The Power of Thinking Big with Aaron Bare

Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molitor.

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molitor Group, Ed Molitor. Now, I firmly believe in underselling and over delivering and I don't want to oversell the conversation you are about to listen to with my special guest, Aaron Bear. But it is simply remarkable. It'll blow your mind. And that is not overselling. And then I'd love to go through and do a deep dive on his bio and all of his accomplishments, but it would take up way too much of your time. Go to his website, check out all the amazing work that he has done that he is doing. But Aaron's life purpose is to create 1 million exponential leaders. Leaders that are purposeful, conscious, digital and above all, exponential.

Aaron is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of Exponential Theory, incredible book and the creator of the XMBA Group coaching program, which is the Exponential Mindsets, Beliefs and Attitudes Group coaching program. We'll take a deep dive into those three things, how they all tie in to getting rid of your self limiting beliefs and to think bigger about ourselves. And he is also the host of the xx podcast Two Exponentials in a Flat World. Now, beyond traveling over 90 countries in all 50 states, Aaron has facilitated innovation and strategy at over 500 companies and appeared on 20 of the top 250 podcasts. But I think he had the most fun in this conversation. But I digress. He is highlighted as 10 leaders to watch in 2022, listed on 50 under 50 leaders, 40 under 40 leaders, 35 under 35 entrepreneurs.

And one of his companies has been awarded most innovative company in the US his award winning digital strategy firm had clients such as now get this, Google Counsel foreign Relations, Coca Cola, Harley Davidson, Dannon Emerson, Comedy Central, Telemundo and Dell where he built over 100 software projects focused on growth, hacking, leveraging, the viral, excuse me, loop. Aaron has over $4 billion. That's billion with a B. Over $4 billion in documented results. Now a couple of things that I was not going to mention, but I just, I feel compelled to tell you. He has sold 12 companies, built three nonprofits and three accelerators. And his ability to think exponentially has led him to successfully build a career site that reached 10 million monthly visitors.

The number one food app in Apple Store, a community that reached 9 million weekly visitors, a neuroscience company, one of the first crowdfunding platforms, the world's largest sales association, the first and largest drone management program, a CyberSecurity company with 60,000 clients, the nation's largest testing program for COVID 19. And the list goes on and on, but you get the idea. And we're going to talk about some really cool stuff, powerful stuff that'll help get you think at the next level, to lead at the next level and again, be purposeful, conscious, digital and above all, exponential. We'll talk about how to think is to create and why what you resist will persist and how. A big part of self awareness is understanding. I love this part. Is understanding what you need to unlearn and reprogram.

Aaron will also jump into what his plan is and how he's going to go about creating 1 million exponential leaders and why it is so meaningful to him. And with that being said, we talk about exponential models, exponential disruption, exponential compounding, exponential sociability and digitalization. I could go on and on about Aaron, his accomplishments and all the great work he's still doing. But you know what? It's time for me to get out of the way and let you enjoy this conversation as much as I did when I was recording it with Aaron. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us today on the Athletics of Business podcast. I am extremely fired up to have you here.

Likewise, Ed. Just excited to get on your podcast and talk to you and your listeners. Been looking forward to this for a while.

Often we usually start with taking a peek behind the curtain and going through your journey and what got you here. But I want to jump in right to what is going on in your world right now because that will all tie back to your journey. You have so much incredible work that you've done that you are doing. Let's talk about 1 million exponential leaders, what that means to you, what that means to us and what you're doing.

With that part of my journey. Over the last 15 years I've been researching exponential leaders and I'll define that as, I'll give you some examples. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, people that thought big about their worlds and obviously were able to create that because they had a long term vision. In that I learned what are their mindsets, beliefs and attitudes which I really have created into a coaching product that we have called exponential mindset beliefs and attitudes, the XMBA. That's analogy on the fact that for 10 years I was a professor in MBA programs. And that candidly is to help people get into middle management and kind of get stuck in being good at reporting, good at accounting and good at getting things done.

What I think the world needs now though, and this is where I've really grasped my own new massive transformative purpose, which is 1 million exponential leaders. And as I want to create that will solve potentially every problem that we have in the world. Because if we get people thinking bigger about themselves, they're professionally and then organizationally they start creating companies to solve massive problems. And the world as, you know, look around looks like it's in chaos. There's a lot of opportunities and that's I reframe problems as opportunities. If we're able to create a million people thinking on this level, we're going to make a dent in this world, we're going to make a dent in this universe. I was telling somebody the other day is like, this is likely a bigger, massive transformative purpose than Google had when they started.

And it was very uncomfortable for me to say it for a while. I mean I literally would tell people and I'd say we're going to create 1000 leaders. And it would be like this Freudian, like I'm not even able to wrap my head or my around it. But you know what I Learned in this 15 years of researching these people is they all had very long term visions. So my vision, my 1 million exponential leaders does not have to happen this year, it doesn't have to happen in the next decade. Bill Gates has a quote that I have in the book that people often overestimate what they can do in one year, but underestimate what they can do in 10. And Bill Gates back in 1976 made a claim to say we're going to put a computer on every desktop in every home.

