April 16, 2026 – Lateral Thinking Paul Sloane and AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar

0:04 Intro 1 : Broadcasting from am and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award winning school for startups radio where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion.

0:24 Jim Beach : Jim Beach, hello everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for startups radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there, building your business, growing your business, taking control of your destiny and the destiny of your generations that you you know your kids and their kids and all of that. There’s nothing more important than being an entrepreneur that you can do for all of those people, for the kids, they see it, they experience it with you, and it changes their perspective. I have seen it now in my kids, and you need to think about that as part of the formula. We have a great show for you today. First up, we have Paul Sloan from the UK. He is going to talk to us about lateral thinking, something I have never heard of before, and it is a great topic. Paul and I have a really good conversation, and I learned a lot, so I think you will learn a lot as well. After that, we have AD Dunbar, also known as the king maker. And I don’t know that I’m going to comment on this interview yet, because I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. It is a challenging interview in a lot of ways, and I will. I love him, by the way, but I’m just gonna, that’s all I’m going to say. Here’s a great show. Thanks for being with us. Very excited to introduce my first guest today. He is an incredibly accomplished man. He has written 25 books, including, most recently, the art of unexpected solutions, using lateral thinking to find breakthroughs. He has had a career with some great names as his place of employment, he was at IBM, where he was the top of the sales school. He was marketing director and then marketing director for Ashton Tate and also vice president international of math soft. And became the CEO of monactive, which is a software startup. He is very successful and considered the father of the idea of lateral thinking. We will ask him about that. 25,000 students are taking his class in Udemy, and he is a visiting lecturer at Cambridge Lancaster Business School, Henley Business School and Mumbai Institute of Technology. Wow, pretty busy. Paul Sloan, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

2:49 Paul Sloane : It’s great to be on here.

2:50 Jim Beach : Jim, very impressive career, and I love the idea of lateral thinking. Tell us about it, please. What is lateral thinking?

3:02 Paul Sloane : Well, lateral thinking is a phrase coined by Edward de Bono, who was the father of lateral thinking, not me, but it’s all about approaching problems from a different direction. And we tend to go forward in a straightforward fashion, doing things the way we’ve always done them. And lateral thinking is about coming at the problem from a fresh direction, typically from the side. That’s what lateral means. And the key for about thing about lateral thinking is it is that the key that unlocks innovation. And if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re looking for a different way to solve a customer’s problem, then lateral thinking is a very useful tool to have in your toolkit.

3:39 Jim Beach : Okay, explain a little bit more. So I am having a problem with an employee who’s always late. How do I come with that from the side?

3:50 Paul Sloane : Well, instead of just saying to him, Look, you’re always late and it’s not good enough, and if you don’t improve you, I’m going to fire you. There’s various other techniques you can use. One of them is a technique called similes, and you say, What’s this problem like in an entirely different field, and how would we solve it? And so with somebody who’s late, I did something like this, and the problem was people who didn’t turn up work, they called in sick, and we said, who has a similar problem to this? And the answer was, well, the similar problem was in the football team, the soccer team, where if the goalkeeper doesn’t show up, we lose the match and we get punished. So and what is the incentive for the goalkeeper to show up when he’s not paid? It’s peer pressure. It’s not once you see all his friends down at the bar at the pub in the evening and being told why you let us down today. So one technique would be, instead of you telling the guy off, to use a little bit of peer pressure and say, Look, all your colleagues are in on time. They need you as part of the team, and get them to put some pressure on and maybe reward this guy for turning up on time as part of a team

4:58 Jim Beach : That sounds like a very Japanese. Solution? Paul, yes, the

5:03 Paul Sloane : Japanese are always coming up with clever things.

5:05 Jim Beach : Well, they have the entire idea of the window watcher. Not wash, but watch. If you are worthless, they have you. They assign you to watch the window, make sure the window doesn’t move. All right. Very syndrome, similar. So can we use this for big things too, like strategy, or, you know, planning the course of the business over the next two years?

5:32 Paul Sloane : Three years? Absolutely. So for every business leader, has to ask themselves the coolest question, what makes our business different. So it’s no good just being better. Being different is better than being better, so just being a slightly better hairdresser, slightly better restaurant, isn’t going to really catch people’s attention. These days, what you want to do is do something different, and the way to do something different is with a little bit of lateral thinking. How can we make our offer to customers significantly different from our competitors? And how can we move fast? So the great advantage that small companies have over big companies is that they can be more agile. They can have an idea in the morning and try it in the afternoon, and if it doesn’t work, they can try something else. And so what I urge entrepreneurs and people running small businesses keep trying new things and and the things that work do more of the things that don’t work stop them quickly. And you can turn on a six months. You can turn very quickly. If you’re a small company, big companies can’t it takes them quite a while to pivot and to change their strategy. And that’s the approach. I’m a big believer in the minimum viable product. You know, from from Al Reese, in his book The Lean Startup, he talks about, you’ve got an idea for a business, and instead of developing a fully formed prototype, you take out the smallest, crappiest idea version of it, and you show it to customers, and you say, would this work? Would this solve your problem? Would you buy it? And typically, they’ll give you very fast feedback. And what you’re looking for with that is not fast payback. You’re looking for fast feedback.

