Are You an Exponential Entrepreneur? – Episode 164

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Once again, we have bestselling financial author and president of Partners for Prosperity, Kim Butler with us today. And we’re going to be talking about an article that Kim found called Are You an Exponential Entrepreneur? Kim is a huge fan of Peter Diamandis and goes to his annual event every year. And Kim, maybe you can just kind of give some folks some background if they haven’t

[00:50] heard that name. And then we’ll kind of go over this article. Absolutely. So Peter is somebody that I really encourage people to follow. His name is Peter Diamandis, D-I-A-M-A-N-D-I-S. And you can go onto his website, PeterDiamandis.com, and I think he’s got another site that’s just Diamandis.com, and opt in for his emails. And he provides a steady stream of information that helps us learn about the positive impact that technological change is having. So technological change is affecting every industry, every person, every single thing that’s going on in our lives. And it’s interesting, two or three years ago when I would attend his event, actually I think three or four years ago, four years is the number of times I’ve been, we would

[01:47] learn about something singular, like 3D printing, as an example, or robotics. And now we’re learning about how robotics and 3D printing are combining to make a change. And so it’s been so interesting to follow his information. He emails once a week. He always has very concrete examples of good things that technology is improving and just massive amounts of different types of industries that are impacted by it. And then, of course, at the event, we get to listen to all kinds of speakers and presentations and we get to see things that just help me be so confident that these technological changes will bring good, that they will overcome some of the challenges that come with them, that they will enable us to help more people and to solve some

[02:47] of the world’s global grand challenges. Things like not everybody having access to food and clean water and electricity and various other things. So not only is this good for the U.S., it’s good for the world as a whole. And Peter says it all the time. It’s absolutely the best time in the world to be alive. And we’re seeing good results that are happening from these technological changes from exponential entrepreneurs that are implementing, driving these changes, doing the research, creating the opportunities, and then also fulfilling them. The thing that I like about most of the stuff or all of the stuff that I read of his is it’s not so much of should this be happening or should this be happening.

[03:39] It’s look, it’s happening. How can we make it work for us? Yes, yes, that’s very well said. And each person, each business owner for sure, but really each person will want to figure out the ways that technology is going to impact them and figure out ways to adjust, adopt, just accept even some of the changes that are happening because businesses that don’t and individuals that don’t are absolutely going to just get run over. And those are strong words. But what’s the saying? I wish I could remember who quotes it. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you’re standing still. That’s exactly what’s happening right now. All right. Well, he mentions that he focuses on six mindsets and the tools that every

[04:44] exponential entrepreneur needs to master and skill number one as you must understand exponentials. Absolutely. So exponential versus linear. And he’s got some great examples that I won’t try to quote because they take very specific numbers that I don’t have in the top of my head. But essentially us human beings have for our entire lives, thought linearly and it’s like one step, one step, one step as opposed to exponentially, which is like a multiplier effect, like one times 10 times 100 times a thousand and that X that times, if you will, is all the difference in the world. So I would just liken it to three plus three is six, but three times three is nine. That’s a good example. And then of course, if you extrapolate that out, it just even gets bigger.

[05:38] And so there are so many times when us human beings want to make a decision about something in the future and we think linearly and we can’t, we absolutely must start thinking exponentially and get that X in there, that times in the equation so that whatever we’re looking at, whatever we’re thinking about, we come at from a mental perspective of exponential speed, exponential growth, exponential opportunity, exponential, whatever it is that we’re talking about, not linear. Awesome. And number two is you see the world as abundant versus scarce. Absolutely. So this goes with our first principle of prosperity, which is think. And what we mean by that is to be thinking from a prosperous mindset.

