Kevin Garber: [00:03] This week on "It's a Monkey Podcast."

Dr. John Demartini: [00:06] It's having the individual engaged to such a degree they don't require motivation and have them feel like they're part of a culture that's making a difference in the world. When they do that, you don't require incentives as much.

[00:17] They're inspired for a cause. I would say motivation is a symptom, not the solution. But having people engaged and being inspired by the responsibilities and the vision of the company and the culture that they're building, this is the key.

[00:31] [background music]

Kevin: [00:31] Hello. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are in the world. It is Friday, the 20th of January. We are coming to you live from Sydney, Australia at It's a Monkey Podcast.

[00:47] My name is Kevin Garber. I'm the CEO of ManageFlitter, the co-founder of ManageFlitter. With me is my co-host, Kate Frappell, who's the design lead of ManageFlitter. Good afternoon, Kate.

Kate Frappell: [00:58] How's it going?

Kevin: [00:59] Thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Kate: [01:01] No problems.

Kevin: [01:02] As usual, we got a fantastic show lined up today. Coming up later on the show, we've actually got an interview with Dr. John Demartini. Dr. Demartini is a very, very well-known speaker, author, educator, researcher. Dr. Demartini's considered one of the world's leading authorities on human behavior and personal development.

[01:22] I had a chat to him earlier on in the week. That's coming up later on in the show. He was kind enough to Skype in from Houston, I believe, in Texas. As usual, you can email us at podcasteditormonkey.com. You can tweet us. We love to hear from you.

[01:38] Let's get right into it, Kate. News this week, tech news. We always like to cover a little bit of the tech news in a great, fast-moving industry. There's always so much happening that we like to give you, the listener, a little bit of a taste of what is happening on the landscape.

[01:55] We've got some interesting stories this week about Google, and Google doing some interesting bits and pieces with respect to downloading high res images.

Kate: [02:07] They've started to use machine learning to reduce the data needed for high resolution images. They're using a R-A-I-S-R technology which I think could just be RAISR. [laughs]

Kevin: [02:19] It's just a name they made up.

Kate: [02:21] It stands for Rapid and Accurate Image Super Resolution. Google takes an image, reduces it to a quarter of the size, and then presents it to who's requesting it. RAISR basically fills in the details and makes it look high resolution again.

Kevin: [02:41] If you're looking at something...I think they've just rolled this out on Google+, which is their social network which I think is still used in some niches, but generally, people don't seem to use Google+.

[02:55] If you're looking at something on Google+, it's a high res image, and you want to look at that image or someone posts an image, your phone will download a very, very light version of that image. It won't use up your bandwidth, which in some countries is actually a big deal. It's really expensive, bandwidth. It will only download a very light version of it.

[03:21] Then, using this new machine learning algorithms and techniques, it will actually fill in all the gaps. From what I understand, where this technique is quite different to other techniques is that it's actually quite intelligent in that it uses different algorithms and adjusts its algorithms according to the image.

[03:44] It doesn't apply just one standard right. "Cut out 50 percent. We'll fill in 50 percent this way." It makes it a lot more effective in that you actually get a really, really high-quality, accurate, non-blurry image, even though you've literally only downloaded a quarter of the pixels.

Kate: [04:08] I believe it can detect the edges of a particular object inside the image. That's where it will add pixels, and same with certain colors and the density of certain areas in an image as well. That's where the smarts come in.

Kevin: [04:23] People don't think about the images they upload. People don't want to think about image sizes. They also don't want to think about their bandwidth. They don't want to worry about using up their bandwidth and thinking, "If I'm going to use Google+ or Facebook, is it going to chew up all my bandwidth?"

[04:45] Companies are really trying to be smart about it, both on the upload side of things. I know this frustrates you sometimes. They try to compress images...

Kate: [04:55] Always. [laughs]

Kevin: [04:55] After you upload it, so that then the people using the social media network have the compressed version of it. Everything's made a lot lighter because you can't...If someone uploads a profile photo of themselves that's two megs.

[05:11] You don't want someone then, each time they look at your Twitter profile, there's a two meg photo that just scrolls down. They do have to actually compress and limit it in some manner.

Kate: [05:21] I can definitely understand why they do it, but it is terribly frustrating. I recently had an experience on Facebook uploading certain images and, particularly on personal accounts, it seems to be more of an issue, the compression. Business accounts, not so much.

[05:39] Google isn't the only one doing it. Twitter has implemented...They've bought a technology of the same type called Magic Pony from the UK. It does the same thing, but for videos.

Kevin: [05:52] People can upload videos. Then, when people watch the video, it's only downloading part of the video, but it works out which parts are missing and it fills in the gap.

Kate: [06:00] Exactly the same.

Kevin: [06:02] Really smart, interesting technology. In Australia, bandwidth is not such an issue. It's relatively cheap, so we don't have to think about it that much. But I know in South Africa where I've spent some time, airtime and bandwidth is a big issue. I think Facebook spend a lot of effort making very light versions of their app for countries where bandwidth is very...

Kate: [06:28] Facebook are very conscious of bringing Internet to the whole world. I wouldn't mind betting that they put efforts into that type of thing.

Kevin: [06:35] They even want to bring connectivity, using helium balloons or drones. There was some initiative from Facebook to actually bring connectivity in the areas where it doesn't exist.

Kate: [06:48] I remember they were testing out some type of aircraft. I remember when it first launched. Everyone was really happy about it. It's probably solar paneled and it goes to third world countries and helps with the connectivity there.

Kevin: [07:03] They're very aware of it. I think we're going to see a lot more of it. They will get it right, so your frustrations...I think the frustration that you have is you upload an image and it compresses it in a way that it changes the visible quality of the image.

