The Intersection of Spirituality and Technology Part 2 with Aaron Bare, author of Exponential Theory: The Power of Thinking Big

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're bringing you part two of our conversation with the author of Exponential Theory, Aaron Baer, on the spiritual side of exponential technology and Aaron's journey around the world. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:20) There's a number of ways to go with this, but one of my first thoughts with the GPT advancements was it's making everybody rich in the sense that if it was the 1800s, right, I would have to go around and hire all these brilliant people, bring them to me, put together this community, and start to query them and interact with them, figure out where things are. I can take GPT now and say, here's 20 books, consume only these 20 books, and then I'm going to ask you questions about it, and you're going to be an expert. I could say, now read these other 20 books about thinking and apply this framework to this knowledge set. And then I have this ability to do this for basically free, you know, pennies, if that. And that is insane. That information at your fingertips, it'll change everything. It'll allow people to work as hard as they want. And when I start thinking about this and I run my business, we're not huge. We have less than 20 people, but I've been running it for about six years, and so I've gotten to experience a lot of different people coming and going and things of that nature.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:24) The premium is on the desire and drive to do something, not the, as you would say, the information or the how. It's just the ability, like, if I made a button, Aaron, that was a money button, and you could wake up, you could press the button all the time. Eventually, people would stop pressing the button because they'd be too lazy to press the button. So some people just don't want to get up and do stuff. Some people just want to sit around and do nothing. And that's something I think the technology will make more apparent.

(Aaron Baer at 00:01:59) Yeah. I think that's part of my own program, the XMBA, is to understand we're in abundance technology. I mean, we could spend all of our time learning new technology and never really ever catch up. But it's having the mindset, belief, and attitude to be able to leverage it and then the motivation. And I think that also is finding your purpose and finding something that you can really think bigger on and contribute to the world. And I think what you said is knowledge is abundant. Meaning we all now have access at our fingertips. It does make degrees less valuable. I mean, at the end of the day, a network is good if you go to certain colleges, but just a degree becomes less valuable.

(Aaron Baer at 00:02:39) What becomes important though to me, and that's why I created the XMBA, is I used to teach in these business schools, and people would create these business models that they didn't, they would just do it academically. But I realized that you could very much see the people that had passion and purpose versus ones that didn't. Those are the ones that are getting funded, and maybe they fail because they get blindsided or whatever, but they get back up and they do it again. My goal is to figure out how to get that mindset, belief, and attitude so that people can then apply their passion and purpose to themselves. And that's where then you start to leverage AI and Web3 and all these technologies that are just enablers to do things at speed that we've never done before. And I think that's also part of growth in itself. As we grow exponentially, as the world kind of, I learned a new word the other day, it was called tetrahenagon, which is exponential in all directions. And that's really where we're at right now is we're just exploding with technology, which means that most people are going to say, well, it doesn't affect me because they want to, to your point, not change. But what we're going to see is that it has already impacted every person on this planet. I mean, everyone. Right now you can't even go to some retail locations without a smartphone because they only have digital, or you have a credit card, or, you know, all these systems have really upgraded to understand that the mass of society has now adopted these technologies.

(Aaron Baer at 00:04:07) And it is, you know, equitably, for $25 you could get a smartphone now. So it's all of a sudden, you know, access to information is not the problem. It's now how do you take the inner wisdom to know how to decipher the abundance of information so that you can apply it in a way that is meaningful to you and to what you want to create. And I think that's part of the conundrum today is we probably all have too much opportunity. And that's where, you know, there are programs and there's systems that for a long time, people didn't understand how to leverage them. Now with the internet and, honestly, an AI that can help you navigate whatever problem you're having, and that's where self-therapy and all these different things are coming, we're literally changing the world where we are going to solve our problems at a much faster rate. Just what that means to me and what it means to XMBA graduates is we need to find bigger and bigger problems to solve because the small problems are all going to fade away, and they are starting to, for a lot of people, not all people, because people choose to focus on small problems. And I talk a little bit about trauma and self-limiting beliefs and even people that have road rage or whatever. If you're not able, if your mind's not bigger than your emotions, then you're never going to get anywhere. If your emotions run your mind, you just got to understand that. If you can get angry and it can derail you, that's the first part of kind of the self-therapy that I think technology's started to enable people. The second part is really then understand how to leverage all of these systems in a coherent way so that it takes you where you want to go, where you personally. And that's where for the first time in the world, we generally just had people tell us what to do, go to school, go get a job, you know, go do this and then retire.

