Success Guaranteed: What All Ultra Successful Founders (or Companies) Have in Common w/ Salim Ismail | EP #45

0:00We're seeing companies going from start up to a multi -billion dollar valuation like inside of a year It's an existential threat for the incumbents the world is very different today for an entrepreneur than it was even 20 years ago We've never seen company scales so fast, but all of them every single one of them had this one common thing Which was a purpose? How do you decide what to say no to what fundamental problem? You're trying to solve the mtp is the emotional energy that drives you It's what keeps you going at your north star when things get tough and doing anything big and bold in the world is hard.

0:36Hey, welcome to Moonshots and Mindsets. I'm here with my dear friend, Saleem Miss Mayal, the co -author of Exponential Organizations 2 .0 with me, the first CEO of Singularity University. And we're going to be talking about something that just lights my soul on fire and hopefully yours as well, which is the whole topic of having a massive transformative purpose as the bedrock of creating an exponential organization. But before we talk about an MTP, Selim, tell us what is an exponential organization and why the hell does it matter? Hey Peter, so in the XO is a new breed of organization that allows you to scale the organization's structure as fast as you can scale technology and pretty much all organizations in the 21st century will be built in this way.

1:23And that's essentially the definition. I know and I want to just put an exclamation point on that these are organizations exponential organizations I mean let's face it the world is very different today for an entrepreneur or if you're the CEO or a business owner Then it was 50 years ago 30 years ago even 20 years ago, right? We're seeing companies going from start up to a multi -billion dollar valuation like inside of a year We've seen incredible work. We've seen companies like you know open AI I basically just put the huge BMS of Microsoft and Google and Apple sort of on back on their heels.

2:02What is going on? What is different? We've seen Uber and Airbnb come out of no place and transform industries, not just a company, transform entire industries. These are the fundamentals of an exponential organization. Give me one more layer of definition of EXO if you would slim. It's where you can scale your organization as fast as you can scale technology where the marginal cost of supply goes to the new zero If you take Uber the cost of adding a car to their inventory is near zero Where's your if your hurts you have to buy a car and add if you're fleet and do all the management of that asset and all that stuff and now we're seeing entire Industries crop up where the marginal cost is dropping to the new zero.

2:44It's an existential threat for the incumbents Yeah, and so in exponential organizations you know, we talk about the 10 attributes that well studied, well documented. These are the attributes, five internal, five external that these EXOs have, that, you know, if you're starting a company, you know, by the way, if you're an entrepreneur trying to figure out what to do next, you know, beginning as an exponential organization from your birth as a data -driven, experimental company with interfaces tapping into the crowd, all of these attributes is amazing. If you're an old -style company who is looking to transform yourself, it's hard, but we're going to talk about the incredible elements.

3:30You know, what I like in this revolution to is an asteroid -impact moment, right? You know, 65 million years ago, an asteroid struck the planet and the slow -lumbering dinosaurs died and went extinct. It was There's the very little mammals that could adapt to the rapidly changing environment that were able to survive. The asteroid that struck humanity and struck the entrepreneurial business world is exponential technologies. They've caused such a flurry, such a change. We've seen all of these companies, old -style lumbering companies, linear companies going bankrupt over the last number of years.

4:09But that's not the topic of our talk today. The topic of our talk today is the underlying fundamental of an EXO called an MTP. So the way this came about is when we started looking at this new model, new breed of organization, and I just want to go back into history a bit. When we were running one week executive programs at Singularity University, UNI, we're on stage, etc. We kept getting this question. Okay, after a week of a CEO sitting in the class, hearing about these breakthroughs, 20 Gutenberg moments, Astrid impacts. They'd go, okay, I get the disruption. I totally got that. What the hell do I do on one day?

4:45Right? And basically the book in the lecture and the thesis of Inexo was the response to that question. How do you adapt and organize for this fast -changing world? And what we did was we scanned 200 of the fastest growing unicorns in the world and said, how are they scaling so fast? How has Ted gone from a single conference to a global media brand in less than 10 years. How is Amazon doing this? We've never seen company scale so fast and we looked at the characteristics of them and tagged them all out and Uber used a staff on demand and Airbnb is leveraging other people's assets and there's different characteristics but all of them, every single one of them had this one common thing which was a purpose and we brand that as an MTP.

