[00:00:00] What do I really need to do right now that's going to bring me closer to what I really want to see happen in my life? And if you're not making that decision on a regular basis, chances are chaos is going to win.
[00:00:30] And you shut down all of the nasing voices in your mind, all of the relatives that you know that tell you ah you can't do that.
[00:00:37] You got to ignore all that stuff and listen to your own instincts.
[00:00:45] Hi my name is Christian Baudwell and today I'm talking with Mark Joyner, one of the world's leading internet marketers,
[00:00:52] referred to as the Godfather of internet marketing and the Superman of online selling but without doubt one of the most respected internet marketers in the industry.
[00:01:02] Despite founding over 20 different online businesses for the last 10 years, Mark has been focused on developing his company's simpleology, a software platform that helps you get more done faster which was established back in 2005
[00:01:16] and I was actually a user way back then when there were no fancy mobile apps and we had to print off our daily planners which I'm pretty sure I still have tucked away at home somewhere.
[00:01:27] But Mark's artistry is not limited to internet marketing alone. Mark's a former US Army officer, he fluently speaks Korean and here has also served as a Cold War veteran of military intelligence
[00:01:40] and you'll be no doubt of Mark's sensational appetite for knowing how the world operates from our conversation today.
[00:01:47] So are you ready? Let's head on over to my interview with Mr. Mark Joyner.
[00:01:58] Welcome Mark to Escape the Rat Race Radio, how are you today?
[00:02:02] I'm doing great man, how are you?
[00:02:04] I'm very very good indeed, it's a real pleasure to speak to you Mark and let me ask you where in the world are you right now?
[00:02:10] In this moment I'm in Manila, I try to keep my location private all the time just for privacy's sake but yes since you know this will be played for folks later and it's not live I can say that.
[00:02:23] Yeah, you'll be on the move, you'll be somewhere else by then I'm sure.
[00:02:27] Probably probably.
[00:02:29] So Mark would you mind introducing yourself for our listeners and just explain a little bit about what you do and who you do it for?
[00:02:37] Sure, well my name is Mark Joyner I'm the founder and CEO of company called Symbolology and that all started as a result of me getting tired of what I was doing before.
[00:02:49] I was you know quite well known before that as one of the early pioneers of online marketing.
[00:02:55] I started the first online ad tracking company my company invented the tracking link and the tracking pixel which you know technologies that you guys use today we started the first ebook publishing company.
[00:03:07] We were the first to do upselling and down selling so all the online marketing funnels that you see today are innovations that came out of my companies.
[00:03:17] And it just got to be too much you know there was so much going on.
[00:03:22] So I decided to sell off and close down those companies and start working behind the scenes for folks and you know I was getting so many requests for consultation and people were asking me naturally for marketing advice but what I quickly discovered was that they didn't really need marketing advice they had lots of great marketing ideas in fact the problem was that their productivity was super jacked in a bad way.
[00:03:46] So I started to develop systems to help people have their best day I knew that looking at myself you know there are days where I felt like a genius and I accomplished so much and then days where I look back and I thought what was that why did I do that I didn't accomplish anything I felt terrible.
[00:04:05] And I tried to reverse engineer that and turn that into systems that I could apply myself and that my clients could apply and then I was getting so many requests from people you know literally I would get hundreds of emails a day this is back in the early days of online marketing and you know people didn't you know have many people to go to I was one of the ones that they were going to and I had to figure out a way to turn this into a mass consumption product because I don't like to not help people if somebody wants to do that.
[00:04:35] Somebody writes to me with a question and a problem it bugs me if I can't help them out so I said hey look let's turn this into a system that anybody could log into and start fixing their productivity and since then you know it's blossomed into the business that it is now it's been going for over 10 years we have over a million registered users.
[00:04:57] And almost all of that's the word of mouth you know it's from people you know like yourself you know who was a simple user from back in the early days going around telling people hey man this is changing my life you got to check it out.
[00:05:09] So it's been quite a fun and gratifying business to run that's for sure yeah no that's awesome and yeah we did have a brief chat just now and I said that I was I was pretty much logged on simpleology back in the early days when you know the apps didn't exist and literally I was printing off printing off the dream catcher and putting it in the back.
[00:05:27] So I put it into a folder and you know using that every morning and you touched on it there but you know you're often referred to you really are a true pioneer of the Internet marketing scene and I was doing my research I saw that you had some influence shall I say on on Russell Brunson when he was starting out and I'm sure you've you've influenced many many other of the big names out there.
[00:05:49] Where did it all begin for you mark like where did your interest in the Internet and was there a point where you sort of really had a light bulb moment and you thought hey this this is just the tip of the iceberg here with what's what's going to happen.