(Aaron Baer at 00:06:00) And what we are learning now is that promise is not there anymore of loyalty and jobs and all that. So we have to actually, there's actually more risk in taking a job than there is creating your own job. And I think that's where the world is changing very, very quickly now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:19) I always thought that was so funny when you'd go want to buy a house or use financing in some way. And if you're the business owner, they see you as incredibly risky. But if you work for me, you can get a loan on way better terms. You're super stable. I'm always like, wow, I get it because I have a higher risk tolerance. Right? That's why I'm in this position in the first place. But I always just found it slightly odd because the employees, by definition, have less control over the direction of the business than the principles of the business.

(Aaron Baer at 00:06:52) Yeah, it's an interesting parable that I think we learn in the growth of the idea of all the different ways we can make money today, which you start to realize that people that have multiple streams of income are much less risky than someone that has one stream of income. And I take that to people that are in side hustles and all these different things. You know, what ultimately happens is the people that commit all their time to one thing though and go all in, are the ones that go exponential. And that's the hard thing today is that there's just too many opportunities to make side money and do different things. And we're inundated with it with ideas of how to make a little extra money here, whether it's being an Uber driver or, you know, marketing Airbnbs, or I mean, there's infinite opportunities out there for people today, taking surveys, whatever it is. But instead, finding what is really meaningful to you that you want to do every day. And that's kind of part of my own purpose is to help people think exponential about those things. And also just even inside companies. I work with a lot of companies and senior leaderships, majority, 87% of people aren't really happy in their jobs. It's because they—

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:03) That's such a crazy statistic, right?

(Aaron Baer at 00:08:05) Yeah, it's enormous. And I think we're in a place in the world that we should figure out what makes us happy because we have abundance. Unemployment rate is fairly low. And for people that have some skills, you know, and I take all the people in the Silicon Valley that lost their jobs, you know, most of them are still getting a paycheck and already have another job. Right? I mean, it's, you know, as you look at these people coming out of Facebook, they're either doing startups, all these sort of things. And I really said this when Twitter laid off the first group, these computer science people, there's plenty of jobs for computer science people to go out and find and create for themselves. And I think what I hope to see out of this kind of great big tech layoff is that we see a lot of new startups that solve exponential problems in new ways.

(Aaron Baer at 00:08:52) And that's all a mindset thing. When something happens to you, you're a victim. But when you take whatever happens to you and make it as the opportunity for you to create the next big thing, that's what we'll see out of a certain percentage of these people that have been laid off. And that's going to be exciting to see. And I see it. I see the noise of the startup community is already kind of picking up because you see these people reenergized about the world because most of them didn't like their job in the first place. So now they can work on something that they care about and want to be a part of.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:26) I'm curious about your origins. So I'll give a brief, I'll share first and then you can bounce back. The big things that I see when I look back on my life, milestones that helped me become who I am and how I think is I got hit by a car when I was 11, 12. I had to learn how to walk again. I went through that process, which took a year. My mom got sick, and they said she had two years, and she ended up only having six weeks. But the positive to the negative situation was that me and my siblings, we got to all be in the room and hold her hand as she passed away. That was the real big moment for me when I got into personal development and decided to start trying really hard. And what I found is I've done 600 plus of these interviews with great people, and I've found that in almost all of them, there's these big defining moments in their life where they decide to make this change. And I was curious what yours was, if you had one.