[06:27] And yes, this is hard. Sometimes I still struggle with it. And yet when we look at something from a position of gratitude, when we are thinking from a prosperous mindset, when we’re thinking from a position of abundance, whatever terminology you want to use, and when we’re not, we’re aware of it and we stop ourselves and we don’t make decisions and we don’t make comments and we don’t go off in a particular direction based on scarcity mentality. But instead we adopt, even if it’s an act as if, you act as if you’re confident about this area of abundance to go forward, sometimes acting as if we’re happy, acting as if we’re confident will actually get us into that state of mind where we can then be more progressive, more capable, more

[07:17] able to help, get more done, et cetera, et cetera. And five years ago, this might have been brushed off as, oh, that’s rose colored glasses thinking, but every single one of my mentors, every single business leader out there in the marketplace is talking about mindset these days and how mindset really matters. And so please with yourself and your spouse and your children and your close family members and your coworkers and your employees, please, please help us all to adopt a prosperous mindset or an abundant state of mindset or a positive point of view, you know, whatever terminology you want to use because we can get more done when we are in that position mentally than we can when we’re in the opposite position.

[08:08] And as we’ve talked so much on this podcast, your thinking is something that can be changed immediately. One of the things I watched a video of his that just blew me away is the fact that some of the projects he has working right now, one of his concerns is that the earth is under populated for the scale of some of the stuff he wants to pull off. Yes, isn’t that interesting? Certainly an opposite environment of what most people think about. And so, yeah, that that’ll be interesting to see as we progress. Number three is you leverage exponential technologies. Okay, so exponential technologies could be data mining. They could be robots. A&I. Yes, artificial intelligence. They could be virtual reality.

[09:02] They could be virtual, sorry, augmented reality. So VR and AR are both spoken about. And you’ll want to look through these various technologies and figure out how to work with them, figure out how to leverage them. And my gosh, again, after attending four years, I’m still struggling with this. I come home and I look at our database and I think, ah, how can we be leveraging exponential technologies in the areas of data science? And I don’t have an answer, but keep looking at them. Keep pursuing information about these areas. Keep seeing the positive aspect about them and figure out if it’s something that you can take advantage of. Use, benefit from, platform off of, etc. Number four is you have an NTM, as in Mary T as in Tom P as in Paul,

[09:57] and a moonshot mindset. Massively transformative purpose. There you go. Drives them to power through hardship and attracts the best talent to join them. Absolutely. So the moonshot that I mentioned earlier about having some type of wearable or a bracelet that would have the ability to let you know when you were going off values that you identified. So that’s what’s known as a moonshot. It’s just some crazy thing that we think about. And so what Peter’s recommending is that each person have some crazy thing that they think about. So a massively transformative purpose, MTP, is some type of overriding, overarching purpose that exists in your life that you’re always thinking about working on in the background.

[10:55] It’s not your job. It’s not your day-to-day income, but it’s just something that drives your life. And then the moonshot is a more specific goal, even if still a big moonshot. And you can Google information about this. So if you Google moonshot, as a matter of fact, Google, the company, has an entire department, small department, but of people that enjoy working on moonshots for Google. These are big, really huge goals that people are individually and from a company perspective, absolutely interested in pursuing. And Peter just believes that every single person, no matter what your position in life, needs to have both an MTP, a massively transformative purpose, and a moonshot goal that they are working on, and that this is what drives

[11:46] innovation, and that this is what enables people to overcome resistance and challenges, et cetera. Currently, as we speak, the average age across the world of death is 80 years old. And I know Peter Diamandis’ personal or MTP is that before his lifetime is up, he will add 30 years to that figure. Well, you’re seeing all the time that 100 is the new 60. And we’re seeing in the life insurance industry when the normal life insurance policy now runs out to age 121, an endowment is at age 121 instead of age 100, like it used to be. And there’s a company that Peter is a part member of called Human Longevity, Inc. It’s in Southern California, I think, might be Northern, somewhere in California. And they are, as the name implies, absolutely focused on this.

