Episode 771 Impact the World - Interview with Dan Miller – Part 4
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us on episode 771 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:08] Dan Miller: [00:00:08] Hi, I'm Dan Miller from 48 days.com. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to find the work you love is key.
[00:00:25] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader.
[00:00:41] So that was three years ago. That was pretty devastating because those are extremely profitable financially. But it forced me to look at how can I still have people together. Yeah. There where we nurture ideas together, give each other a lot of support and encouragement. I explored this idea of having [00:01:00] an online community.
[00:01:03] Scott Maderer: [00:01:03] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. You'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence.
[00:01:25] So that you
[00:01:27] Dan Miller: [00:01:27] can
[00:01:27] Scott Maderer: [00:01:27] impact the work
[00:01:35] and today's interview with Dan Miller. I asked Dan about conducting his annual review and how he does it. I also ask him about his top tips on making an impact in the world. And I asked him to share the legacy that he hopes he leaves behind. One reason I like to bring you great interviews. Like the one you're going to hear today is because of the power in learning from [00:02:00] others.
[00:02:00] Another great way to learn from others is through reading books. But if you're like most people today, you find it hard to find the time to sit down and read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial.
[00:02:21] There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And instead of reading, you can listen your way to learn from some of the greatest minds. Out there. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this
[00:02:39] Dan Miller: [00:02:39] podcast.
[00:02:41] Scott Maderer: [00:02:41] Dan Miller president of 48 days, LLC specializes in creative thinking for increased personal and business success.
[00:02:50] He believes that meaningful work, blends our natural skills and abilities, our unique personality traits and our dreams and passions. He believes that a clear [00:03:00] sense of direction can help us become all that God designed us to be. Dan is the author of the widely acclaimed 48 days for the work you love and no more Mondays books.
[00:03:10] 48 days was recently released in a 20 year anniversary edition. He hosts his podcast and is the founder of the online community that I belong to called the 48 days Eagles. And there's many active entrepreneurs there. I've learned a lot about how I view my vocation from Dan, his books and listening to him over the years.
[00:03:31] And I consider him one of my virtual mentors. Oh. And by the way, Dan and his wife, Joanne have three wonderful children and 17 grandchildren to celebrate. Well, welcome to the show, Dan.
[00:03:46] Dan Miller: [00:03:46] Well, thank you. I've been looking forward to our conversation.
[00:03:49] Scott Maderer: [00:03:49] So Dan, I know one of the other things I've heard you talk about, and that is that you're a proponent of, is doing a review.
[00:03:55] You talked about this a few weeks ago, about how everything you do is kind of [00:04:00] on the bubble. You constantly want to review and figure out is this something that I need to keep doing, or is this something I need to cut out so that I can make room for new things? Can you talk a little bit about the process you use when you're reviewing your ideas and thinking about, and then why you do that?
[00:04:16] Dan Miller: [00:04:16] Yes, I'm pretty intentional about how I spend my time. And time is the one resource we can't grow or recapture. And so every year as we approach November 14th, I'm working on my goals in seven different areas of my life. Use a model popularized by Zig Ziglar and certainly a lot of other seven areas of our lives.
[00:04:38] So it's not just finances and career. It's seven areas. As I determine what do I want the next year to look like? I'm also asking myself, what is it that I'm going to eliminate now? Here's why we all tend to be very busy. Nobody's sitting around saying, gee, I've got an extra 20 hours a week, with nothing to do.
[00:05:00] [00:04:59] Everybody's busy. It's that Parkinson law where whenever we have to do expands to fill the maximum time we have available, everybody's busy. So I like everybody else. I'm not looking for, what can I add on? And a lot of times people get frustrated in setting goals because it seems like they're adding onto what they're already doing.
[00:05:18] Do y'all want to get in shape. So now I have to start working out four times a week, 45 minutes. That's not a very busy schedule. What I look for is not so much what I'm going to add on, but what am I going to eliminate? So I'm looking for what is the 15% of what I've been doing currently that I'm going to eliminate as I go into the new year.
[00:05:38] What that does is that opens up a window of opportunity. That means though I'm not throwing out everything. I don't just wait to slate clean and say, I'm going to start over and having a business like I do with multiple components and allows me to do that. But I'm going to keep some of the components.
[00:05:57] That are going to continue to be nurtured and [00:06:00] roll over into the new year. But opening up that 15%, I can try things. I can try something. That's really a wild hair idea. Something that I really don't know if it's going to work or not, because I'm not risking everything, but I have that opportunity. And frankly, the things I have today that are the most rewarding for me in every way, started in that 15%.