(Aaron Baer at 00:10:19) Yeah. No, in the book, I kind of talk about it as my launching point. I went on this, I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, very small town. The world was big and foreign. You know, anything outside the United States was crazy. But I actually did get an internship in Chicago. I went to Notre Dame and I didn't go to Notre Dame as a student, but I went to their career service center. I broke in. I didn't break in, but I walked in and I did interviews with people on their career center. And the interviews didn't work out. I literally told them I went to a school down the road, Indiana Institute of Technology, where I had a soccer scholarship, very small school. But what happened is walking out, I saw a poster for something called Semester at Sea. And it was about something to travel around the world. And it was a defining moment that I took this little handout, this little brochure, took it home, and just said, at all costs, whatever I'm going to do is I'm going to expand my worldview. And I always wanted to be, I guess you could say, an explorer or go out and see the world. And ultimately, what I did is, six months later, flew a plane to the Bahamas, got on a ship with 500 other students and went to Venezuela, Brazil, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, China, Singapore, Japan, and then back to Seattle. So I circumnavigated the world aboard a ship. And every culture I went into, I learned one about different people and their views on the world. But I also expanded my view, but just having a reflection time going in and out of all these different places and just myself, because I had not known anyone that had ever been on this program. When I went, I was very different. You know, most people were of means and had traveled considerably. I had never been outside the country. You know, I'd been across the border in Canada, near Detroit, but never really been outside the country in a meaningful way. And that defining moment of coming back was really when I got back, I had this reflection of how empty, you know, I had this experience where we went to a McDonald's in Seattle and I hadn't had McDonald's in, you know, quite some time, because we're in places that just didn't have McDonald's at that point. And we went into McDonald's with my parents and they were just so impatient about everything. And I'm thinking, oh, wow, I've had to wait, you know, patience that we have. And, you know, just the fact that everything is not available instantaneously around the world. And you just have this perspective of how, you know, how good it was to be an American, but also how good it was to see people from that. There are great things about other cultures. And part of it is the exact opposite of what we think is great about America is to embrace these opposing thoughts. And I think it always served me well as F. Scott Fitzgerald always said something very similar is, you know, genius is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts. And I think today that's also served me very well.

(Aaron Baer at 00:13:18) As I've advised political parties on both sides, you know, having these conversations about how do we think bigger about their party, as well as government in general. I've also, you know, coached several different CEOs, up to a $10 billion energy company. And those conversations always come back to this defining moment of my ability to have two opposing thoughts is to be very objective, to understand there's always two sides to a story. And if we're going to grow the story the biggest, what's the biggest story we can tell ourselves about it, and then we can tell the world about it. And most of the world is about storytelling, and most of the people that are successful tell better stories. And so I really embraced this story that I told about myself traveling around the world and it redefined my identity and my belonging. And I started to think of myself as a citizen of the globe. Yes, I'm from the United States, but how do we raise tides for everyone? And not just for us and our family, which I probably didn't have that thinking growing up. You know, I grew up in a little bit of a utopia in South Fort Wayne where racism and different things, we didn't have much of it because we just were all together. And, you know, I went to a predominantly African American middle school and high school changed a little bit. But those experiences, I had some empathy as well as what I'll call compassion for all people. Because I was friends and, you know, I think ignorance is built out of not knowing. But then when you go around the world and you see from all these different cultures and perspectives, is there something unique about all those different points of view? And that's kind of part of where I grew into the Exponential Theory. So I can link it all the way back. Exponential Theory is growing conscious about the world when it's also thinking bigger about all people and helping all people and all boats rise in the tide. And I think that really goes to this rapid expansion that I had in my own mind during that time. And I've never stopped learning.

(Aaron Baer at 00:15:21) It accelerated my learning so much, and I've just consumed knowledge. But to the point that I'm now at a place that I understand that it's not the knowledge you consume. It's really the wisdom and your own inner belief and your exponential mindset, belief, and attitude to what you can impact the world. And that's where my world and the people I attract into it, including yourself in this podcast and other things, and whoever else is listening to this, really helps grow that. And it's growing my mission as well, as I want to help every single person out there think bigger from whatever country they're from, whatever circumstance, because we're not our past.

(Aaron Baer at 00:15:59) We're not the circumstances we were born into. We're literally standing here with the opportunity today, now, to think about the future and to leverage the same technologies that none of us understand and really grow into disrupting whatever the status quo is, which is all the people sitting on the sidelines saying that things are not going to change. The only thing that I'm certain of is that things are going to radically change at a faster pace than we've ever seen before. Every five years, it's just going to be a blink of the eye. Literally, the next ten years, we're probably going to have as much innovation as we've had in the last thirty thousand years.

(Aaron Baer at 00:16:37) And that's not a stretch to think about, but that just shows you the exponential curve that we're on right now, that we have to think in new ways. And that's why I think my program, Exponential Mindset, XMBA, is timely. And I honestly think that at least someday, and it's probably sooner than I think—I used to say I'm going to work on creating 1 million exponential leaders for the rest of my life. There'll be someday I have to rename the company 1 billion exponential leaders.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:05) Where are you at now?

