Theory of Constraint and How to 10x Your MSP, with Dr. Alan Barnard

[00:00:00] When I'm asking you it's impossible unless, pick any goal that you think is impossible, right?

[00:00:07] Really impossible. If you think it's realistic, then increase the magnitude, shorten the time to do it,

[00:00:13] until you say, okay, now it's impossible. Then you say it's impossible unless, and you realize what your mind does,

[00:00:19] it will instantly go into problem-solving mode. It will try to find those conditions that could turn the impossible into possible.

[00:00:31] Hey guys, Damien Stevens, host of MSP Mindset. Today I get the amazing pleasure of interviewing Dr. Alan

[00:00:40] Barnard, who is the world leader in the theory of constraints. What does that mean for my business?

[00:00:46] Well, are you stuck growing 10 or 20%? Is that all you think that is truly possible? We're going to talk

[00:00:53] about how we go from growing a business 10% to growing it 100 times the size in about the same

[00:00:59] amount of time. So if you'd like to go from it's impossible to it's impossible unless, then don't

[00:01:06] miss out on our conversation. Just for everybody that is listening, tell us a little bit about the

[00:01:13] theory of constraints and how you came to know it. So I studied industrial engineering. I'm currently CEO

[00:01:23] of Goldwood Research Labs. But I'll rewind back a little bit. I studied industrial engineering. And

[00:01:31] one of the books that we were given to read was The Goal. And it was interesting because my brother at

[00:01:39] the time, older brother at the time, was working in a big steel plant. And almost at the same time,

[00:01:44] he came to me with a book. And he said, you know, Alan, I know you like reading and do really good

[00:01:50] summaries. Do you mind reading the book and giving me a summary? And if you can tell me how to implement

[00:01:56] it in my company, you know, that would be really cool. So it was kind of I got it from both sides,

[00:02:02] one from the academic side, but one from a very real practitioner side. And I read the book,

[00:02:09] but it basically got me already in the foreword of the book. Right. And in the foreword of the book,

[00:02:15] Dr. Ellie Goldratt, who created Theory of Constraints, was explaining the simplest version

[00:02:21] of the scientific method I'd ever heard before. He said, if you want to make a breakthrough in any

[00:02:28] field, any aspect of your life or any aspect of your business, you just need to follow two steps.

[00:02:35] The first step is to have the courage to face inconsistencies.

[00:02:41] And an inconsistency is simply a gap between how things are today and how they should be or can be.

[00:02:50] Right. But you do that at the highest level of the system. Right. So for a company, it could be the

[00:02:57] profitability or the growth rate that you're achieving. For an individual, it could be our level of well-being

[00:03:04] and happiness. Right. If you apply to something else, it could be imagine how much more we know

[00:03:11] about our partners today than what we've ever done before. Right. And then you go like, shouldn't we have

[00:03:19] an expectation that the divorce rate should be coming down? Right. And not only it's not coming down,

[00:03:26] but it goes up. And then the second marriage, the divorce rate is even higher. And the third one is

[00:03:31] even higher. Right. So you start off with just something that doesn't make sense to you,

[00:03:36] that some kind of inconsistency. He said, well, once you've got that inconsistency or gap,

[00:03:43] the second step is just to have the courage to be willing to challenge basic assumptions.

[00:03:51] And if you imagine a gap like this, there's really only two assumptions that are relevant.

[00:03:56] The first is the assumption on which you've based your expectation. Right. Could your expectation be

[00:04:04] too high or too low sometimes? Right. Right. And the second assumption is the assumption on which

[00:04:13] you've based your actions to realize that expectation. Now, that to me is interesting from a psychology

[00:04:21] point of view, because what happens if you have an expectation gap that's large? It causes stress

[00:04:29] and anxiety. Right. Right. We even have names for them called the midlife crisis. You know, this is when

[00:04:36] we tell all of our friends, you know, when we were in our 20s and 30s, oh, I'm going to retire by the age

[00:04:42] of 40 or 50. Right. And then 40 or 50 happens. And then you always have that idiot friend that goes,

[00:04:49] didn't you say you're going to retire by this age? Right. And suddenly you have a midlife crisis,

[00:04:56] which is just an unresolved expectation gap. So what happens is this, this is causing stress and

[00:05:03] anxiety. We can't tolerate it. It's intolerable to have these sort of expectation gaps in our mind.

[00:05:10] So we have to find a way to resolve it. And there's a couple of things that we do naturally

[00:05:15] that are not that useful. Right. One is that we try to resolve it by finding something or someone to

[00:05:22] blame. Right. Okay. So we essentially saying, look, this was unrealistic. You know, I'm not in control

[00:05:33] of a large percentage of that stuff. It's out of my control. It's, it's them, right? Or it's it,

[00:05:40] it's the weather, it's the economy, it's the president, it's whatever. Of course, that's not,

[00:05:46] it does relieve the pressure. So there is that benefit, but it doesn't really help me improve.

[00:05:53] The other thing is, I can go, oh, silly, my, my expectations was just to lie. Right. So I start

[00:06:00] lowering my expectations. Again, that closes the gap and provides some short term relief. But it,

[00:06:05] it basically means we're giving up on our dreams, you know, and that really sucks. Right. And the

[00:06:13] other way that we can go is we can go and try to get educated. So we can go and read books and attend

[00:06:19] masterminds and conferences, etc. And we get super excited every time we see somebody that has achieved

[00:06:25] what we think might be impossible. Right. I mentioned this workshop that I attended with Alex and Leila

[00:06:32] or Mosey. And I mean, starting off as young personal trainers, fast forward, you know, just over 10

[00:06:41] years, and they're worth a half a billion dollars, you know, so you can go and attend a seminar,

[00:06:45] and you get back all fired up. But all that does is it actually increases the potential that you have

[00:06:51] in your mind. It doesn't change the result. Right. And that to me is like, okay, what's the assumptions

[00:06:59] that I've made that have blocked me from taking the actions that can actually change the result?

[00:07:07] What's that one thing that I can do today?

[00:07:12] That can actually move the needle? Right. So when I read that, that's essentially what Goldratt got very

[00:07:20] interested in. It's like, what is that? You know, we know that a kind of a reductionist approach

[00:07:28] doesn't work, right? We can say, okay, how do I improve the system if the system is my company,

[00:07:35] I can break up the system into its parts into its various departments and functions.

[00:07:41] And I can give the instruction to all of them improve.

[00:07:46] And they will improve. But the majority of those improvements won't translate to a system improvement.

[00:07:53] And they often can make things worse. Right. So I can tell the procurement department improve.

[00:08:00] For them, it means find a way of buying at a lower cost. They go and they buy from some international

[00:08:07] company. Maybe previously they paid 10 bucks. Now they're paying only nine bucks. Right. And I think,

[00:08:14] oh, we do a million of these. So we'll save, you know, $1 million right a year. But they don't realize,

[00:08:20] well, you know, further away, it's like four months lead time rather than maybe four weeks lead time.

[00:08:27] You have to pay up front. If you get wrong stuff coming in, you know, you have to delay all of that.

[00:08:35] So it's very often that our efforts to improve the system by improving everywhere causes the exact opposite.

[00:08:45] And that's the problem that fear of constraints is trying to solve, is it's trying to help whoever is

[00:08:54] feeling responsible for analyzing and managing and improving the system, giving them a holistic approach

[00:09:03] or systems approach of improving a company. So what I've done over the last kind of 30 years is to try and simplify how I look at it.

[00:09:15] And I think this might resonate with your listeners and viewers is, if you think about what is a system,

[00:09:22] a system is something that starts off with having a clear goal, right? I have an impact goal or an income goal that I want to achieve.

[00:09:34] That goal dictates basically four things. First one is what work do I have to do to achieve that goal?

[00:09:43] Do I have to produce products or sell products or services? The second thing it dictates is the resources.

[00:09:52] It tells me what resources I need, but as importantly, how much of every resource I need, right?

[00:10:02] So if my goal is to make a million dollars, right? Selling protein shakes, right?

[00:10:09] To customers that could benefit from it, right? What resources do I need? I always need five resources,

[00:10:18] regardless of the size and complexity of the business or the industry.

[00:10:22] Number one is I need enough demand for the product or service I provide.

[00:10:29] So if I have a clear goal, and I go, what's the one thing to focus on? Your first question to yourself should be,

[00:10:38] is there enough demand to achieve that goal? Right? So I work backwards based on my pricing,

[00:10:43] and I say, okay, to make a million dollars, I'm selling this stuff at 100 bucks each.

[00:10:47] How much do I need? What's the demand on the various resources? Do I have enough demand? If I say no,

[00:10:54] then that's the one thing to focus on. How do I create enough demand? If I have enough demand,

[00:11:00] next thing is, do I have enough capacity to reliably and consistently and profitably deliver that demand?

[00:11:09] Thirdly, I have enough demand and capacity. Do I have enough supply? Is there some external resource that I need

[00:11:17] in order to produce enough of the product or service to meet all the demand to achieve the goal,

[00:11:24] right? Then do I have enough cash to pay for the supply and to pay for my own operating expenses and

[00:11:31] CapEx? And the last one that took us a long time to discover is, do I have enough management attention?

[00:11:42] Right? And that's kind of the ultimate constraint is the amount of things that demand my attention,

[00:11:49] not just at work, but also at home will always exceed my available attention.

[00:11:54] Yeah. I love that. That's unfortunate. It's an inconvenient truth.

[00:12:00] And that's kind of for me. So I have a goal. The goal dictates the work I have to do.

[00:12:06] It tells me the resources I need and how much of every resource I need. And a constraint is simply

[00:12:12] a resource I don't have enough of. So that's an important thing for the listeners and viewers is

[00:12:19] that in common language, you use constraint for a whole bunch of things. It's almost like anything

[00:12:25] that's a limitation. In theory of constraints, it's very specific. We say a constraint is simply

[00:12:32] a resource that I don't have enough of to achieve the goal. So by definition, if I'm not clear on my goal,

[00:12:41] I can't define a constraint. Right? Then, once I know I have the goal, I know the work, I know the resources,

[00:12:51] I know whether I have enough or not. The next thing is what are the rules that I'm going to be using

[00:12:58] to manage the work and the resource to decide how to allocate the resources to achieve the goal.