Kate: [07:17] Yes.

Kevin: [07:18] You spend a lot of work on getting this image perfectly right and the colors right, and you upload it, and it pixelates or got funny watermarks and things like that. There's just no way around it, even though the size is not necessarily that big.

Kate: [07:35] No. Even if you read certain guidelines from the particular websites that recommend the upload size or dimensions, you can follow it to a tee and they'll still compress it.

Kevin: [07:46] I think they change things a lot and frequently. The good thing with Facebook and Google, usually they sort things out. We'll get there. Anyway, that's Google's new compression technology, RAISR. We'll put it into the article.

[08:04] If you want to find out more about it, you can always check the show notes at itsamonkey.com. We put links to the article and links to the guests, etc.

[08:13] Next story, really cool. Everyone likes space and space exploration. There's a company that wants to be the first company that mines on the moon. Now, that's in itself probably a little bit controversial, but Moon Express has received full funding for its first trip to the lunar surface later this year. That's pretty quickly.

[08:38] It's raised another 20 million of funding and has now raised over 45 million so far. One of the companies that has invested in it is Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Peter Thiel of course one of the founders of PayPal. He was the first investor in Facebook. Now he's in the news because he was one of the few outspoken supporters of Donald Trump from Silicon Valley.

[09:04] Anyway, that's one of his investments is Moon Express. The CEO says, "Our goal is to expand earth's social and economic sphere to the moon, our largely unexplored eighth continent." I like the way they're making the solar system a smaller place by calling it the eighth continent.

Kate: [09:23] Definitely. Moon Express is also a main contender for Google's Lunar XPRIZE.

Kevin: [09:29] Which of course is a competition to get the first private spacecraft to the moon, where all the funding needs to come privately, i.e. no government involvements at all. Or 90 percent. They can get 10 percent from the governments if they so wish.

Kate: [09:45] They must be a privately funded team. They need to successfully place a spacecraft on the moon's surface, travel 500 meters, and then transmit high definition video images back to earth.

Kevin: [09:59] Such a cool competition to be part of. I actually contributed to the Israeli team. I think it's called SpaceIL. IL is the domain for Israel. I think I've got a T-shirt for my contribution.

[10:13] [laughter]

Kevin: [10:13] I get emails every now and then, and I think they also got a team on track to be first on the Moon there.

Kate: [10:20] Yeah. They're part of this, actually. There's about four of them by the looks of things. Yeah, SpaceIL, Moon Express, Synergy Moon, and Team Indus.

Kevin: [10:32] Interestingly, the company was the first private company to receive regulatory approval from the US government to go to the Moon.

Kate: [10:43] Yeah.

Kevin: [10:43] I wonder what that letter looked like.

Kate: [10:45] It'd be pretty impressive.

Kevin: [10:47] Dear Moon Express, We hereby grant you permission to go to the Moon."

Kate: [10:50] I know, but, I mean it's controversial, but can the US even give that kind of permission? Is the Moon the US's to own?

Kevin: [10:59] Yeah, I don't know about all the laws. I'm not sure. I mean, it's a good question. I've actually reached out to the CEO of Moon Express to see if we can get him on the show, because it'll be interesting to talk a little bit more about the technology behind it.

[11:15] Obviously, it's a lot easier getting machines to the Moon than getting humans to the Moon. The complicating part of getting humans to the Moon is you've got to bring them back. Right?

Kate: [11:22] Yeah.

Kevin: [11:23] Alive.

Kate: [11:23] It takes a lot of years, apparently, too, to get there and back.

Kevin: [11:28] Not years. You're thinking Mars.

Kate: [11:32] Maybe I'm thinking Mars.

Kevin: [11:33] Mars, I think, is about four years one way?

Kate: [11:37] Yeah.

Kevin: [11:38] Mars is far, but the Moon is...I think it's a couple of weeks.

Kate: [11:43] OK.

Kevin: [11:43] Yeah. Yeah.

Kate: [11:44] I'm not that up to speed with space.

Kevin: [11:49] You can't know everything. Look, mining on the Moon, I would imagine, is quite controversial. Mining can be, in a way, is a destructive process.

[12:01] Are we going to go and destroy the Moon? Then again, if it's, for instance, would solve our energy problems on Earth, then we would discover some abundant energy source there. These things are never black and white. Here it is. It's a four-day trip to the Moon.

[12:22] Once it lands, it will explore by hopping across the surface, as well as take pictures and videos to send back to Earth. The Lander will also carry scientific instruments, including payloads from NASA, the International Lunar Observatory, and the University of Maryland.

Kate: [12:34] Aren't they also talking about, in terms of mining, using the water on the moon to get back? Using it somehow as rocket fuel?

Kevin: [12:46] It would be a fueling up station, as well, maybe for further exploration. Maybe on the way to Mars you stop off at the Moon.

Kate: [12:57] That'd be a cool idea.

Kevin: [12:58] You sort of change trains there. The space exploration is really, really interesting. I saw SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, landed another rocket yesterday.

[13:13] Well, they've got this initiative to launch the rockets and then bring them back and land them after they've come back to Earth, to reuse these rockets. Apparently, by far, the most expensive parts of space exploration is the rockets and the fact they get destroyed.

Kate: [13:32] True.

Kevin: [13:33] If you can reuse them, you suddenly start bringing the cost down. That's his whole aim, which is a complicated thing to do, but they've achieved huge amounts of progress. The space shuttle, in part, was a little bit like that, to reuse the actual vehicle, although the boosters weren't reused. Still got a long way to go, but there is progress being made.