7:16 Jim Beach : Yes. Eric Reese is on the show next month. Interestingly, yes, I’m an

7:25 Paul Sloane : Admirer of his, so yeah, that’d be great. I’ll listen to that show.

7:29 Jim Beach : So tell us about your new book, The Art of unexpected solutions, using lateral thinking to find breakthroughs. So how do I engage in this process if it’s unexpected? Uh, do I do a brainstorming and try to only use lateral ideas in my brainstorm? How do I do this?

7:48 Paul Sloane : You’ve got to have an open mind. You’ve got to develop your curiosity, and you’ve got to be prepared to seize opportunities when they occur. So many of the great businesses, the startups, were the result of something unexpected, something that just wasn’t anticipated at all. And so, for example, you know, Stuart Butterfield, who is the founder of slack, that he started a company called Tiny spec, and it was a gaming company, but the game they produced didn’t get any traction. It didn’t work, and they were going to go under. And they realized that the product had been used for internal communication. Was a very, very useful product, and it was a log for all common knowledge. And he called it the slack. And then they started selling that product, and it became a big hit, but it was an accident. It was a tool that they developed internally. Their main aim they failed in and very often businesses, they try something, it doesn’t work, and then they learn and they try something else. And there are many, many examples of that in the book The Art of unexpected solutions, where I talk about how successes in business started with a mistake, with an accident, with a failure, something that wasn’t expected. But the the key thing is that the leader had the nous, the initiative, to do something with that information and turn it to their advantage. The nous now, N, O, U, S, yes, it means now to mean shot spot, I mean initiative.

9:28 Jim Beach : Is that a real word or britishism?

9:31 Paul Sloane : It’s a British word. But we invented the language so we couldn’t put any words we wanted.

9:36 Jim Beach : Yes, I guess so. I guess you have that, right? So if I have a problem and I want to solve it this way, do I sit down and I don’t even know how to come up with lateral ideas, I guess.

9:55 Paul Sloane : Well, there’s lots of techniques in the book and in my other books where I talk about. Ways To do this, and and there are lots of ways, including formal ways with brainstorming and brainstorming techniques, and using a random word from the dictionary, a random picture, going for a walk in a different place to an art gallery or a museum or a castle, and just seeing what’s what’s there, and using that to stimulate your mind. And a good way is to bring more of the random into your life. So if you’re doing the same thing over and over again, doing routine things, taking the same journey to work, speaking to the same kinds of people, you’re coming up with the same ideas. But by deliberately changing your daily routine, introducing the haphazard, introducing the random, you’ll get more random ideas. Many of those will be worthless, but sometimes you get something really useful. You know, if you always talk to the same group of people, you have the same conversation. If you talk to somebody you’ve never met before in a different field, you have a different conversation. And you learn stuff.

10:56 Jim Beach : Can people learn to be more creative?

11:00 Paul Sloane : Yes, I mean, children are very creative. You see children in class when they’re four or five, they’re asking all sorts of crazy questions. They’re asking hundreds of questions a day, and they think anything’s possible. And if you ask them to draw something or draw anything, and you ask an adult to draw something, they’re reluctant to do it. And adults, typically at work, ask very few questions. The day you join the company, you ask a lot of questions. But now this is the way we do things around here. You just take everything for granted, and one approach is to be much more childlike in your approach, and to ask childlike questions, basic questions. Why do we do this? What’s the purpose of this? What’s the value added. What’s the promise for the customer here? Ask those very basic questions, and it will stimulate ideas that will give you new routes,

11:52 Jim Beach : Very interesting idea. And if I want to integrate this into the business, how do I help my employees do this as well?

12:04 Paul Sloane : Well, you can get them a copy of the book. You can get me, or somebody like me, to run a brainstorm. An external facilitator can get them thinking in different ways, far more easily than the manager can or the boss can, because the boss has a certain persona and a certain approach. Very often the boss is very dominant in meetings and shapes meetings with their ideas and their strategy and their thoughts. And what you want, if you’re having a proper brainstorm, is all sorts of crazy ideas, heretical ideas, unorthodox ideas, ideas which challenge all the assumptions on which the business is built. And you can do that with an external facilitator.

12:42 Jim Beach : All right? Or what about the boss doing it

12:45 Paul Sloane : In the boss, it’s very difficult. No, no, I think it’s very difficult for the boss to do it because they’ve got to change. And people are waiting for the boss to signal approval or disapproval when they voice an idea. And you don’t want that in a brainstorm. You want all sorts of crazy ideas to come out early, because crazy ideas stimulate new ideas, absurd ideas, bizarre ideas, are very, very useful to start off with, and they spur other ideas, and eventually you end up with a short list of really good, creative ideas. But if the boss is in there to start with and they just smile, they laugh at an idea, they said, No, that won’t work. It just sends a signal that only the boss’s ideas really count, right?

13:24 Jim Beach : Well, as the entrepreneur, that’s what I think. I mean, Paul, mine is the only one that does count,

13:33 Paul Sloane : All right, so I wrote a blog on four key questions that every entrepreneur must answer. Would you like to know what those four questions?