[00:13:05] And these are these rules, what I call you get different types of rules, you get design rules,

[00:13:12] which is if I'm in manufacturing, it's like what my supply chain looks like, right? Where do I put my

[00:13:18] factories and distribution centers? What products am I going to be putting through there? What modes of

[00:13:24] transportation? If I'm running projects, the design is essentially my project work work breakdown

[00:13:30] structure. Now, there are rules by which we design systems that can be wrong. If they're wrong,

[00:13:38] they're suboptimal. There are also rules in planning and execution, like how much work do I release? Do I

[00:13:45] multitask or not? Do I batch, right? All of these rules can be useful locally, but they could cause the

[00:13:54] system to be suboptimal. And that's another big part of theory of constraints. So theory of

[00:14:00] constraints not only gives you this overall approach that says, if you want to improve the system,

[00:14:07] you have to have a goal. You have to identify the system constraint, what don't you have enough of?

[00:14:13] You have to decide how to not waste it and better exploit it. So whatever it is, stop doing stuff

[00:14:22] that uses the constraint that's not helpful. That's not needed, right? That's not wasting it.

[00:14:27] Better exploiting it means focusing it on the highest value items, right? So if you have a capacity

[00:14:34] constraint, go and look at the products or services that you provide and focus on those that gives you

[00:14:39] the highest profit, gross profit per scarce resource time unit. That would be better exploiting it.

[00:14:47] But then subordinating it, which is subordinating everything to that decision, which is go and

[00:14:53] change any rule that's in conflict with that, right? So if you're producing large batches because you had

[00:15:00] a production constraint, and now the constraint is in the market, and you keep on producing batches of

[00:15:06] 1000 when they only need 200, and you end up wasting 80% of your capacity, and now you're creating a

[00:15:13] bottleneck because you're producing stuff that you shouldn't, go and change that policy or rule, right?

[00:15:19] That's the subordinate. If it's still a constraint, go and elevate it. Now go and get more. And then the

[00:15:25] last step is it's a continuous process of ongoing improvement. So if you've broken a constraint,

[00:15:30] don't let inertia become a constraint, go back to step one. And that's kind of the whole framework

[00:15:36] of theory of constraints. And that's a framework that that the goal, which is that first book that

[00:15:43] I read that Goldrard wrote, provided. So it talked about the scientific way of thinking, look for

[00:15:49] inconsistencies and be willing to challenge basic assumptions. And the basic assumptions is what we

[00:15:56] use to decide how do we analyze, manage and improve systems. And fear of constraints provide us with a

[00:16:02] great framework of finding out what to focus on. And that the last point that I want to leave everybody

[00:16:10] with is, how do you do that? So I call it this trio that whenever somebody asks you what's the problem,

[00:16:21] there's a trio that's important, which is the goal, the constraint, and the problem.

[00:16:29] So I'll give you a practical example of in this workshop with Alex and Leila Ormosi who's applying

[00:16:36] theory of constraints to have grown their business and to attain a level of focus you hardly see in

[00:16:42] business. Somebody from the audience would ask, Alex, you did a video recently about lead generation.

[00:16:51] We have options at the moment using Facebook advertising or Google, you know, what do you

[00:16:57] think for our type of industry? What is the best lead generation engine at the moment? Which channel

[00:17:03] should we use? Now, Alex knew this client asking the question because he's part of the mastermind. So

[00:17:10] he already knew the business that this person had, he knew the goal, and he knew the constraint,

[00:17:16] right? So his response was not to answer the question, but to ask another question, which is,

[00:17:25] am I correct to say that my understanding is that you currently have a capacity constraint?

[00:17:30] You just don't have enough capacity to meet the demand. And he said, yes, the business owner said yes.

[00:17:38] And Alex's response is, so why are you asking me about leads? Right? It changes the definition of what we

[00:17:49] call a problem. A problem now is I don't have enough of this resource. The second level of the problem is,

[00:17:58] why don't you have enough? Are you wasting it? Why are you wasting it? Are you not focusing on our

[00:18:04] highest leverage things? Or you simply don't have enough? Why don't you get more?

[00:18:10] Right? So it gives us great clarity in terms of what is a problem. A problem is not any performance

[00:18:18] improvement opportunity or gap or anything that's irritating or frustrating, or I've gone and I found

[00:18:24] this a better way of doing it. A problem is the thing I have to solve to get more of the resources that I need

[00:18:32] to achieve the goal. Today's episode is sponsored by Servocity. I created Servocity because I was an MSP

[00:18:42] who lost data and had to face my client. I don't want you to ever be in that situation. So what's

[00:18:49] different about Servocity is that we test your backups maniacally. We do them, we test those daily,

[00:18:55] weekly, monthly, and quarterly. We manage the backups for you. So 80% of your workload is gone and you can

[00:19:01] focus on your core mission. And all of the storage is both immutable and unlimited. If you'd like to

[00:19:07] learn more, take a look at servocity.com. So help unpack that. So if I understand theory of

[00:19:17] constraints, there are lots of problems, but just trying to understand what is the top constraint?

[00:19:23] What is constraining the global system, not just the local? But help me unpack the difference between a

[00:19:28] problem and a constraint. So a problem is the thing that is blocking me from getting more

[00:19:37] of the resource that has become a constraint. So just remember that a constraint is just a resource,

[00:19:44] right? So I mentioned five types of resources, demand, capacity, supply, cash, and attention,

[00:19:53] management attention. So we don't call any of those problems, they're resources, right? It's a

[00:20:02] constraint when I don't have enough of it. Okay. So let's say I don't have enough demand.

[00:20:07] That's the resource or constraint. Yes. So now it's clarity. So if I ask you,

[00:20:13] Damien, what's your problem? You say, we don't have enough demand. Demand has become the constraint,

[00:20:19] and we just don't have enough demand. Now, okay, now let's unpack that. So what's the problem?

[00:20:27] Well, the offer that we are making at the moment doesn't seem to be resonating. We have a conversion

[00:20:33] rate of about 5%. If we can get that 5% to 10%, we can double sales. Okay. So it gives you a way of

[00:20:41] just keep on diving deeper by asking why, why, why, until you see, okay, this is the problem I need to

[00:20:48] solve. And my check is, if I solved it, do I get more of what I need? Did it generate more demand? Or

[00:20:59] did I get more capacity? Or did it give me more supply or cash or management attention? If not,

[00:21:08] it wasn't the solution. It wasn't the right problem. It wasn't the right solution.

[00:21:15] Yeah. Yeah. It's easy to run around and optimize things that you don't need to optimize.

[00:21:20] They're not constrained.

[00:21:21] It's so easy. It's so attractive because, you know, it's like there's problems everywhere.

[00:21:25] There's opportunities everywhere. So for me, that's the essence of theory of constraints is

[00:21:30] to differentiate between all the things that can be improved from the few that must be improved.

[00:21:39] Hmm. You might be solving the right problem, but at the wrong time, right? It's not yet your problem.

[00:21:46] Yeah. So let's, let's dive in, you know, you can, we can use me, we can use you, but I'd love to dig in

[00:21:53] and say, what, what is my constraint or what is yours? You know, because, you know, as author,

[00:21:57] I'm sure it switches, but, uh, or not as author, but as the, as the theory of constraints, uh,

[00:22:03] a guru. And so I'd love to hear, you know, what is your problem? What is your constraint? Um, how does

[00:22:09] that look like in your world? And I know when you read the goal, it's obviously heavily focused on

[00:22:14] manufacturing and I read critical chain, which is also focused on manufacturing. Um,

[00:22:20] well, it's focused on project environments, right? Yes. So it's a, and the only reason why it's

[00:22:26] different is there are universal principles that you can apply to any operational environment,

[00:22:33] whether it's construction or R and D, if work is flowing through the system, remember we said one of

[00:22:40] the key parts of any system is the work that flows through it, right? What you want is uninterrupted flow.

[00:22:48] Right. And it's very interesting that the principles that govern flow in a system is the

[00:22:55] same principles that govern flow in terms of our flow state of mind. And when you get into flow,

[00:23:03] we all know what that's feels like, right? It's when you basically lose track of, of all your senses,

[00:23:09] you become hyper productive, hyper creative. Why is that? Because the, the flow that's coming

[00:23:17] through your mind is little packets of work, right? And it's uninterrupted. It just flows.

[00:23:25] That's the highest state of productivity and creativity that you can get. So that's what we're

[00:23:31] trying to achieve a fear of constraints is to remove constraints that causes that flow of work

[00:23:38] to stop and start or to be misdirected. It must just flow. I'll give you an example to just give you a

[00:23:46] reference point of what's possible. A few years ago, we started working with a steel manufacturer,

[00:23:53] one of the largest steel producers in the world, Tata Steel. And we looked at what is the total time it

[00:24:01] takes from the moment that iron ore comes out of their mine, because they own everything from the

[00:24:08] mines to the car dealerships, right? That that ton of steel is finally converted into a little Tata

[00:24:15] car that drives into a dealership that somebody buys. If you think about that, the total time from the

[00:24:21] iron ore mine, where the iron ore is lying in a stockpile ready to be picked up until that ton of iron ore

[00:24:29] is converted into a car that drives into a dealership, what do you think that total lead time is? So that's

[00:24:36] the flow time. Right? So just imagine all the piles of inventory, how many weeks or months of inventory

[00:24:44] is each of those steps carry? The mine is sitting with a stockpile, the iron ore plant, steel plants are

[00:24:53] sitting with inventories, right? The assembly plants are sitting with inventories, etc. All the way to the

[00:25:00] end. Our measurement was around eight to nine months total lead time. I can see that easily.

[00:25:08] So you're trying to run that, manage that system. And there's suddenly a change in demand at the consumer

[00:25:15] level. They switch over from buying, you know, gas cars to electric cars, and this changes the type of cars

[00:25:22] to make, which changes the type of steel that you have to produce, right? It's eight to nine months later that you

[00:25:29] can only react to it. Right? In 1926, Henry Ford was running the same supply chain with his Model T cars.