[13:56] OK, so we're going to take a short break. Remember you can tweet us at monkeypodcast. You can email us @podcasteditormonkey.com. We love to hear from you.

[14:06] We get these podcasts out every week. We have some fantastic guests coming up in the next few weeks, including the creator of Ruby on Rails and one of the partners at Basecamp, one of the very popular project management software, is going to be joining us on the podcast. We're going to be taking a short break and then we'll come back with my chat with Dr. Jon Demartini.

[14:44] [commercial break]

Kevin: [14:44] My name is Kevin Garber, I'm the CEO of Manage Flitter, and you're listening to the It's a Monkey podcast. Now, if you're a regular listener to the show, you would know that on this podcast, we chat about all things related to startups, tech, entrepreneurship. But we also chat about the human elements of our industry, the human behavioral element of success.

[15:16] I'm excited to say that joining us today on the podcast is Dr. John Demartini, who's a world authority on human behavior and performance, researcher, best-selling author, international educator, and public speaker and former chiropractor.

[15:30] Dr. Demartini is also the founder of the Demartini Institute. He's the author of many books, including nine of his most recent ones, such as "The Breakthrough Experience," "Inspired Destiny," "Riches Within," "Stress to Success," translated into 28 languages. Dr. Demartini, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Dr. Demartini: [15:49] Thank you.

Kevin: [15:50] Dr. Demartini, you've said being a master of persistence means embracing both support and challenge in pursuit of your dreams. Now, from an early age, you actually had a birth defect. You wore hand and leg braces.

[16:04] At school, you had a lot of difficulty with reading, writing, and diagnosed with dyslexia. You actually left school at 14 and you almost died at 17 from poisoning. Then you met someone that inspired you to discover and fulfill your purpose. Here you are today, many, many years of being a leading thought leader in the area of human behavior.

[16:31] In our industry, we hear a lot about the, quote unquote, "overnight success stories." What's very useful to us is actually to hear about the nitty-gritty, the dirty details, the hard stuff.

[16:43] I was lucky enough earlier this week in Sydney, to hear about your success evolution in your chiropractic practice. I think it would be really interesting for our podcast listeners, for us, before we get into the exciting success sort of elements of success, to hear about your story right back from where it wasn't such a quote unquote, "success story."

Dr. Demartini: [17:07] You'd like me to start back at the childhood?

Kevin: [17:11] We can start with your chiropractic practice, when you borrowed some money and you were anxious about how all of this is going to land up.

Dr. Demartini: [17:19] Well, I graduated from professional school in 1982. I went out and started my practice. I had considered mentoring, precepting, and interning with other doctors. I frankly didn't find doctors that really matched what I wanted to do, so I decided to go out on my own.

[17:43] When I went out, I, it was right at the time when it was just about to have downturn in the United States, with the oil crisis. But I got in right beforehand and I was able to get a loan to open up the practice. I got a little $70,000 loan to get me enough equipment to open up the practice.

[18:01] Nine months later, I expanded it. I added another a little over 1,500 feet more and had a doctor and some staff working for me. Then, nine months later, I had grown, and I had five doctors and about a dozen staff members, and I had gotten another $70,000 loan.

[18:24] By then, I got a house, cars, and all the stuff that you normally call success with the trappings of growth, and as my income was going up so were my debts. My taxes were going up. Everything was going up.

[18:41] I had the normal challenges that I think that an entrepreneur begins with, adapting to the new changing environment, having the downturns in the oil market just wipe up whole subdivisions in Houston. 300, 400 people closed down all at once. Thousands of people were laid off, and then, there was road construction going on.

[19:00] I had a lot of challenges in the beginning, but I had the ability to adapt and be resilient the best I could and I went out of my way. I literally went door to door, introducing myself to thousands of people in the community to find out what their needs were and kept matching their needs.

[19:19] I was able to flourish during some of the tougher times, primarily because I had to be creative and be adaptive. I started doing radio and television and newspapers and magazine articles and media and whatever I could to keep exposing myself and keep meeting needs, so it was a bit of a challenge the first few years.

Kevin: [19:35] You discovered during that process what part of it really inspired you, what's you purpose, and which parts were really a drag. That was almost the point at which you found the magic formula to do more of what you love and delegate at the part you didn't love, and in a way that seemed to bring a whole new energy and momentum to your business, and push it through to whole new levels, right?

Dr. Demartini: [20:02] What happened was as I was growing, I was had to learn how to delegate because I was in the way. I kept wanting to do it all myself thinking I knew best, and my exaggerated self-image was blocking me.

[20:17] Luckily, I picked up a book at Walton's Bookstore called "The Time Trap," by Alec Mackenzie. After reading that book, I realized all the pitfalls of delegation I was falling into and so I made a list of everything I was doing. I put next to it how much did it produce per hour to get an idea what was really the most important things to be doing.

[20:40] Then, I went by and I looked at how much meaning did it provide to me because some things I would sacrifice a little profit for some meaningful things. Then, I looked at how much would it cost to replace somebody to do it, to do those activities, to look for spreads, and then I looked at how much time I was spending each day.

[20:57] After doing a chart of those five columns, I had a better idea of where my biggest spreads were, where my biggest returns were. Then, I realized something that was a little bit shocking. The thing that I went for 10 years of college to, the actual doctoring and clinical work, was not the most productive thing I could be doing.

[21:15] It was the second most productive thing, which initiated me to focus more. Even though I'd already been speaking as a professional speaker and already making part of a living by it, I concentrated more on speaking, because I was generating new patients by speaking.