Well, that sounded like crazy in 1976 because there wasn't even a computer on every desk at work. I mean, we didn't even really use computers. There's mainframes and different things, but the idea of a personal computer or laptop didn't exist. So the only thing he did is any exponential thinking is he solved the exponential equation to say this will happen. But now you could say that he underestimated because 40 years later there's a computer in every pocket. And who would have thought that he actually would have thought that and that's what he leveraged with his long term vision. You could say the same about Elon Musk in 2006 wrote a blog post that predicted Tesla would be exactly where it is today and said exactly how it was going to happen.

He literally said, I'm going to sell a really expensive sports car that's the fastest because we're going to show you that electric can be fast. I'm going to sell that. He sold the Roadster, then he created the Model S, and then he created several other little versions to get down to the Model 3, which now, candidly, where I live, there's 20 Model Threes driving around because it's going to be the Model T of today, where you can only get it in four or five colors. They're going to be out there everywhere. And it's because also he has an exponential business model that in the future, you know, he could change car ownership into being an asset instead of a liability, where, you know, if that car goes and works for you 90% of the time when you're not using it driving other people, that's.

That's a potential that changes the idea of ownership. And obviously that scares even companies that have been disruptive, like Uber. So we're in this very disruptive world where exponential leaders is my goal, and I want to become the absolute expert. And working on interviewing all these different people over the last 15 years has been just an incredible journey to learn how they thought about. And all of them had points of what you'd say is being human, where they were ready to just throw it all, I'm done. I just need to go do something else, because I'm not going to get there. Because doing something big is not the easy path. And oftentimes you're in a very deceptive phase of where you're going to take that. But that's all part of my own journey that really started back probably in college when I went overseas.

And once I went overseas, my world started to open up. And since then, I've been on this exponential path.

It's pretty fascinating. I'm curious if you back up interviewing all these folks over the last 15 years. Was the information you got, was the thought leadership you got was a creative mindset? Was it what you thought it would be? Was it more. Was it more simple? Was it more complex? Was it deeper? I mean, how did you. Did you have expectations of what you were going to get?

Well, during that time, I was. I was working with companies like Daimler, Mercedes Benz. I work with their board of directors, their top 100 executives, Coca Cola, their top 100 executives. So I was able to meet these companies that wanted to learn about what are these Companies outside of their world that were growing faster than what they could learn from. So how their innovation could be more entrepreneurial. So in that I kind of was forced into this. Okay, well here that's when I started studying and what happened is I would take these companies like Daimler and I would take them to Singapore and Shanghai and Tel Aviv and London and Silicon Valley and we would go meet with these companies. So I got the opportunity then to facilitate these conversations.

Senior executives of very big companies and these startup executives that were just growing like gangbusters that obviously a lot of them wanted to sell the Daimler or Coca Cola or Belfius bank, which is the national bank of Belgium. We created these experiences that allowed me to fall into this beautiful research that I just started to learn about it. And my mindset expanded beyond belief to where candidly 5 years ago I couldn't have said I was going to create 1 million exponential leaders. I didn't believe I was worthy of it. I didn't have the self confidence. So what I learned is very simple and it's, you know, I use a model and it goes to self help is broken to me because that says there's something wrong with you. And I believe that we're all perfect.

I believe that we're perfectly where we're supposed to be right now because we chose to be here. Whether what environment we let impact us, whatever out there on the outside let us. So once I in my own coaching program, I get people to think about their past and I think about what are the traumas or the limitations or the regrets or whatever. And I want to create meaning to that is all that actually is part of your journey to get you to where you to find your greatest potential. Those are just obstacles put in the way to see how you handle them. And you know, the world works in this mysterious way that you know, I don't want to get new agey on you or whatever, but it's.

It's like when you look at your past though you are a reflection of what you think about yourself and your future is often that reflection. To say your stress, worries, anxiety, doubts and fears are all made up based on what you believe about yourself right now. Getting someone to get exponential. What I learned about all these people is they're somewhat fearless in the fact that failure is just part of the journey. And I ended up coming to the only time you really fail. And what I learned from these people is if you actually don't learn anything or you don't win. So I came to this concept of winning or learning, and the faster you do that. What I learned, especially about these companies that are exponentially growing, the Facebooks, the Googles, the Amazons, is that they just learn at a faster pace.

They're not stuck in fighting for the norm that so many big companies, because they were set up that way. Their bureaucracy, their leadership, their layers of management, the level fours and fives in these companies, right. That all had hierarchies. They were set up to not change. Well, the world's changing, so if something's not changing, your company's gonna die.

You're kind of screwed.

That's been. My message is right. Yeah, I love it. There's.