[00:25:40] Total time from the iron ore stockpile until a Model T car made of that ton of iron ore drove into a

[00:25:48] dealership was 81 hours. 81 hours. Isn't it amazing? Right. So you just imagine that. So that's another way of

[00:25:57] thinking about fear of constraints from a flow perspective. Really, what we want is we don't

[00:26:04] want bottlenecks. We don't want constraints. We want to be able to set a goal by considering

[00:26:12] the resources we have, not over committing. And that once we start the work, it just flows through the

[00:26:21] system. Right? And we have to figure out what's the rules that we need to manage that system. So

[00:26:28] the work just flows through it. If that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I love relating that to a flow state.

[00:26:34] Yeah. Right. So if you take that steel plant as an example, it's a very big example, but if you come in

[00:26:40] and you imagine now sitting down with the owner and you're trying to figure out what's the goal,

[00:26:48] where's the constraint and what's the problem. Right? So a recent project we did with a completely

[00:26:54] different steel manufacturer is I did that. I said, what's your goal? And I said, well, we're currently

[00:27:00] producing 10 million tons of steel. That's equivalent of $10 billion of revenue per year.

[00:27:07] Our goal is to grow to 40 million tons, $40 billion of revenue. That's the goal. So you can

[00:27:15] imagine now in your mind's eye, we are here today at a time zero. I said, how quickly do you want to

[00:27:22] achieve this goal within five years, which is unprecedented, right? I mean, building steel plants

[00:27:29] is a lot of work and effort, but you can imagine some sort of step function to get from 10 million to

[00:27:36] 40 million. Right? Now the question is, what's the constraint? If you have a clear goal,

[00:27:45] it's only clear enough when you can determine the resources I need and how much of every resource I

[00:27:51] need. If you can't, then the goal by itself is not clear enough. Then that becomes your one thing,

[00:27:57] right? Make it so clear that it's obvious to everybody what resources we need and how much,

[00:28:04] how many salespeople, how many R and D people, you know, how many people in finance, et cetera.

[00:28:09] So my next question...

[00:28:11] That's worth pausing though, because

[00:28:14] that is almost every goal I've ever set, right? It is, we're going to quadruple revenue or double

[00:28:21] or whatever the number is. And then there's, there's not an, there's not sub goals. There's not

[00:28:27] enough specificity. And it's like, you know, you can, it's just like the events you talked about.

[00:28:32] You can go to an event, you can get inspired and you can say, I'm going to come back and double

[00:28:35] revenue or quadruple revenue or whatever this is in this time period. And you don't, you don't really

[00:28:40] know, you haven't sat with a problem long enough to really understand what do I need to do to get

[00:28:47] there. You want to translate that goal into demand for your product or service, right? So if it's an

[00:28:56] income goal, like in this case, we have a pretty good idea about the product mix that they're selling

[00:29:04] and the ratio at which they're selling it. So we can work backwards and calculate how much of every

[00:29:11] product they need to make and sell to achieve the first step, which is going from 10 million to 15

[00:29:18] million. Okay. And then we can take that and convert that back and to say, okay, how much more demand

[00:29:25] will that put on my furnaces, on my salespeople, on my warehousing, right? That's what you're giving to

[00:29:31] the department heads. You say, here's our goal as a revenue goal, income goal, or an impact goal.

[00:29:38] I will, you know, we're currently feeding 10,000 people. We want to feed a million people. Okay.

[00:29:43] Let's translate that back into how much do I need of every resource? So I asked him, the CEO of the

[00:29:52] company, where's your constraint? Now his definition and my definition was different, right? So his answer

[00:30:01] was, we have many constraints, right? Okay. So let me give you my definition.

[00:30:08] Sounds like something I would say. Yeah. Do you have enough demand

[00:30:13] to achieve that goal? And he said, yes, in steel, which is a commodity, at least for the foreseeable

[00:30:21] future, there's so much infrastructure projects that they can always sell what they can produce.

[00:30:28] Right. So if that's the case for them, and it might be the case for your product

[00:30:34] or service, if you can always sell what you can produce, then demand is not the constraint.

[00:30:41] Mm-hmm .

[00:30:42] Right. So I said, okay, is capacity the constraint?

[00:30:46] And he said, yes, we have to install capacity to be able to produce those numbers.

[00:30:54] Mm-hmm .

[00:30:55] Right. Okay. So it's somewhere in capacity of the various blocks. And now you're drawing up the

[00:31:01] flow that they're going through. We're starting with the iron ore and the coal mine, right?

[00:31:06] Okay. Currently, what is the constraint currently? What's limiting you from producing more than the 10 million

[00:31:13] tons? And it's like, okay, it's our mills that is the problem. We just don't have enough milling capacity.

[00:31:24] Okay. Right. What is the next step going to be if you invest there? Well, that will get us from 10

[00:31:32] million to 12 million. Okay. All the others, can they do 12 million? Yes. Okay. So the constraint is going

[00:31:40] to stay at milling. What's the next big investment that you're making? We're taking it from 12 million

[00:31:46] to 15 million. Okay, great. All the others, can they do 15 million? No. We have a problem with our

[00:31:55] furnaces. They are only capable of doing 13 million. Okay. So now the constraint is going to move.

[00:32:01] Does that make sense? So that's kind of, is capacity a constraint? If they came back and said,

[00:32:06] at the moment, we actually have got enough capacity, we have enough capacity for 14 million,

[00:32:14] but we can only do 10 million. Why? Because there's resources that we need from the external world

[00:32:22] that we don't have enough of. It's like, I was listening to an interview with the CEO of Nvidia,

[00:32:29] you know, Jensen one, and he's basically saying, if you look at Nvidia, who's producing,

[00:32:34] you know, the computer hardware for AI, right? He said, for the foreseeable future,

[00:32:41] we will not have a demand constraint. Right. Right. We can ramp up our capacity.

[00:32:49] No problem. But there's a supply constraint. There's multiple resources that we need from the external

[00:32:55] world that there is simply not enough of. Right. So that's now the constraint. And now,

[00:33:02] once you've got the constraint, then you say, well, how do I make sure I don't waste it? Number one.

[00:33:09] Number two, how do I make sure I fully exploit it? Which means I only get the highest,

[00:33:16] I use it for the highest value stuff. And if it's still the constraint, then how do I elevate it? How do

[00:33:24] I go and get more of it? So if I have a cash constraint? Do I waste cash in any way? No.

[00:33:31] No. Right. If I don't waste it, am I spending the cash on stuff that's not helping me directly achieve

[00:33:40] the goal? I might be spending it on improving a part that's not the weakest link. Okay, stop that,

[00:33:46] right. And if it's still not enough, if cash is still a constraint, then how do I get more? Can

[00:33:53] I go to a different bank? Can I try a different mechanism, etc.? So that's the ideas. There's the

[00:33:59] goal, there's a constraint, and there's the problem. The problem is, what's blocking me from getting

[00:34:06] enough? Resources don't wake up in the morning and go, I want to be a bottleneck, right? Right.

[00:34:12] We cause them to be bottlenecks by either causing them to waste their scarce capacity doing stuff that

[00:34:19] they shouldn't, or not focusing on the highest leverage work, highest value work, or just simply

[00:34:27] not giving them enough. Overcommitting, essentially. You know, we can pick any of these. It could be,

[00:34:34] I love the demand one, because I think a lot of people struggle with, you know, they're not always in

[00:34:38] NVIDIA's or the steel manufacturers place. I love the management attention one. Maybe we'll talk about

[00:34:44] both if we can, but let's maybe start with demand. What do we need to walk through? What are the

[00:34:51] questions I need to ask? Because I think it's, I use myself as an example, more market, more sales,

[00:35:00] whether it's sales, whether it's marketing, you know, it's leads in some capacity, right? Now you need

[00:35:05] to start asking questions like, do we have enough leads and we're not closing on a percentage, I think.

[00:35:10] But help walk me through if it's demand, what do I do to go from this?

[00:35:15] So say you have a, you have a small coaching business, right? The first question is,

[00:35:22] think about the work that you're doing, the product that you're providing. And now think about

[00:35:28] the market that could benefit from that product or work that you're doing. So the first question to see

[00:35:36] is, is it really the size of the market? That's a constraint, right? You might be providing a product

[00:35:48] which the size of the market is diminishing. So for example, human-based content writing,

[00:35:57] right, or human-based coding, that market is disappearing. Right? So you could say, well,

[00:36:06] what is the constraint at the moment? I'm producing a product that requires human beings, me in this

[00:36:14] case, I'm doing coaching or I'm doing coding, etc. The size of the market is shrinking. It's being taken

[00:36:23] over by AI. Right? So there's a substitute to providing that product or service that realistically,

[00:36:31] I cannot compete with. Right? If you are unfortunate to be in that position and many

[00:36:37] businesses will be there soon, right, that's a hard problem to solve. Now I have a demand constraint.

[00:36:46] Right? There's currently or will soon not be enough demand for the product or service that I'm providing.

[00:36:53] And I can't see it changing. It's not a temporary down, like what happened during COVID. No,

[00:37:00] the size of the market for my type of product or service is declining rapidly. And soon it might be

[00:37:07] completely gone. Right? If you say, well, there will always be a demand for my type of product or service,

[00:37:14] then it's about, okay, now what's the problem? It's being able to differentiate myself

[00:37:22] in that type of market. Right? So my first question is always, is there a problem with the size of the

[00:37:29] market? If you say, no, the market is much larger than what I would ever have capacity for? I have 0.00001%

[00:37:38] of the global market in this thing. Okay. So the size of the market is not the problem. Next question is,

[00:37:46] who is your dream customer? So of all the people, of all the customers that could benefit from your product

[00:37:54] or service, who is your dream customer? And your dream customer is the one that will get most value

[00:38:03] from your unique way of producing that and selling that and delivering that product or service. Right?