13:42 Jim Beach : Yes. Okay, so

13:44 Paul Sloane : If you’re planning a new product or a new business, you probably need to get some approvals. You need to make need to raise finance. You need to convince skeptical decision makers. Here are four key questions that you will want to answer. The number one is problem? What is the problem that your idea will solve. If real people don’t have a pain which you’re solving, then chances are your business not going to work. So that’s the first one, what is the problem that I’m going to solve? Secondly, what is the premise? What is the fundamental ideas? How concisely will it work? Can you express it in one or two sentences? Thirdly, what’s the promise? What are you promising customers? What benefits do they get from your product? Why should they spend money? What’s the benefit they will get? And then proof, what evidence do you have for this assertion that your product will will work and offer these solutions? So the problem, the premise, the promise, the proof.

14:41 Jim Beach : And when most business owners start, how many of those do they have?

14:47 Paul Sloane : They’ve got one great idea. Typically, they’ve got the premise. They think that the product is so clever that there’s going to be wonderful but they’ve got, are you solving a real customer problem, which is a pain, and if you’re not. Solve if it’s if it’s just a nice to have, then it’s much more difficult. If it solves a real problem for people and they’re prepared to spend money on it, then it’s got a chance of flying.

15:11 Jim Beach : Excellent. I love that criteria. Where do you start when you are trying to solve this problem? Do you start with the problem itself, or the premise, the promise, weird. Where do you jump into that?

15:27 Paul Sloane : Well, there’s two approaches. Generally speaking, one is the best approach is to start with a problem. You observe customers having a problem, and you say, is there a better way to solve this problem that people are currently using? And the answer typically is yes, there is a better way. You just have to find it, but there’s an entirely different approach. Is to say, we’ve got a really cool technology here. What use can we put it to? And very often, in high tech companies, software companies, they come up with something that’s really cool, and then they say, Well, who could possibly use this? So that’s the other approach, but the best approach is to find a problem, and very often customer. You don’t ask customers. You observe customers. You know, I was in the park the other day, I saw a dog walker, and they had one of these bendy things that they used to throw a ball. Have you seen that you put the ball into it and you flick it? And whoever thought of that was brilliant, because no dog walker would have said, I need something to help me throw a dirty ball, because I can’t throw it very far. Nobody said that. But by observing the need, especially women take a dog for a walk. They can’t then the ball is very dirty. This thing that picks up the ball, and you flick it, and the dog races away, so and it solves a real need, and that’s what you have.

16:43 Jim Beach : Yes, I used to have one of those that was a great, great little toy. The dog loved it, yeah. What if no one’s willing to ask unexpected or difficult questions? What if the boss is so tyrannical that you get the group together and everyone’s just afraid of the boss, we kick the boss out of the room. How do we situation like that?

17:13 Paul Sloane : Well, I did a workshop for an engineering company in the south coast of England, and the managing director called me, and he was a very forceful, alpha male, clever guy started the company, made most of the decisions. And he said, Paul, we’ve got these problems in the business. I want you to help my team come up with solutions. And he said, these are the problems that I want answers to. And he was very clear. Clarity was one of his great strengths. And then he stepped out of the room, and he came back at the end of the day, and we said, these are the ideas we want to do this. Then he said, That’s great that we can’t do that. I like that. This one, I need more information on. And he was decisive. He realized he was smart enough to know that if he stayed in the room, he couldn’t have stopped himself from shaping every conversation. So he was smart enough to step aside. And sometimes the bosses are clever enough to do that. Other times that they’re not. They think that the smartest person in the room, even when they’re not, but even if you’re the smartest person in the room, you don’t have all the answers. And very often, people who are closer to the action, people who are dealing with customers every day, can see things that you can’t, and you need them to feel safe. They need psychological safety whereby they can voice any opinion you want them to say, I think it’s a better way to do this boss. And then you want to say, what’s your idea? And you want to listen to that idea, no matter how initially absurd it sounds, and then say, that’s interesting. How could we make it work?

18:34 Jim Beach : How do you see things when other people miss them?

18:39 Paul Sloane : Well, yeah, sometimes you see things that other people have missed. Sometimes they missed. Sometimes they see things that you miss. The more eyes you have, the more chance you’ve got, and people with different backgrounds, different approaches, different departments, different levels of experience, see things differently. And that’s why diversity is so useful in a brainstorm. You want young and old, and you want experienced and fresh into the company. You want different departments, and you want maybe some outsiders, a sprinkling of outsiders, unless you’re talking about something very secret. You know, I did a workshop for a German company, and they had a customer in the room, and they’re bouncing ideas around, and the customer was was coming up and inputting and helping them. So it can be, if you get a provocative outsider, that can be very, very useful.

19:29 Jim Beach : It can be very dangerous, though, too. I would imagine. Well, it

19:32 Paul Sloane : Depends what the topic is. If the topic is, how can we cut cost, you wouldn’t typically have a customer. The topic is, how can we surprise and delight customers, which, by the way, is an excellent topic for a brain. Your next brainstorm, how can we surprise and delight customers? Then having the customer in the room is great. You say, Yeah, I’d love that you did that. That would be terrific.

19:53 Jim Beach : What about unexpected failures? I know that in the book, you talk about that as well, and you talk about the Google Glass. Olis, which is starting to make a comeback. What do we learn from the failures?