There's so much that you've said here in the last just five minutes. And you think about it like our foundational program here is victory defined. We live in a society. You mentioned a cancel culture. We live in a society. We're afraid to talk about winning. Right. Like it's, oh, my God, he wants to wake up every day and win. Well, you have to clearly articulate what victory means to you. The way we break it down is values, intangibles. And this is why I'm so excited to talk to you. The third one is creativity and reframing everything and being able to reframe situations, circumstances, challenges, adversity as opportunity, and then T and then objectives and then rules of the game, challenging the status quo, which you talk so much about. And then you. Why same for you.

The ability to work on yourself and how important, from what you just told me, is the story that you are telling yourself and how much that story you are telling yourself empower you to become the author of your own story.

You couldn't have basically paved the way for my ex MBA any better than you just did because we actually use the hero's journey as our method. And for those that don't know what the hero's journey is basically over the last 2,000 years, every major story was really written that, hey, I'm a. You know, we identify a person, they come to a place in their life, they either fail or find out they're not, you know, they're not where they thought they were, and they have to think about that. And then they come away and they learn it, and then they teach others. So Star wars, the movie, Harry Potter, all literally written down to a T. On the hero's journey, we use it in the Xmba because you are your own hero.

And if you actually play your own character and I. I think of this As I think of a Tom Brady as a sports analogy, I guess is when he steps on the field, I think he believes he's a superhero.

So do a lot of people.

Yeah. And I think that's part of when you step into business, when you step in the boardroom. When I was in sales and I became one of everywhere I've gone, I've really been good at sales and winning because I literally played a person like, I'm going to walk in here and I played. I'm going to be the best salesperson in the world and I'm going to be listening, I'm be empathetic, I'm going to hear what they say. I'm going to find out. And I literally would have this little affirmations before I went in and I said them to myself and nobody knew I said them. And then I did that Same with me speaking on stage. I never.

I don't get nervous, however big the crowd is or whoever I'm talking to, and I've been in front of some very important people in my life is like, how do you stay centered? It's because at the end of the day, like, I want to accomplish, you know, and that's where this all comes back to 1 million exponential leaders. For me, that's where I want to accomplish now at whatever time I wanted to accomplish, I was very outcome focused, very winning driven because I did grow up in sports. I'm not saying it's the only way. I do think that we have to get people back to thinking about winning or learning. And the faster you learn, the more you'll win. The reality is that those failures are what you learn from that is how we actually grow.

And I think part of that is the mindset that I really see that an exponential leader has is getting into a place where they're actually present in the moment to understand that they can back to creativity. They can create whatever they want that day. So the beauty is when they wake up, they think about the biggest thing they can create. Most people slink out of bed and think about going hit the alarm or going back to bed or whatever it is. But when you really look at exponential leaders I've talked to, they're not having a hard time getting out of the bed. They're excited on Monday as much as they are Friday. And they're excited about every moment in their life because they're able. They understand, they're able to create their world and they understand that failure is part of it.

So then it's just let's learn from this. And then it accelerates. And I think in the overall mission of what I'm doing is to help people really have the confidence to say something like, I'm going to create 1 million exponential leaders. And all I can say is, follow me in the next 10, 15, 20 years, you'll be like, oh, my God, that guy created a million exponential leaders. And he was on my podcast.

Yeah, no, and I will follow you. And I'll be the first one to say, I told you so, that you will do it too. No, I believe it. You know, and you said something. You can't see it here on our wall, but it says self awareness is the competitive advantage. How important is self awareness into what? Everything that we're talking about.

So that's the core of getting to be where. Because in reality is what. When we think we're being mindful, a lot of leaders, what we still have is this little voice in our head that talks and says all these negative things and all these doubts and fears. And for the longest time, I had that I wasn't worthy or I wasn't good enough. I write that in my book. In my first chapter, I kind of talk about a teacher that really, you know, said I was never going to amount to anything and did this publicly, you know. And in high school, I graduated the bottom half of my class. I was lucky enough to play. I was a pretty good soccer player. So I got some soccer scholarships and I ended up.

When I got into college, I realized that I could one choose the subjects and that I knew if I was going to keep my soccer scholarship. I got good grades, so I got all A's. I literally got straight A's through all of college. So I changed overnight, basically, from a confidence standpoint. I wasn't really ready for the world when I was coming out of high school because I had all this limiting beliefs and regrets and remorse like, oh, why didn't I? You know, oh, man, I should have done better in high school. And I see kids today is like, what you got to learn is whatever you were yesterday, you don't have to be that tomorrow. In fact, you can make the choice right now, today, listening to this to really change your world of what you believe you are.

