long time in development
without anyone else knowing it, and it just happens to
surface and become visible to others when it does.

It’s unpredictable when it emerges, but what gets things to


that point is predictable because the person had this unique
organizing of capabilities.

Multiplying what’s most useful.


We each have access to thousands of experiences that no
one else knows about. We’ll always be surprised by one
another because our development happens out of sight of
anyone else, and we’ll all be able to expand and combine
endlessly as long as we continue identifying our own
capabilities.

Your confidence will keep growing because you’ll feel both


focused and certain that this capability mindset will always
be multiplying you where you’re most useful to yourself and
to everyone else.

41
Chapter 5

42
Capableism

43
Chapter 6
Combining Capabilities With Others’
Your growing confidence about your own capabili-
ties extends into the world where you increasingly
cooperate and collaborate with other individuals
whose capabilities are also growing.
After you’ve spent years and years identifying your own
capabilities, recognizing them as unique and combining
them, you can then look at other people and see their
capabilities as unique and where you can combine your
capabilities with theirs.

Because you’ve trained yourself to identify your capabilities,


recognize their uniqueness, and spot opportunities for
combining them, it isn’t a big leap to move on to doing the
same thing with other people’s capabilities.

More than you’ll ever know.


Your growing awareness of the value and impact of your
own capabilities expands your appreciation for being
surrounded by an endless number of other people who have
capabilities that can be combined with yours.

The people you collaborate with have to be of the right


mindset, though. If they don’t have the same attitude about
the value and impact of their own capabilities, there won’t
be a clear radio signal. Connecting and combining your
capabilities probably won’t be possible.

But differences in capabilities themselves are okay.


Everyone’s sets and combinations of capabilities are differ-
ent, and there’s often a sort of magic that happens when
different capabilities come together. Just as the results are

44
Capableism

greater when you combine two of your own capabilities, the


same thing can happen when you combine your capabilities
with someone else’s.

And since you know how you created your capabilities, you
know that you can never create someone else’s. Their capa-
bility is unique, as yours is. The best each of you could do is
create a mediocre version of the other’s capability; you can’t
actually produce it.

Bigger vision creates crucial need.


Because we’re social creatures, we have the natural desire
to be seen as unique and as creating something important.
We’d also like for our unique capabilities to be useful to
other people. We like to get paid, and we like to have doors
open for us to do this.

The desire and need to go out and have an impact takes


you beyond your own capabilities because the world is
composed of vast organizations of different capabilities that
make it a lot easier to make an impact.

For one thing, you won’t have all the skills necessary to
achieve the impact you’ve envisioned, and you won’t be
able to develop them because it’s not your unique thing.

What happens once you develop an appreciation for your


own unique capabilities is that you develop this keen
appreciation for the uniqueness of those of other people.

Your vision for yourself will include greater progress and


growth for a growing number of people, and your vision
creates a need for all of those individuals’ best capabilities.

45
Chapter 6

There’s an infinite number of unique capabilities, and so


the possibilities for combining your capabilities with other
people’s capabilities are infinite.

Combining expands everyone’s future.


When you combine two of your own capabilities, that
creates a bigger future, so when the complete symphony
of capability you have combines with another person’s
symphony of capability, it creates a bigger future for both of
you that neither of you could have created individually.

Every time you utilize someone else’s capabilities to expand


your own, you’re also automatically expanding the future
possibilities for both of you. Abundance 360 with entrepre-
neur and author Peter Diamandis and my 10x Talk podcast
with Genius Network creator, Joe Polish, are just two of the
successful collaborations that would not have come about
had I not been open to combining my capabilities with those
of others.

Inward and outward confidence.


This process of combining your capabilities with others’
continually reinforces your confidence about who you are
and expands your confidence about what you can become.

What happens is kind of like a loop. You have the confi-


dence to go out and combine your unique capabilities with
someone else’s unique capabilities, the combining produces
something larger, and that creative enlargement actually
makes you go back and strengthen the capabilities you
initially brought to the table.

The initial inward expansion allows for an outward expan-

46
Capableism

sion, and the confidence that comes from the outward


expansion allows you to come back and reinforce your skill
and your capability, making it even more powerful.