[00:38:10] Because often we have a demand constraint. And when you look at it, it's because we are trying to sell to

[00:38:17] everybody. Yes. And then nobody is buying. Right? Right. Rather than finding our dot,

[00:38:25] right? In that big market, who's that dot? Our dream customer. The one that will get most value from

[00:38:33] it. Right? I have kind of this little two by two matrix that maybe the audience might find useful.

[00:38:39] Right? When I'm going through these questions with, for myself and my team, but also with clients,

[00:38:44] I go, okay, imagine this two by two matrix. You've got need and want. Right? So who is not our clients?

[00:38:55] It's clients that don't want and don't need what we have. Right. Right.

[00:39:00] Could it be that we might be marketing to customers that look like that?

[00:39:06] Most likely. Right.

[00:39:07] Yeah. Most likely. So if we do, then stop it. Right. Right. Because we're wasting this scarce resource.

[00:39:15] Right? By doing stuff that we shouldn't be doing. Okay. The next one, if we go down this horizontal axis is

[00:39:25] they don't want us, but they need us. Okay. That's a potential client. It's hard because we have to

[00:39:37] educate them. Right? We have to show them that they need us. And if we are really good at that,

[00:39:46] that might convert to, oh, I need you and want you. Right? The one part is I am better than anybody else.

[00:39:54] The need is I have a product or service that can solve a problem for you. But for you to want

[00:40:02] us and want us now, we need some clear differentiator. Right? That makes it easy for you to make that

[00:40:10] decision. Right? You also get other clients, which is they want you, but they don't need you.

[00:40:20] I call those fans. They are not customers. Right. Right. And sometimes we get those. Right?

[00:40:28] People are so excited by who you are and your product and it's so sexy, but you realize they don't need you.

[00:40:35] Right. Right. I have a friend of mine that sells software and I was sitting once with Dr.

[00:40:42] Eli Goldratt in his office and a very large company CEO phoned up Dr. Eli Goldratt.

[00:40:50] And he said, do you know this guy? And this was this guy that owns the software company that supports

[00:40:56] fear of constraints. And Dr. Goldratt says, yes, I know him. He says, can you please phone him?

[00:41:03] He doesn't want to sell me his product. I need his software. And Dr. Goldratt said, well,

[00:41:09] did he tell you why he wouldn't sell it to you? He said, yes, he told us that we don't need it, but I want it.

[00:41:16] And Dr. Goldratt goes, you know, I trust the guy. You should take that as a compliment.

[00:41:21] If he says you don't need it, you don't need it. Yeah. Right. And it's like, okay, so that's the

[00:41:28] third type of category. The ones that we are after are ones that want and need us.

[00:41:35] Right. Those are our dream customers. Why would I sell to somebody that doesn't want us, but need us?

[00:41:43] Mm hmm. If there are customers out there that both want and need us, we just have to find them.

[00:41:51] Right. So that to me is the way that you deal, which is the more generic case, right?

[00:41:56] Most businesses today, like you said, are not in a fortunate position where they can sell whatever they

[00:42:05] produce. Mm hmm. So they need a different strategy. Because if that's your, if that's your constraint,

[00:42:12] if you can sell whatever you produce, your business strategy is just to produce more.

[00:42:19] Right. It's that simple. Right. Until when?

[00:42:25] Until you can no longer sell what you can produce. Right.

[00:42:28] Until that's not the constraint. Okay. What must I change now? What product or service must I switch to now

[00:42:34] where that is true again? But if you find yourself in a more common situation where we can't sell whatever

[00:42:42] we can produce, it means we have to switch to producing only what we can sell.

[00:42:50] Mm hmm.

[00:42:52] And that's a big shift. Mm hmm. That means that we have to be very clear who is our dream customer.

[00:43:00] Who are we selling to, to get the highest chance? And if that's the case, then my question is always,

[00:43:09] are you clear about your dream customer? Mm hmm.

[00:43:11] Are you absolutely confident that you are marketing to them? And them only, before you try to market to

[00:43:20] the ones that might need you but don't want you? If you are already marketing to them your problem,

[00:43:27] right? So you have a demand constraint, what's your problem? Why is my dream customers not buying

[00:43:35] more from me more frequently? Or why are they not paying more? That becomes a problem to solve.

[00:43:43] None of the other things matter. That's, that's what the, the, the, the owner of the business and

[00:43:52] his or her leadership team should be focused on, right? Why is my dream customer not willing to pay more,

[00:44:00] buy more, buy more frequently? Yeah. Once we get an answer to that question,

[00:44:05] we can implement that change to test the hypothesis. Was that really true? Are they not buying from us

[00:44:12] because we simply unreliable? Are they buying, not buying from us because maybe we are too cheap,

[00:44:19] not too expensive, right? You want to come up with an hypothesis and then test it. And that sort of,

[00:44:26] sort of full circle is another core part of theory of constraints is it's based on the scientific method,

[00:44:32] which is essentially encouraging constant experimentation. One of my sort of big insights

[00:44:40] that I had is we don't learn from experience. We learn from experiments. Wow. I love that.

[00:44:49] Right. And what is a good experiment? A good experiment is one where I'm clear about the

[00:44:56] assumptions I want to test. And I have a way of getting fast feedback.

[00:45:02] Mm-hmm. I think that fast feedback.

[00:45:05] Exactly. That's an important part of it. It's like, we can learn from, from experiments,

[00:45:10] right? You touch a hot stove plate, it burns you, right? You learn immediately because you get fast

[00:45:16] feedback. Imagine what would happen if you only got burnt a day later or a week later. How long will

[00:45:24] it take you to put these two events together, right? It'd be very difficult to today with all the fast

[00:45:31] feedback that we can get, you know, because we are able to monitor our clicks, etc. It's fantastic.

[00:45:38] In the old days used to take out an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine. You had no idea

[00:45:45] whether the next order that's coming in was from that newspaper ad or magazine ad, or was it just

[00:45:53] somebody that, you know, read about you on a book or found you on the internet or something, right?

[00:45:58] Mm-hmm. So that to me is, I hope that's kind of useful as to think about when there's a demand

[00:46:03] constraint, your first question is, is it the size of the market that's a problem?

[00:46:08] Mm-hmm. If it is, that's a completely different problem, right? Yeah. Then no, I have a tiny,

[00:46:16] tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the world market. Mm-hmm. So what is the problem? It's that I'm

[00:46:23] marketing to the wrong people. Yes. I'm marketing to people that don't want or need my product.

[00:46:29] Right? Okay. How do I find the ones that need it and with a little bit of sales can be convinced to

[00:46:37] want it. Mm-hmm. The need is I'm solving a problem. The want is they want me now, right? Not the same

[00:46:46] issue to solve. Right. Like in our case, we provide digital twins, right? A digital twin helps you to

[00:46:54] build a complete simulation of your business. So our dream customer would be one that is currently,

[00:47:00] say, experiencing shortages and surpluses in their supply chain. Mm-hmm. Right? And we can use a digital

[00:47:08] twin to try and figure out why that is. What's the decisions that they've made somewhere in the supply

[00:47:16] chain that caused avoidable shortages and surpluses? A dream customer is one that needs that. And I've

[00:47:25] already seen that, wow, the type of digital twins that you guys do is so much better, so much faster,

[00:47:33] so much easier, so much cheaper than anybody else that I need you and I want you. Mm-hmm.

[00:47:39] If we don't have a clear differentiator, they might need us, but they don't want us. They'll go for the

[00:47:45] safest option, which is probably buying it from a big company, et cetera. Right. Right, right. Instead of going to

[00:47:52] you in applying the theory of constraints, they might just go to one of the big four consulting,

[00:47:57] right? Because it's the safe option, quote unquote safe. Yeah.

[00:48:01] How does theory of constraints compare, contrast with first principles thinking?

[00:48:08] So first principles thinking is what Goldratt used to develop many of the applications of theory of

[00:48:17] constraints, right? So I posted a recent video and we can share the link that people can go and have a

[00:48:25] look of Goldratt taking a subject like scheduling from first principles. Okay.

[00:48:34] And what he does is he says, okay, let's think about scheduling. When you're doing work,

[00:48:41] right? Whether that work is a product or service, and you have limited capacity,

[00:48:48] right? You have to decide when and how much of the work to do. That's a schedule, right?

[00:48:58] You have demand out there. You now have to decide how you're going to fulfill the demand.

[00:49:04] What is your schedule? So he starts off by asking what is a schedule?

[00:49:09] Mm-hmm.

[00:49:11] The next question is what's the criteria by which to use to judge whether it's a good schedule

[00:49:18] or bad schedule, right? That's the next question that you have. When you're working from first

[00:49:26] principles, you're not fooling yourself that you know what the hell you're talking about, right?

[00:49:31] Right. I have the schedule. I think it's good, but I need to look underneath the hood.

[00:49:36] Yeah, exactly. And it's like, again, referencing Alex and Leila or Moses workshop, I was so impressed

[00:49:43] with them because that's the way that they've picked up from fear of constraints is thinking

[00:49:47] and first principles. Somebody would ask a question from the audience, how do you motivate your people?

[00:49:56] And you can imagine it's tempting to give some solutions, right? Incentive schemes,

[00:50:04] you know, all sorts of things. Alex's first question is what do you mean by motivation?

[00:50:13] That's a first principles question, right? And now the guy's I'm not sure. He says,

[00:50:20] you're asking a question about something that you are not sure what it means.

[00:50:27] Yes.

[00:50:28] So how will my answer be beneficial to you if you don't even know what it means?

[00:50:33] Mm hmm.

[00:50:34] Right. It's like asking, what can I do to be happier?

[00:50:39] Right. And you go like, what is happiness?

[00:50:41] Mm hmm.

[00:50:42] Right. Because unless you have a very clear definition of happiness

[00:50:48] and criteria by which you can judge whether you are happy or not happy,

[00:50:53] right, then trying to jump to the next level, which is how do I improve the happiness makes no sense

[00:50:59] at all? Mm hmm. Right. Start there.

[00:51:02] Right. It's your definition of happiness or your definition of success or whatever those things are,

[00:51:08] right? And I think happiness or success sometimes I think are, you know, at least in my reflection,

[00:51:16] they're given to us by others. You know, I need to have a million dollars or, you know,

[00:51:20] because you mentioned a million earlier and it's like talking to somebody and they're like,

[00:51:23] I wish you'd say 900,000 or, you know, some other number because it's just this number that you don't,

[00:51:29] it's not your goal. It's not a goal that's meaningful.