[00:06:22] There are things that I just said. I wonder if this would work. I went from, I had a mastermind. I've always been involved in the mastermind, but several years ago in that 15%, I started a mastermind. I said, I'm going to make this not just 12 guys together. I'm going to expand it beyond that a little bit.
[00:06:41] So I I'm at 30 people in there. I said, I'm going to allow both men and women. The determining criteria is not gender it's mindset. Now, if I find people have the right mindset on vitamin to that that's been extremely successful for me. The, one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, the community that you're involved in [00:07:00] with is the 48 days Eagles that came in that 15% is just kind of new.
[00:07:04]What happened is I actually was prevented from doing live events on our property in Tennessee, that we'd been doing for years after 12 years of doing those, not realizing I was in air in any way, the County showed up and said, you can't do these on your property. Having groups of people on your property like that, you can't do that.
[00:07:24] So that was three years ago. That was pretty devastating because those were extremely profitable financially. But it forced me to look at how can I still have people together where we nurture ideas together, give each other a lot of support and encouragement. And I explored this idea of having an online community.
[00:07:43] So we opened that up three years later, here we are. Well, guess what? This year I have a hotter people that I know and care about who have a whole lot of live of events planned for this year. And all of a sudden they couldn't do them. I was forced to make that change. Three years [00:08:00] ago, this year came along.
[00:08:02] I was perfectly positioned. Nothing changed for me. Everything grew because I had made that change earlier, but it was putting those things in that 15%. Here's what I want to do to grow in this arena.
[00:08:16]Scott Maderer: [00:08:16] And I think that's also interesting because out of a constraint came an opportunity when the County said you can't do it this way.
[00:08:24] Dan Miller: [00:08:24] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. There's a brand new book out by Seth Godin called the practice and he talks about that constraints. Move us into creativity without constraints. We don't need to be creative at all
[00:08:38] Scott Maderer: [00:08:38] right now. It's the necessity is the mother of invention is an expression for a reason.
[00:08:46] Dan Miller: [00:08:46] And I witnessed that personally many, many times.
[00:08:51] Scott Maderer: [00:08:51] So one of the ideas that I love to talk about and you just mentioned Seth Goden I've heard him talk on this topic. I've heard you talk on it. The idea of [00:09:00] making a dent in the universe, doing something that makes an impact, whatever that means to you. And what are some of the best principles or mindsets or beliefs that people need to adapt and have, if we want to really learn to make a dent in the universe,
[00:09:16] Dan Miller: [00:09:16] look for what is authentically yours, what is it that you own?
[00:09:22] And if we're going to make a dent in the universe, it's going to be something. I mean, the application is something that's not being done now. And again, that doesn't mean that we go into something never been heard of before. I mean, ideas usually are not brand new they're applications of things that have been around a long time, but you have to move into an arena that perhaps is untested.
[00:09:44] If you just keep doing what you've always done, you're going to just get the results you've already get you already get in. Now, if you're okay with that, that's fine. But that kind of lifestyle does not make a dent in the universe. Two of the core principles. That have made Disney so [00:10:00] successful. Their two primary core principles are creativity and innovation.
[00:10:05] They're always asking how can we apply creativity and innovation this? So I try to take that same. I'm certainly not going to be a Disney organization by any means, but in the small things that I have opportunity to look at, how can I be creative in doing this? Here's an example, Scott. We know when I started writing and writing was not something that I had never took an English course, well, just the basic requirements in college, but I certainly never took writing courses. Never thought about that until I was pretty far down the road in terms of what I'd been doing business. And then this opportunity came along. Then I discovered that 95% of authors in the United States never make more than $40,000 a year.
[00:10:50]That should have stopped me in my tracks. Why would I waste my time writing a book if that's the statistics, but that's not how I think my immediate thought was [00:11:00] okay, how difficult can it be to put myself in the 5%? So I look at what are authors doing? What is it that I'm willing to do that most authors are not?
[00:11:10] So I've looked for all kinds of creative ways and that's served me very, very well where the rewards that I've had. Because of my writing have been pretty extraordinary and I value that by seeing, okay, what is the, I really love writing, so I don't need to walk away from that. So look at what is it you really are passionate about?
[00:11:31] What is it where you show talent in and then how are you going to use creativity and innovation and there's your opportunity to make a dent in the universe? So
[00:11:43] Scott Maderer: [00:11:43] now I'm going to ask you the easy question.