You’re always going back and reinforcing what allowed


you to go out in the first place because if its present form
allowed you to do that, going back and strengthening it will
allow you to go even further.

This will become habitual, and the more you strengthen your
capabilities, the more natural it will be for you to use them.

There’s no comparison.
None of this is possible if you’re involved in comparing your-
self with the outward performance of other people.

People’s outer performances usually look packaged and


put together, but that isn’t necessarily an indication of what
their inner life is like. Inside the most put-together-seeming
person could be utter turmoil.

It’s key to remember that you’re not cooperating and collab-


orating with someone else’s performance; you’re cooper-
ating and collaborating with the capability that created that
performance. A performance is just a snapshot, and it will
look different in the future.

There’s no sense of creative connection or resonance when


you think of yourself as either better or worse than what you
see someone else doing. Instead, look deeper to see how
they approach and think about their capability and ask how
you can collaborate to create something bigger and better.

47
Chapter 6

48
Capableism

49
Chapter 7
Reviewing Your Capability Past
You now use the single factor of increased capa-
bility to transform your understanding of your
entire life until now — namely, that every happy
experience was where you increased a specific
capability, and every unhappy one was where you
failed to do so.
We’re born with a desire to increase our capability.

What we get out of every experience is either that we’re get-


ting better at something or we’re failing to get better.

This striving for capability starts at birth. We had nine


months in a world where everything was growing, and then
we got outside and there were restrictions and opposition.

I’ve noticed that everybody becomes happy when they


expand their capability, and everybody gets frustrated when
they can’t. I believe this is the difference between happiness
and unhappiness. It’s the feeling of growing and being able
to do something that you couldn’t do before, or else you’re
failing to do that on a continual basis.

Capability is the great simplifier.


All of the complexity, conflict, complications, and confusion
you’ve experienced in various situations in your life were all
the result of not seeing increased capability as your central
purpose, goal, and result in those situations.

There’s an enormous emphasis on external factors being


used to explain why people turn out the way they do. What

50
Capableism

I believe is that there are external factors that might contrib-


ute to who you are, but they’re not contributing factors to
your understanding of what you’re going to do next.

There are many examples of people who were born into


negative circumstances but those circumstances appear
not to have held them back from success in any way. My
feeling is that they were successful despite these obstacles
because they got hold of this basic insight about growing
their capability uniquely and made it their focus.

People who are uniquely successful come upon some capa-


bility-creation method early on, and they start taking all of
their experiences and filtering them through the question of
whether they’re useful for increasing capability. They start
sorting out their experience and reinforcing what’s growing.

Bypassing all the theories.


Other people’s theories about the meaning of your life can-
not be enlightening, useful, or satisfying because none of
these explanations have anything to do with your permanent
daily desire from birth to become more capable.

The goal is always to become more capable, and what a lot


of theories don’t take into account is that comparison has
nothing to do with it. You want to see other people’s capa-
bilities as things that you can possibly do, but you’re on
your own path. Everyone you look at developed their capa-
bilities uniquely, and you’re doing that too.

Everybody wants to become more capable, but everybody’s


creative and intellectual development happens differently.

51
Chapter 7

And the process is mysterious. You can understand as an


overview how everyone is doing this, but you can never
look at an individual and predict what their next step is
going to be.

True for you, true for everybody.


You now have what you need to understand where everyone
else you meet is coming from in relation to their own lifetime
experiences, whether positive or negative: Everything they
talk about is connected to their successes and failures to
increase their capability.

What every person makes of their experiences is unique, but


the desire to increase capability is something that’s factory
installed. Every member of the species comes equipped
with it.

Knowing this, and understanding your own past and current


experiences, gives you context for understanding and relat-
ing to every other human on the planet.

Memories you love most.


All of the past experiences you remember as being the most
important and valuable were the ones where you gained and
increased your most useful and lasting capabilities.

For me, an example of this is having conversations with


adults when I was a kid. I asked a lot of questions and
learned a lot about what other people’s lives were like, and it
led to people introducing me to information at a young age
because they knew I had a mind that could handle it.

