The Self-Managing Company

Freeing Yourself Up from Everything That Prevents You from Creating a 10x Bigger Future

By: Dan Sullivan

Narrated by: Dan Sullivan

Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

In my Strategic Coach® workshops, I’ll draw a circle on the white board, and in the center, I’ll write, “Self-Managing Company”. I’ll say to the group, “You don’t know exactly what I’m going to say about this, but right off the bat, how many of you want one of these”? Every hand in the room goes up. Every ambitious entrepreneur in the world wants to have their own self-managing company. This 60-minute audiobook will provide you and your Unique Ability® Team with the eight crucial entrepreneurial mindsets necessary to make this a daily, exciting breakthrough for the next 25 years and beyond.

©2020 Dan Sullivan and The Strategic Coach, Inc. (P)2021 Dan Sullivan and The Strategic Coach, Inc.

Fundamental Concepts

This audiobook excellently covers the fundamental concepts of the author’s work. Having read his written works, I found this audiobook to be an excellent resource that concisely presents the basic tenets of his thesis. Highly recommended for anyone looking to grasp the essential ideas quickly and effectively.

Great listen

I got a lot out of this book I’m excited to listen to more from Dan.

Very confident lives by example

Juggling the time management is most important.

Making sure you want to be your future better self but measure backwards.

Another amazing book by Dan

This book is simple and short but powerful. I highly recommend all of Dan’s books but if you want to shift your perspective of how to build a company that doesn’t require you to be constantly working, this book is a great one.

Great Information that’s applicable to all areas of life!

This book really helps to change your way of thinking and simplifies complex concepts. Thanks Dan Sullivan for the work you and your team does.

Excellent summary

I have just listened to several other books by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy and this one was an excellent summary and overview with a few new tidbits and stories. Highly recommended!

Fun, insightful - nothing life changing.

Let me first let you know where I come from. I read at least one to two books a week. Topics that frequent my library range from managing self, to business, relationships, communication, and beyond - there are plenty of key, pivotal books out there. I regret to report, this isn’t one of them. While it is an insightful read, it’s not life changing.

As an associate to a dental practice, we picked this book up to improve our business. The owner of the partnership purchased the paperback version for the whole team, and we have started to implement its principles. Truly, it’s content isn’t “bad” - it just isn’t great.

Most of the concepts are half baked. They are thought provoking, it’s true, but they fail to really drive the point home. The paperback version of the book is not at all concise and this audiobook is even less so. I had to re-read the paperback and almost re-format it in order to get its points across. Often times literally re-phrasing paragraphs in order to make them more impactful and memorable.

An example being the ABC principal. Which then is given three terms, irritating, okay or fascinating. The principal is good, but the real impact is left in oblivion.
Really the ABC should either be rephrased to something like “Awful, Boring and Captivating” or the ABC concept shouldn’t be brought in at all, because it’s just another principal to remember that is clunky in transition and hard to recall.

Other parts of the book go down nuances of word play leaving you wanting to either argue with word choices or read between the lines to apply his ideas. One such chapter guaranteeing unhappiness if you focus on the future, promising only happiness if you do three wins of accomplishment that day. Again, as I attempt to gain as much as I can, I had to rephrase his wording, and apply different word plays from the audio version to more aptly apply it’s principle. Which, in my opinion, should have been done before publication, not left to the reader to do.
Unfortunately the first six chapters (out of eight) are all this way in some form or another. I literally had to re-write the book in order to extract and make its concepts memorable.

Unfortunately this isn’t the worst of it. Really this whole “book” is focused on what I find as a self defeating mindset, and it becomes painfully obvious in the audio version. This “I want to work for myself. I’m an entrepreneur to be free and earn lots of money” bleeds through almost every concept. To many, this is inspiring. Because owning your own company, managing your own business, and reaping the rewards are all awesome parts of being a business owner. But when that becomes one’s focus, it becomes self serving, and quite honestly it’s obvious to anyone who has two minutes to conceptually reflect on the things portrayed. Taken to the extreme, if everyone had this mentality, there wouldn’t be anyone who could be part of a team, leaving all “business” to ruin.

The reason this book doesn’t tank completely is because
1- it’s principles are quite enlightening. On paper, the concepts are good. They are, in fact, helpful to business and owners alike to think differently.
2- the last two chapters are much more ‘hit home’ principles. The reader can tell that his heart is actually in these last concepts. Focusing on living life to its fullest and trying to live longer to make a more impact on the world is a great “live life” concept that really saves this book.

Ultimately, it’s a decent read. And at $5 for the audio and $2 for the kindle, it is worth going through. But I wouldn’t go out of my way to seek its information.

No value here

A bunch of useless info just to push you to buy into their coaching. Don’t waste you time and money. There are better resources available for free on YouTube.

Skip it.

Basically you’re paying a credit to listen to a half baked podcast format. Listening to Dan ramble and a half baked interview style is fine for a free podcast… for 20 bucks or a credit… not so much.