And that's part of this hero's journey or the story that you're telling yourself. Because when you do put on whatever and you can put on the artificial cape and do that, and I think all of a sudden you're going to perform at a level that you've Never seen yourself perform at. The beauty is that you can put that on anytime you want. It may be affirmations, it may be a visioning exercise or journaling or, you know, and it's the values that you put in place to say I'm going to live up to these every day. Which I, in my book I talk about these universal truths that I've learned that actually fit into anyone that ever tells me any values or ever. And I've read thousands of books.

They all fit into these universal truths that I learned that really help kind of build the exponential leader. And they're the foundation of. When you look at these people, when they create every day they use these universal truths.

You know, I think that's a good jumping off point for a second to jump into your book because it is beyond fascinating. I mean it's empowering. It is so enlightening. It's fun to read. And I always ask this question when we have authors on what's the best way to read it, in other words? And you talk about beginning of the book. And I love that because I think more books should do that. Right. But when someone picks up that book to squeeze it dry to get the most out of it, how should they go about attacking process of reading exponential theory?

Well, what I've learned about books is 90% of people will buy a book and not read it.

So.

Yep.

And that might be low too, by the way.

It might be low, but it looks.

Good on their bookcase behind them when they're on a zoom call.

So the best way to read it is to pick it up and read a couple sentences anywhere in the book. And that's where I can say is, you know, and I took the COVID experience and allowed me to be very exhaustive in my research and fine tuning the writing. But every sentence is intentional and there's a jumping off point. And I think over time people will get drawn into the book if they want to be exponential leaders. Because I tell story of some of the greatest exponential companies and leaders and what they did. It leads into my coaching program which is really about the mindset, beliefs and attitudes. But throughout the whole thing you become more conscious as you become exponential. And that's part of my own journey to see the world and go to 90 countries and do all this innovation, facilitation.

I learned to look at things in a very empathetic way and I started to listen a lot better. And I think those are all skills of exponential leaders because they realize the wisdom of Crowds or the people around them are what gets it done. And we often always give Steve Jobs or Elon Musk all the credit. But it's really the fact that they created these massive missions, these very big iconic belief systems that attracted the best talent and then that talent was the one that actually made them look so incredible every day.

Because if you're a leader of an organization and you have Jony Ives designing your products and you have these different groups of people that really believe in the vision of Apple, Steve Jobs was able to leverage that in to now creating the richest company as far as cash on hand of any company in the world. That was all created from a vision. One, because he had to fail. He actually got kicked out of Apple and came back to really, actually not take it for granted and actually came back as a much more exponential leader than he was before. And I think that's all part of his journey into Pixar, into the hero's journey. I mean, there is some. There's some.

So that's such a great story.

Yeah, yeah. So you know Steve Jobs, you know, remarkably all these people say he's the greatest innovator. I believe he's the greatest timer, you know, the technology in the book I.

Have a story about, yeah, I have.

A story about General Magic, which is a company that Apple invested in. And there's a guy, Mark Porat, that actually created the term information technology at Stanford and then went on to be part of the Macintosh team. And then he wrote this little book called the Magic Crystal and then it created a company called General Magic that literally created the iPhone 17 years before the iPhone was published in 2007. So what happened is it failed several times because the world wasn't ready for having communication in their pocket. Steve Jobs recognized and I think one of the clever ways of him seeing systemically, and I think that's about being an exponential leader.

He saw that Nokia was starting to fall off on their phone sales and BlackBerry at that time in 2007, if you remember back was really just a corporate tool that people got email. But all of a sudden consumers started wanting BlackBerry. So he recognized at that very point that it may be a good timing. And he always denied for several years that they were ever working on a phone. And then they launched the phone to what I say there was pre iPhone and post Android came out at the same time. But iPhone gets a lot of the sizzle. Android actually does seven times the amount of phones. But iPhone has really reaped the reward because they own their whole Vertical integration of the hardware, software and everything.

So I just look at Steve Jobs as the greatest timer because he had people working on this stuff way beyond what he's done. And he actually failed at this several times with the product, Lisa and the Newton and all these different things. So it is a matter of just being in the right place, right time, and having the long term vision to follow it through. And I think that's what Apple did. They got it right the third or fourth time. And you know, since then, you know, they even launched the iPad in a way that they dumbed it down to bring the price down because they knew they wanted mass adoption. And they also build in their own technological advantage because they had iPad3 built when they launched iPad1.

And I love the whole concept that he's a great timer. So our listener reads the book. They're reading the book. How do you have the book laid out? You talked about the seven universal truths. Are you okay to share a couple of those with us?

Yeah, I can share them all. I think it starts off really on this personal journey that I've had to get to where 15 years of researching exponential leaders, talking to them, facilitating conversations between their companies and others, universal truths are, is that we are always right. To think is to create. Your perception is your reality. And I think that's one of the first universal truths is when you say something internally to yourself, you're saying it to the world. The world is that vibration, that energy is getting out. So when you're saying you're not good enough or you can't do this and it's like, hey, I want that new shiny red range Rover. And then, you know, a day later, yeah, I don't really need it. Well, guess what? You're not going to get it now.