[00:06:02] Well it's interesting you know Russell is such an extraordinary guy I certainly can't take credit for his success I did happen to be his first mentor any any speaks you know kindly of me and I appreciate that very much but that guy's a juggernaut and.
[00:06:16] You know I I'm fortunate to have been able to influence a lot of the people that are known as the you know the online marketing gurus of today.
[00:06:25] You know because they you know we're coming to me because you know my company was one of the first ones to figure it out when I really understood what we were sitting on at the time happened sometime probably around the mid 90s you know I've been playing around with online marketing in the early 90s even before the Internet was big we had these.
[00:06:46] And so I had a lot of systems called bullet and board systems. And before that you know my uncle used to work for the Department of Defense and even had access to an arpanet machine which was one of these old teletype machines.
[00:06:57] That was connected to these big old ear muff modems back in the day and we'd play games on it you know we would type and you know with it would type out on a sheet of paper and say you are standing in front of a cave what do you do then you would type your instructions back and it would send it and you'd wait for 10 minutes for reply and when it came back it was the most exciting thing you could a man.
[00:07:15] And so I was like this is a very exciting thing you could imagine oh my god I'm talking to a computer somewhere else right but now of course everything's a lot faster and in the 90s.
[00:07:27] You know with the bulletin board stuff I started selling products there and then when the Internet started catching on even before we had a secure transactions I was doing business then.
[00:07:41] So I started to kick into my mind that something significant was happening here. I'll give you one of the big aha moments so another friend of mine who was also an online pioneer but came to me for stuff that he didn't know yet was gentleman in Joe Vitale you guys might know him from the secret and a lot of other things he's turning to just an enormous superstar now.
[00:08:08] He gave me two years to convince him to do an ebook deal because you know he was convinced that nobody was really going to be interested in ebooks.
[00:08:18] Finally after two years we e published one of his out of print books called hypnotic writing and I told him I said dude why are you throwing this away this is such a fantastic little book.
[00:08:32] The first day we made him 50,000 bucks and the excitement in his voice when he called me that day.
[00:08:42] I suddenly kind of kicked in I was like damn you know that I know that we're on to something big here but this is you know to hear him speak like this.
[00:08:53] You know that just it really infused me with some passion so from that point forward you know we really start to get serious about about innovating new things yeah well yeah just talking a Joe Vitale there you know it brings back all the memories those early memories for me and that excitement when I was with my two buddies you know.
[00:09:11] We were just kind of having our eyes open to entrepreneurship and the online world and I'm actually trying to get Joe on the show real soon so so be fantastic to get him on as well.
[00:09:22] But a lot of our listeners mark maybe for them now is that time you know and they are just having their eyes open to what's possible now and when people think about escaping the rat race and creating a business it's very different probably from how it was back then in terms of the world.
[00:09:40] And I was just with some friends at the weekend and you know they're young young children kind of six years old they want to be YouTube sensations that's now the dream of the young children when they grow up crazy right yeah it's unfathomable but for our listeners now mark you know a lot of them are aspiring entrepreneurs but the early stages i'd love to hear what your definition of a real true entrepreneur is.
[00:10:10] You know to me it's it's an attitude it's a spirit you know and you know there's the dictionary definition of an entrepreneur which is basically somebody who starts a business you know i mean more or less i'm you know you're going to hear people argue about the different nuance of all that doesn't really matter but the the word to me is about somebody who is.
[00:10:32] And you know you can see a problem and find a solution to that problem that other people are not thinking of and find a way of solving that problem that can generate some revenue.
[00:10:48] And if you just look at the world in that way and you shut down all of the nacing voices in your mind all of the relatives that you know that tell you can't do that you know you need to go get a regular job you need to do this you need to do that.
[00:11:04] You got to ignore all that stuff and listen to your own instincts and trust your own mind an entrepreneur i think a good entrepreneur trusts their own mind and i'm re emphasizing that because that is one of the most fundamentally important things not just an entrepreneurship just in life in general.
[00:11:24] And we're under so much pressure these days you know especially you know politically and sociologically we're being manipulated.
[00:11:34] And so many different directions there's so many people with agendas that want us to behave a certain way that want us to think a certain way and will be shamed for thinking our own thoughts.
[00:11:46] And the person who experiences that more than anyone is the entrepreneur they are going to get shamed by family members by friends.
[00:11:55] By by jealous people who don't want them to succeed and i hate to say that i don't want to be negative but that's just a landscape it's what it is you know.