52
Capableism

These are great memories for me, and what makes them
so pleasurable is that in each one, there was a growth of
capability or a combining of capabilities happening.

It’s also worth noting that asking questions is something


I’ve never stopped doing and that I have, in part, based
my career on.

Simplify and then multiply.


By using increased capability as your most important life-
time simplifier, you’re eliminating almost all of your need to
ruminate about your past. You’re now freed up enormously
to consciously multiply all of your capabilities in the future.

The only thing I take seriously in my past is when I used,


expanded, multiplied, and collaborated on my capabilities.

When an experience was good for you, you were developing


your capabilities, and when an experience wasn’t good
for you, you were being prevented from developing your
capabilities.

The negative experiences might last for a long time, but


the only way out of them is to become more capable and
combine capabilities. After a while, the positive feelings you
get from that will surpass the feelings of frustration.

We can reflect on the past, but we can’t change anything


about the past other than our interpretation of it. The only
way we can move is forward.

53
Chapter 7

54
Capableism

55
Chapter 8
Expanding Your Capability Future
You now simplify and empower your personal and
entrepreneurial future by seeing all growth, prog-
ress, and achievement strictly in terms of expand-
ing individual and organizational capabilities.
Your life can continually expand without complexity if you
simply focus on capabilities. This is because the starting
point for any project will always be the same: You look at
what capabilities you’re working with and go from there,
with each person on the team staying in their area of unique
skill and talent.

More and more, I’ve been seeing my future goals in terms of


increased capabilities because I have control of the devel-
opment process and the expansion process if I’m starting
from the inside and going outward rather than trying to go
out and achieve something in the world.

I find that if I just keep my focus on capabilities, I don’t have


to worry about the results, because if I’ve increased my
capability, invariably the results are good.

In other words, I can predict and control the process of


the capability. What’s more, I get different kinds of results
when I change things, and I get all sorts of new opportuni-
ties that come from other people sensing the capability and
reaching out.

Only you know what’s next.


Because you’re constantly expanding outward and interact-
ing with the world, you’re going to feel increasingly free to

56
Capableism

identify where you next want to enjoy greater capability, with


the knowledge that you’re the only one who understands
how all of your capabilities fit together as you go forward.

You’re the master of how this gets developed, and you’re


the only one in the world who has the insight. Nobody else
has the inside knowledge on what your capabilities are at
their source. People know the impact of your capabilities,
but they don’t know what their source is.

Building on what you already have.


You’re never starting from scratch with capabilities; each
new capability you’re creating for a bigger and better future
is based on the solid foundation of all the capabilities you’ve
acquired in the past. You’re always building on what you
already have, so you’re always starting with strength, and
there’s a constant growth of capability confidence.

It’s important to inventory the capabilities you’ve developed.


You’re not looking at them as other people see them; you
look at them as you see them. In other words, you have
your own independent judgment about what deserves to be
called a capability.

An element of your capability is passion. It’s something


you love to do. It lights up your eyes. It’s something you’re
excited about, something you see a bigger future for. That’s
what you want to supplement with other people’s capabil-
ities. You don’t want to delegate that particular talent. You
want to build and strengthen and make use of it.

57
Chapter 8

Minding your own best business.


Aside from expanding your own capabilities and being on
the lookout so that you can combine your capabilities with
those of other individuals, there’s very little else you need to
be thinking about. There’s no need to get involved with or
be affected by drama in the outside world.

There is drama in what you’re doing—but it’s positive


drama. It’s dramatic breakthroughs, dramatic realizations,
and dramatic new capabilities that pop up.

This isn’t status oriented at all; it has only to do with capa-


bility. You don’t do an activity for the sake of how you’re
going to be perceived for doing it, except by the people you
want to collaborate with.

Recognizing a collaborator is a capability. I’m always on


the lookout for collaborative mindsets and collaborative
approaches. For real collaborators, it’s an endless game.
They’re looking at you as part of their expanding game, and
you’re looking at them as part of your expanding game.
Because you share a similar mindset and approach, it doesn’t
take long to reach agreement with a fellow collaborator.

Uniquely clear and confident.