[00:51:31] It's not. So it's clear. I'll give you an example of how this impacted me. Many years ago,

[00:51:38] we were called in to help a company that was doing the implementation of SAP. One of the largest

[00:51:45] implementations of SAP ever, $5 billion SAP implementation, right? 1,200 Accenture

[00:51:55] consultants on the project at any point in time. Burn rate of like a million dollars a day, right?

[00:52:01] And we were asked to come in and help them implement this project on time in full.

[00:52:08] A year into the project, they were already six months behind.

[00:52:12] So I was looking at, you know, what is the constraint? The top SAP resources were the constraint.

[00:52:20] And I realized that the problem was that they were multitasking. They were not getting clear

[00:52:25] priorities and are trying to work on multiple things at the same time. And that was my advice,

[00:52:31] is to say, we're just going to do these five things, right? We're going to stop multitasking

[00:52:36] is the first thing that we're going to do. And everybody appreciated it. I had shared some

[00:52:44] examples that show how bad multitasking is, how everything takes longer, you get less done,

[00:52:48] etc. And there was a woman in the audience, a very senior vice president that stood up and she said,

[00:52:57] I cannot support it.

[00:52:59] I'm going to do this.

[00:53:01] Hmm.

[00:53:01] Me and my team have to multitask. And it's like, you just hear this awkward silence in the room.

[00:53:11] Right.

[00:53:11] Right.

[00:53:12] Because everybody instantly knew that if she doesn't support it,

[00:53:16] she controls a big part of the team. It's not going to happen.

[00:53:20] Right. Another question is what the hell do you do?

[00:53:23] Right.

[00:53:25] And I said, you know, it's time for a break.

[00:53:31] I need a couple of minutes to think about how to answer that. Great question. Thank you for the

[00:53:36] question. And I went outside and I realized multitasking appeared in the literature of

[00:53:43] Fear of Constraints around 1995 when Critical Chain came out, right? In the book, there's an example of

[00:53:49] of realizing how that wastes your scarce resource, right? Trying to do multiple things at the same

[00:53:56] time. At that time, it was the most counterintuitive insight because we thought at that time that we

[00:54:05] should hire people that can multitask. We thought it's a good trade to have. Today, we know it's a

[00:54:11] horrible trade to have, right? Right.

[00:54:14] I walk outside, I sit down and I go, first principles thinking, what the hell is multitasking?

[00:54:24] We've been using it since 1995 and have never defined it properly.

[00:54:33] Multitasking is not when I'm trying to do multiple things at the same time. I can't.

[00:54:40] That's true. That's very true. Right. I just can't. Cognitively, I can't. If it's a task that

[00:54:46] involves cognition, like texting and driving, I can't do them at the same time. Right.

[00:54:52] Not possible, right? It's like a computer, unless it has two CPUs, it can't multitask, right?

[00:54:59] So then I said, so what the hell is multitasking? It's something to do with switching, right?

[00:55:06] When should I switch? And when shouldn't I? And I realized that you should only switch

[00:55:15] when you can no longer make progress on the highest priority task.

[00:55:21] So multitasking is when you switch from a higher to a lower priority task, when you could have

[00:55:28] continued to make progress on the higher priority task. So when should you switch?

[00:55:35] Either when priorities change or when you can't make any more progress towards your highest priority task.

[00:55:43] It's now, you know, you're waiting for the customer.

[00:55:45] Mm hmm.

[00:55:47] I went in and I shared this definition with this vice president and I said, I apologize.

[00:55:55] I just realized and I still get goosebumps, right? It was a big moment for me.

[00:56:01] I said, this was around 2015 about. I said, we've been doing this for 20 years.

[00:56:07] And I realized we never defined multitasking clearly. No wonder it caused confusion.

[00:56:16] Right.

[00:56:17] No wonder it triggered resistance.

[00:56:19] Mm hmm.

[00:56:19] Right. I said, what if I defined it in this way? Is that useful?

[00:56:25] And she goes, of course, absolutely.

[00:56:28] From time to time, priorities do change. From time to time, my team can't make progress and I want them to switch.

[00:56:36] Yeah.

[00:56:36] Yeah.

[00:56:36] So no problem.

[00:56:38] Right.

[00:56:40] Compared to me trying to go in there and going, what did I miss?

[00:56:43] You know, do I need to replay the multitasking game with her again?

[00:56:47] Do I need to start again showing how bad multitasking is?

[00:56:51] Like that wasn't the problem. The problem is we didn't define it so clearly that people can immediately understand what you're talking about.

[00:57:02] And I think Goldratt has done that consistently, like you'll take projects, right?

[00:57:08] And he goes, what is planning? What is it?

[00:57:12] Like we keep on using it, but what is it? Oh, it's all the decisions we make before we start doing something.

[00:57:20] Is that a clear definition? Yes. Okay. So what are the decisions we make before we start doing something?

[00:57:27] And then what are the mistakes that we make that are avoidable versus unavoidable?

[00:57:31] This is all like first principles thinking. I think Elon Musk is amazing in first principles thinking, you know, it starts with the basic principles.

[00:57:42] And it's like, unless physics tell me that it's impossible to do, my assumption is it's possible.

[00:57:48] Yeah. It might take us a long time, you know, to land rockets upside down, right? It's like, okay, but unless the physics tells me it's impossible, I'm going to try it.

[00:58:01] Yeah.

[00:58:02] And that sort of gets us to that famous thing, my insight, it's impossible unless.

[00:58:08] Yes. Yes.

[00:58:09] So that's the other part of first principles thinking is to keep on asking yourself the right question.

[00:58:16] So tell me about that. We got to give that its due. So I love it. I love it's impossible unless.

[00:58:22] Where did you, how did that come about?

[00:58:27] Yeah. So the background is one of my goals when I grew up as a little kid, you know, in South Africa,

[00:58:33] was I just want to come up with one new thing, one idea that had never been done before, never been seen before, like one new insight.

[00:58:42] Right. It sounds very simple, but when you think about it, it's really hard to come up with one original idea.

[00:58:50] Mm-hmm.

[00:58:50] Um, there's a quote that has driven me. It's both inspires and haunts me kind of every day. There's a couple of these ones, but this one particular is Jean-Baptiste Peremi. He was a famous French physicist. He said that the aim of all science is to substitute visible complexity for invisible simplicity.

[00:59:17] Mm-hmm.

[00:59:18] So if you think about E equal to MC squared, it is mathematically one of the most simplest correlations between free variables that you can imagine. Right?

[00:59:29] Right.

[00:59:30] But it explains an enormous amount of visible complexity.

[00:59:35] Yeah.

[00:59:36] So that simplicity was always there. We just had to discover it.

[00:59:41] Mm-hmm.

[00:59:42] Right?

[00:59:42] So my passion is helping people achieve impossible goals and make impossible decisions.

[00:59:50] So I wanted to come up with one original idea that can help you do that.

[00:59:56] There's a lot of visible complexity in these two fields, right, of trying to achieve impossible goals and make impossible decisions.

[01:00:04] Is there this profound but hidden simplicity?

[01:00:08] Mm-hmm.

[01:00:09] And I was very, very lucky to discover it.

[01:00:12] I was in front of a big group of miners.

[01:00:15] They had asked me to come and give a lecture on theory of constraints and be bottlenecking.

[01:00:23] And I walked into the room and I saw 60 miners sitting there like this with their arms folded, looking really unhappy to be there.

[01:00:34] Miners? You mean people that are digging things out of the earth?

[01:00:36] Miners. One of the biggest coal mines in the world, right?

[01:00:41] And I was supposed to be there for two days.

[01:00:43] I thought, oh, gosh.

[01:00:45] I had like 200 slides that I was planning to present.

[01:00:48] Took me ages to prepare.

[01:00:50] And I thought, you know what?

[01:00:53] If you present any PowerPoint slides here, these guys will throw you out.

[01:00:57] Right?

[01:00:58] It's like, so I pulled the mine manager aside and I said, before we start, what's going on?

[01:01:05] He says, look, I'm so sorry that actually, you know, I should have canceled the workshop because there's a major risk.

[01:01:14] Major, major risk here.

[01:01:16] I said, what's the problem?

[01:01:17] He said, well, we have a goal of 12 million tons a year.

[01:01:21] We now in month four, we only had 3 million tons.

[01:01:24] If we keep on proceeding, we'll end with 9 million tons in the year.

[01:01:29] We'll be 3 million behind.

[01:01:31] We'll pay massive penalties to our customers.

[01:01:35] We'll lose a lot of money.

[01:01:36] And probably most of the guys sitting here will be fired.

[01:01:41] So I said, okay.

[01:01:43] So the last thing that they want to hear is about some theory.

[01:01:48] Right.

[01:01:50] So I said, okay.

[01:01:52] And by that time, Damien, I knew nothing about mining.

[01:01:56] Okay.

[01:01:57] Nothing.

[01:01:58] Right.

[01:01:59] So I was going to present like theoretical exercises with some practical examples where I had experience in.

[01:02:05] Right.

[01:02:06] So I go to the board.

[01:02:07] I said, okay.

[01:02:08] I understood.

[01:02:09] I just want to make sure I understand the problem.

[01:02:11] So I drew this graph.

[01:02:13] I said, 12 million tons is where you have to be.

[01:02:16] You only tracking like this.

[01:02:19] You already a million tons behind.

[01:02:22] And if you end up with 9 million, it's disastrous for everybody.

[01:02:26] Is that the problem?

[01:02:29] Yes.

[01:02:30] Right.

[01:02:31] So you have a capacity problem at the moment.

[01:02:34] That's a constraint.

[01:02:35] It's not a demand constraint.

[01:02:37] It's not supply.

[01:02:38] It's not cash.

[01:02:39] It's a capacity problem.

[01:02:41] Yes.

[01:02:42] So I said, the first thing we have to figure out is how to catch up.