And that's where the thing is to create in a. You know, you see these exponential leaders is sometimes ego can. They can show ego and different things because one, we don't think and talk like them because they just believe they know they can speak it into existence and they continue to work on it and they learn and make mistakes and they learn from that and then they find their winnings, they'll keep moving on. The other is we are habits. You know, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. So this goes to any locker room in the country, focuses on habits to get their players to perform the best. The greatest have the greatest systems. You look at Saban and how systemic he is with every single thing they do.

And how important every coach is to making sure the system works. They're just better at creating the habits. Yeah, sure, then they recruit the best talent, but they still got to fine tune that to perform every year. Attitude is everything. I think you always hire on attitude because if someone walks in and wants to learn, they're not going to be fearful of making mistakes. What we resist persists. You got to let some go things. I mean so much people are so proud of. You know I always, I use this analogy that you have this red wagon you carry behind with all your crap and every time the, you know, if crap falls out, you actually go and pick it up and put it back in your wagon because you want to carry it around because it's like a badge of honor.

But that's let that go. You know, it's.

Yeah, to me that's like departure for arrival points. Departure points. Right. Just that's it, move on, goes back to the whole the universe.

Yep. The goal is not the end, so the journey is the reward. At the end of the day. A lot of these exponential leaders because they have such long term visions, they're not reaching their goals overnight. And in fact Elon Musk in any one of his companies had just even SpaceX. And this is the beauty I invented this term called Mars Shots. You've probably heard of Moonshots where Google shoot for the moon. Well what Elon Musk did, and this is just the exponential thinker in him, he's like I want to think bigger than that. So I'm going to say in 2040 we're going to do a Mars settlement. And that's about as big as I can think right now. And that's as about as long as term as people will let me think.

Yeah.

And I'm going to create a company, SpaceX to do that. And now SpaceX is shuttling passengers back from the International Space Station, launching satellites literally on a bi weekly basis, you know, doing some incredible things. If he were to fail and not get to Mars, SpaceX is still now the done pretty well private space company.

Yeah, yeah, he's done okay with that.

And he was able to attract all these great minds in that vision because it was bigger than the vision that they ever had at NASA or anywhere else.

If someone looks at a person like Elon Musk though, and says he's nuts, he's brilliant in one aspect, he's manic, but he's got some serious issues and we're all flawed but they have an argument with some of those Things. But that doesn't mean that's what it takes to be an exponential leader, an exponential thinker.

Oh, but I think when you know, I think even people like when look at me and I say I'm going to create 1 million exponential leaders, there's going to be doubts and fears because people. The hero's journey. And this is every story you say to yourself about anything is a story that's a bigger story. So when you look at other people, and that's the beauty of storytelling, is we all want to see ourselves and other people. Well, if we're not able to see ourselves in Elon Musk, we're not able to see like the genius that's in every one of us. That's because we're still got all these limiting beliefs from our past. We still got all this stuff that we're carrying around. And that's part of my coaching program is eliminate those things.

Because what I've learned from exponential leaders is they don't know how they're going to do it. They just keep working on it and keep making mistakes and keep learning. And the reality is they set such high standards for themselves that they're unrealistic for everyone else. So, yeah, you look crazy, you sound crazy. Especially the guy on the couch that has remote control and literally sits on the negative news all day and is the biggest critic of the world. It becomes really easy to say that this person's crazy or whatever. And they may be. And it's candidly. I have some stories in my book about different companies.

Like Fred Smith at FedEx got a C minus on his paper at Yale because he wrote this paper that said, I'm going to fly jets into Memphis and fly them out every night and we're going to get packages everywhere in 24 hours. And the professor's like, well, that's not possible. Well, today the reason we get packages within 24 hours is because he had a paper that he got a C minus. All big ideas are not necessarily ideas that people can handle. John Bogle at Vanguard. I actually started my career at Vanguard Group. They're the largest mutual fund asset manager. Now it's plus 7 trillion or whatever it is. And they start off with, hey, we're going to do it the opposite. We're going to have no fee, no load.

We're going to actually drive costs down and we're just going to scale and we're going to buy indexes where we'll buy every stock. So you always own everything because. And now they've proven that model of investing works better than any other model, better than Warren Buffett over a period of time. So there's very few people that can even compete with them because of their low expense ratios and everything. At the time when he did that, the whole industry is like, well one, they didn't like it because everybody's like, well I'm going to go over the low fee guy. But nobody thought that his business would ever be the largest in the world.

And then they were chasing, if it did work, then they were the ones who had changed.

Now everyone's chasing them, everyone's adapting that strategy.

Let me ask you this, and you mentioned this. With your coaching program, you work limiting beliefs and yourself had a hard time spitting out a million exponential leaders. How did you overcome that? How do you work with your folks to eliminate their limiting beliefs?