People appear different to us when they’re focused on their
capabilities, and it’s a matter of both focus and duration.
If you decide to operate this way, the results might not be
obvious to anyone else for a while, and when they surface,
the results might appear to other people to have happened
overnight.

Here’s how the formula works for you: Your increasing focus

58
Capableism

on the overall growth of capability in every area of your


life continually clarifies the purpose and meaning of your
personal future while making you increasingly confident
that every area of your future life will be continually more
successful and satisfying.

This goes against all notions of giving up and feeling like a


victim when bad things happen. Bad things might happen
to you, but this is how you get out of them. You are 100
percent in control and the creator of your own destiny.

Always bigger and better.


As you get older, your growing capabilities will always
enable you to achieve results that are bigger and better, and
this will increasingly make you feel younger.

Focusing on increasing capability is a rejuvenating activity


because you’re always getting fresh new beginnings from a
higher stage of capability.

I feel a lot younger at seventy-three than I did at sixty-three,


and it’s exceptional to be my age and know that the biggest
and best things in my life lie ahead.

This is how your future’s going to be if it’s how you want it


to be.

59
Chapter 8

60
Capableism

61
Conclusion
Increasingly A Capableism World
You now understand how the whole world around
you is always developing and expanding — billions
of other individuals, every one of them uniquely
working each day to increase their capabilities.
Capableism is based on the notion that there is a powerful
instinctive drive in humanity to constantly increase human
capability, and that this is what drives all progress in the
world.

All economics and politics on the planet revolve around this


issue of individuals wanting greater capability. One could
say that Capableism is humanity. Each individual endeavors
to become more capable, but more often than not, individ-
uals pool their resources to achieve much faster and larger
results.

Capabilities transcend theories.


Because of your increasing focus on always growing your
own capabilities, and on multiplying your capabilities
through collaboration with others’ capabilities, you no longer
have to pay any attention to abstract theories about how
your life is supposed to work or what your life is supposed
to mean.

My theory about theories is that they’re actually just


descriptions. Usually when someone comes up with a
theory, they want it to be written in stone—“this is how
things work.” But in reality, theories are just present moment
snapshots of how things work.

Any good theory can be useful for a certain period of time,

62
Capableism

but Capableism is all about movement. Every one of the


more than 7.5 billion people on the planet is striving in their
own way to be better at something. There’s an amazing
amount of movement and motion constantly taking place.

Theories often take the form of a consensus of the people


who’ve got it good and who don’t want to have any inter-
lopers come along and lessen their reputation and status.
That’s why I think that all desires for status are a freezing of
a particular moment in time and wanting to stay that way
forever with no increasing capability.

These theories are abstract, not personal and practical.


Capableism is a sort of theory, but the nature of it is that you
immediately take it to the personal and practical level.

Collaboration overcoming obstacles.


By fully committing to living your life entirely within the
framework of your own developing and expanding capabili-
ties, you’ll always be extraordinarily successful at overcom-
ing any and all obstacles simply by collaborating with the
unique capabilities of an increasing number of others.

Commitment is key, and anytime you make a commitment,


it requires courage in the early stages.

But there are no abstractions here. It’s just about what


you’re already capable of doing and what you will be capa-
ble of doing. It’s about where you are and how to get to the
next level you want to reach. Can you do it just by expand-
ing your own capability or do you have to go outside and
find the necessary capability in someone else?

63
Conclusion

There are avenues that allow you to collaborate with some-


one, but the most important thing is who you’re linking
up with.

This model is an interactive one. The value of your capa-


bilities is meaningless except in how they interact with the
world. It’s only through interaction with the world that you
can even test if your capabilities are growing.

Uniqueness multiplying uniqueness.


You’re going to increasingly see and appreciate the past,
present, and future of your entire life as an endless process
of your unique capabilities continually multiplying the unique
capabilities of other individuals.

You’ll get a tremendous sense of inner peace because


there’s something that’s inside of you allowing you to expe-
rience the feeling of multiplication that’s happening outside
of you. This gives you the sense that you’re not being left
behind, that you’re not being bypassed by the world.

It will also help you stay away from comparison with


others. You don’t want to compare yourself with other
people because everybody’s capabilities—and combining of
capabilities—are unique. You’ll see opportunities in others’
unique capabilities, and people who are of a similar mindset
will see the same in yours.