[01:02:47] Right.

[01:02:48] Now, there's some other scarce resources like budget and management attention.

[01:02:56] Right.

[01:02:58] So I asked them, I said, I want to ask you, we're just going to do two things.

[01:03:04] First question is, I want you to write on a flip chart, all the departments go to these flip charts and write down what are the things that are currently demanding your attention and budget.

[01:03:19] Right.

[01:03:21] Right.

[01:03:22] What are those things?

[01:03:22] Please write them on the flip chart and stick them up on the wall.

[01:03:26] When we got to about 100, I stopped them.

[01:03:30] I said, okay, you agree?

[01:03:31] These are all the programs or change initiatives going on at the moment that's consuming or demanding your limited attention as management and your limited budget.

[01:03:43] They said, yes.

[01:03:44] I said, okay, now I'm going to ask a very, very below the belt question.

[01:03:52] I said, we've just agreed that the problem is that you are not producing enough tons to meet the demand.

[01:04:01] That is the problem.

[01:04:03] If you don't solve this problem, nothing else matters.

[01:04:06] Do you agree?

[01:04:06] Yes.

[01:04:08] Yes.

[01:04:08] I said, okay, what I want you to do now is go back to those sheets and to write on them how much additional tons that program or initiative will give you.

[01:04:23] Right.

[01:04:24] Does that make sense?

[01:04:25] Right.

[01:04:25] If they are the ones that are allocating resources, right, and their job is to allocate it to those things that actually help you get more of the thing that you don't have enough of,

[01:04:41] then most, if not all of the programs or initiatives out there should have a direct impact on the amount of tons.

[01:04:49] Out of the hundred, they were free.

[01:04:55] Right.

[01:04:55] Right.

[01:04:55] And you can imagine that's not, it sounds, might sound crazy until you're in a company and you know how many change initiatives.

[01:05:02] Oh yeah.

[01:05:02] Right.

[01:05:03] New and every day it seems like.

[01:05:04] Right.

[01:05:04] Yeah.

[01:05:04] There's an audit team that comes in that says you, the benchmark is here, you, here, you should close the gap.

[01:05:10] Right.

[01:05:11] And you have a whole list of tasks now to do.

[01:05:13] Yeah.

[01:05:14] So I said, so that's the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to stop as many of these things as possible.

[01:05:21] And we literally went one by one.

[01:05:23] Can we stop this completely?

[01:05:26] Never touch it again.

[01:05:28] Right.

[01:05:29] Because we don't need it.

[01:05:31] Or we're going to stop it, but only freeze it.

[01:05:34] We'll have to do it at some point, but freeze it at least for now.

[01:05:38] Or no, it's actually needed.

[01:05:40] It's giving us more tons.

[01:05:42] There's something that we can do to get it done even better.

[01:05:45] Right.

[01:05:46] Right.

[01:05:46] So it's like, okay, so that's what basically what we did.

[01:05:49] And people felt this relief.

[01:05:52] Right.

[01:05:53] All the load that was on them is now removed.

[01:05:57] They have complete clarity in what's the problem that they must solve.

[01:06:02] And every department, recruitment, what resources do we need from you?

[01:06:08] Resources that can help us produce more tons.

[01:06:11] Do we need now more people in finance or more people in HR because, you know, there's a budget for?

[01:06:19] No.

[01:06:20] Right.

[01:06:21] And how long should it take you?

[01:06:23] Should you go for the six months process of hiring somebody?

[01:06:27] No, you need to figure out how to get it done in six days, never mind six months.

[01:06:31] Right.

[01:06:32] Because every day that we lose, we lose.

[01:06:35] Right.

[01:06:35] Right.

[01:06:36] So then the question was, okay, but now we need to think about what to start doing to get more tons.

[01:06:42] And I called up, I plotted out the process.

[01:06:45] The first one is exposing the ore, right?

[01:06:49] It's basically clearing out the overburden and making the ore visible so that the machines can go in and extract the ore.

[01:06:56] I called in the team that was responsible for that and the manager.

[01:07:00] And I said, okay, let's do some calculations.

[01:07:03] You have to produce at a million a month, but you're already behind.

[01:07:08] You have to catch up.

[01:07:09] To catch up, you'll have to run at about 1.25 million tons a month.

[01:07:14] Right.

[01:07:16] How are you going to do it?

[01:07:20] And the guy is just looking at me, big guy, right?

[01:07:23] Staring at me.

[01:07:24] I'm staring at him.

[01:07:25] It's getting really uncomfortable.

[01:07:27] And he's like, if I knew how to do it, we would have done it.

[01:07:31] It's bloody impossible.

[01:07:35] And the only thing that I could come up in that moment was, it's impossible unless.

[01:07:45] And as I said it, Damon, I instantly knew this is my big idea, or at least one of them.

[01:07:53] Right?

[01:07:54] Because it's like you instantly recognize when you're asking the right question.

[01:07:59] Yes.

[01:08:00] Right?

[01:08:00] What I realize is by him saying it's impossible, not only he's not trying, but he's not even thinking about trying.

[01:08:11] I realized later on the psychology behind it is we say things are impossible as a coping mechanism, as a protection mechanism, so that we don't have to try.

[01:08:21] We don't even have to think about trying.

[01:08:23] Right?

[01:08:23] Yeah.

[01:08:23] It's like a need for safety.

[01:08:25] Yeah.

[01:08:26] Whereas when I'm asking you, it's impossible unless.

[01:08:30] Pick any goal that you think is impossible.

[01:08:34] Right?

[01:08:34] Really impossible.

[01:08:35] If you think it's realistic, then increase the magnitude, shorten the time to do it until you say, okay, now it's impossible.

[01:08:42] Then you say it's impossible unless.

[01:08:44] And you realize what your mind does, it will instantly go into problem solving mode.

[01:08:49] Mm-hmm.

[01:08:49] It will try to find those conditions that could turn the impossible into possible.

[01:08:55] I love this.

[01:08:56] I love this.

[01:08:57] I've used it myself so many times.

[01:08:59] It's impossible unless.

[01:09:00] And I'd love your thoughts, but I feel like it ties into the brain hates open loops.

[01:09:07] And nature abhors a vacuum.

[01:09:10] Yes.

[01:09:10] And you're creating a vacuum.

[01:09:11] And you have to fill it with something.

[01:09:14] You can't let it hang out there.

[01:09:15] You need to give it some place to focus on, right?

[01:09:18] Yeah.

[01:09:19] Yeah.

[01:09:20] I mean, I tried this.

[01:09:23] I was some time back.

[01:09:25] I was interviewed by Joe Polish, who runs the Genius Network, you know, on his stage.

[01:09:29] And he said, well, how would this apply to him, right?

[01:09:32] I said, well, what's your goal at the moment?

[01:09:35] He said, no, he's writing a new book.

[01:09:38] You know, what's in it for them?

[01:09:39] And he's got a goal of how much of this book he wants to sell.

[01:09:43] And I said, well, what's your ambitious goal?

[01:09:45] And he said, like 100,000 copies.

[01:09:48] There's very, very few books that ever sell 100,000 copies.

[01:09:51] So it would be amazing.

[01:09:52] It would be way beyond a bestseller.

[01:09:54] I said, okay.

[01:09:55] And do you think it's possible?

[01:09:58] He says, yeah, it will be hard, but it's possible.

[01:10:02] I said, okay, what would be impossible?

[01:10:05] He said a million copies.

[01:10:06] Okay.

[01:10:08] Okay.

[01:10:09] I said, it's impossible unless.

[01:10:12] It's impossible to sell a million copies unless.

[01:10:16] And he started laughing because immediately your brain goes, well, unless I can get on the Oprah Winfrey Shows book club, right?

[01:10:26] Unless I can get Tony Robbins to promote a book for me, right?

[01:10:31] Unless, and this is giving you options that get you unstuck.

[01:10:37] And then you can ask, well, how to, right?

[01:10:41] First, what can make it possible?

[01:10:43] And then to think about how to do that.

[01:10:46] What's the simplest, fastest, lowest cost, lowest risk way of doing it?

[01:10:50] So that's often, and how they tie together is often when we find a constraint, whether it's demand or capacity or supply or cash or even our own attention, right?

[01:11:01] And we realize that unless I get more of this thing, I'm not going to achieve more of the goal.

[01:11:08] And that expectation gap is going to eat me for breakfast, right?

[01:11:13] Will cause stress and anxiety, cause me to start blaming people and things around me, or maybe even start causing me to reduce that expectation to protect myself.

[01:11:23] It feels like it's impossible.

[01:11:25] And then you ask yourself, it's impossible to get more of this thing unless.

[01:11:31] I love that.

[01:11:32] And I love what you, for folks that are listening, right?

[01:11:37] There's a lot you can learn from a lot of other folks around impossible goals and what that looks like.

[01:11:45] And I love how you built up both things, right?

[01:11:47] Because you said, look, you know, Joe Polish, who's already well-connected and quite ambitious, you know, wants to sell 100,000, which is maybe a high, hard goal.

[01:11:58] But on the other hand, you have, you know, he admitted it's not impossible.

[01:12:05] At least it didn't seem impossible to him.

[01:12:07] And so I love the process that the first thing you did is you either increased the goal or you shorten the timeframe.

[01:12:14] And so you increased the goal to a million.

[01:12:16] Now a million books is impossible and less.

[01:12:19] And so I love that because I just want to, I've missed this kind of thing because I go like, well, you know, can I get one more client this month?

[01:12:28] And if I say that's impossible and less, well, no, that's actually a pretty achievable goal.

[01:12:32] Like that's not a hard goal.

[01:12:34] It's not even an impossible goal.

[01:12:36] And so if you start off there, then this is kind of, it's not that useful of a tool.

[01:12:41] But when you really say, this puts me in my comfort zone.

[01:12:45] Like you said, I got to get an Oprah Winfrey's book club.

[01:12:48] I got to, I got to do things now.

[01:12:50] It's impossible unless then all sorts of neurons are activated.

[01:12:56] All sorts of, you know, connections are necessary, help from others.

[01:13:00] And I do think, you know, there's some fear and safety related because then you go, wait, I got to ask.