[21:35] I found out that my role was to speak and then get doctors to do some of the clinical work and get teams of administration to do the administrative work. Once I put that formula together, I really took off. I was able to generate enough income from just a morning.

[21:53] It was quite astonishing. My business grew, and I had people doing it and freed me up to do the highest priority things which today is researching, writing, traveling, and teaching.

[22:03] It morphed my program, or my career, from a clinical thing to mainly running businesses, managing people, and leading people, and then to speaking at conferences on how I did that, and then into different industries.

[22:19] Now, I get to travel all over the world. I started in the health profession, but I'm now serving people all over the world. Different industries.

Kevin: [22:27] Isn't it a trap that I see with myself and some of my peers as well, that the illusion of being busy is a bit of a trap? That sometimes if you feel like you're being busy, that you're working on your business and that which isn't important, but unless you actually bring awareness to what you're working on, it's not necessarily the case?

Dr. Demartini: [22:49] I definitely had majored in minors and minored in majors, without realizing it, until I did that exercise. That exercise is a goldmine if it's done. Then, I realized that the key is now to maximize my performance in the highest priorities.

[23:07] Once I identified my priorities, in my case it was speaking. If I went out and did a breakfast talk to 60 people, I would generate 5-8 new patients. Each patient, case average, was about $3,000, so I could have a $15,000 hour by doing presentations.

[23:27] Once I did that, I hired somebody to schedule those, and I was doing those pretty well at least three to five times a week. That generated a whole lot more income and grew my practice, and then, with that and normal referrals, I did really well.

[23:40] Then, people want to know how I did it, so I speak at conferences of how clinically managing people and timing everything and procedures were being tightened. I was like Henry Ford with detail for a while, just trying to get everything down to the most efficient thing I could to get the best service, and there's shortest time for people so people didn't have to wait.

[23:58] I prided myself on not ever having my patients in my office anymore than minutes beyond...Just bare-minimum minutes so they didn't have to stall their life. I didn't like patients having to wait in my office. I wanted them to get service the second they walked in right on schedule.

Kevin: [24:13] That's what I love about hearing your stories. Even though your business was not a tech story, it's almost a classic tech model of iterating, measuring, adjusting, taking the feedback, optimizing.

[24:24] That iterative process, if done right in any business, and opening the lines of dialog with your customers, there's a real magic to staying tuned into that process. That's how so many good businesses grow, through that iterative process. Although it sounds logical, there's many small and big businesses that get that wrong, stagnate, and miss the boat.

[24:52] There's a famous story. Kodak invented the digital camera. Kodak doesn't exist anymore. Somehow, they just didn't stay in tune with dialog with their customers and their market, and they totally missed it, and even though they invented the technology, they went bankrupt and don't benefit from it now at all.

Dr. Demartini: [25:07] It goes to show how important it is, the executive center with foresight, how it can override the more primitive parts of the brain with hindsight. If you learn through trial and error, you won't keep up with the people who are out there foresighting, thinking in advance, and grabbing market share.

Kevin: [25:24] You also say something that I love as someone who manages a team and needs to get the best out of a team. "Motivation is not a solution. It is a symptom." I was almost confronting when I heard you say that as someone who's always trying to honest to motivate my team.

[25:47] But there's a lot of sense in what you're saying there. It's a hard reality that if people are on the right seat on the bus, aligned with the organization and their jobs aligned with their own purpose, motivation is almost a seamless, natural part of the process and comes from them not from you, right?

Dr. Demartini: [26:10] I like to think it's inspired from within. I was with Keith Cunningham at a conference -- I spoke in Dublin last night -- and we had thousands of people there and we were discussing that. It's not just getting the people on the bus, as Jim Collins said.

[26:24] It's also building the culture where people feel that they're engaged and inspired to work with that culture in the dream of the game. It's having the individual engage to such a degree they don't require motivation and have them feel like they're part of a culture that's making a difference in the world.

[26:42] When they do that, you don't require incentives as much. They're inspired for a cause, and so that's important. I would say motivation is a symptom, not the solution, but having people engaged and being inspired by the responsibilities and the vision of the company and the culture that they're building, this is the key.

Kevin: [27:04] Dr. Demartini, the messages in society these days from the media, from social norms, are incredibly strong. A lot of your work talks about understanding your own higher purpose and understanding your values. Is it possible for people to just really have no idea of their higher purpose and their values are?

[27:24] Even some of my previous team members, etc., I've tried to understand what their driving forces are in the tech industry. It's famous that a motivating force for tech people is not money. They're not driven.

[27:37] They're driven by technological challenges, sights of people using their products, etc. How do you work with people that don't necessarily understand what their higher purpose is?

Dr. Demartini: [27:53] Every human being lives by a set of priorities. Whether they're conscious or unconscious, they're living by a set or priorities. Hopefully they're conscious of what they are, but most aren't.

[28:04] Whatever's highest on their values, highest in their priorities, the Ancient Greeks call the "telos," the end in mind. Napoleon, he'll call it the "chief aim." One of my earliest mentors called it the "primary objective."

[28:20] This highest value is the purpose. The telos is the purpose, so you don't have to search for your purpose. It's always there, but wake up to look at what your life demonstrates is truly spontaneously inspiring from within to do.

[28:37] Whatever you do every day that nobody has to remind you to do, that you're inspired to do, that you love doing, whatever that is, that's the purpose. It's not what most people expect it to be or what they think it would be, but what did their life demonstrates is most important.

[28:50] Then, making sure that the people can see a link between the job responsibilities and that initiates engagement. That's what engagement is. No one goes to work for the sake of a company. They go to work to fulfill what's highest on their value, the very highest value, which is the telos, is the purpose, is the thing that they're dedicated to most.