20:07 Paul Sloane : Well, I mean, something like the segue, you know, was supposed to be something that would transform personal transportation, and people invested millions in it because, but it wasn’t tested. They didn’t take out the minimum viable product and test it with the consumer. They developed it all in total secret, and so they could retain all the copyright and all of the material. Then they launched it, and it was overpriced and looked a bit dorky, and it didn’t have all the infrastructure in place. And it took, it didn’t really succeed. And Friendster, you know, was Friendster was there before Facebook, and it would agree, but it didn’t scale properly, and it failed. So that you know that what they used to say was that, you know, the pioneers get shot by the Indians, and it’s the second people that arrive who clean up and do well. So very often, being first first mover advantage does exist, but there’s also first mover risk, so you just got to watch and keep trying. And, you know, Angry Birds, the very famous, successful game, was produced by a Finnish company. It was the 52nd game they produced. They tried and tried and tried and failed, tried and failed, tried and failed, eventually they got a winner. And it’s the same with that like that, with with innovation and new products, your first idea is very unlikely to be the final solution, and you have to iterate, you have to change, you have to try different things, and eventually you might get to something that’s a real winner.

21:36 Jim Beach : Excellent advice. All right. Most important question of all, Paul team William or team Harry

21:46 Paul Sloane : Team. William, of course.

21:48 Jim Beach : Yes, yes, I agree. What would it take for you to take Harry and that woman back? United? We’d like to get rid of them. Will you please take them back?

22:00 Paul Sloane : Well, you know, he was disloyal to the firm, and He disrespected the Queen and the monarchy, and that’s a terrible sin. It’s almost unforgivable, and he would have to apologize profusely and earn his way back. But when he wrote that book, you know, spare, which was all about, full of complaints, just and he got a lot of money for it, that really damaged his image in my eyes and many people’s eyes here.

22:29 Jim Beach : Yes, I could not agree more. We forgot to talk about AI. How does AI affect this all?

22:37 Paul Sloane : Ai affects everything. AI is massive, and every if you’ve got if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re running a small business, you should be using AI every day, not just for writing press releases, but but to check for things so and you can use it as a confidential alter ego. So say you’re very optimistic kind of person, and you’ve got this great new idea for this new product, and you’re all it’s fantastic. You put all the details into AI, and you say, What could possibly go wrong? What are the risks here? What are the dangers, what are the downsides? And it will come up with alpha, which you wouldn’t have thought of. On the other hand, if you’re very cautious, and people come to you with a great idea, what are the benefits of this idea? How could we make it even better for customers? So you’re constantly refining ideas, throwing them at AI to get input, and you should use it as an abrasive companion who’s challenging your ideas. And you know, if you’re the CEO, you can, you can have this acting as CFO COO and challenging your ideas and giving you input. So you should be using AI every day. Use different tools. See the ones that suit you best. And you know, if you use AI to come up with a new idea for a product, tell me a great product to solve this problem for customers, it comes up with something. You say, Wow, that’s terrific. Then you take that idea and you form it, and then you put it into a different AI tool. And if you started with copilot. You might use Google, Gemini, what could go wrong and you get a different model to assess the ideas from the first model. That’s one of my tips for using AI. Just use it as a challenger. Use it as a provocateur. Use it as something which is going to challenge your thinking and give you fresh ideas.

24:21 Jim Beach : Paul, how do we find out more about you? Follow you online, get a copy of the book. Turn to you.

24:26 Paul Sloane : Well, yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. Paul Sloan, I’m on Amazon. You can see my videos on YouTube. My books are all on Amazon. The leader’s guide to lateral thinking skills is one of my most popular books. Lateral thinking for every day and the new one the art of unexpected solutions. So and contact me on LinkedIn. I’m on x and all over the place.

24:50 Jim Beach : Fantastic. Paul, thank you so much for being with us. Great stuff, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

24:55 Paul Sloane : Loved it, Jim, thanks,

24:57 Jim Beach : And we will be right back. You.

25:11 Jim Beach : Well, that’s a wonderful question. Oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim,

25:17 Intro 2 : Wow, that’s, that’s, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question. And I don’t have a great answer.

25:25 Intro 2 : That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. And that’s actually a really good question. School for startups radio,

25:35 Jim Beach : We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome ad Dunbar to the show. He also goes by the king maker, and we will ask him about that, what kind of kings that he is making. But what he is doing is he is helping high net worth and very successful men bring that success into the other parts of their lives. The contention is, is that they’re not necessarily having the best marriages, and that the success that they have in their business life might need to get mirrored in their personal life as well. Ad, welcome to the show. How you doing?

26:22 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : I’m well. Thank you for having me. Super excited about the having the conversation.

26:26 Jim Beach : Did I describe what you’re doing? Well, taking relationships with high performing married men and making them better in the rest of their lives. Is that fair?

26:36 Unknown Speaker : It’s a it’s a pretty good

26:39 Jim Beach : Way to put it better, make it better.

26:40 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : Yeah, so I would say, I, I’ll start here. I would argue that most marriages today are mediocre, okay? And I say that because, Jim, if you had a career, if you had a job, that you’re working 40 hours a week, and then you start a side business where you’re putting five hours per week into it, and that side business is making $50,000 a month. We would consider that a thriving side business, correct? Sure. Okay, so then if we jump into a time machine, and then we go 20 years into the future, and now you’re spending 50 hours a week on this business, and it’s only producing you $5,000 a month in revenue, we would no longer call that a thriving business. That’s correct. We it would be fair to say that we are sustaining a mediocre business at this point, correct.

