Episode 154: Rewind – From Linear Thinking To Global Impact

Hi everybody, this is Peter Diamandis. And welcome to our next episode of Exponential Wisdom with my dear friend, my coach, Dan Sullivan. This time I'd like to speak about an exponential mindset. As you've noted, it's not natural to us. Our brains evolved in a world that was local and linear, that the world around you operate linearly. The river, the lion moving towards you was moving at a linear rate. And you had to calculate whether you could get into your cave or up the tree before it attacked you. But we're living in a world today that is anything but local and linear. It's global and exponential. And training yourself to have that kind of a mindset I think is critically important. What are your thoughts about this?

One of the things that I'm interested in is politics and social things. And I've been marinated in this since I was 4 years old. And you know, it's something that I pay attention to. If there's a constant issue in politics that goes back millennia, it's the problem of inequality in a society. You know, for last couple hundred years it's been income and it's been economic wealth. But I would say that's kind of a result, you know, I think income and wealth is a result of something deeper. And, and I think the deeper thing, and we can talk about some great examples of this because you have hung out for the last couple decades of your life in an industry that's an exponential industry. And you know, a lot of the thinking, they just consider it normal that you would think in exponentials. And if you look at the greatest difference, the cause of the greatest difference between haves and have nots, thinking about it, people who are linear thinkers versus exponential thinkers would be a good place to start your examination that people who think exponentially, their incomes are going to be amazingly bigger and their wealth is going to be amazingly bigger than the people who are linear, but they're working the same amount of time. I mean, they have 24 hour days too. They have 60 minute hours and everything like that. They're just doing something different with their time, with capabilities that are either just linear capabilities or exponential capabilities. That's how I would approach it from my world, that if you don't want to talk about that, then you're not going to come up with any interesting answers.

We talk about having an exponential mindset, having an exponential organization, and you need to train yourself on, because our brains are wired to think in a linear fashion. And the reality is that the tools you have are not changing in A linear fashion. They are changing exponentially. When I talk about the tools, I mean computation, sensors, networks, artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, synthetic biology, augmented virtual reality, blockchain technologies, these are all changing rapidly. And you're right, it's the individuals who look at their current business and say, okay, how could we do this differently? One of my favorite examples, and I had the two founders on my stage here at Abundance360. It's a company called Relativity Space. And they said, well, how would we reinvent the rocket business now here they are working at two of the most extraordinary exponential organizations. And then they asked, well, what's the next leap? And people have to realize there's always the next leap. You know, there is something better than Zoom, better than Amazon, better than Apple. It's there for you to find and to create. And that's part of an abundance mindset. It's part of an exponential mindset. And they created a company called Relativity Space in which they're 3D printing 95% of the rocket. And all of a sudden, when you're able to think about 3D printing the entire rocket, I mean, they've gone to a multibillion dollar valuation in just a few years. It's insane what you can do in terms of your flexibility and your ability to just print it 5% bigger or 10% bigger, whatever the case is extraordinary. So you can look at exponentials everywhere, but it's tough. It's tough. Something that everybody should realize. Exponential is a simple doubling. In a linear mindset, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. In an exponential mindset, it's 1, 2', 4, 8, 16, 32. And when you double something 10 times, it's 1,000 times bigger. Double it 20 times, it's a million times. Double it 30 times, it's a billion times. And it's that disconnect between 30 linear steps is 30 meters. 30 exponential steps, a billion meters. That's so massive and opportunistic.