[00:12:04] And you know there's a thing called the stockdale paradox admiral stockdale said that the ideal way to go through life is to have a combination of optimism and realism.
[00:12:16] And he could speak very authoritatively about this because he was a prisoner of war in charge of a group of other POWs and he observed very consistently that those who had that paradoxical combination.
[00:12:29] Of psychological traits tended to be the ones who would would come back with their sanity intact.
[00:12:35] And entrepreneurs are under that kind of stress right so we need to be very very clear about the challenges that we're facing as entrepreneurs be optimistic about it undoubtedly be optimistic about it i'm a die hard optimist i will never stop being an optimist while there is breath in my lungs but I will also look.
[00:12:57] At the reality that is in front of my face and the reality in front of the face of every entrepreneur is that they are going to.
[00:13:04] Face a lot of challenges yes it's easier now for entrepreneurs than it was in almost every respect however it's also harder in some ways i'll give you one more anecdote I know this kind of around about way i've answering your question but i think all of this is apropos important so.
[00:13:24] You know you spoke of me you know in my pioneering role back in the early days I was also probably one of the first people to get trolled by masses of people online.
[00:13:39] Back in the 90s you know I remember one particular occasion where it happened to me the first time there was a i think that there were some people behind it you know who were just sort of jealous competitors and they thought that this was the right way.
[00:13:52] To compete was to organize a big massive hate campaign.
[00:13:58] And i gotta tell you it was awful it was awful i mean i didn't know how to deal with that i don't i don't know if anybody had dealt with that.
[00:14:04] Before ever i mean sure there are people who had been pilloried in newspapers you know but to see masses of unknown faceless mobs online.
[00:14:15] Saying stuff about yet it's not true it's a man it can get to you and it's it's common now right see what i'm talking about then it was new but now everybody knows hey man don't read the comment section because.
[00:14:28] It's gonna it's gonna mess with your head i'm saying this because people need to prepare themselves psychologically for that and there is a particular orientation you need to have to that type of feedback to be able to survive it.
[00:14:44] Yeah yeah and it's often said and i don't know if you'd agree with this but you know if you don't have some haters out there certainly if you're building your personal brand and you are putting yourself out there to the world online.
[00:14:55] If you don't have some haters then you're probably not doing a good enough job you know you're not polarizing and you're not standing for what you believe in.
[00:15:02] I would say that's probably more true than not you know there maybe there is some way to do it out there without having a hater but yeah it seems for me like no matter what i do.
[00:15:11] And i like to on Facebook I have a lot of fun right i use social media as a medium of social change more than i use it as a medium of marketing because i'm thinking man i know people all over the world from different walks of life i have friends from different eras of my life who are all over the political spectrum who have you know all sorts of different viewpoints.
[00:15:36] What i love to do is i love to put things out there to get them to interact with each other because i think that there's a real big problem right now that people think that they have to hate people who don't agree with them politically or socially or whatever and that's just a terrible notion.
[00:15:54] It's a really bad way to go through life i think you can disagree with people and still love them and still get along just fine with them so what i do is i i i like to post things that are kind of neutral and innocuous to start conversations but there are people who will be mad at me for that.
[00:16:13] You know you'll post a question of like hey what does this mean right and somebody gets angry how dare you even ask that question because x is obviously the right answer which is amusing and a little bit frightening for humanity but it proves your point i think to a certain extent.
[00:16:33] Yeah it does indeed so we touched on their mark a little bit about some of the challenges that await an entrepreneur and as many often talk about the role of the world.
[00:16:42] I often talk about the role of a co-star of entrepreneurship you know you can have one week and you can have some real updates and some real down days and that's just life as an entrepreneur but one of the biggest challenges that i have my members speak to me about most regularly is lack of time.
[00:16:59] You know lack of time i've got a full time job when i get home we've got the family to deal with where do i fit my business in how do i just get everything done so explain to us mark a little bit about the way i'm doing it.
[00:17:11] So i've got a little bit about the rules of simpleology and how this all came about and really what it's all about so our listeners get a good grasp of what this software can help them with.
[00:17:22] Yeah it's really the big problem for most people and before I answer your question more precisely let me give you a concept that will help people understand just exactly how dire this is.
[00:17:35] So there's something we talk about in simpleology that i call the complexity gap.
[00:17:39] It's a very fascinating and very easily observable phenomenon and it's this the human mind can only process around seven bits of data and conscious memory at anyone given time this is one of the most widely observed.
[00:17:56] And established principles of cognitive psychology right it's why most phone numbers are seven digits long right because we know that the average guy can you memorize about seven things.