27:32 Jim Beach : I agree. Yes. Your numbers are solid.

27:35 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : Yes. So then, if we look at marriage along this same analogy, we would say that when you met your now wife, when you were courting her and dating her and things like that, you didn’t have a mortgage, you didn’t have cars, you didn’t have kids, you didn’t have daycare, you didn’t have all these responsibilities, yet she would give herself to you more readily. She was more excited, she was more available. She was more outgoing, more lively. And now that people are married, they’re 510, 1520, years in, the lust is gone, the attraction is gone, the respect is gone, the softness is gone, and he’s putting in more than he’s ever put in. That is a mediocre marriage. So I help them go from mediocre to outstanding, the best possible barriers they can possibly have, the love, the warmth, the softness, the kindness, all of that comes back within the first 30 days of us working together, and I show them how to sustain that over the lifetime of the relationship.

28:33 Jim Beach : All right, I do want to talk about that. That sounds awesome. How did they get to that point? Is it someone’s fault? I don’t know fault, people like you hate talking about fault, but there’s got to be a reason for this, and I do think it’s someone’s fault.

28:51 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : So, yeah, yeah, great. So I won’t use the word fault, because fault assigns blame, and blame leads to shame, and so I won’t use that word. But if we’re going to say it’s someone’s fault, I would say it’s the husband’s fault. I would say that because he’s the leader. However, what I’ll say is there’s a pattern. And so when I talk to my clients about and I tell them the number one thing that your number one job is a man in a relationship with a woman, your number one job is not to provide, is not to protect, is not to her problems. Is not to listen to her remote. Is not that. It is to keep her attraction to you high, her level of desire for you high. I love cookies and cream, ice cream. My desire for it is high, but if I eat it today, my desire for it is going to be diminished because I just had it. I can’t, you can’t have something all the time, and desire is really, really, really difficult to do. Okay, so part of one of the things that they do that goes wrong or that decreases their attraction is they make themselves too available. In the beginning, maybe you were working a lot, and she can only see you Friday evenings, and so maybe for three to four Fridays or three to four weeks in a row, she. She gets to see you, and maybe on the fifth one, you’re sick, or you’re out of town, or you have some other kind of event. Now she doesn’t get to see you. Now she’s sad, okay, like you were less available. Once you have kids in a home and you look together, you see each other every freaking day. It’s just harder. So the way that we do modern marriage, it is inevitable that attraction falls. There are some things that you can do to keep it high. And all of my teachings and my systems are about what’s the lowest effort thing that you possibly can do or have to do to keep it high. It’s not about working hard for attraction. It’s doing the things that are conducive to attraction being high, if that makes sense, and not doing the things that decrease.

30:43 Jim Beach : It All right, are you talking about double income couples or woman, staying wife, staying at home,

30:56 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : Either, either or either or I think it’s just harder when there’s double income. But this I’m my strategy works for all men who are in long term relationships with women, regardless of what the economics of the situation looks like.

31:14 Jim Beach : Okay? And you’re saying that. Okay, I’m with you so far. So how is it the man’s fault that I’m not giving her enough attention?

31:26 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : Um, no, the man’s fault comes in, in not understanding a woman’s nature, okay? Meaning, like, if you own a snake, right? You it would make sense that you understand the nature of the snake such that you don’t right, you don’t startle it and get yourself big, right? If you owned a dog, you wouldn’t want to know the nature of a dog. So that

31:52 Jim Beach : Are you comparing women to snakes?

31:56 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : No, I’m only comparing one creature to another. I’m just created comparing one creature to another. What I’m saying is that a human adult female is an animal. We tend to think that we’re not because we wear clothes and we drive cars and we have positions and titles, we’re still animals. We’re still animals. And so the female adult human has things about her that turn her on. If you do these things, it turns her on. If you do these other things, it turns her off. Right? So the man’s fault, quote, unquote, comes from not understanding that his number one job is to keep her turned on and to also not understanding what variables turn her on versus which ones turn her off. They’re kind of just going about it unconsciously and unaware, and this is why 50% of marriage is ending divorce, and 80% of the time is the woman leaving.

32:48 Jim Beach : Okay, so what can I do to keep her excited?