Well, I think what it comes down to is when you get to a place where you're just really being, and I'll use the word mindful, where you're in the moment and you realize is that nothing's holding you back from being whoever, whatever. What's the story you want to tell about yourself? And the story I want to tell about myself today is that I'm going to create 1 million exponential leaders. And I'm going to do that and I'm going to do it for whatever time it takes. That's my purpose on earth. And if I do that, then I'll have 1 million people going around thinking bigger about the world, solving problems in every single industry in the world. Every social problem, every social movement, every ngo, every whatever it is, everyone started to think bigger about what they could do.

Then that's going to change the world beyond anything that I could possibly get involved with. Along the way I have some side visions that will be on the board of five or six exponential companies. I see myself as creating a coaching program that actually certify other coaches in every city in the world to actually drive this out. Because I think this is as important today in Moscow, almost more important in Moscow than anywhere else. Because we're going to have to think our way out of the future, of not getting ourselves into these predicaments. And these are candidly a lot of these things. When you look even on a global level, these are small thinking of what we're doing. There's a much better way to accomplish some of the ego driven goals than literally taking something from someone else.

Do you get pushback sometimes from higher level executive leaders when they need to Be put in a position to tell themselves what they need to hear, not necessarily what they want to hear. And do they come back at you with, well, how do you measure this?

Yeah, no, I think the biggest thing is complacency and leadership. It's very easy to be in a leadership role. And what I can say the biggest problem today is hands down. And I had a cultural assessment company on my path to creating this 1 million exponential leaders that I would go into companies and assess cultures. And there's generally about five or six problems that every company has. But the number one problem is really this complacency where it's not willing to make decisions because it's easier not to make a decision even if they go and get as much data. And I've seen this in very large organizations where all the data would point and tell you, here is the story of the future, that if you want to be part of it, we can be ahead of it.

And they have people in the organization that then get beat down. No, no, no, we're doing fine. You know, I should love that word.

We're doing.

We're going to hit our goals this year. Let's not. We're not going to spend a bunch of money reinventing anything because. But even working with Daimler, Mercedes Benz over the last five, six years, the story I told them six years ago has now happened. So now they're ready and they're literally massively shrinking to kind of figure out, oh, wow, this electric thing is real. So they were making $20 billion investments in tooling for combustion engines. Well, they were the best at that. And that was kind of the problem is, hey, we actually, we can build the best combustion engine there is. We're not really that good at that EV thing. Not as good as that Tesla guy.

So all of a sudden you got all these people that had a lot of power and influence saying, well, no, we're going to stay with the combustion engine. Even though the rest of the world has been telling these programs, now you see everybody flipping because financially it actually is showing them that they have to do it. And every other car company has now made these huge, momentous changes late in the game, but partially because of one exponential leader, that their goal was so big that they wanted to change the car industry. They didn't just want to create a car company. In fact, Elon Musk early on very much said, and Mercedes was an investor. Most people don't know this. They actually saved Tesla from vanishing from the world.

They gave Tesla $100 million and got an 8% stake at a time that they were about to fail, and then later sold that out for a little less than a billion and they celebrated. But if they'd owned 8% today, that'd be worth more than their market capitalization of their whole company. So you look at the story is exponential. What you want to do is find exponential leaders. And this is what I'm going to create. Literally find. If you don't have the vision to have something very find something you love and attach yourself to a purpose that's so big that you can grow as big as possible into it. And then if you outgrow it, then outgrow it. Because that's part of my own thing that I tell people that come to work for me.

My goal is that you outgrow me, that you succeed more than I ever thought I could succeed. Then I've succeeded more than I ever thought I could. Wow.

So what is the best way we talk about challenging the status quo? What is the best way to identify the status quo? You're going to change. Like you talked about, change the industry. Right. Don't just be a car maker. What is the best way to challenge the status quo? First identify it and then follow through on it.

So to tie that into a little bit additional about measuring, you asked about measuring and being complacent. The reality between 10% thinking, which is what we would say is pretty aggressive thinking in corporate America, to actually shifting that to 10x thinking, how do I create a business that goes 10x? And what we're seeing is the companies that are reinventing themselves are disrupting themselves. And I start the whole book off of disrupt yourself or be disrupted. And that goes for every company, it goes for every person. It goes for every job. The reality is we have to think bigger about ourselves because the future is changing. In 10 years, more than half the jobs that are currently exist will just vanish. It doesn't mean there won't be jobs. I mean, I think there's always a scarcity, that jobs are going away. We've already seen that.

Right now we actually have more jobs in the world. And 20 years ago we said there'd be no jobs. The opportunity, though, is that we have to continue to learn if we're going to win at the game in the long term is we're going to have to pivot where the market's going. And measuring something that your expectations are, say 5% growth or 10% growth is no longer acceptable because outside of a company even say it's a large company, they need to create micro companies on the outside with the whole goal to disrupt the bigger company and then literally merge that into that company.

