056 – A World of Abundance With David Dugan

Today a BLL special interview with David Dugan, founder of The Elite 500 Mastermind mentorship program.  He is also the author of the Amazon bestselling book Bulletproof Business.  We’ve known David for a number of years and he has been tremendously helpful to us.  David fist became interested in coaching and mentoring after he hired a coach in the early 2000’s.  He was a tank commander in the Australian military and was in a tremendously high-stress environment.  He had always had an interest in small business as well and after retiring from the Navy he put those two interests together.

David wanted to create a community that would grow and succeed together.  His goal was to get 500 thousand businesses each making $500 thousand in revenue.  It’s not just about making money.  It’s about building a group that could change the world.

One of the big lessons David emphasizes is how to go from an operator to an owner.  That process starts by asking how much money you want to make.  Often people will say something like “a million dollars” but they have no idea what they would do with that money.  You want to setup right from the start how much money you want to get out of the company and what kind of lifestyle it will produce.  You also need to ask yourself who you want to impact with your company.  Is just about money or do you want to create something to pass on to the next generation.

Moving from being an operator to an owner is a mindset shift.  Being an operator is all about producing great products or services that give you constant affirmation.  The only reason to be in business is to solve peoples problems.  People fall in love with their products.  You should be asking yourself what problem are you trying solve?  What business are you in and whose problems are you trying to solve?  These are questions you should be asking yourself in a serious way at least once a year.  You have to be ahead of the game and thinking strategically.

People often talk about time management but that’s a term David finds very problematic.  You can’t really manage time.  Everyone in the world has the same amount of time to use.  What you can manage though is your focus.  Where focus goes energy flows.  Too often people are putting their focus into stupid things.  You need to think strategically.  You should think of your time in three different chunks.  The first is gold time.  The second is blue time.  And the third is black time.  Gold time refers to those things that can be accomplished as long as you get to them very quickly.  For a business owners that is critical thinking and strategic planning.  Blue time is the time spent making money for the business.  The things that you are getting paid for right now.   Black time is spent on administration and finance.  At the end of each week you should calculate how much time you are spending on each of these categories.  Then look ahead and set a goal of how much time you should spending on each.

David thinks that there is unprecedented change coming and few of us are prepared.  In the US, for example, 9 million drivers will be out of work in the next few years because of automated vehicles. From a healthcare perspective by 2030 for every year you are alive you will extend your life by a year.  Extending our intelligence using digital technology will revolutionize the way we think.  Projects like Project Loon are going to bring internet connectivity to more than half the globe within the next few years.  And digital technologies like Blockchain and Bitcoin are going to totally change the world economy.  Massive shifts are coming and preparing for those changes will be the key to riding the wave.

David’s goal is to help people to create intergenerational wealth which in turn will create healthy communities and a world of abundance.