[00:18:08] Now there are outliers by the way some some can do you know a few less or a few more that's why they call the magic number seven plus or minus two and this is in relation to this paper that came out in the seventies i believe from Princeton University now.
[00:18:24] While that is an observable thing there's something happening in the world right now that is challenging that and it's challenging it in a very serious way.
[00:18:35] And it's that the amount of information being put out in the information stream is increasing every day but not only is the amount of information being put into the stream increasing every day.
[00:18:47] The rate at which new information is being put into the stream every day is increasing as well now a few years ago or remember Eric Schmidt famously stated that you know there were several exabytes of new information of new data being put online on a daily basis now that was years ago it's probably happening much faster that it could be exabytes per hour now right and this is all part of.
[00:19:15] You know this memeplex of ideas that you know is popularized by Ray Kurzweil you know the technological singularity he's actually quoting the concept was coined by sci fi author gentleman named Werner Vinge but Ray happened to be the guy who popularized the idea and it's this idea that you know as a exponential trends occur.
[00:19:38] Change starts to happen really early fast right and in one way to help people visualize that is to think of it like this my dear old friend the late great Robert Anton Wilson expressed it quite well and he said the period of time between a paradigm shifting discovery or invention will have itself throughout time so I'm going to botch the actual specific.
[00:20:07] The actual specifics here pretty badly but if you imagine the discovery of fire and then maybe you know 50,000 years later it was the wheel and then 25,000 years later bronze 12 and a half thousand so on and so forth i'm sure that's all wrong right in my timeline there but you get the notion right it's having itself we are to point right now we're a paradigm shifting invention or discovery is occurring on a daily basis.
[00:20:35] This is a big fricken deal and to me the fact that this is not the primary topic of discussion in the news and in governments.
[00:20:45] Shows a lack of sanity because it's the thing that's going to change the world more than anything else so the complexity gap.
[00:20:53] Is this real serious problem and it's that our ability to process information is static but the amount of information that's available is increasing exponentially so that gap of complexity between how much information we can handle and how much information is out there is getting bigger and bigger and bigger on a daily basis so you absolutely must have.
[00:21:16] A strategy for dealing with this if you don't that gap is going to each you alive and it's eating most people alive and it's not just that hey you know i've got a job to manage and I also want to run a business and by the way i've got some kids on top of that now we've got so many different sources of information competing for our attention and they're competing for our attention in ways that are quite effective.
[00:21:45] In clever right you know people are getting very very good at clickbait and you know figuring out how to trick you into giving attention to this and that.
[00:21:55] How do you know what to pay attention to.
[00:21:58] Well, simpleology in simplest sense is the antidote to that.
[00:22:03] We give you a process called start my day which allows you to churn through all of the available information all of the possible thoughts ideas and to do is that you have on a day to day basis and figure out which ones are important.
[00:22:17] And the core intellectual idea behind that is something we call high me it's an acronym that stands for high impact minimal effort and it it's based on this I think axiomatic notion that among a world.
[00:22:32] Of choices if you're spending your energy on the stuff that is the best combination of what is easy and effective.
[00:22:42] You can't help but do well right so simpleology helps you cut through all that stuff you know you'll look at your list of things most people have these to do lists right to do lists are terrible to do it why are to do list terrible because on the same list you've got take out the trash and solve world peace right this is a bad idea.
[00:23:01] From the get go what you need is.
[00:23:05] Hey man this is a confusing chaotic world what do I really need to do right now that's going to bring me closer to what I really want to see happen in my life what is the most effective and easiest thing I can do in this moment to get me there and if you're not making that decision on a regular basis chances are chaos is going to win so this gives you a way to win over
[00:23:30] chaos.
[00:23:33] And for someone who hasn't locked in who hasn't seen the system yet how how quickly could they expect to see some results when they start using simpleology.
[00:23:44] I'm going to make a bold claim and it's going to sound like BS to most people but I can say it very very confidently because I've seen it over and over and over again we've been doing this for over a decade now
[00:23:56] the average result that we see people get when they actually follow the instructions and by the way the instructions are simple it's really easy I'll tell you what it is you log into my dot simple
[00:24:08] dot com and you click this big fat button that says do today's training that's all you're ever going to have to remember we have systematized it for you so well this by the way I apologize we didn't have this for you back in the early days you had the the printout but it's so simple and easy now that's
[00:24:26] all you have to remember just those two things if you follow those instructions within 48 hours you're going to see a doubling of your productivity within the first 48 hours and I can see that with high confidence within a couple of weeks you're probably going to be getting done within a few hours what used to take you a whole week to get done.