And that's part of what we do when we create exponential sprints, we'll actually create them at the edge of the company because if you bring them inside of the company, really the company just is going to beat those down and not let those succeed. So at the edge of the company, what we do is literally create these ideas that are potentially disruptive. And that's where you got to help disrupt people personally, professionally and organizationally. That's part of my whole coaching is that every person has to have a belief system that they're worthy, that they're enough, that they, you know, because candidly I run across everything from people that'll sabotage their own success. I see that actually more times than just about anything because they're not ready for the journey that they told themselves. They start actually pulling back because of this self talk.

Is that ever a subconscious thing when they self sabotage?

Most always. I mean and that's what we work on that level because in the end the subconscious is just if you tell the conscious something enough, the subconscious learns it. You know, there's faster ways to do that and we've proven different ways to kind of help people reprogram that. But that's where I say is you a lot of times as people are perfectly where they are. And that's where I think the idea of self help is wrong. The idea of self awareness is something when you get a self awareness you start to learn is what do I need to unlearn or reprogram. And that's what we really focus on in the mind is okay, what are the things like when I ask you to think about 1 million exponential leaders, like even I asked myself to think about it.

What are the things that made me hesitate And I started asking myself why and if I were to coach myself and Kennedy, that's what you have to be your greatest own coach. I don't think people realize that is you need lots of mentors and coaches because. Because one, you're never going to do it alone. But most importantly is you. And your own conversation with yourself is the most important conversation. It's the one that you talk to most no matter who you are. And it's your belief systems built off that. So once you can get to where you're conscious, if you say I'm going to do this, like what I was telling you earlier about walking on a stage or walking into a sales meeting1. I've said that enough that now my subconscious believes it and it doesn't have any way to kind of.

And I actually unlearned these things that I'm not good enough or I'm not worthy or you know, I shouldn't say that, you know, it sounds egotistical or you know, hey, someone's going to say I'm crazy. Well now I embrace those because I realize that those are people that need to unlearn something so that they can obviously create their own crazy dream. Because there's nothing better than living a life with a crazy dream. I mean, you know, you get up every morning, you know, wanting to accomplish that dream.

Yeah.

And the fact that you don't accomplish it every day is actually part of loving the journey and enjoying the moment. Which is another universal truth.

And you said something that I work with my clients on as well. We as a society focus so much on what keeps us up at night. But what about what gets you up in the morning? What happens when you make that shift? What is it that you're excited about? What thoughts do you have that are driving your feelings, drive the emotions that drive your behaviors? And that's why I just when I sat down and started reading the book I'm like this is, I mean for lack of a better description, it's pure gold. And I love the work you're doing.

Thank you. I actually part of a system and I often share a lot of these things because even my own health, my own is a digital sunset is not letting your mind go. So many people go to sleep in front of the television or in front of their phone or whatever. Disconnecting that from an hour or two before one. That blue light which we have lots of proof and evidence that blue light stimulates the mind and honestly we generally fill it with news and negative and doom scrolling and cancel culture and compare culture where we're all you know, I'm not going to oh my God, look at their life. So all that does is then further actually triggers and you're going to think of triggers. And this is probably my biggest piece of advice to leaders is what are your kryptonites?

What are the things that actually hold you best back and then how do we eliminate those first because then your whole world will open up. Want to get rid of your kryptonites. And one of the biggest kryptonite for every person that goes through the ex MBA or that I actually know including my daughter, you know, my ex wife Anybody that I know you know is that they get caught in this trap of comparing themselves and that you're moving through this life and the only one you should compare yourself is to yourself. And you got to coach yourself is better than you were yesterday. And Navy seals have this great little line that I learned from a Navy SEAL is If I improve 1% every day, that's 37x improvement. That's exponential.

And that's actually part of what I teach people is, well, let's work on your habits. You are your habits, how you spend your days. So what do you want to accomplish? And if I want to accomplish 1 million exponential leaders to give you kind of context. Well, I get on podcasts, great podcasts like this with you. We have this conversation. We get one or two or five or ten people that say, I want to be an exponential leader. This is the best I could spend my time.

I can do this the rest of my life and enjoy the rest of my life knowing that I'm living out my life's purpose and I'm sharing God's gift and talent to bring all this knowledge and information to me was the ability to obviously using your mechanism to you we're able to share a message that obviously gets people thinking better. Who knows what problems we'll solve just from getting people to start believing themselves that they can solve those problems. Because every problem, no matter how big it is going to be solved by someone. And that's.

Yeah, it's inevitable, isn't it?

It is.

Yeah.

So done it through all history. We're still here.

Yeah, we are. We're doing better than we think too. Yeah.

Yeah.

Now I love that. Now where listener, where can they find out everything they want to about Aaron, about your book. And again, we'll have all this on the show Notes but directing towards your social media, wherever you want to tell them to go.