Nothing’s equal, everything’s useful.


The emphasis on equality in the world is a collective thought
and a concept, but it’s an abstraction. It’s not how individu-
als actually make their way in the world.

64
Capableism

Instead, you can be completely freed from the burden of


thinking about inequality in the world around you when you
realize that in a world of endlessly expanding unique capa-
bilities, involving the unpredictably useful daily growth and
progress of billions of unique individuals, the whole concept
of equality is meaningless.

With respect to the desire for capability, all of humanity is


equal. We are all involved in the same movement.

Unpredictably fascinating and motivating.


You’ll find yourself continually surprised by your emerging
life and how you’re thinking about it, because every new
expansion of your unique capabilities increases your
fascination with what you’re doing in the present and how
you’re motivated by the further unpredictable expansion
that lies ahead.

If you’re interested in how to best apply the concepts in this


book to your own life and career, we’ve created a step-by-
step process for individuals, especially entrepreneurs and
their teams, to discover their own Unique Ability—what you
love to do and do best—so you can focus your life and
business on your capabilities and create a team around
you of people who are focused on theirs.

If you’re a current participant in The Strategic Coach


Program, you can register for a one-on-one Unique Ability
Discovery Session with one of our Unique Ability Specialists.
The Unique Ability 2.0: Discovery book and workbook set is
also available for purchase at strategiccoach.com.

65
Conclusion

66
Capableism

67
The Strategic Coach Program
Expanding Entrepreneurial Freedom
The Strategic Coach Program, launched in 1989,
has qualifications, measurements, structures, and
processes that attract a particular type of talented,
successful, and ambitious entrepreneur.

One differentiating quality of these Strategic Coach partici-


pants is that they recognize that the technology-empowered
21st century is a unique time to be an entrepreneur. It’s the
first time that a growing number of individuals with no spe-
cial birth privileges and no special education can achieve
almost anything they set their minds to.

These self-motivated individuals who participate in the three


levels of Strategic Coach accept that if they can focus on
mastering the right mindsets, they can experience increas-
ing breakthroughs for themselves, both personally and pro-
fessionally, that are new in history.

Capableism is one of these breakthrough mindsets, and


there are dozens more for you to master.

Mindsets that enable entrepreneurs to escape.


Many entrepreneurs have the potential and the willing-
ness to achieve exponential goals in the 21st century, but
they are blocked from taking action and making progress
because they feel trapped in three ways:

• Trapped thinking: They are isolated by their own discon-


nected creativity, which continually churns out ideas that
don’t translate into achievement. At Strategic Coach, entre-
preneurs increasingly liberate their thinking to create entirely
new practical breakthroughs for themselves and others.

68
Capableism

• Trapped circumstances: They are surrounded by peo-


ple who don’t support their ambitions, who actively oppose
them, or who try to make them feel guilty about their
achievements and dreams. At Strategic Coach, entrepre-
neurs learn how to increasingly surround themselves with
like-minded and like-motivated individuals in every area of
their personal and business lives.

• Trapped energy: They’re using much of their daily energy


to simply sustain themselves without ever actually experi-
encing exponential performance and results. They wanted
to create a growing business but it turns out that they’ve
only created a job—one that always stays the same. At
Strategic Coach, entrepreneurs continually transform every
part of their business organizations so that they become
self-managing, and then self-multiplying.

Mindsets that enable entrepreneurs to achieve.


Around the world, the vast majority of entrepreneurs never
get out of these trapped circumstances, but at Strategic
Coach, our participants not only escape from these limita-
tions, they also jump to extraordinary levels of achievement,
success, and satisfaction.

They never stop growing. Strategic Coach participants con-


tinually transform how they think, how they make decisions,
how they communicate, and how they take action based on
their mastery of dozens of unique entrepreneurial mindsets
that have been developed in the Program. These are purely
entrepreneurial mindsets, like Capableism.

We’ve taken a look at what goes on in the minds of the best

69
The Strategic Coach Program

entrepreneurs and have created a thinking system that is


custom-designed for them and adjusts to the ambition of
each individual.