Yeah, well, the great fortunes, even the past centuries before the. The technologies we have, they were still using a multiplier. One of the big multipliers of the past 200 years was steam engine started it off. But the big thing was internal combustion engine was a huge multiplier. And so the fortunes built on cars, trucks, and everything else. But actually, one of the really big ones around, you know, 1500, 1400s, was deep water navigation. Up until the 1500s, a sailing ship couldn't afford to get too far away from land because you would immediately lose your bearings. You know, the Sextant and the chronometer that were created over the next couple of centuries meant that you could sail anywhere in the world and more or less know exactly where you were. And there were individuals who took advantage of that and countries that took advantage of that. Actually, the biggest corporation in the history of the world in relationship to its country was the East India company founded in 1600. But in 1800 they had an army and navy bigger than the British navy and the British army, they were a British Corporation. They had 40, 50,000, you know, employees just in the East India Company. But they were exponential because they took advantage of, you know, deep water navigation. And so printing was exponential. Reading was exponential. Having an Alphabet, a simple Alphabet was exponential. Having the 10 digit numerical system with 0 being the 10th one was exponential. So we have all these exponential tools which at any given time speed something up so that there's inequality. I think the greatest thing that drives the world forward is a new shortcut, a new exponential shortcut that increases inequality.

Interesting. And I think you raise a very important point that most people don't realize when we think about exponential growth. I think about, oh, just the last 50 years of Moore's law with transistors doubling on a piece of silicon. But it's not the case. We've seen exponential tools driving exponential growth since the first Flint Axe or whatever was created where we magnified human muscle power. And it's these inflection points that move things. And I think we're going to see this continuation of new tools that are created that we could not have imagined life before that. We take so much of what we have for granted today. Right?

Yeah. At the end of the summer, you sent me a 37 minute video. They were really quick reports. They were like 90 second reports on the part of cutting edge scientists and doctors in the longevity field.

Yes.

And you could take any one of those and say, what if it really developed the way they're seeing it? To develop it would create an exponential in certain individuals who took advantage. They would have a certain kind of certainty that they could live another 20, 25 years that they can plan for. And I think longevity is actually one of the great exponentials. All the medicine and technology that's contributing. If you're interested in it, first of all, you gotta be interested. And we can talk about the longevity mindset on another thing. But my feeling is that nothing's useful unless you have a goal for it.

Yeah. Like you say, your eyes only see and your ears only hear what you're looking for. So what is your goal? And that brings me to another point. Most people don't realize that you back into the mindsets you have. Your mindset has come from where you were born, the people you hang out with. And I think ultimately your mindset is the most important tool that you as an entrepreneur have. And so doesn't it make sense if that's the case, for you to actively choose your mindset, not to just let it happen to you? So, you know, I teach and I work on at Abundance360, as you all know, is helping entrepreneurs actively choose and shape specific mindsets. We talk about abundance, exponential mindset, longevity mindset, a moonshot mindset, a gratitude mindset, and the way that you choose it. I mean, you can understand the benefits, we can talk about the benefits, but then you need to create in your life overwhelming evidence for that mindset that helps you see it and reinforce it over and over again.

Yeah. One of the things that I've really focused on at Strategic Coach is thinking tools which produce a different kind of mindset just by going through, you know, a half hour of thinking and certain concepts that favor, you know, if you have a goal and you're excited about the goal, stop yourself from saying, how are you going to do it? Who's going to do it for you?

Yes.

One of the chapters in the book, this is the book who, not how, is a manufacturer in China who felt the need to create a new factory in India to diversify his centers. And he did it in six hours with six impact filters. He went through the head of the Indian Trade Commission in China, who directed him to another individual, who directed him to another individual. And six months he had a factory that in the second half year produced $30 million of revenue. I said, what's the impact of doing this in six hours? And I asked him, how long did it take you? He says, six hours. Half hour for the impact filter, half hour for the conversation. I asked. He's about 60. He's been in this business for 35 years. And. And I said, now combined with zoom, because zoom happened at the same time. So you've got a concept, a mindset called who, not how. And you've got a technology that removes the transportation and travel barriers that you might have had. He was on this morning. He just checked in for a couple hours this morning. And I said, how are you feeling right now after this past year doing the who, not how and zoom? And he said, I'm 20 again.

Yeah.

He says, I've got a bigger Future now at 60 than I ever had at 20.