[29:05] They spontaneously are inspired from within to fulfill that. Once they can see how their job duties help them do that, they're inspired, they're engaged, and they produce.

Kevin: [29:13] You've mentioned one of the questions you should ask in a job interview is, "How would this job description help you fulfill what is most meaningful in your life?" If people don't have a good answer for that, does it mean that they just...

Dr. Demartini: [29:28] They're not engaged.

Kevin: [29:29] If there's alignment, they'll be able to answer that, and if there's not, it's just a bad fit.

Dr. Demartini: [29:33] If they can't answer that in less than a second to three seconds, literally one second, if they're not fluent in the answer, they're not going to be congruent. I've dealt with thousands of people in interviews and things like that in engagement in people and companies. I'm absolutely certain that's a science.

[29:53] If you can ask them, "How specifically is to doing this job duty going to help you fulfill what is truly most important to you, once you define what that is," if they can't answer it and just blurt out immediately the response, they're not going to be engaged in that duty.

Kevin: [30:06] Then you're going to have to use all the sophisticated motivation techniques.

Dr. Demartini: [30:11] That's a symptom. You're going to use motivation, and you're going to use all these gimmicks to get people motivated. It cost overheads, it costs money, it adds HR, and you're adding bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a by-product of incongruencies and non-engagement in companies.

Kevin: [30:26] Interesting. Dr. Demartini, you also mentioned that the number one question that you have in your seminars and your workshops people ask you is how to stay focused. It's something I hear a lot from my peers and from team members as well.

[30:42] Is that part and symptom of our distracting society? Is it part people not totally in tune with their higher purpose? What's driving the need? Is there an innate understanding that focus will actually drive productivity, and they understand and they want more of that?

Dr. Demartini: [31:03] Every human being is spontaneously focused, inspired, and dedicated to what their highest value is, guaranteed. When somebody says, "How do I stay focused?" that means they're attempting to live by something other than their highest values.

[31:20] If they can't stay focused on the things they think are important to do, what they think are important to do or what's important to them. Until they can see what that high-priority action is, and how it's going to help them fulfill their highest priority, it's illusion.

[31:34] I have people tell me that they want to be financially independent. I just asked thousands of people in Dublin last night, "How many of you want to be financially independent?" Thousands of them. They all put their hands up.

[31:47] Then I asked them how many are, right now, financially independent. This was a high-end group, so there was a higher percentage than the global average, but it was no more than one and a half percent. That was it.

[32:00] You have a small, few people that actually do it. The average around the world is less than one percent, but these are executives, so there were a lot more of them there.

[32:08] The thing is, they all have a fantasy about being financially independent, but they don't have the values that will ever lead them there. They have a higher value on buying consumables and depreciables, and buying things that leave a liability, than they do in knowing, discerning, and buying assets that put money in their pocket and build their wealth.

[32:26] As long as their values are not leading towards buying assets, and they'd rather spend their money on things other than that, then they're basically going to go backwards in financial independence. They're not going to obtain it. That's why 99 percent of the population doesn't.

[32:41] Most people fantasize and think, "I want to be financially independent." No, they don't. They want to spend their money and have the lifestyles of the rich and famous without the income. They want to spend more than they make. That's the fact.

[32:53] Many people, what they think is important to them is not what's important. It's what their life demonstrates that they spontaneously do. That's what's important to them. Getting that distinction and knowing that difference...

[33:05] I put together an entire questionnaire in my website to help people discern that, to help people make that decision, because otherwise, they're going to be living in the illusion. They're going to think, "I can't stay focused."

"[33:16] Why can't they stay focused? Why keep sabotaging? Why am I not driven?" They're going to be distracted. When you aren't inspired by your highest value, you're easily distracted by other people telling you what to do, and then you're further into a vicious cycle.

Kevin: [33:29] Many thousands of years ago, Plato said, "Know thyself and be thyself."

Dr. Demartini: [33:35] That's the Delphic Oracle that carried that on. That was the great truth. Most people don't know what their values are because they're not taking the time to do it. They've injected the values of outside authorities, mothers, fathers, preachers, teachers, or peer pressure, some society. They've clouded the clarity of what's really important to them.

[33:52] Letting themselves to be free to be true to themselves is very powerful. Seeing how what they're doing in their job is helping them fulfill that is the key to engagement.

Dr. Demartini: [34:02] Dr. Demartini, in our industry, the tech startup world, it's infamously difficult. A lot of companies struggle to get product market fits, and have co-founder fallouts. Sometimes, it's pretty difficult to stay energized and motivated.

[34:20] One of the things that I read that was even pretty useful to me as an owner and entrepreneur is when you're going through a perceivably tough time, to ask yourself the question, "How is this experience helping me fulfill my purpose, and how can you extract benefits on what's happening?"

[34:40] You also comment about that this dualistic nature of life and the universe, that the good and the bad is just as equally important parts of this entire journey that you're going through. I think that's incredibly valuable for startup founders to really remember.

[34:58] Sometimes we feel that if we're having more of the bad and less of the good, we're perhaps sometimes not as capable as we should be, or we're failing, etc.

Dr. Demartini: [35:10] My experience is there is no such thing as good and bad. That's the delusion that we keep living in. What we do is we have this arbitrary assumption that something is good, and then we wait weeks or months or years. We find out the challenges and the downsides of it. We think something is bad, and we find out upsides to it.

[35:25] Why wait to have the wisdom of the ages with the aging process? Why not just find out that there's two sides to things? In quantum theory, everything is an event. It's not a positive or negative, or good or bad.