The Strategic Coach Program provides an accelerating


lifetime structure, process, and community for these
entrepreneurs to create exponential breakthroughs.

Mindsets that enable entrepreneurs to multiply.


Depending on where you are right now in your life and busi-
ness, we have a complete set of entrepreneurial mindsets that
will immediately jump you up to the next level in terms of your
ambition, achievements, and progress. Over the course of
your entrepreneurial lifetime, you can move upward through
our three levels of mindset measurement and scoring:

1. The Strategic Coach Signature Program: From isola-


tion to teamwork. At this first breakthrough level, you create
a “Unique Ability Team” in which everyone does only what
they love and do best, allowing you to have a “Self-Managing
Company” where your business runs successfully without
your having to be involved in the day-to-day operations.
Every successful entrepreneur dreams about having this kind
of teamwork and organization. Through the Signature level of
the Program, these dreams become a reality.

2. The 10x Ambition Program: From teamwork to expo-


nential. You make breakthroughs that transform your
life, and your organization becomes a “Self-Multiplying
Company.” Talented entrepreneurs want to free their big-
gest growth plans from non-supportive relationships, situa-
tions, and circumstances. Through the 10x Ambition level of
Strategic Coach, their biggest aspirations attract multiplier
capabilities, resources, and opportunities.
70
Capableism

3. The Game Changer Jump Program: From exponential


to transformative. As your entrepreneurial life becomes
exponential, your Self-Multiplying Company become trans-
formative. The key evidence of this is that your biggest com-
petitors want to become your best students, customers, and
promoters. Game Changer entrepreneurs in Strategic Coach
become the leading innovators and cutting-edge teachers
in their industries and continually introduce new strategies,
methods, and systems that create new industries.

Measure yourself, score yourself, get started.


We’ve created a Capableism Scorecard you can use to
score yourself according to the eight mindsets discussed
in this book. Go to strategiccoach.com/go/capableism to
download your copy. Read through the four statements for
each mindset and give yourself a score of 1 to 12 based on
where your own mindset falls on the spectrum. Put each
mindset’s score in the first column at the right, and then add
up all eight and put the total at the bottom. Now, think about
what scores would represent progress over the next quarter.
Write these in the second scoring column, add them up, and
write in the total.

When you compare the two scores, you can see where you
want to go in terms of your achievements and ambitions.
If this fast exercise tells you that you want to multiply in all
these areas, contact us today to get started:

The Strategic Coach Program is ready for you! Visit us


online at strategiccoach.com or call us at 416.531.7399
or 1.800.387.3206.

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The Strategic Coach Program

72
Capableism

73
About The Author
Dan Sullivan
Dan Sullivan is the founder and president
of The Strategic Coach Inc. and creator
of The Strategic Coach® Program, which
helps accomplished entrepreneurs reach
new heights of success and happiness. He
has over 40 years of experience as a stra-
tegic planner and coach to entrepreneurial
individuals and groups. He is author of
over 30 publications, including The 80% Approach™, The
Dan Sullivan Question, Ambition Scorecard, Wanting What
You Want, The 4 C’s Formula, The 25-Year Framework,
The Game Changer, The 10x Mind Expander, The Mindset
Scorecard, The Self-Managing Company, Procrastination
Priority, The Gap And The Gain, The ABC Breakthrough, and
Extraordinary Impact Filter, and is co-author with Catherine
Nomura of The Laws of Lifetime Growth.
CAPABLEISM
Every individual strives to become more
capable. I believe this is essential to what
it means to be human.

Capitalism and other political systems


are really sub-systems of what I call
Capableism, a powerful instinctive drive
in humanity to constantly increase human
capability. In this short book, I share the
importance of using and growing your
capabilities, and show how, by combining
our capabilities with those of others, we
can expand everyone’s future. Indeed, this
is what drives all progress in the world.

For more information about Strategic Coach :


®

1.800.387.3206
Toll Free From The UK: 0800 051 6413

www.strategiccoach.com
TM & © 2019. The Strategic Coach Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, or by any means whatsoever,
without written permission from The Strategic Coach Inc. Made in Canada. July 2019.

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