32:52 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : That’s a great question. So this is where I’ve come up with what I call the desire equation. Desire is a mathematical equation is constantly running in the back of every woman’s mind. A woman typically cannot tell you why she is attracted to a guy. She only can tell you what makes her comfortable with this guy, but she does not know what turns her on. Okay, and so the desire equation stems it comes down to three things. Now, human biology and evolutionary psychology is very, very, very complex. So this equation does not capture everything, but it’s a very good, simple starting point. The first variable in it is respect. Now, respect is a mixture of admiration and fear, and when I say admiration, I mean, the sense of, wow. Like, how did they do that? Like, when you think about Jordan scoring 60 points in the game and, like, you’re like, wow. How did you do that? You see an entrepreneur go from nothing to, you know, $100 million valuation in two years. Wow, that’s, that’s admiration, wow. She must look up to you, and she must think and feel wow. I don’t know how he does what he does. It might, it might be something small, like she’s afraid of bugs, and you kill bugs, but not a problem that’s Wow, right? So these don’t have to be grand thief, and the second part of respect is fear. And that fear of disappointing you, fear of letting you down, fear that she might lose your love. There, there must be fear involved, right? Because that is that is a part of respect. Most people, if we’re walking in a forest and we see a bear, we’re not going to go on our way to punch the bear because we fear that the bear may kill us. Okay? So fear is a parts. It is the basis of respect. So respect is the first variable, and a woman cannot love a man who she does not respect, and she also cannot be turned on long term by men she cannot respect. The second variable is masculine behavior. This is your masculine self. Is your your thinking and your doing self, and your feminine self is your your feeling and your intuitive. Self in masculine behavior. I simply boil it down to like, the behaviors that you want to do, doing the things that you want to do, genuinely, naturally, authentically as a man. So many husbands tell me if they argue with their wife on a weekly basis, and I’m like, do you want to argue? Do you enjoy arguing? And they’re like, No. And I say, then stop. Stop, refuse. If an argument starts, stop what you’re doing. Realize this is not serving you, and then just walk away. It’s okay, do what you want to do, do more of what you want to do, do less of what you don’t want to do. That to me, I know it sounds overly simplified, but it is the essence of masculinity, and whenever you are doing things that you do not genuinely want to do because you fear something else happening, meaning she may want to go on a date every four days, and you’re like, I don’t want to, but you fear her leaving, or you fear her divorcing you. So now you’re coerced. You’re being coerced into doing things you don’t want to do. You’re moving out of a place of fear, and she can feel that, and that makes her less attracted to you. You’re better off risking losing her, quote, unquote, and saying, No, I don’t want to do that. And if that does not work for you, then this relationship just may not be compatible, right? That communicates, I do not fear losing you. And she’s going to pouch in the moment, but she’s going to be, she’s going to be attracted to you long term. And then the third variable, like I said earlier, is distance. You cannot you almost like you smother a fire when you put it out, right? And desire is like a fire. So you must make space for you to be yourself and her to be herself, like you have time when you come together, but you also have time. Have to make time where you are apart, and you’re not communicating, you’re not you’re giving, you’re giving each other time to miss one another, right? You need distance. And if you do those three things, and you find a very effortless way to do those three things like you just build it into how you live your life. It brings back, it brings back desire, very, very quickly.

37:09 Jim Beach : All right, I can’t imagine doing what I want to do and not getting in trouble.

37:15 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : Okay, that’s great. I’m so glad she said that. The first thing that I said to my clients is doing what I want to do, I get in trouble. The first thing I say is, is this your mother, or is this your wife? Right? Because you can get in trouble with your mother, but your wife is your wife, like you lead her. She doesn’t lead you, right? So a lot of men, when they say that, they I try to help them come to the conclusion that to some degree they fear their wife, or their fear the brunt of their wife’s emotions. And I’ve been there, and I understand that, however, if you fear her, then her mind is like, well, and this is subconscious. Her mind is then saying, Well, if you can’t protect yourself from me, how in the heck can you protect me from something else? Right? So part of bringing back attraction is understanding that most men have been bullied into doing things they don’t want to do, and they have been bullied out of things they do want to do. And she can feel that, and that’s why she’s no longer attractive. So in that way, we might also say it’s the woman’s fault, because she’s a bully, and so your job is to not let her bully you and she I don’t think they do it intentionally. They’re doing unintentionally. So we’re going to put it that way. It’s both sides fault, because a relationship is 5050, but your job is to not be bullied, okay? And that is what, that is, what drives desire,

38:41 Jim Beach : All right. Well, how do you what do you do when she is bullying, you just walk away, right? You said, with a fight, I’m more trouble.

38:53 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : So that’s great. I’m glad you said that. So here’s what I recommend you do. Um, this. This is my patented method. I call the grab your nuts method, okay? And nuts is an acronym, okay, N, U, T, S, so in stands for never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever argue with your woman. Just don’t do it. It is a lose, lose battle. If you win, quote, unquote, like you said, you’re in trouble, and she’s upset if you go in and you lose. You’re just frustrated because you were using logic, she was using emotion, and nothing ever happens. So step one is to understand, never, ever argue. Now, can you just argue?

39:36 Jim Beach : That’s their whole thing.

39:38 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : Yes, they do, and if you engage in it with them, then they lose respect for you. So let them argue with people who are willing to argue with them. Let them argue with other women and let them argue with other men. Never you, never you again. This is your wife we’re talking about, right? This is the woman who you love, who you’re providing for. You’re having kids with, right? Like you don’t. Want to no one wants to argue, at least no man wants to. And women can be a little chaotic. So just because she wants to do something, just like your child might want to wake up and eat candy every morning, you don’t do get let them do it because they want to right. Your job as a leader is to lead the relationship in such a way that is harmonious, and we can’t just let them do everything that they want. So step one is never argue, right? And I’ll tell you what to do instead,

40:25 Jim Beach : Let them do what they want. My if my wife heard you say that, she would cut my nuts off. I mean, that’s just the antithesis of what women, you know, in feminism and all of that is they