[12:46] And I’m seeing it all the time. We know people that are in their 80s and 90s that are unbelievably healthy and will absolutely live to 100. Of course, we also know people that are 85 and not healthy at all. But I believe that 100 is the new 60 and that every single person, no matter how old you are today, needs to be looking at age 100. And if you’re in the younger set, if you’re 20, 30, maybe even 40 years old, you need to be looking out to 120, which just changes all kinds of things. I mean, we can’t be retiring at 65 if we’re going to live to 100. We can’t be stopping work at age 65 if we need to then create income for another 35 years. The math is just not feasible. So whatever people need to do to just be conscious of that time frame

[13:39] that individuals will probably, anybody that is alive today, barring illness, of course, be living to age 100. Okay. Number five is you tap the crowd for expertise, solutions, and capital. So this, to me, is impressive. It doesn’t mean that you’re sitting in a room coming up with this stuff by yourself. It’s a much more we economy than a me economy. Absolutely. So as an example, there’s a company called HeroX. So the website, H-E-R-O-X.com. And HeroX helps people create contests which then drive innovation and people try to win the contest. And you can do this for as little as $10,000, $50,000, where you create a contest of some problem that you want solved. You put up a prize and maybe you even get other people to put up a prize.

[14:38] And then people compete to win that prize, thereby solving the problem. And of course, some problems don’t get solved and others get solved but not the right way or what have you. So just as a fun place, if you want to take a look at HeroX, then that’s a good example. And of course, a more well-known one is something called Kickstarter. So Kickstarter is a place where entrepreneurs put their product and people that are interested can fund those products and create all kinds of money that then enables innovation and the research and creation of these products. And one thing leads to another and money is provided to the product. People that then can provide the product back to the people that provided the money.

[15:24] It’s a great way to continue to build and take advantage of these exponential technologies. Number six is you launch your vision, experiment, and disrupt yourself. In other words, you have to be willing to get out of your own way once you start something. Absolutely. So the experimental part is so critical and Peter talks all the time about our decisions these days need to be made with data. Gone is the day that an entrepreneur can figure out a product and then just put it out there and hope that people will buy it. Today’s world, it is such that you put out a prototype as an example and you experiment with it and then you get good feedback and then you make another one and another one and another one.

[16:15] And he says all the time, if you own a business, you need to be disrupting yourselves. I’ll give a fun example. The parking garage builders are seriously looking at what they’re doing in the realm of building parking garages because especially in the inner cities, it is believed that Uber or something like it will absolutely transform car ownership. Are you ready for this? By the year 2025. So we’re talking seven, eight years from now, car ownership in inner cities is going to be, this was their words, not mine, obliterated. I’ve used Uber 50 times. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I do too. And so if that’s the case, and obviously car parking garages are no longer needed. And here’s a statistic that’s fun.

[17:12] Four percent of the time is all that a car is typically used. Now, of course, somebody in real estate or somebody maybe in some kind of travel job probably uses theirs a little higher. But think about it. Think about all the money that we have tied up in something that we call an asset that only gets used four percent of the time. That’s so horribly inefficient. And so Uber and Lyft and other companies that may come from that kind of thinking are potentially going to decimate car ownership in the inner cities. So again, as a parking garage builder, you better be rethinking what your business is doing. Well, if our listeners out there, if we’ve sparked any ideas in you, or you have any more questions about this,

[18:02] we invite you to send your questions or comments to hello at partners, the number four, prosperity.com. And again, we’ve been talking about Peter Diamandis. We invite you to look him up on the internet and maybe you’ll become a fan of his. Maybe you’ll become a critic. We’d like to hear back from you either way. Anything else you’d like to add, Kim? The email for comments, responses, questions is hello at partners, number four, prosperity.com. We would love to hear additional questions that you have. I’m happy to share anything that I can from the event. We’ve been given permission to share it. Peter is a big believer in open source architecture. So I’m happy to answer questions and happy to keep the conversation going.

[18:47] That’s hello at partners, number four, prosperity.com. Super. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Special thanks to Kim Butler. Take care and thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.