[00:24:44] I'm going to make this believable for people okay think about what you're actually spending your time doing on a day-to-day basis first off most of it's probably not real work right most of it is your check and stuff you're looking at Facebook responded to this guy that's just a second just a second here in there
[00:25:02] just a little seconds add up and they pull you out of that critical focus that you could be putting on what's really important and when you are doing the real work it's probably not the most
[00:25:13] high-me stuff you could be spending your energy on so we got to get you thinking about these things consciously spending just a few minutes every morning going through the start my day process making conscious decisions about what's important and then attacking your day from that.
[00:25:32] Hi this is Roger Hamilton. Hi I'm Rob Moore I'm Daniel Priestney and you're listening to Escape the Ratt rate radio.
[00:25:44] So obviously using simpleology building that into your daily practices is certainly something where we're highly recommending that people look at do you have a morning routine in addition to this mark because a lot of people
[00:25:57] a lot of successful people you know say that the start of your day makes all the difference to the results that you get in terms of your energy your focus do you have any top tips for how you have started your days effectively.
[00:26:12] Yeah I have so many that I am constantly updating and changing that routine for myself depending on where I am, how I'm feeling what's going on.
[00:26:22] I'll give you an example of a way I might change it so you know I'm quite physically active and very very serious about my athletics.
[00:26:29] I'm 49 going on 50 and I don't intend to become an old man and I think that you can prevent that with proper self management.
[00:26:43] If I had an ass kicker I would work out the day before and I know that I need a little bit of recovery.
[00:26:49] The first thing in my morning routine is going to be to allow myself to sleep as much as I want on some days.
[00:26:56] Now by the way this is contradictory to some people you know look at a comic book we have out there that talks about what we call the habit most billionaires have in common and that's waking up early right then we teach you we give you systems for doing that and that's what I do most of the time too.
[00:27:14] But if I know my body needs extra recovery it is more important for me to allow my body to recover than to wake up early so it's variable and I would certainly advise everyone to be somewhat flexible not to use that as an excuse for not waking up early or doing what it is you're supposed to do but to really listen to your body.
[00:27:36] One of the most exciting things that we're doing now is we have this new thing that we're doing for our people that we call the little calendar that brain washes you.
[00:27:45] And I don't want to reveal what is in that little calendar we like to keep it a bit of a mystery but it's you know it's free plus shipping in fact we're launching the 2019 version tomorrow in fact I don't know when folks are going to see this.
[00:28:01] But it's a very simple little ritual that you do the first thing in the morning you open up the calendar you do three little things that's it takes you just a couple minutes if that maybe even 30 seconds you could probably get it done you put a little X on your calendar for that day and then you get a little chain of these X's and we tell you don't break the chain.
[00:28:23] And over time if you do that consistently you're going to find all sorts of miraculous things happen you know your attitude gets better your productivity goes up your health improves the way you interact with people improves it's really just such a beautiful elegant little system.
[00:28:42] Nice I'm going to have to grab the link from you for that mark make sure that I put that in a show notes for everyone so they can easily click that and go and grab a copy that sounds really cool.
[00:28:52] It's great appreciate that let's talk about procrastination now procrastination I would say it comes from either not being clear about what you have to do or not wanting to do the things that you need to do what would you add to that mark.
[00:29:08] I think you're 100% right with both of those things that you just said there are all sorts of interesting ways that we can talk about this now in the early version of simpleology there was one of the things that we talked about it was the fifth love simpleology and that's the inevitability of action and reaction.
[00:29:24] And it's kind of a it's a bit of a it's a way to mess with your mind a little bit and I'll I'll mess with everyone's mind by putting it this way what if procrastination doesn't actually exist right.
[00:29:38] If you think of it this way you can you can agree to this hypothesis because you're always doing something you're always doing something right we say you know I'm procrastinating I'm not doing anything well not it's not true.
[00:29:53] You're you're just playing more games on your phone you know or you're you're spending more time on Facebook you know you're not wasting any time doing that you're playing the video game on your TV or watching the show or.
[00:30:05] You know shooting the breeze with somebody there's all kinds of things that you're doing so the inevitability of action and reaction helps people become aware that they're always doing things and that there is always a consequence so the word procrastination is always a consequence.
[00:30:22] The word procrastination is fascinating and obviously we're kind of getting into to you know linguistic games here with it.
[00:30:30] But I think when you look at it that way it helps you reframe it in your mind because you're saying okay i'm actually doing stuff I have energy to do things i'm just doing the wrong thing what if I were able to take that same energy and just move it over here and somehow it deflates a little bit of that resistance.