[01:13:06] I got to ask Alan for help here now because he, because he's the guy that can tell the audience about it.

[01:13:11] Or I've got to ask, you know, like you said, Tony Robbins or whoever it is.

[01:13:15] And that is, it's scary, but that's, that's, that's what's so exciting about it to me is that you have to challenge yourself.

[01:13:24] And if it's an impossible goal, I feel like that already puts you in the spot where you're going to have to get out of your comfort zone.

[01:13:32] Yeah.

[01:13:32] And you have to, the goal has to be kind of ambitious enough to be considered impossible, right?

[01:13:41] Because as soon as we think we know how to do it, we cannot think out of the box.

[01:13:47] Right?

[01:13:48] So I'm currently co-offering a book with a friend of mine, Dr. Kevin Hamm.

[01:13:53] And we're starting off with the idea of why not go 100x rather than even 10x, right?

[01:14:03] So we started with first principles.

[01:14:05] And I said, well, if you want to go 100x, say you're feeding one person and you want to feed 100, that's 100x, right?

[01:14:13] Or I'm feeding 100, I want to feed 10,000.

[01:14:16] I'm already feeding 10,000, I want to go a million, right?

[01:14:19] Anything that's 100x, how long will it take you to achieve that 100x goal?

[01:14:26] Right?

[01:14:27] You're making $1, you want to make 100.

[01:14:30] You're making 100, you want to make 10,000, right?

[01:14:32] Well, if you're improving by 10% per year, right?

[01:14:38] Which sounds like a reasonable level of improvement.

[01:14:41] It'll take you 50 years to get to 100x, right?

[01:14:47] If you can improve by 100% per year, the same goal will take you just eight years.

[01:14:54] Wow.

[01:14:55] Right?

[01:14:56] Yeah, so the first goal you probably won't live to see.

[01:15:00] Right.

[01:15:00] Right, 50 years later.

[01:15:01] No, you probably won't, right?

[01:15:03] And you'll lose motivation.

[01:15:05] Whereas if you can go at 10x rather than 100%, right, then it's suddenly two years.

[01:15:15] Right?

[01:15:15] Just two years.

[01:15:18] And if you can go to 100x, it's essentially how long it takes you to implement the tactic that can get you there.

[01:15:27] Right?

[01:15:29] Right.

[01:15:29] And then the beauty of that is even if you're only 10% successful, you still get the 10x.

[01:15:37] Right?

[01:15:38] So that to me is like part of that first principles is to just understand under what conditions is it actually possible.

[01:15:50] 100x might sound impossible.

[01:15:52] You say, no, if we just increase by 10% per year, we can get it.

[01:15:56] The problem is it'll take 50 years.

[01:15:59] Okay, what if we could just double every year?

[01:16:01] Wow, then it goes to eight years.

[01:16:03] You, that's a huge reduction.

[01:16:05] Right?

[01:16:06] What if we could go to 10x?

[01:16:08] Suddenly just two years.

[01:16:10] Yes.

[01:16:11] And 100x, couple of months.

[01:16:13] Yes.

[01:16:15] So how do I get myself into that 100x mentality?

[01:16:21] Is it asking, is it impossible unless?

[01:16:24] Is it building up the goal in front of that to make sure it is actually a really, really hard goal?

[01:16:30] What else do you recommend to get myself in that kind of impossible unless mindset?

[01:16:36] Yeah.

[01:16:38] I think for me, a framework that I'm using is, is it ignorance that's the problem?

[01:16:47] Inertia or ineptitude?

[01:16:50] Right?

[01:16:50] This is terms that comes from the medical side.

[01:16:54] Ignorance is I didn't know that there's a problem.

[01:16:57] I didn't know how big the problem was.

[01:17:00] I didn't know what the solution was.

[01:17:03] That's ignorance.

[01:17:05] So if you take somebody and they were ignorant of the benefit of having these hugely ambitious goals, right?

[01:17:14] They attend one of my seminars or anybody else that's presenting on this, like Dr. Benjamin Hardy or, you know, whoever.

[01:17:21] And they go, wow, I didn't realize, right?

[01:17:24] You could do this, right?

[01:17:26] You could come up with this crazy target, right?

[01:17:29] Moonshot target.

[01:17:31] Okay, problem solved.

[01:17:32] They do that.

[01:17:33] But what happens if they've learned, they gain the knowledge?

[01:17:37] That is what ignorance is I didn't know.

[01:17:41] Inertia is I knew, but I didn't act.

[01:17:47] Ineptitude is I knew I acted, but I compromised.

[01:17:51] Right?

[01:17:51] So when you're trying to see, well, I now heard about this thing called impossible unless, but I didn't act.

[01:17:57] Why is that?

[01:17:59] Most common reason is fear.

[01:18:01] Yes.

[01:18:02] Right?

[01:18:03] So you have to try and check what am I afraid of?

[01:18:07] Or what is my customer afraid of?

[01:18:10] You know, why aren't they buying my amazing product?

[01:18:13] Why aren't they buying?

[01:18:15] They're afraid of losing something or gaining something.

[01:18:18] It's very seldom that it's ignorance of the benefits that they can get by buying my product or by adopting this approach or the negatives that they don't, right?

[01:18:27] Most likely they know, right?

[01:18:31] It's like the joke with a woman walking up to the guy that's like smoking, you know, and saying, excuse me, your smoking is bothering me.

[01:18:38] And he says, bothering you?

[01:18:39] It's killing me, you know?

[01:18:42] It's very seldom ignorance.

[01:18:44] It's mostly inertia.

[01:18:45] And if it's inertia, it means that there's something we're afraid of.

[01:18:49] Right.

[01:18:50] Right.

[01:18:51] So it's like, what are you afraid of that's blocking you from benefiting from this technique?

[01:18:56] And one of the things I realize is that if I'm afraid that my target or goal will be turned into a commitment, then I'm going to back off.

[01:19:09] Right.

[01:19:10] It's kind of my way of thinking is about is to have very high aspirations, but very low expectations.

[01:19:21] Right.

[01:19:22] As we have this moonshot and then we do whatever we can to prepare to give us a good chance of getting there.

[01:19:30] And if we didn't get there, you know, we don't massively disappoint, feel disappointed or look for anybody to blame.

[01:19:39] We go, okay, what did we miss?

[01:19:42] Right.

[01:19:43] It's that mindset of very high aspirations, but very low expectations.

[01:19:47] As soon as somebody thinks that I'm going to turn their goal or target into a commitment, they will immediately start to negotiate to say, no, I mean, there's 100x is impossible.

[01:19:59] Right.

[01:20:00] Come on.

[01:20:01] It's like, we can't commit to that.

[01:20:02] No, we're not committing to that.

[01:20:04] But what we are doing is we're preparing to see what could make it possible.

[01:20:11] So this is important for me because this is one thing I'm struggling with, which is I can set these 10 or maybe even 100x if I ask if it's impossible unless or through that.

[01:20:23] And, but I also realize with myself and with my team that there are expectations and there's this commitment and I need to break it into, like we talked about earlier, clear next steps, clear goals.

[01:20:36] I need to think about what those are.

[01:20:37] So I need to say this, this week, this month, this quarter, I've got to do these things.

[01:20:43] So how do I set it up so I can take clear next steps, which is, seems required.

[01:20:49] But the challenge for me is I end up, you know, reverse engineering 100x goal, which means if I don't hit it in the month or the quarter, you know, I feel like I've set myself up to lose.

[01:21:00] And, and so how do I have those 100x moonshot, you know, aspirations without the expectation?

[01:21:09] Yeah, I think it's a, it's again, it's the next step needs to solve the problem, right?

[01:21:17] That's blocking me from getting to where I could be.

[01:21:21] Right.

[01:21:22] And that to me is a goal is only useful if it changes what I'm going to do next.

[01:21:30] Think about that.

[01:21:33] Right.

[01:21:34] Right.

[01:21:35] It's only useful if it will change what I'm going to do next.

[01:21:41] Interesting.

[01:21:42] So if, if the goal is 100x, right, or impossible, and I go, oh, the only way of doing that is to get to some influencer that has access to that audience, right?

[01:21:56] So my next step, the problem I'm trying to solve is how to get onto the open win-free show.

[01:22:01] Mm-hmm.

[01:22:02] That's the problem.

[01:22:04] Yeah.

[01:22:04] And then you say, okay, well, what does that look like?

[01:22:06] And knowing that it's a moonshot, right?

[01:22:09] I need a plan B.

[01:22:11] So my plan B is get onto Tony Robbins' podcast or Tim Ferriss' podcast or something like that, right?

[01:22:18] But that changes what I'm doing next.

[01:22:20] And then to say, okay, let me design an experiment.

[01:22:24] And the experiment is designed in a way as there's a clear assumption now.

[01:22:30] The assumption is that it could be possible to get onto open win-free and that it can be done relatively quickly.

[01:22:40] Mm-hmm.

[01:22:41] And now I'm thinking about how can I do that and do it in a relatively quick way?

[01:22:47] And that's now my experiment.

[01:22:49] It's like, how long will I try it before I go to plan B?

[01:22:53] Yeah.

[01:22:53] Let me stop you there.

[01:22:55] I don't know why just light bulbs going off because, you know, you framed it from a scientific method, right?

[01:23:02] Hypothesis.

[01:23:02] Yes.

[01:23:03] And there's, at least mentally, there's nothing scary about that because if you run an experiment, you learn.

[01:23:10] Like the worst thing you're going to do is learn, right?

[01:23:13] You're going to be an experiential learner.

[01:23:14] You're going to say, I ran an experiment and I learned that it's not feasible to get on open win-free.

[01:23:20] We're not in this timeframe.

[01:23:22] Yes.

[01:23:23] And I've already learned.

[01:23:24] And if I keep the learning cycles agile enough, I could decide the next experiment, like you said, is Tim Ferriss podcast or whatever that other thing is.

[01:23:33] And there's just something very both exciting about experiment because experiments have parameters.

[01:23:44] They have known values.

[01:23:46] They have, you know, they don't have infinite learning loops.