[35:36] There's no positive pole without a negative pole in a magnet. In a magnet, when we embrace both sides of the magnet, we have magnetism. We need both sides. I would say that the child that's overprotected, over-supported, and got all this positive and happy supportive thing, usually stays juvenile and dependent, and it holds him back.

[35:54] The challenging stuff, the tough stuff, and responsible stuff is what makes them entrepreneurs. People will think that terrible stuff is bad, but it's not. It's actually what makes you great.

[36:05] It's the challenges in the world that build entrepreneurial experiences.

[36:09] When we're out there looking to solve problems, if we didn't have problems in the world, we wouldn't have businesses. The businesses are built out of people's problems. Our job is to find them, not run from them, but to embrace them and use them to a great advantage, to serve people with them.

Kevin: [36:25] As one of the philosophers says -- I forget which one - said, "That which hurts instructs."

Dr. Demartini: [36:31] I think there's wisdom in that. I always say that the greater the challenge, the greater the opportunity. I don't see things as good and bad. I see them as events. The question is, is both sides of that magnet served? How specifically do they serve? That's what you want to get. You come from that attitude, and there's no setbacks or failures, there's just feedbacks.

Kevin: [36:52] Dr. Demartini, you spent a lot of time in Australia. Interesting, your insights. We spend in the tech industry here, there's always a lot of talk about how cultural differences between Australia and America. What do you notice? Any insights or observations how Australia is different in the business level, the human level, to the US?

Dr. Demartini: [37:16] I don't know if there's as many differences as there are similarities. I think that people are people. They want to get ahead. They want to raise a family. They want to be loved. They want to be appreciated. They want to come up and innovate.

[37:28] Today, with the global environment, that difference in culture, I'm not finding it really that big and significant anymore. People in every country I've been to -- I travel in 60 or so countries a year -- everybody is trying to do the same thing, trying to achieve, trying to serve, trying to build businesses, trying to earn income, trying to raise families.

[37:49] I find more similarities than differences in the cultures. I can't make a statement that Australia is one way. I find that you got a complete spectrum in every country I go to with people.

Kevin: [38:00] With all that travel, how do you practically deal with time zone switches and keeping your energy levels? Just curious. It just seems like an incredible investment of energy to do that amount of travel.

Dr. Demartini: [38:15] I don't even think about it. I get on a plane. I just flew from Dublin to London, London to Houston. That's an hour and a half to London from Dublin, and then about another ten and a half hours to Houston.

[38:28] I got my computer, I went to work. I landed, and I found out I had this interview. I didn't know I had this interview because it wasn't on my itinerary the other day. I left Sydney, Australia, I think on Tuesday.

[38:39] I spoke with you guys Monday. I was in Singapore Tuesday night, and then I went up to London and Dublin. I had to speak at a conference there and did a webinar. Then I'm here. I'm here till Monday. Tuesday, I go to LA. I'm on the go constantly. I don't know if I ever have a time zone that becomes normal. I don't even think about it. I just get to work.

Kevin: [39:00] It's incredible. I know sometimes people -- my friends in the US -- that travel from LA to New York, a few hours, struggle even with that jet lag. Your physical adaptation and resilience is quite amazing.

[39:15] Dr. John Demartini, performance and behavior specialist, really appreciate you joining us on the podcast. We're going to put up links on the show notes to your website and all your bits and pieces. Thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Demartini: [39:26] Appreciate it. Thank you for what you're doing.

[40:01] [commercial break]

Kevin: [40:09] Kate, I stumbled upon Dr. Demartini many, many years ago -- I think one of his books -- and been to many talks of his. I love how clear and articulate he is. He always gets me excited. His life story fascinates me. It is such a turnaround life story.

[40:29] I got him to speak about his business story and how he created the business because it's something that I haven't read or heard about in any of his talks.

[40:38] He built a really big, successful medical practice from nothing, just by iterating and adjusting and finding out what he is good at. He got really good at learning how to grow and run medical practices.

[40:52] People came to him for help. People liked to hear about him talking about other things, and it just grew. Now he travels around the world. His schedule, he must have a very strong constitution to...

[41:07] He's constantly traveling, and he said he doesn't experience any jetlag. He gets wherever he is and adjusts into it.

Kate: [41:14] He doesn't even think about it.

Kevin: [41:15] Doesn't even think about it.

[41:17] [laughter]

Kevin: [41:17] He gives over a thousand interviews a year and 300 hundred talks. Definitely a remarkable person.

Kate: [41:28] I think he made a point. He said earlier on, when he first opened the practice, he had to get creative in terms of advertising and surviving difficult times. Door knocking and all sorts of things.

[41:40] I think that's carried through, by the sound of it, to where he is now. He had to continuously be creative about the ways that people find out about him, and hear about him, listen to him. Look, now he travels to different countries nearly every day.

Kevin: [41:56] He talks a lot about the higher purpose and your value system. It is a very elegant and simple way of looking at things. If you look at your own diary or your social calendar, or even your work calendar, you can't hide away from what are your priorities.

Kate: [42:19] That's true.

Kevin: [42:20] We make time for what's important to us. We do.

Kate: [42:27] To a degree. He also said too the things that you do spontaneously are also subconsciously your higher values because you don't even have to think about them. You just do them.

Kevin: [42:38] Exactly. I think all of these frameworks, metaphors, and methodologies are all very useful to self-reflect, so that we can sometimes see where we're at with the work that we're doing, with what we're filling our days with.

[42:58] As entrepreneurs and business owners, it's a classic trap -- I think I mentioned this in the interview -- of busyness as opposed to productivity, I think for us all. Busyness can mask non-productivity.