[00:30:50] That is preventing people from doing the right stuff yeah so Mark let me rewind you back before all of this world of internet technology came was there ever a point in your life where you can look back and say hey yeah I was in the rat race once.
[00:31:05] Well hi I'd kind of an odd upbringing I don't know if I was ever in the rat race as such i'm a guy who actually hardly ever went to school you know my parents were not too consistent about forcing me to do that so I dropped out of school almost all I ended up getting my degree well was in the military later on through independent study and I spent a lot of time.
[00:31:34] I spent a lot of time educating myself in libraries because i was just a naturally curious person i don't know if the military could be considered the rat race.
[00:31:45] I think I might have missed that whole thing i mean i've had a lot of different jobs but i think the rat race as people talk about it i'm quite fortunate to say i missed that yeah yeah and would you agree now that obviously the millennial age.
[00:32:02] And age that now thinking about entrepreneurship you know so much earlier and that you know they're just going straight from education into building their own businesses you know they're not even considering trying to find a job and staying there for 20 30 years with one company.
[00:32:19] I applaud them for that because you know as jack Welch pointed out in his great book straight from the gut for folks who don't know jack Welch is one of the greatest CEOs ever he's the guy who turned G.
[00:32:31] Around completely.
[00:32:34] You know i'm probably going to botch this quote here but he said that the the only way to guarantee job security is through customer satisfaction you know we used to have this era where people had what he called a feudal kind of loyalty with their company where they would think that they would trade time for security you know I've been with this company for 30 years they would say you know with high dungeon and and just be.
[00:33:00] You know very self righteous about that and then expect.
[00:33:04] Things to happen as a result of that well.
[00:33:08] Guess what the time that you spent doesn't equate to anything right and in fact if you if you think like that your company is going to fail and they're not going to be able to pay your pension anyway right so people are starting to understand you know hey wait a minute you know that that lie that we were sold that the big company is going to take carry
[00:33:28] you for your whole life it's just not true anymore so I certainly applaud all those kids were getting out of school and becoming an entrepreneur's what I would say is maybe they don't even have to go to school.
[00:33:42] And I'm going to say this for a number of reasons okay if formal education where what I thought it was when I was a young man.
[00:33:55] If it were what it could be for humanity I would not advise people to not go to school I would be like man go to school get get your full education.
[00:34:05] But here's the thing okay I'll give you a couple of interesting points one.
[00:34:13] That has never been a factor for me in my hiring okay having hired hundreds of people I quickly learned that it just doesn't matter in fact.
[00:34:24] Some of the most highly educated people I've hired have been some of the worst hires so that's one thing you know I've had PhDs that were just.
[00:34:33] Atrociously bad I hate to say not going to say names you know I've hired many like a keep it big enough here you know but but some of them have been have been really terrible and that's because they've been mistrained.
[00:34:45] They don't know what's important you know if you think that getting a mark on a sheet of paper is what's important in life you are in for some rude awakening is my friend because life is going to hand you some a big dose of reality and it's going to say hey what actually matters is something else something else completely.
[00:35:06] What really matters is how do you solve problems how much energy do you have how do you manage this complexity gap that we were talking about how productive can you make yourself how easy are you to work with as a person and I don't think people are learning a lot of that in a lot of formal education these days and on top of this formal education is actually it's debilitating people.
[00:35:34] In many respects as well there is a you know there's a bit of a sociological agenda that's being crammed down a lot of kids throats these days in formal education and we are infantilizing kids in a lot of these schools.
[00:35:53] There are some very famous videos from I believe it was Yale where there was this you know amazing professor who was expressing a herculean level of patience and dealing with a bunch of spoiled entitled brats who were who were crying at him because of some memo he put out about Halloween costumes
[00:36:18] and he was trying to have a rational discussion with these kids and they were crying and screaming and no matter how cool and chill this guy tried to be they were making him the villain in the bad guy.
[00:36:31] That particular video I don't think it's too unusual about the kind of thing that happens on university campuses these days so you know we're teaching these kids to be entitled were teaching them you know that hey there's all this unfairness in the world but we're not equipping them with dealing with the unfairness right we're getting them angry about things that can I really be solved with anger.
[00:37:01] Right when what we really need to be teaching these kids is self reliance how to be good productive citizens that are cooperating with other people that are contributing to society that are adding things but what we're teaching them is that they are entitled to all kinds of stuff right and that and that they need to rail against these horrible horrible people who made this awful world that they they were trying to do.