[01:23:48] You know, they have feedback that is, like you mentioned, the stove.

[01:23:53] It's not weeks later.

[01:23:54] So you can have a short feedback loop.

[01:23:57] And just framing it psychologically as an experiment based on scientific method seems not only logical, but just seems like just so much more clear.

[01:24:11] And just, it feels less like, you know, before I'd go, okay, I'm going to do 100x.

[01:24:15] I've got to sell a million copies of this book, which means I've got to get on Oprah.

[01:24:19] And then if I spent six months or a year and I didn't get it, I would say I'm a failure and there would be no other rung in the ladder.

[01:24:26] What do I do?

[01:24:27] I just, you know.

[01:24:28] I think your insight is really important.

[01:24:32] And I can tell you just a brief story of where I came up with this quote of we don't learn from experience.

[01:24:37] We learn from experiments.

[01:24:38] We should view every decision that we make just as an experiment.

[01:24:42] Going back to that SAP, very large SAP implementation, you know, with the multitasking.

[01:24:49] So fast forward, we deliver the project on time, in full.

[01:24:53] Kind of anticlimactic, right?

[01:24:56] And the senior vice president at the time that was in charge of that project, he takes me out for the customary steak dinner, right, to celebrate the success of the project.

[01:25:09] And we're at the dinner and I asked him, I said,

[01:25:13] Yuck, I have a question for you.

[01:25:17] It must have taken a lot of courage at that time to give the go ahead to what I was proposing because it was right in the middle of things.

[01:25:28] There was a lot of resistance.

[01:25:30] Is there anything that I said that changed your mind, that made it an easy decision?

[01:25:37] And he said to me, Alan, great question.

[01:25:39] There was one thing that you said.

[01:25:41] You said you identified the problem, why the problem exists, why it hasn't been solved.

[01:25:48] You came up with a simple solution.

[01:25:51] But then you said something that changed everything.

[01:25:53] You said, let's do an experiment.

[01:25:57] You don't say, let's implement a change or this program.

[01:26:02] You told me and my team, let's do an experiment.

[01:26:05] We'll get feedback within two weeks.

[01:26:09] Right?

[01:26:10] If we do the following thing, the rate at which the teams will start completing tasks will start accelerating.

[01:26:17] And it will be so much faster.

[01:26:20] It will be outside of the noise.

[01:26:22] Right?

[01:26:23] If they are currently doing, you know, three to five tasks a week, that's the noise.

[01:26:28] Right?

[01:26:30] It's not useful to say, okay, last week they did three.

[01:26:32] Now they did four.

[01:26:33] We improved.

[01:26:34] No, that's the normal noise.

[01:26:36] We have to get to levels of seven, eight, nine, ten to know that we've actually improved.

[01:26:41] And he said that was the experiment.

[01:26:42] If you made these few small changes, let's do the experiment.

[01:26:48] And I'd like exactly what you just said.

[01:26:51] I thought, wow, what an amazing way to live your life.

[01:26:55] It removes all the anxiety.

[01:26:57] Right?

[01:26:58] From making commitments.

[01:26:59] It's just to think in terms of experiments.

[01:27:02] I love that.

[01:27:03] I just absolutely love that.

[01:27:05] I have one last question because I wish I could, but I can't keep you all day.

[01:27:13] What is your current, it's impossible unless, that you're working on?

[01:27:20] So my goal is to help as many people as possible make better, faster decisions when it really,

[01:27:31] really matters.

[01:27:33] So we make, you know, tens of thousands of decisions every day.

[01:27:37] The estimate is around 30, 40,000.

[01:27:40] Most of those don't matter.

[01:27:42] Right?

[01:27:42] But if you do, getting those right or wrong can be a big difference.

[01:27:47] So that's my goal.

[01:27:50] In order to achieve that goal, I've developed a range of decision support methods and apps

[01:27:57] like Impossible Unless.

[01:27:58] There's the Procon Cloud method and others.

[01:28:01] We have very advanced digital twins that we can use to test, basically do virtual experiments

[01:28:08] about what rule to choose, you know, to use to reduce shortages or surpluses or reduce lead

[01:28:15] time and cost, et cetera.

[01:28:16] So that's my goal.

[01:28:18] My impossible goal is to move from where I'm currently where we have about 40,000 downloads

[01:28:26] of one of our apps at the moment.

[01:28:29] So theoretically, we've helped at least 40,000 people make a decision with our app.

[01:28:34] Is that Harmony Decision Maker app?

[01:28:37] Yes.

[01:28:38] The Harmony Decision Maker app, which you can download from the app store.

[01:28:41] You know, if you want to, you can get it for free.

[01:28:43] You just apply for it or it's like three bucks a month.

[01:28:46] Right?

[01:28:47] But that's my impact contribution.

[01:28:50] Right?

[01:28:50] Is trying to help as many people make decisions.

[01:28:53] So my impossible goal is to get from the 40,000 to the sort of one to four million range in a

[01:29:01] very short period of time.

[01:29:02] Kind of giving myself like two years.

[01:29:05] I realized I broke it down into what are the things that I need to do that can reasonably

[01:29:11] get me there.

[01:29:12] It's a massively ambitious target.

[01:29:15] But I've broken it down with my team to how to get there.

[01:29:19] And part of it is not to go after everything and everyone that could potentially benefit,

[01:29:25] but go for that niche that both need it really.

[01:29:29] And it's typically to do with people that don't feel confident when they are making decisions.

[01:29:35] I love that.

[01:29:36] The app, you know, allows you to look at it from all sides.

[01:29:39] You can actually, we've even embedded sort of chat GPT into it because we all have biases

[01:29:44] and blind spots.

[01:29:46] You know, that thinking hard takes time.

[01:29:48] So we're constantly looking for excuse to back out of it.

[01:29:52] Making decisions is hard.

[01:29:54] So when you're combining the best of AI with the best of psychology that understands what

[01:30:00] are the steps that you have to go through to be able to identify and challenge basic assumptions,

[01:30:05] that's kind of where my focus is at the moment.

[01:30:08] I love that.

[01:30:08] That is an amazing goal.

[01:30:11] How can folks support you on this way, follow you, engage with you?

[01:30:17] What do you recommend?

[01:30:19] How can they get connected to you?

[01:30:22] My social media linked is just Dr. Alan Barnard.

[01:30:25] So I'm on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter.

[01:30:32] I also have a YouTube channel under Dr. Alan Barnard where I'm putting a lot of the research

[01:30:37] that we earn.

[01:30:38] So, you know, we're trying to give as much away as we can as we're learning it.

[01:30:42] And those are the channels that I'm using to give it away.

[01:30:45] So that will be the first call.

[01:30:48] I'll share some links with you that you can share with the audience.

[01:30:52] I've just published a new children's book, which is really I'm nervously excited about

[01:30:57] that.

[01:30:57] It's called My Impossible Decision.

[01:31:00] Oh, wow.

[01:31:00] It basically teaches a very simple method on how to make impossible decisions for kids

[01:31:07] and young people.

[01:31:08] When does that come out?

[01:31:09] Do you have a time frame?

[01:31:11] It should be out probably in the next two weeks.

[01:31:13] You should be able to get it on Amazon.

[01:31:15] Okay.

[01:31:15] All right.

[01:31:16] Well, if you're listening, it's probably out.

[01:31:18] Make sure to look for the book.

[01:31:19] Give us the title again.

[01:31:22] My Impossible Decision.

[01:31:23] My Impossible Decision.

[01:31:24] Go look for the book by Dr. Alan Barnard.

[01:31:28] Make sure to download the Harmony Decision Maker app as I have.

[01:31:32] And then last thing I wanted to ask, what about this new book you're co-authoring?

[01:31:36] What sort of rough time frame do you expect when we can get our hands on that?

[01:31:41] Probably around, we're thinking about, it's a much bigger work.

[01:31:46] And, you know, so probably around a year to get it published.

[01:31:50] But it's really, I met this guy, Dr. Kevin Hamm.

[01:31:56] He's one of the largest domain owners of the internet in the world, right?

[01:32:01] So very, very successful business-wise.

[01:32:04] And when we met, we realized that we have very similar recipes for life, living life.

[01:32:11] But the sequence is just a little bit different.

[01:32:13] So my motto or recipe is, do good, make money, repeat.

[01:32:22] Like solve important problems.

[01:32:25] Really solve them.

[01:32:26] Make a big impact on that, like helping people make really hard decisions.

[01:32:31] Then figure out a way to monetize it and make money and use the process to do even more good, right?

[01:32:38] His recipe is the same, but the sequence is just different.

[01:32:42] His is make money, do good, repeat.

[01:32:45] So basically the book is about how do you 100x your impact or income and then do it again and again and again.

[01:32:54] What have we learned?

[01:32:56] What are the mistakes that we've made?

[01:32:57] I've been pretty good at making quite a big impact, you know, educated more than about a million people around the world, generated billions of dollars of free cash flows for our customers.

[01:33:08] But I haven't really been doing well on the income side because that's not where my mind is.

[01:33:14] You know, my mind is impact rather than income.

[01:33:18] Kevin, on the other hand, has generated hundreds of millions of dollars and probably close to a billion in terms of income.

[01:33:27] But he hasn't been that great in terms of impact.

[01:33:31] He wants to give it away and do that.

[01:33:33] So that's what the book is about.

[01:33:34] That sounds amazing.

[01:33:35] Yeah.

[01:33:36] Let me know when I can sign up for the preorder.

[01:33:39] That just sounds amazing.

[01:33:41] I would love to have you on again, maybe before the book comes out or as the book is coming out.

[01:33:47] Yeah, that'll be awesome.

[01:33:48] And everybody listening, this is your time.

[01:33:50] Make make the best use of it.

[01:33:52] Download the Harmony Decision Maker app.

[01:33:55] Follow Dr. Alan Bernard on wherever you're socializing.

[01:33:59] I know the things you're putting on YouTube are really amazing.

[01:34:02] I follow you there.

[01:34:04] And thank you so much for being on the show today.

[01:34:08] Thank you so much for the invitation.

[01:34:10] Absolutely.