So, yeah, that's amazing. And that is, by the way, part of the abundance mindset that we spoke about is seeing a bigger future for yourself, that every year there's more and more. And, you know, an exponential tools play in that. They give you the ability to communicate with not just your town or village, with the world. They enable you to manufacture, to design, to create, to gather data, to analyze the data. Anyway, when I think about an exponential mindset, it's important for individuals when they're looking at their business to say, okay, it all starts with the 60s that we've talked about, which is how do I digitize my business? And how do I dematerialize it, demonetize it, democratize it? Right. So everybody can realize that you can digitize every aspect of your business.

Right.

So whether it's strategic coach or abundance360 going virtual, that allows you to democratize it, dematerialize the physical element. And if you choose, you can do the cost benefit analysis of increasing the number of people and lowering the cost per person or creating different tiers. And I think ultimately that's the number one. The on ramp for an exponential mindset is what am I not digitizing that I should be? And then once things are ones and zeros, they're bits. You then have a whole slew of technologies. One of the areas we're going to get into deeply is the spatial web. And this is going beyond zoom. This is the combination of AI, VR, blockchain technologies. And so my prediction for coach and for a 360 is in the next few years, we're going to shift beyond just a flat screen to an experience where you are like, the difference between being physically in Toronto or being physically in the VR world is very little, but the benefits are massive for being in the VR world.

Yeah. Peter, I was going to ask you a question about this because Ken Newman was in for his workshop yesterday, and he said that he had been talking to you, and he brought up the vision that you're talking about right now from a standpoint of who uses it first. One of the interesting things about any technological breakthrough, who are the earliest adapters, because this really provides them something that they crucially need. I mean, nobody would have switched over zoom if they didn't have transportation taken away from them. So from your standpoint of where the front lines are on this and who is absolutely buying into it, who is.

It in the spatial web, what we're going to see, first of all, a lot of the Apps I'm seeing right now are exercise apps. It's going to be interactive meetings, it's going to be engineering where you want to sit down with a fellow engineer who's in India or China or in Boston, wherever, and look at a three dimensional machine together and rotate it and discuss how to do it. It's these kinds of technologies. I mean, obviously pornography moves in that direction as well.

Dirty tech is always one of the early entries, but games will certainly be there.

Oh, games are. I mean, I should start with that. Right? So you get Oculus 2 at what, the most popular downloads on Oculus. It's all games.

I know because I have always had a stream of special forces veterans who've come through coach as entrepreneurs. You know, Navy Seals, Delta Force, they train using simulations, they reproduce exactly where they're going, they've got the dimensions, they know where the doors are, they know where the windows are, everything. And they know the path and everything like that. So the military, I always have been struck throughout history, certainly since technology has been a big thing, that it's always the military, it's kids and adolescents and it's porn. You know, all the breakthroughs. And I was thinking, well, why is that? And I said, well, military's life and death. Kids are finding unintended uses. Big thing with kids, they say, well, I know it was designed for this, but I want to do it for that. So they're great experimenters and I don't have to go into the motivations for porn. You know, I mean, the gaming industry as a sport is bigger than football, basketball, baseball and hockey put together worldwide. I mean, they don't even show up on the radar screen compared to gaming.

It's insane. These are multi tens of billions of dollars. Individually. One of my A360 members, Marc Merrill, is the CEO of one of the largest gaming companies on the planet. They're owned in part by, by the Chinese, but I mean, their assets, their games are worth tens of billions of dollars per asset.

Yeah.

So ultimately what you're doing is you're grabbing attention. What is typically the scarcest thing we have is our time and our attention. And so if you can grab people's attention and grab their time, then you are tapping into the most scarce thing they have and that drives your value.

Up, you know, and it's always going to be extraordinarily unequal. You know, like certain individuals just take to it, but you know, those who are going to do it, are going to do it and a community forms around it, then you Get a critical mass of users, and then after a while, it's normal, you know.