[00:11:46] Dan Miller: [00:11:46] Oh, good.
[00:11:47] Scott Maderer: [00:11:47] Jokingly. He said, sarcastically,
[00:11:50] Dan Miller: [00:11:50] if you
[00:11:51] Scott Maderer: [00:11:51] could travel into the future now more than 48, we gotta be more than 48 days or 48 years here where we're talking.
[00:11:56] I don't know, 50, a hundred, 150 years in the future. [00:12:00] And you could look back on your life. What let's do 148 years just for you. What impact do you hope that you've had in the world?
[00:12:10] Dan Miller: [00:12:10] My desire, knowing that my first love is writing. My desire is that my writing helps people discover their greatest God given talents and passions, and that they've been inspired to release the greatness that they have in them.
[00:12:29] Calling people out of autumn lives of mediocrity. NIST does you don't need to be superstar. You don't need to be in the top 10%, but to move beyond just mediocrity thinking that we're just kind of trucking along to get through this life. Now I want to inspire people to their own greatness.
[00:12:48] And when I get the testimonials that I've been blessed to get, I mean, I've a Bach. We recently moved Scott and we have a box that I had, one of the rooms in my office that has nothing [00:13:00] but. Handwritten letters from people that I've received over the years, the buy, the lid won't fit on anymore. We had to discover and I had to discover develop a new place in our new house to store that.
[00:13:11] But that's too valuable because if I'm ever discouraged, I can go sit down for 30 minutes there, read through the letters. Wow. That's amazing. And it's one of those things too. I mean, it's not a matter of just numbers. It doesn't have to be millions of people. I mean, think about the people, the person who inspired mother Teresa or Billy Graham, if you were the person who put that person on the track that they ended up spending their life on, that's a pretty big accomplishment.
[00:13:40] This it's not just quantifiable. It's just. You gotta be able to recognize though what I have done has value, it has made an impact and I get great deep satisfaction out of. Being able to experience that.
[00:13:56] Scott Maderer: [00:13:56] So it, you mentioned the box of letters and things that have [00:14:00] come. One of the things that I teach people, especially folks that are getting started in a passion project is to immediately start a happy file.
[00:14:08] And that's what I call it. And so I can literally reach from where I'm standing. If I bent over and grabbed, I have a file down here of. It's. If somebody sends me an email, I print it out. I put it in the file. If somebody sends, somebody says it out loud, I write it down. I put it in the vial and it's exactly why I do it as for the days that this isn't fun today, cause we have those days I can grab that file and hang on to those. Rememory the reason why I'm doing
[00:14:36] Dan Miller: [00:14:36] it. I have no idea what I'm going to do with that box that I have. When I'm gone. I mean, I'm sure it will mean nothing to anybody else, but I'll have it until the day I do leave this earth just because of what you just described there.
[00:14:53] Happy file. That's a great term.
[00:14:55] Scott Maderer: [00:14:55] Yeah. That's my name for it. It's the happy file. So what's coming next for Dan, as you [00:15:00] continue on this journey to living out the call that you have and impacting the world.
[00:15:06] Dan Miller: [00:15:06] I have some pretty big aspirations. Scott, probably no surprise. Somebody asked me recently if I was, anticipating you're slowing down, going into that thing that we often call retirement.
[00:15:19] And I really don't. I just can't get my head around that. So I don't have any plans for that. As long as I continue to love what I'm doing, I'll continue doing that. But here's some of the things that I'm trying right now. One of those is we have an online community or people who say I have a dream. I have an idea I want to develop.
[00:15:40] I don't have a lot of people around me who were encouraging me. I want to be in a community where those people are going to cheer me on. So we have that community and we have about 1100 people were in there. Currently. I want to grow that to 10,000 and that's just, that's my number. I've been very open about that.
[00:15:55] I want to grow that to 10,000 people with that. [00:16:00] We are seeing already emerging leaders. We're seeing people who are showing up. We have competence in areas where we can point other people to them. It accelerates their success, accelerates the success of everybody in there. So I love seeing what's happening there.
[00:16:15] And this is one of those, again, being forced out of having the crisis, the constraint of not being able to have live events, those live events, we're limited to 60 people that we could cram into the converted barn that we call the sanctuary and our property. Now we have no geographical, no physical constraints.
[00:16:33] It's wide open. So we can go from a thousand people to 10,000 without batting an eye. So I want to do that. Also in the writing space, I'm doing some things that other people would raise their eyebrows app. My next book that'll be coming out is titled and understanding heart. Every Sunday. I get up early in the morning and I write a piece that's just inspirational, challenging, perhaps theologically that goes out to just my mastermind members.