[00:37:31] We're born into when in fact there's a lot of wonderful stuff about the world that we're we're in right now yes it's true that the the older generation is messed a lot of things up and there are things that we need to correct for sure but I don't think the educational system I hate to say it is is where these answers are coming from I think the answers are going to come from independent entrepreneurs and I'll say one more thing about this to make people exceedingly aware.
[00:38:01] This is going to get a little bit heavy and I this is probably a little heavier than you want to go I know that you intend to to fire people up with this podcast and and and I'm all for that but again in the spirit of the stockdale paradox there are certain realities that I feel I would be remiss not to mention.
[00:38:22] Along with everything that we've been talking about in terms of the complexity gap and singularity theory and all of that.
[00:38:29] There is a phenomenon that I want people to be palpably aware of and that's this everything is getting smaller faster more powerful cheaper and more available that's everything right now it doesn't take too much brain power to look around and observe that this is the case right but what people are not getting.
[00:38:53] Is that when I say everything I mean everything including weapons technology okay so how long is it going to take before the governments of the world no longer have a monopoly of power right so if everything is getting smaller more powerful cheaper more available.
[00:39:17] How long will it be before the average guy can have access to a 3d printable weapon of mass destruction right we're not too far away from that right now at all so what I'm trying to point out is that the very fabric of society is about to change in some really big ways and I wrote a comic book about this couple months ago and I said that there is a war coming and it's not what you want to do.
[00:39:47] So what you think and the war coming is it's a war between fast moving technology and slow moving governments.
[00:39:58] So entrepreneurs are going to be filling these gaps because we are not going to be able to regulate the pace of technological change much longer we're already struggling with it right now we're totally struggling with it if you look at the just the almost the comedy show that you see when you watch governments talk about this.
[00:40:17] They are so behind the times if you if you watch the Mark Zuckerberg testimonies in front of Congress have these guys were not even sufficiently educated to even be in the same room to have that discussion right they really didn't know so how can they possibly say that they can regulate these things that they can't understand add to that that we're going to be getting into a phase here of artificial intelligence.
[00:40:43] I think it's it's tremendous human hubris to say that we are going to be able to control intelligence that is beyond our intelligence and the singularity by the way one of the the markers for it for when the singularity is going to happen is that point in time when computers can have as many flops floating point operations per second as the human brain now I don't think that's the perfect.
[00:41:13] Measure to compare I think there's a lot more going on in the human brain and I don't think that the floating point operations per second of the human brain is is necessarily the best gauge of how powerful the human brain is but let's just use that as a baseline as soon as artificial intelligence exceeds that point i'm you really think we're going to be able to control that stuff.
[00:41:33] I don't think so as I'm all that a great answer for that you had the three laws of robotics wonderful first start but I don't think it's going to be enough so.
[00:41:44] If you're not urban or you're exactly in the right place because we're going to need you the whole world is going to need you we're going to need you to solve problems and these are going to be big serious problems right so you know buckle yourself up expect to.
[00:42:02] Think a lot of money but expect to do a lot of good service for humanity too yeah well we could we I feel we could really open up a whole new conversation here in this direction you're talking about the decentralization there of power with the government something we're seeing that now in the financial system aren't we with obviously blockchain and that's just one whole new area that's just opened up over the last few years but i feel we've got a whole new conversation maybe to revisit another day mark if you.
[00:42:32] Yeah you know if you'd care to come back sometime i'd love to carry on that and it's such a fascinating fascinating direction but for today i'd like to to to leave our listeners on one final question and I always ask this mark of our guests and that's for anyone listening right now who's squashed up on a train maybe on their way to work they're on the subway or in a traffic jam.
[00:42:53] And they just know that their life wasn't meant for that they know there's something much greater inside of them they have that entrepreneurial rich but something is holding them back most likely that something is fear what would you like to say to them.
[00:43:08] Well well we could talk about that quite a bit but what I would say is every area of your life is going to benefit by facing your fears and if you're.
[00:43:23] Not ready to face that entrepreneurial fear right now go find another fear that you're struggling with you know one that that i still struggle with that i have forced myself to face several times the fear of heights right so i you know i force myself to do bungee jumping and i.
[00:43:38] I jumped off the the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere which happens to be in ockland New Zealand where i live for a while to sink all the sky tower you can do a controlled jump off that.
[00:43:49] To you know scared the bj's a sata me but facing it.
[00:43:55] Help me deal with other fears so what you got to do is you got to get out there and start making a habit of facing your fears as much as you can.
[00:44:04] Ideally it would be just you know strap in yourself in and facing your entrepreneurial fear right now just get in there and face it but you may need some baby steps to get ready for it now another thing that you can do.