Kate: [43:14] Like you said, you got to learn to delegate, eventually.

Kevin: [43:17] Which is very hard for entrepreneurs that tend to like being in control of their journeys. One thing I really liked about him as well is what he said, the whole balance and having to deal with the good and bad of the journey.

[43:31] There's the happiness movement which might have become misunderstood, where people might even be feeling bad when they not feeling happy. Do you know what I mean? You're looking at me a little bit confused.

[43:47] [laughter]

Kate: [43:47] Feeling bad when they're happy. [laughs]

Kevin: [43:48] What I mean by that is there is some schools of thought that say happiness is a choice. If you're not happy, it's because your attitude isn't right, and things like that.

[43:58] But I really liked Dr. Demartini explaining that the dualistic nature of life and the universe is that the bad is a part of the good, and you have to go through the bad for the good. You're living in a delusion if you think everything should or must be happy and good the whole time.

Kate: [44:21] Sure. I think you appreciate the good more when you've experienced the bad.

Kevin: [44:24] It gives you some context and relativity.

Kate: [44:28] Yeah, and perspective. If you're doing well now, you recognize that you're doing well, or that you're happy, versus the time when you weren't. But if you've always been happy, then you've got nothing to judge that on.

Kevin: [44:42] Like child stars that have success to early. I'm not an expert in the area, but it's so extremely obvious how disproportionately their lives derail, and it's always incredibly tragic.

[44:58] Sometimes I wonder, is it because there is something magical about not being able to have everything that you want, particularly at a early age? If you have such success at an early age, and you have fame and fortune and anything your heart desires, it's almost like the human psyche implodes on that.

[45:16] There's person after person. There's that actor, Amanda Bynes, I think she was on a Disney show in the states.

Kate: [45:28] She was the star in that "She's the Man" movie.

Kevin: [45:32] Right. She was one of the youngest people to have her own talk show host, at 16 or 17. You watch YouTube videos of that, and she was so smart. Wow. Sharp and smart. Unfortunately, over the last couple of years, she's had a lot of personal challenges.

[45:56] There's a lot of interrelated forces, and it's probably comforting to a lot of people that feel pressure that they need to be happy, and satisfied, and fulfilled the whole time. Guess what. You don't. If you're not, you're probably on the right journey because none of us are. As he said, it's delusional and unrealistic.

Kate: [46:17] Another point he brought up too is about motivation, that it's a symptom, not a solution. The good and the bad...

Kevin: [46:28] Lack of motivation.

Kate: [46:29] The good and the bad. If you're in a bad state, it can almost motivate you to get out of it.

Kevin: [46:32] Absolutely. When you're leading teams as well, it's a hard reality as I mentioned in the interview. If someone's not motivated, leadership by beating the stick can only work for the short term. Sooner or later, it's not going to result in this.

[46:57] There's an underlying mismatch there. His question of what purpose does this job interview or this job description, what will it fulfill in you, would be a really interesting question.

Kate: [47:11] It would be. He did say these people should be able to answer that immediately. I don't know that you could. Personally, I'd have to sit on it.

Kevin: [47:20] I don't know if some people think in those terms. Everyone clearly needs a purpose and has a purpose, but I don't think they necessarily use that language.

Kate: [47:31] No, and they do not have it defined.

Kevin: [47:33] Especially some technical people that don't speak in this metaphorical language. You probably have to workshop it a little bit with them to unpack the language or make them familiar with the language.

Kate: [47:48] A lot of people's values too come through their actions rather than their words. Until you see them work, or you could ask them about their lifestyle, or how they approach certain tasks. That would give you more insight, potentially.

Kevin: [48:02] What I find interesting in interviews, job interviews, I usually try to find a point of discussion where they light up. There'll be something. Sometimes, you'll be talking in an interview, and they've casually mentioned in their résumé they're into archery or something.

[48:25] You throw it out about, "Oh, I see you do archery." You'll literally, physically see them light up. Immediately, you can see that that's their passion. We can't always necessarily make our hobbies our livelihood. Some people can. Some of us can't.

Kate: [48:50] Sometimes your hobbies are important to stay hobbies, because once you take them to a professional level, they're not fun anymore.

Kevin: [48:58] It can be seen two ways. Some people have enjoyed making their hobbies a livelihood, and some have enjoyed keeping it not work.

Kate: [49:08] It goes both ways.

Kevin: [49:09] I do like that question. I'm actually curious to try it, particularly in a tech interview where, as mentioned, tech people don't necessarily...Some do, but a lot of the time they're not necessarily familiar with that type of metaphorical way of seeing the world. That would be interesting.

[49:30] Peter Thiel, we mentioned in the interview...Sorry, at the beginning of this podcast with Moon Express. He mentions that he's got an interesting interview question, which I have used before.

Kate: [49:43] What's that?

Kevin: [49:43] It's quite an interesting one. It said, "What commonly held belief do you disagree with and convince me why I should change my view around it?"

Kate: [49:54] That's an interesting one.

Kevin: [49:56] That's an interesting one because you get to see how people handle difficult discussion, a sensitive topic. How they can have to convince you of something, especially the tech industry.

[50:11] Developers have to convince you they need an extra server, or to approach things another way, or something can't be done or it needs to be done. They have to convince the exec or the c-suite of a lot of things. It's quite an important skill.

Kate: [50:25] It would test a person's ability to logically explain something as well, particularly in a tech field where it could be quite difficult to convey that language to someone who wasn't familiar with certain terminology.