(Aaron Baer at 00:17:06) We're about 10,000.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:08) So we're—

(Aaron Baer at 00:17:08) On that exponential curve where we're starting off. But the whole goal is just to continue to grow this. We were at a conference last week. We had a couple hundred different companies express interest. So we're in this process of growth because, ideally, if you don't have a company culture that's thinking big and exponential, and you're not enabling innovation to come from anywhere, you will be disrupted. And I have lots of examples in the book, and I think that's where I've gotten some good reviews on Amazon.

(Aaron Baer at 00:17:37) And obviously, it was a number one bestseller and hit Wall Street and USA Today. Been blessed in those areas. One year anniversary of the book, and it's still selling ferociously. And my goal is to just get more and more people to think exponential, whether they buy the book, they join the course, or they engage me to help them and their companies think bigger. And that becomes a purpose, as I don't want to do anything outside of that because I've realized that through all my history of growing and learning, it's to come to this point, whether it was neuroscience or behavioral economics or all these different subjects I include in the XMBA.

(Aaron Baer at 00:18:16) The goal is to help each individual, no matter where they are, think bigger about who they are. And because each one of us now has been enabled more than any other generation in history to make an impact on the world. It's just our choice. It's our mindset, because we all have the same tools. I mean, it's not that a hundred years ago, there was a very big difference between the royal families and the rest of the world of what tools they had.

(Aaron Baer at 00:18:39) Now we're all fighting for the same Wi-Fi and the same speeds, and we all have that same speed. And we have the same Internet, and we have the same ability to do those things. And that's just really exciting to me to be part of something that's helping people think that, wow, you're part of this system that is changing. And if it's disrupting you, it's forcing you into a new opportunity. And that's just whether your mindset accepts it or not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:07) People want to learn more about the book. Where do they go? What do they type in?

(Aaron Baer at 00:19:11) Yeah. You can learn more on my website, aaronbaer.com. And the course is xmba.io because you come in as a linear thinker and you go out as an exponential thinker. So that's our goal, is to help people think bigger. It's a seven week course, and we're launching the open course now.

(Aaron Baer at 00:19:33) We've done it with a lot of different companies and, like I said, got feedback from about 10,000 people. Now it's time to really scale that. So we're ending in our deceptive phase where our goal is to really grow this and impact as many people as possible. And it's really a learning community where I think today, it's this continuous idea to help and learn from each other and grow. And that's ideally what we're creating, which I just feel really happy that I am where I am.

(Aaron Baer at 00:20:03) I struggled for so many years to find my own place, which I think a lot of people do. But it really is when you find it and you know it and you become certain, it becomes exponential. And that's where every day I go out with a goal to talk to people and help expand their mindset and get on a podcast like yours. And hopefully 10 or 20 or 50 or a 100 people take this call to action to say, I want to think bigger about myself. Whether they download my ebook for free, which is available through aaronbaer.com, or they buy it on Amazon, or they end up taking the course, doesn't matter.

(Aaron Baer at 00:20:38) It's just all part of my journey to make an impact.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:41) Well, thank you for being out there creating these types of resources, creating these types of communities, because that is right up my alley. And I love when I got to learn about you and discover you through my team. And I was like, this guy, he's like a business, technology, Tony Robbins, all mixed together in one. I was like, I like this guy. Let's talk to him.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:02) So thank you so much for doing this.

(Aaron Baer at 00:21:05) You're on your way too. So I got your book and really enjoyed some of your disruptive thoughts to really break down some, I think, stereotypes as well as just ideas to really help people think bigger about the CTO role, which I think is really important to be there on the business side making decisions today and not necessarily just being, as you said, a developer. It really is plotting the future. And we're seeing more and more of that where CTOs are the track to the CEO role, especially in technology companies, and understanding the business side of it. And I do play in the version of that.

(Aaron Baer at 00:21:40) And then, as you said, part of it is also the mindset to help both sides of those communicate with each other, which is really a gap right now in most big companies and especially amongst their board of directors and the companies themselves. It's closing those gaps, which I find fascinating and fun. And every day, I enjoy talking about these big things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:02) And those are the opportunities, right? Closing those gaps.

(Aaron Baer at 00:22:05) Yep. Yep. And that's where things get crazy big and fast. And I've been part of some unbelievably exciting companies and look forward to being a part of quite a few more in the future.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:16) Aaronbaer.com. Right?

(Aaron Baer at 00:22:18) Yep. Aaronbaer.com.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:21) We made a podcast, Aaron. How do you feel?

(Aaron Baer at 00:22:23) Feel great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:24) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.