[00:44:17] Is you can get leverage on yourself i'll give you an interesting metaphor here imagine that you were a parent and that you know truly truly loved your your spouse and your child and that they were in a burning building.
[00:44:41] A lot of people can overcome that fear of burning to death because they love their spouse and their child so much they will they will throw themselves into that burning building to save them.
[00:44:54] That's how passionate they are about saving that life if you can find something that you are that passionate about that is that important to you.
[00:45:05] It will quickly squelch that fear right so this is what i'm talking about about getting leverage and it doesn't have to be you know a big world changing thing.
[00:45:15] It would be nice if it were because we need that in the world right now but you can get selfish about this is there something that you really really really want you wanted to be a musician for the longest time on or you were in the music business for the longest time you lost passion for that right some people have something that they want.
[00:45:34] You know i mean and you can get his crass and his base about that is possible if you're a young man.
[00:45:41] And you're you know you're not doing too well with the ladies if you're a straight man on you know and you really really would like to meet a nice woman.
[00:45:54] You can start visualizing that every day hey man you know me doing this nine to five jobs sitting on the train every day wondering what's going on with my life not even having the guts to go talk to that beautiful girl.
[00:46:06] On the train every day that I see i got to change this whole thing it would sure be awesome if I had enough money to transform myself to become this great person that that woman would be delighted to talk to me too.
[00:46:20] I would love to transform myself to become that person entrepreneurship is a path to transforming yourself because it can give you the money to give you access to things that you don't have access to.
[00:46:33] And also the act of entrepreneurship changes you it makes you a better person in fact i believe it was the great Brian Tracy who said it was a Brian Tracy or augbandino i can't remember which one maybe it's a third one i can't remember but one of the the self help greats said.
[00:46:49] Maybe it was Jim Ron yeah know what in fact it was Jim Ron he said don't start a business.
[00:46:56] Because of the money that it's going to get you okay start a business because of who you're going to become along the way it is one of the greatest paths to self development.
[00:47:11] Well and leaving us on a Jim Ron quote as well because Jim was certainly the guy that kicked it all off for me he opened my eyes up to this whole world and still I call him my my top mentor today.
[00:47:23] And on that on that note mark i'd like to thank you so much for not only the influence that you've had on on my life and career but for the many many thousands if not millions around the world as well that have read your books that have used simpleology and still follow you.
[00:47:39] And admired the work that you do today.
[00:47:42] Thanks for the kind words and thanks for having me here i appreciate it.
[00:47:45] If I welcome i've really enjoyed our conversation today thanks for being an amazing guest on escape the rat race radio wish you all the best of luck for the rest of the year and beyond and i look forward to our next conversation sometime soon.
[00:47:56] Like why is to all that.
[00:47:58] Wow i really hope you enjoyed listening to my conversation there with mark joiner and I feel as if we could have really branched off in so many different and wildly interesting conversations around human behavior and impact that technology is already having on how we interact with one another but let's save that for a future episode.
[00:48:21] So lack of time is not an excuse not to get the important things in your life complete and mark has been fine tuning his simpleology platform for over 10 years now which is why over 1 million people are using it to organize their daily routine.
[00:48:35] If you want to check out simpleology yourself just head over to simpleology.com and get started today now i particularly found interesting to hear marks view on procrastination and he refrained it by sharing his fifth law of simpleology which was.
[00:48:50] The inevitability of action and reaction suggesting that you're always choosing to do something even if it's not the most critical thing that you know you should be doing right now.
[00:49:00] Well i'd really loved hear what resonated strongly with you during our conversation today and if you post your comments in the escape the rat race private facebook group i'll be sure to get back to you personally and you can join that group by heading over to www.etr.online forward slash facebook.
[00:49:18] Well if you're in Melbourne Australia on Tuesday the 23rd of October then make sure you head along to we work on Collin Street for a 6 30 p.m. star where serena 2 will be hosting the first ever escape the rat race meetup in Australia good luck serena i know you'll absolutely smash it now if you've enjoyed the show today then i'd really appreciate your review on either iTunes or the Google Play Store it helps me so much to spread the word out to more frustrated employees around.
[00:49:47] Finally if you're in those early stages of your own business and seeking accountability from other like minded and highly focused individuals as well as regular access to experience mentors in different areas such as business marketing ecommerce property or wealth building then you might just be interested in joining our very own peer group for aspiring entrepreneurs the etr.r.r. in a circle no matter where in the world you are we have a level that can support you so head on over to do.
[00:50:16] So head on over to www.etr.online forward slash in a circle to find out more i'd be absolutely filled to have you join us well that's all from me for this week's episode have a great week ahead see ya.