Yeah. Instagram, Aaron Barer A A R O N B A R e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. My email is Aaron Barrettaronbear so people can email me. Aaron Baer.com I often tell people is like, send me an email me or my team will get back to you 100%. What's interesting, I used to say this to students when I was a professor and I'd say 99% of you, I was like, I'll take you to coffee. I'll help you start a business. I may even give you some seed money. And I'll definitely help you in the right direction because I taught entrepreneurship and innovation and I said 99% of you won't take it. And my co author was a guy named Forbe. Shannon was one of my students that took that opportunity. And now he's co founder of 1,000,000 Exponential Leaders with me.

And he's literally the first coach in that program. He's 27 years old now, but I met him when he was literally 19. And we've been working. He was the one followed up and kept following up. He just didn't stop calling. And that's whatever you want. That was his own exponential path to get here. He's there.

Can I just ask you. Because he opens up the book, obviously, and shares a very personal story. And from his standpoint, from your standpoint. And you took his call and you took him up on the offer to go grab a cup of coffee. And here you guys are doing this amazing work. What was it about you? It's your empathy. But where did that come from inside of you? Like, where did that, hey, I'm going to go sit down with him and talk to him because he was at a kind of a tough point in his life.

Yeah. And, you know, when I took the call, I didn't know where he was at, you know, and I think that's, you know, so it wasn't compelling in the sense that I need to save this guy, that he was in a dark place. And I think, you know, Forbes shares a story that's his journey. And I, you know, part of it, he's like, well, what do you think about putting this in the book? I'm like, do you want it in the book? I mean, I wholeheartedly think that this will help a lot of people get from whatever dark place they may be to a place that they can have a clearing. And Forbes will be another guy to have a conversation with because he's come so far so fast.

And, you know, that's part of my goal is I shared with him is like, hey, man, let me. I made 20 years of mistakes and learned from them. Let me work to give you those in two. And then let's bottle that up in a jar and figure out how we can do that and give it to people in two months. And now those are exponential thinking. Like, that's, hey, it took me a long time to figure this stuff out with Forbes. I've shortcutted that. And now he's coaching other people. I'm coaching other people. We're getting better and better at it. We figured out the shortcuts. But the reason I always say that is because people like Forbes, at the end of the day, there's always this analogy of the starfish on the beach.

I don't know if you ever heard this analogy where, you know, there's a little boy and he's going and putting one starfish. They're all washed up on the beach. And the short. The tide's gone away, and he's taking every starfish, and the old guy goes like, you know, you can't save them all. He's like, but I saved that one. So. And there's literally thousands of starfish. And that's what the world is right now. We're in a mental health crisis. I mean, and I own part of a neuroscience company that deals with ptsd. And that's actually where a lot of this research came from. Because if you can get people to where they have options, you know, suicide, as, you know, one of those, you know, and that's. That's actually part of the Forbes story, is an option only when you have no other options.

And that's part of how your brain's even connected to the rest of the brain. So creating lots of options and understanding when you become exponential, it's the opposite of that, is that you have unlimited options. Now, my biggest failure over 20 years was I probably had too many opportunities and I never focused one. Now I'm focused one. Now I'm exponential. Now I'm figuring that out. Forbes the same way, but with that, I want to meet with people that either in that problem, you know, that place where they need. And then I want to get them into a program like our program Xmba we have scholarships.

I have a way that if someone needs help out there and they want to be involved, they just follow my funnel, which if you get into many of my social media or whatever, you'll get into a funnel and then reach out to us in a scholarship. Because I want everyone to be exponential, and I want everybody to have a chance. What I've learned is so transferable. And that's where now, for the first time, I see that I can give this to a million people. And I know how to do that. I've actually. I worked for Oxford Leadership, and they're just about to pass 1 million people in their program. I created their coach certification program. So I'm literally taking that model and saying, now I want to do with exponential leaders.

Because every exponential leader is going to think bigger about their world and actually create a bigger impact, whether they're a leader, an athlete. It doesn't matter what they do. It's just that you actually think bigger about yourself. So I take every one of those meetings and now I have a system and coaches and I'm working on coaches in every little ecosystem in the world to really be able to take those meetings so that we create a system that everybody that connects to that Funnel creates that 1 million. So I have this vision that literally has come together and obviously now we can take every one of those meetings and this isn't for money. We will take those meetings to literally help people and move them along. In the end, we know that when people think exponential, that's going to pay dividends beyond belief.

Awesome. Aaron, I can't thank you enough. This has been. I love this conversation. I wish we had more time. I could keep going. I got about five more questions, but I mean just, I had an absolute blast.

No, no, thank you, Ed. Appreciate having me on. And I look to see how the athletics of business becomes exponential after this.

Well, I will be picking your brain, that's for sure. And we need to get Forbes on. I would love to have a conversation with him.

Okay, let's do that.

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