Kevin: [50:41] Exactly. Tech people, if you're a developer listening to this podcast, the one thing that I would say is that to develop the ability to explain the complicated tasks to non-technical people is a huge, huge advantage. It will help your career significantly.

Kate: [51:04] I think it's common like in the medical field and stuff too. You have to ask your doctor, "Please, in plain English, repeat what you just said." [laughs]

Kevin: [51:15] Drop the jargon. Zoom out. I know for technical people it is a lot of brainpower. A few of them have said to me it's when they have to translate it, they have to really think hard.

[51:29] You can understand. Image having to explain the Internet to someone from another planet that isn't aware of it.

Kate: [51:40] Very difficult.

Kevin: [51:41] It's hard if they're not familiar with the building blocks. How deep do you go? It's a two-week exercise to explain it. It's not an easy thing to do. There's a lot of components to the technical process. Those are some interview questions.

[52:02] It's tricky because we don't live in a perfect world. I don't think everyone can be doing a job that fits in with their absolute...We can all aim to it, and we can all aim to have team members that are.

[52:12] We can all aim to have jobs that are, but sometimes I think there's a bit of the reverse. Sometimes, I think we need to find purpose and meaning in what we're doing, right?

Kate: [52:24] Yeah, and that pursuit of finding that meaning? Your meaning can constantly change. You know what I mean? For this year, you might have a particular purpose, but once you start heading towards it, you realize that might not be what you want and you've got to change tack.

Kevin: [52:45] Things change as well. I'm at the stage of life where a lot of my friends are questioning their paths and changing their paths. We're lucky we live in a society where we've got these high-level problems where we can change things.

[53:00] I'm very envious of my...I lose track of the generation labels. Millennials? People in their early mid-20s, are those Millennials? Those are Millennials, right?

Kate: [53:05] Yeah, mostly teenagers, I think. [laughs]

Kevin: [53:06] Are they?

Kate: [53:06] Millennials, yeah.

Kevin: [53:07] Millennials, and then there's Gen Zs, apparently, which are after Millennials. Anyway, my friends are in their early to mid-20s. I'm lucky I didn't have to have friends of all different ages.

[53:27] My oldest friend is good old Jimmy. He's 77, so... [laughs] We all love Jimmy, and he works with team ManageFlitter. My younger friends, the ability they have to travel, for instance, is such a privilege.

Kate: [53:47] It's so accessible now.

Kevin: [53:49] My friend Mattie, she listens to this podcast often. She's 22 and has been to 22 countries. That is amazing. In my day, there was just no way in hell that anyone would have been able to afford that.

[54:04] She's worked and she's studied in places and she's spent some extended periods of time. I think that's also great about Australia being a very middle class sort of economy, that it's accessible. It's not that top and bottom heavy as the US or South Africa.

Kate: [54:22] Yeah, plenty of opportunities now.

Kevin: [54:24] Plenty of opportunities to volunteer toward visas, even visas, I mean, you can get, there's all sorts of visas for Australians under 30, right?

Kate: [54:31] Oh, yeah.

Kevin: [54:32] In Japan, Israel, I think even the States, I'm not sure, Canada, you can get all these work visas. What a fantastic opportunity.

Kate: [54:39] I know the Australians ones, maybe not for every country, but we've definitely got like nice extended periods. I have a friend who's here from the UK. They get a year where they can work. They have to get two jobs in that time.

[54:58] Then if they want to extend it, they have to do some kind of agricultural work, whereas in the reverse for Australians, you can go two years with no limitations, no restrictions.

Kevin: [55:08] You know what would be really great? If the countries puts together national service, and they coordinated, so when you finish school, provide some incentive to do a national service in some other country. French people could come here, and we can go there, and it's a coordinated national service working on the environment or not-for-profits.

[55:34] I think also, because of the gap year where it's just one big party, it's a bit of a lost opportunity as well, I think.

Kate: [55:40] I think these things need to be accessible and in major cities as well. The whole idea of the helping out with agriculture here in Australia, I mean, the concept is good, but a lot of people don't opt for it, because they're going to have to move out of the main cities. Then there's nothing there for them to enjoy as young people.

Kevin: [56:00] The backpackers I've chatted to that have done fruit picking, Australia's got a special visa for it. It's desperately in need of people to pick fruit and it's got a special visa if you come and pick fruit. I've never met anyone that's enjoyed the process. They're stuck in the middle of nowhere with very few people.

Kate: [56:18] In the sun. [laughs]

Kevin: [56:18] Harsh conditions and picking fruit. But they all manage to sort of merge into some other track and land up in the big city somehow.

[56:31] Anyway, we have meandered wonderfully. I've hope you enjoy this podcast. If you want to get an email notification when these podcasts are released, just hop onto itsamonkey.com and pop in your email address.

[56:46] As mentioned, we've got some fantastic guests coming up over the next few weeks. In a couple of weeks, we'll be talking to David Heinemeier Hansson. He's the creator of Ruby on Rails. He's a very interesting and very smart guy, and quite outspoken and controversial sometimes, which is great, which is what we like.

[57:06] We'll be chatting to Neil Patel about content marketing as well. We'll actually be talking to a podcast expert on the podcast, which is a bit meta as they say.

Kate: [57:20] Podcast Inception.

Kevin: [57:21] Exactly.

[57:21] [laughter]

Kevin: [57:21] We've got some fantastic guests lined up. We're always on the hunt for new guests. We've got a great year planned. Anyway, you've been listening to It's a Monkey podcast. I'm Kevin Garber. I'm the CEO of ManageFlitter. With me has been Kate Frappell, who is the design lead of ManageFlitter. We will chat to you next week.

Kate: [57:44] See you.

[57:45] [background music]