5:29What is your massive transformative purpose? Uber is that that everybody should have a private driver. Google is the most famous organizer world's information. X Prize Peter is. Yeah, create a world of abundance. Right? So, go ahead. Yeah, no, it's critically important. And in fact, I'm, yeah, those of you who know me, no, I have an MTP for myself. It's to inspire and guide entrepreneurs to create a hopeful, compelling, and abundant future of humanity. And I wake up every day in the shower, I'll say that two or three times through the day, I'll say it two or three times, it focuses me. You know, we're living in this world of so much opportunity, right?

6:08If you're an investor or an entrepreneur or a business owner, you're being hit with deal after deal after deal all the time, new technology, new information, new opportunities. I call it drowning in abundance and we truly are living in a world where there's just more than you can possibly even absorb, let alone take advantage of. So how do you select what you do or don't do? who, you know, Martin Rothblatt, who's an incredible moonshot entrepreneur, she's on her seventh or eighth moonshot. I remember she gave me a quote, I'm going to paraphrase it. She said, you know, the difference between successful entrepreneurs and various successful entrepreneurs is successful entrepreneurs saying no to many things.

6:52And the most successful entrepreneurs say no to almost everything. And that's interesting, right? Because how do decide what to say no to and it really is your MTP as your filter. If you're clear about the purpose in life you have that you wake up with and you go through the day, you're going to use that to parse like this helps me in achieving my MTP and this does not. Right. Well, I think this become you know, we're in a hyper volatile, very uncertain world where things are changing dynamically And if you're growing a company and you're going super fast, you have to be hyper focused as to what Fundamental problem where you try to solve and the MTP serves as the tagline that guides the entire company because you don't have time to get Doing all hands and get everybody thinking along the same lines every day Because the world is changing so think it becomes the single point focal point where everybody can go Okay, that's what we're about.

7:52And if some junior manager somewhere is trying to evaluate two alternatives, which one fits the MTP better, becomes the easiest heuristic in the world to go, okay, which one helps do that? And then you focus on that. And it allows you to push that entire decision -making down into the organization. We found it's also incredibly good for hiring and retention because the younger generation is very purpose driven. And it turns out it's fabulous for during periods of hyper growth to keep everybody focused during these scalable periods. So it turns out every single one of them had this MTP characteristic.

8:27And the U -frame it is moonshots. And we should talk about the difference between an MTP and moonshots. Peter, you got it. I think the best clarification. Yeah, I'll run that. So I think about your massive transformative purpose. We're going to more detail. And I think every entrepreneur as an individual and every company should have a massive transformative purpose. And it can be the same. or it could be different. But your MTP is the canvas upon which you are painting your entrepreneurial world. So my first MTP, I remember it in my early 20s, it was to make humanity a multi -planter species, it was opening up space privately, that drove me, drove the first dozen companies that I started, and then on that canvas of opening up space, I took very clear moonshots.

9:15So my first one was to build an international space university, which today isn't Strasbourg, France, ISU is doing amazingly well. And so building that university to attract talent around the planet. The next one was on making private spaceflight, demonstrating private spaceflight, which we did with the original Ansari ex -Prize that was funded by Anushansari and won by Paul Alan and Bert Routin and from that ex -price grew, you know, the entire private space flight industry back when it was won in 2004. There were others zero G and so forth. So I think about the MTP is the emotional energy that drives you.

9:57It's what keeps you going. It's your north star when things get tough and doing anything big and bold in the world is hard. And unless you have an MTP driving you that emotional energy you'll give up before you get there. And so it's that North Star, it's the emotional energy, and then your moonshot is a very clear objective. It's like, I'm going to do this by this, and this is how I know I got there, and this is how the rest of the world knows I got there. Yeah. What's your MTP, Selene? Minus to transform civilization. It's a niche project. niche effort. You know, I've been lucky enough to be the forefront of cutting edge technologies, plus I I have a deep, I have a diplomacy background.