You know, let me talk to our community here about one of the important elements of an exponential mindset, which is can you create what I call an interface moment? And what is that? So we've got exponential technologies coming online all the time. And one of the greatest ones was Arpanet, which in the 50s became the Internet, right? So Arpa, which now is Darpa, it used to be the Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the military. There were supercomputers located at mit, at Harvard, at Stanford, you know, University of Illinois. And there were just a few of them. So ARPANET were able to connect these supercomputers, and then they put terminals at other universities so you could get access to these. And eventually that became the backbone of the Internet. And using those terminals was very difficult. And accessing, you know, the interface to ARPANET was very challenging. And this young guy, Mark Andreessen, who's then a undergrad University of Illinois at Urbana, creates this software tool called Mosaic. And Mosaic became the interface to the ARPANET. And we went from 26, effectively websites, to thousands of websites in the first year, to hundreds of thousands in the next year, to millions in the next year. And so one of the things always is, can you create for your business a user interface moment where. Where you interface with the user, and then you allow the user to interface with this massive exponential capability, but make it dead simple for them? And if you can do that, then it's awesome. Itunes was a user interface moment for music, or just the Apple Store for the iPhone, and there's countless of these. But that's what we all need to be looking for, is how to create a user interface moment where it's so easy and so simple, and all of a sudden, my users, my customers, find it super easy to use all of.

This, besides giving examples. Peter, would you say that if you were putting together first principles and then moving on to understanding all the dimensions, is that where you would start with that moment? Because it seems to me it takes in economics, it takes in technology, it takes in psychology, it takes in. It seems to me that you're combining a lot of different PowerPoints.

You are. It's digitizing the stuff that you do and then creating a user interface moment. Zoom is a user interface moment of sorts. It's creating a super simple user interface that is connecting you to the back end of this incredible gigabit network that we have. YouTube was a user interface moment in that regard. The Google search bar to a search algorithm that was very efficient. So, yeah, I'm always looking for. Okay. In what we're doing at a fundamental level, can I create a user interface moment?

I think this is a terrific idea. It kind of lets everybody in because our lives are really involved in just meeting the right people at the right time to do the right things. And it seems to me that you've created a concept that kind of takes all those factors into account.

Yeah, I think I'll develop a tool around it. Besides Abundance360, we do these five implementation workshops, and maybe I'll do one on user interface moment because I think it's an important idea.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Who doesn't want one?

Yeah, it is. And the other concept that goes along with that real quick is one that I first heard, you know, the executive team at Google talking about, which is a platform. You know, it's a tide that raises all boats. So how do you turn what you're doing into a platform? Because if you can become a platform, what a platform means is I create something that people build a business on top of.

Yep.

Right. So YouTube was a platform. So YouTube was. When Chad Hurley and Steven Chen created YouTube, it allowed people to earn a living on top of it. That was amazing. So how do you create a platform?

Yeah, Netflix is a platform.

Absolutely right. There's thousands and thousands of platforms. And ultimately that's what you want to be. You want to be a platform.

Exciting stuff. And with everything we're talking about, Peter, you only have to wait about 90 days and you can tell a new story.

That's true. The speed is insane.

We got the world on our side as far as coming up with interesting topics. Topics.

It's like when we get on our sessions here. So what do I talk to Dan about today? And then there's an incredible amount of stuff to talk about. I mean, after all, it's the most extraordinary time ever to be alive. So who doesn't want to see what the world's going to be like? Well, first of all, if you have a positive abundance mindset, you're not dystopian in your mind. Right. Who doesn't want to see what the world's going to be like in 20 years or 30 years? I mean, hell, we'll be living on Mars, on the moon. We'll be.

And everybody's got one of these that they're totally responsible for. Yeah, yeah.

No, it's crazy. We haven't even talked about the whole brain computer interface world, which is how do you increase your intelligence? Because if you've got increased intelligence, your ability to make a dent in the universe is there. And it's going to be humans collaborating with AIs in incredible ways.

But thank you, Peter.

Take care, pal.