40:42 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : Yes, yes, yes. And feminists, to me, are women who don’t have very good relationships with their fathers, and so they’re angry at all men. And everything I’m telling you now will also work on a feminist, because it also it always works on all women, because I’ve studied the human female adults, animal so yes, they will be upset, and when I get to T, T tells you what to do when they get upset. So in is never, ever, ever argue. Okay, all right, walking away and just not indulging in the argument. That works. That is a solid plan, if that’s what you want to do. Okay, literally anything better, anything other than arguing is better. Okay, you this is important. You means understand that your woman needs chaos, period. Just, just, just write it in stone. Don’t try to challenge me. Just believe they need chaos. And by chaos, what I mean is they need to have a fluctuation of emotions every day. The phrase Happy wife, happy life, was invented by the most miserable men on the planet, meaning, I don’t want to feel the brunt of her emotions, so I just like, I just want to keep her happy. As long as I keep her happy and she’s not upset or moody or whatever, then you know, the energy in the house is great, and that, again, is spoken out of fear. I don’t want to make her feel bad, because I don’t want to, I fear the brunt of her emotions, she’s going to feel bad no matter what you do. There’s that’s like saying I don’t want it to rain. It’s gonna rain no matter what you do. Okay? So what you need to understand is that they need to feel bad. This is a need, the same way that you have a bladder, and when that bladder fills up, you need to pee. It is a need. They need to feel happy and sad, joyous and mad, anxious and sad. They need to feel all of them, and that’s their God given right to feel their own emotions. So I say, let them, let them just, let them feel whatever they feel, just like if something were to happen to you and you’re upset, you have a right to feel upset. Now, when they’re upset, you don’t have to stay in the room and watch them be upset walk out that has nothing to do with you. Those are her emotions. Okay, if she’s sad, let her be sad, because you trying to rush her through an emotion again, communicates indirectly, I fear you and your emotions, and these are uncomfortable to me, so I must do something. Don’t do that. Let her feel her feelings. It’s okay. There’s a term called self regulation. And when a baby is is is growing up, they’re like in that toddler stage. You can come to their rescue every single time, or you can, you know, let themselves Sue, let them cry, let them kind of feel their feelings. And then once they’re done, the child stops crying. Now you don’t want to always just completely disregard the child. You want to, you know, help sometimes, and you want to leave them alone other times. There’s a good balance of the two husbands today are constantly trying to keep their wives from feeling bad, and it’s a losing battle. It’s a losing battle. Let her feel that it’s okay. She’s not going to die. I’ve never seen a woman die from excess of emotions. They need this. Okay? So that’s used understand. They need chaos. And then T, this is the trap card, okay? T stands for trap card or theatrics. This is kind of like the stop, drop and roll right? Like, this is what you do when she’s moody and you have no idea what else to do. Like, you’re just like, caught off guard. What the heck do I do? This is what you do. And this is all science, by the way. I’m not making any of this up this. I got all of this from books and research and all of my own personal relationships and everything. Okay, what you do is you drop your voice to a very like low tone, like a like a late night FM, DJ, and you put sympathy and warmth in your voice, and you say, Poor baby. Okay. You hug her. Okay, not like a sensual, you know, sexual hug, or anything like that. You hug her, like, like a friend, like, like someone who you see in pain, okay? And you kiss her on the forehead, and then you walk away. Because this is not a logical problem. This is an emotional problem. You cannot solve an emotional problem using logic. You must solve an emotional problem. Using emotions and what that communicates to her, that hug, the kiss the forehead, the all poor baby, it communicates I see that you’re in pain. I you matter to me. I care for you. I love you, and I’m so sorry that you’re in pain, and I’m not gonna sit here and try to solve it for you so and then you walk away. Okay? Like, I know it’s, I know it sounds incredibly simple. It’s because it is. We’ve been taught to try to fix things with words. Words don’t work. Words turn into arguments. My solutions. I use as few words as possible, because if you use a lot of words, they will manipulate it into you being the bad guy. You will be gaslit into believing that you’re wrong for feeling how you so we’re not even going to you. We’re not going to give them the opportunity to bring words into the picture, okay?

45:46 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : And so that’s t that is the theatrics. That’s the trap car. This is what you do. This is your stop, drop and roll. And then S is optional, but it is very, very effective. And S stands for set expectations. So this is basically you telling her what’s going to happen next, right? For example, my wife had very stressful thing happen at work this past week. I saw her. She was moody. I said, here’s what we’re going to Well, first I dropped my voice. I said, poor baby, hug forehead, kiss. And I said, Hey, I can tell that this is difficult for you. I can tell that this is hard for you. I can say this is a challenge for you, and I’m so sorry to see you go through this. I’m busy right now. Here’s what we’re going to do, though, later on tonight, nine o’clock, after the kids are asleep, we put the kids down. I want you to come and lay in bed on my chest in silence. We’re not using words, okay, in silence until you feel better. She did that. She woke up perky and fresh as a daisy the next morning. And I accomplished all of this without us ever having a back and forth dialog. And so whenever the emotions get big, right, whenever they’re arguing or they’re upset and things like that was was happening in that moment is you’re seeing a toddler in a adult human’s body having a emotional, dysregulated moment, and all you need to do is help her regulate her emotions. And I promise you that nothing is more effective than hugs and kisses. You don’t need to use words, just hugs, and then you tell her what to do next. Hey, I see this is difficult for you right now. I’m busy. What I need you to do? I need you to go and make me a sandwich so I can, you know, eat before I get back into my next work call. And then tonight, at nine o’clock, I want you to meet me in the bed. I want you laying on my chest in silence until you feel better, and then laying on your chest, like you can go look this up, like it slows their heart rate. It it makes them feel more comfortable. It makes them feel warm. It literally, your body regulates their body. You’re calm, and their body is all over the place, and they’re borrowing your calm energy, and it soothes her. It is, it is the her out of this. This is my own wording. There’s no safer place for a woman to be than on the chest of the man who she loves. There’s no safer place. There’s nothing that you can do to make her feel safer than letting her lay in your chest. It is my secret. Go to move. It makes everything easier.