10:42My family was heavily into foreign service and helped in the independence movement in India. So there's some genetic obligations there. And I find my, Tony Robbins, I remember once, you brought him to Singularity once. And he took me aside and he goes, you know, there's a lot of people that know that the world is changing a great deal and I call that the tech crowd. I'm like, okay, he goes, there's a subset of that group that knows how broad and deep that transformation is and I call that the Singularity group. Okay, he goes, but there's a, there's a, the people that actually know what to do about this.

11:15I would put on the fingers of one hand and you're one of those people. So if you have any inclination in doing something about this, don't stop. And I was like, you know, talk about being called to the mat. And so I thought about, okay, I had this luxury of being able to choose anything. What's the biggest problem in the world? I'll do one more little segue here, which is I, you know, I used to do these late night meaning of life metaphysics, I remember those who had a lot of long nights. So I did I did one in Toronto, okay, and my dad came to you. He's 90 years old. Okay, so he's sitting and somebody said to me, hey, I loved your TEDx talk titled Fixing Civilization where I talk about the immune system problem.

11:55And my dad hands go goes up and he goes, can I heckle? And we're like, I'm like, yeah, of course you can heckle. He goes, totally disagree with your talk. I'm like, really? Do you not think we need to fix civilization? I mean, you're You know, really? And he's like, no, the fixing part, of course, we need to fix it. My issue is with the civilization part. He said, we've not civilized the world, we've materialized the world. Now we have to do the work to civilize it, right? And it was like wisdom of the elders, boom. I lost all credibility for the rest of that session because every time I said something, they're like, what is your dad think?

12:27And it really set me on a path going, wow, we actually need to civilize the world. And so that's where my amtiping comes from is that fundamental problem of the systemic change of society that is instigated by this incredible 20 Gutenberg moments, the asteroid impacts that is coming along. And the book is kind of like the starting point and the model is the starting point for all of that. A quick break from our episode on June the 6th, Selim and I are going to be running a free three hour workshop on how to actually build and design an exponential organization. Would love to have you join us. If you join us on June In the sixth, first of all, you'll get free access to the book, Exponential Organizations 2 .0, access to an AI that we've built that allows you to query the book and helps you design your exponential organization.

13:14It's June the 6th, it's three hours, it's free, we've never done this before. Click on the link below, dmandis .com, backslash EXO, and join us. All right, now back to the episode. So why an MTP matters? So the first thing in it's really important if you have your MTP and We can talk about how you develop one. I think every exponential entrepreneur and every exponential organization needs to have an MTP You need to put it out there. It helps the world know what you stand for right? That's critically important. So if I said you know what is you know SpaceX is MTP or Elon's MTP I think everybody knows it's get humanity in Mars.

13:57Get your astamars right or for Tesla, it's electrify the planet. The second thing, and I think, you know, we're still until we have a AI, artificial general intelligence, we are still in a massive competition for talent. And having a clear MTP helps attract talent to you and your company. Would you agree with that? 100%. And not just talent, but like mind -to -talent, right? You want people that are aligned and are interested in the same problem. And I think one of Elon's gifts is he can attract people that are all passionate about that particular problem and bringing them to one place. Amazing.

14:34The other thing, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, is your MTP focuses your emotional energy and it fuels your moonshots. I can't stress this enough. Doing anything big and bold. I said this already in the world is hard. and you're going to fail over and over and over again until you win. And unless it's driven by some deep emotional energy, and that emotion can be a positive energy like, aww, like I want to explore the universe or pain. Like I was hurt by this situation in our system and I want to solve it. You're going to give up before you get there. And so, you know, another thing people realize, these moonshots are, you know, 10 year adventures.

15:13They're not overnight. This, I describe this of MTP versus moonshot, but let me give you this visual here. Your MTP is this canvas, this large yellow area here. And mine again was to ever, simply privately open space. And then you take these moonshots on that MTP canvas. One moonshot was building this international space university. Another one was creating this $10 million prize. and it really allows you to implement your MTP in a very concrete fashion. MTPs, you know, we had this in the first book, Exponential Organizations, the Characteristics, it's massive, it inspires you. Anything else you want to say about massive?

16:02It's massive. It doesn't have to be world changing. It can be in, as long as it's massive to you, it's good enough, right? It could be changed in industry, which is massive enough, but the bigger it is, the more you'll focus and the more canvas you have to play with in a sense, right? So the more massive it is, the bigger the canvas you can dabble. I keep on coming back to this emotional energy. We're humans and we are living an emotional life. I got this from Tony Robbins more than anything. So it's driven by this emotional energy. It's deep seated in you. your, you know, it wakes you up, it keeps you going at night, it occupies your shower time, I like to say.