[00:17:00] [00:17:00] The one I did on this last Sunday morning, as we speak was number 178. So you can see that I've been doing that for quite a long time. I've never done anything with that. With the encouragement of my mastermind. They're saying you've got to open this up to a broader audience. So I'm putting those together.
[00:17:18] The first one is 71 of those segments, but it's going to be done, not in an easy format, not in a little paperback that we can sell for $8. Publishers are looking at how can we make it? Cheaper to get it out there. How can we produce a cheaper needed out there to a bigger audience? I'm going to do this with a simulated leather cover gold edge pages, a bookmark.
[00:17:42] It's going to be very heavy. It's going to be like something you would put on a coffee table or beside your devotional area, perhaps, which I hope happens. I'm going to price it at $48 publishers. Roll their eyes at that. They say, it does the numbers don't work. The math [00:18:00] doesn't work. I don't care.
[00:18:02] I'm not doing it to fall in line with the trends that are popular. I'm doing it because it's an innovative idea and it expresses my heart more than anything I've ever done. I mean, obviously you can tell, I get super excited about ideas like that that are not just bigger and better even is different.
[00:18:22] How can I do something that continues to inspire me in the math? Doesn't excite me as much today as it did 20 years ago. I've been blessed with a lot of opportunity, the math is looking like, so I can do things that really come from my heart, but it's surprising how often those things just come from my heart, turn out to be the things that are most profitable.
[00:18:45] Anyway. In working with artists, we all know, you know, artists starved, they don't make any money. Guess what if that's what God really equipped you to do, do that. And money will show up in ways that you could never imagine. [00:19:00] So I'm having an opportunity right now to lean into some of the things that are just passion projects for me, but I'm more excited about them than some of the things I've ever done.
[00:19:11] What's
[00:19:11] Scott Maderer: [00:19:11] ironic is I, everything you just said. So I'm part of the 48 days Eagle the community you were talking about. In fact, I think I was one of the first people that joined one of the founding members in that first round. When you. Almost and you were very clear, you launched it with an email that basically we said, this is an experiment.
[00:19:27] I'm not even sure it's got to go. This I'm committing to a year. I, other than that, I can't tell you what it's going to happen. And it's several years later, it's still going and growing. So I look forward to seeing your other tests and experiments go out into the world, because I know that they will continue to bless bless others.
[00:19:45]And it's exciting to, I, I. I've introduced you as a virtual mentor. You're one of those folks that you talked about having mentors in your life. They're there, you're one of the ones that I've considered a virtual mentor for years. So it's been awesome talking to you.
[00:19:58] Dan Miller: [00:19:58] Well, thank you.
[00:19:58] I'm honored by that, [00:20:00] Scott.
[00:20:04] Scott Maderer: [00:20:04] You can follow Dan on twitter@fortyeightdaysteamrfindhimonhiswebsiteatfortyeightdays.com and that's the number's 48. He's also active on LinkedIn at 48 days. And Dan has made a free gift available, including how you can get a free chapter of the book and some other great resources available over@fortyeightdays.com slash.
[00:20:28] I guess for inspired stewardship, I'll have links to all of these in the show notes as well. Dan, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?
[00:20:36]Dan Miller: [00:20:36] There's something, as you've talked, I've gotten a better feel for who your audience is and how you think. And so often I hear people who think they've missed their window of opportunity.
[00:20:45] And I hear from 27 year olds who think they might majored in the wrong thing in college, now they just have to kind of coast into the grave now. Oh my goodness. You aren't even old enough to ask the right question and yet hang in there. But if there's one piece of encouragement, I don't love to leave [00:21:00] with your listeners.
[00:21:00] It's that? It's never too late to have a new beginning. So it doesn't matter if you're 27 or if you're 57 or 77, it may be a time where you have fresh insight into really what your core passions are. The things that you really have to offer that could make a dent in the universe. And now's the time to step into that.
[00:21:23] And you can walk into the most productive, fulfilling time of your life. So never too late to have a new beginning.
[00:21:30] Scott Maderer: [00:21:30] Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. And it has been great to have you.
[00:21:34] Dan Miller: [00:21:34] Thank you so much. God, my honor.
[00:21:42] Scott Maderer: [00:21:42] thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this [00:22:00] episode, please, please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes
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[00:22:09] Scott Maderer: [00:22:09] All one word iTunes
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