48:21 Jim Beach : Ad, what do you do when you have, like, hyper big problems like, say, the police show up at your house with the search warrant and they take your wife’s computer because they’re grabbing all the electronics in the house, and she can’t do her job now because you had a search warrant, or your dad died and you’re not doing well because of it. You know, how do you handle situations where you know you are unhappy, you’re destroyed at this moment, and you’ve caused her immense pain by, you know, having her computer seized by the police or something. You know, one of your shows get caught cheating or something. You know, how do you handle the really, really, really crappy moments that hit us all?

49:15 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : Are you saying like you’re a crappy moment where you as the man? Your feelings are kind of all over the place.

49:24 Jim Beach : Well, I just imagine you got served with a search warrant and your wife’s computer taken away. You know, you screwed her over somehow, you know, how do you okay? I got

49:34 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : She’s like that. I got you. I got you. So one thing that you must I tell my clients, one of your most important jobs is disappointing your woman. You remember, she needs chaos, right? She needs to feel all the feelings. So it is part of your job is to help her feel these feelings. So I tell my wife that, like, Hey, you’re not married to an average guy. Like, I am a great man, like, I’m changing the world. I’m helping keep families. Together, like, like, you’re riding in a McLaren, okay, this, the ride is going to be exciting. It’s going to be exhilarating. It’s going to be stressful at points, but it’s going to be fun. And if you wanted a normal guy, you could just go get a guy who’s a Honda, you know, he’s not going to do all that. Like, it’s going to be simple, it’s going to be boring, but he’s going to be stable. And, you know, it’s going to be a very easy, boring, normal life. Okay, that’s not what you signed up for when you signed up to be with me. And things are going to happen. You may I may get arrested. You may get your computer confiscated. It’s all a part of the journey I’ll live. You’ll live. It’ll be okay. So like your job as the man is to regulate your own emotions and don’t blame her for what how you feel. And then your other job is to like you’re doing that, and she gets to model that she takes accountability and doesn’t blame you for how she feels over time, because you take accountability for how you feel and you don’t blame her. So you did whatever you did, the thing got confiscated. You didn’t screw her over. Her computer got complicated. That’s the literal truth. If she’s upset about that, that’s okay. She can be upset now, in the in the instance where you feel as though you did something wrong and you and she deserves an apology from you, you just say, I’m sorry. You give her a hug and a kiss, and a kiss, and then you say, I’ll fix it. And then you go, fix it like nothing is a big deal, unless you say it’s a big deal. And at any given moment, she can leave. She can choose not to be here. So I would rather than you or I’m sorry, rather than her argue and be upset with me all day. Just don’t be with me. Just leave, because I’m not coming to rescue you and save you from your emotions. I’m going to let you feel them, because those are your emotions. That’s your responsibility. Now, if you come to me and say, Hey, I’m dysregulated, could you help me? Absolutely, as long as you bring it to me calmly, maturely and respectfully, absolutely, I’m here to help you, just like you’re here to help me, right? But at the end of the day, you’re the leader. You make decisions. No, let’s be real, Jim, no one knows everything. No one knows what they’re doing. We’re all doing our best to figure it out. And as a leader, you you need room to make mistakes, because mistakes is how we grow, right? So I’m wrapping up your question into, how do you handle a situation where you make a mistake, and now she is on the, you know, the bloody end of it. You just say, hey, my bad. I made a mistake. I’ll fix it. And then you let her feel however she wants to feel.

52:29 Jim Beach : Wow. Dunbar, you gave me a lot to think about and to consider, and this is really challenging, and I’ll have to get my wife’s opinion on this, if she lets me, how do we find out more about you? AD, get in touch. Sign up for your program. All that, please.

52:47 AD “The Kingmaker” Dunbar : Yes, yes, yes. You can find me on all other social medias, the Instagrams, the tiktoks, the YouTubes, at AD, the king maker, on all social media platforms. And if you are a husband who’s looking to bring back your wife’s warmth, love, loving and softness, you can go to the 30 day fix.net, that is the word th, E, the numbers three, zero day fix.net. Backslash husband. And if you’re a wife who knows that, you know, she wants to bring back the honeymoon phase, and she wants to learn how to get out the way and get her husband in front of a guy like me, so he can lead, lead better, and they can feel safer, and all the things then go to the 30 they fix.net backslash wife.

53:39 Jim Beach : Fantastic. Ad. Thank you so much for being with us, and we’d love to have you. To have you back. This is great information. Yes, Jim, thank you for having me, and we are out of time. But you know what we do? That’s right? We come back to our V safe, take care and go make a million dollars. Bye. Now you.