16:39You know, this is something we didn't have in the first book, and I love this connection you brought to, which is the connection to the emotion, because we are biological creatures driven by emotion, and it's that emotional aspect that brings us together as a tribe or as a community looking to solve a particular problem. And so I think this is so critical about how do you think about problem solving going forward. The next thing is, you know, for me, you need to be committed to your MTP for enough time that you have a chance to do something. You know, we'll talk about this a little bit. You can have multiple MTPs over time, and I've evolved mine, and I'm on my third one now.

17:19But if you're gonna do something, you know, significant, it takes time. It's happening faster than ever. But I like to say you should be willing to commit to this for 10 years It may be that after six months you decide, no, this isn't it. I want to change it Which is fine, but when you've locked in I think there needs to be a decade commitment do you agree with that slim? Yeah, it cuz it takes like 10 years to do anything meaningful You know you often say there was like this was an overnight success after 11 years I'm doing Xero 2 for 11 years of hard work. Yeah, right. And it looks like it's a classic exponential.

17:55You kind of plunder along all of a sudden. And everybody thinks you're a genius. And you're like, yeah, I've been working up this for like 11 years. And it just seems it takes that long to solve a maze. People don't realize, oh my god, Elon's amazing. He's come, you know, richest man on the planet. And you know, don't realize that SpaceX is now 23 years old. And he was in the edge of bankruptcy in 2008. and every single story of every major success has gone through this. Anyway, the next one I have is, you know, a true MTP gives you or your company focus to shoot for. And that is one of the most valuable things is this focusing element of what not to do as well as what to do.

18:38You know, this is worth touching here on when I looked at, I was the head of around and then Yahoo collapsed and we were doing singularity and we look back. You look at Yahoo, Nokia, Blackberry, Blackberry for example, never had an MTP, right? So they both this monster company, the biggest mobile phone company on the planet, hyper successful, but they didn't have that thing that just kept them going and they basically lost interest in the whole company, stalled and imploded. And by the way, sometimes it could have an MTP, but it gets lost. Like I love George Eastman starts Kodak. And the reason he started codec was to preserve people's memories.

19:18He didn't start codec to be in the paper and chemicals business, which was its profit center. And so when codec actually invented the digital camera, which was a much more efficient way to preserve people's memories, they didn't take advantage of their own breakthrough. And they drove them into bankruptcy and oblivion. So if you're a founder of a company really instantiating, like, you know, will the SpaceX go to Mars even if Elon has an untimely accident, right? You know, this is such a critical point, period, that you have to walk away from things that don't match the MTP, right? Oh my God. The time I have failed is because I didn't do that.

20:04100%. You know, a friend of mine said, if it's not a hell yes about something, it's a no. Yeah, so make sure it's a hell yes and it fits your MTP perfectly. And it might be worth you telling the story of Elon and the Falcon 9 and the heavy. Yeah, it's a great story, Selene. So I had known Elon back in when he sold PayPal to eBay before he started SpaceX. And I was there in his old Hawthorne factory when they were building Falcon 1. And when they finally got Falcon 1, their first launch vehicle after three failures, right? This is not giving up. On the fourth attempt, they got it successful. They then won a contract for Falcon 9.

20:49A vehicle they had not built. And when they won that contract for Falcon 9, he burned the ships. He said, no, we're going to stop selling the Falcon 1 and Falcon 1 E. We're going to focus 100 % of our energy on the Falcon 9. Even though they had a working Falcon 1 that was in its own right a disruptive launch vehicle and it was doing great But they focused on Falcon 9 amazing it went on it's now become the most successful by Huge orders of magnitude successful launch vehicle on the planet. I Was having lunch with him. I don't know. This is probably about seven years ago or so now and he was really he was upset, he was bothered, there was something going on, I said, hey, what's up?

21:33And he goes, I just figured out there's no way that Falcon 9 is going to allow us to get our mission to go in Amaras. And we have to retool everything. And what he was realizing was they needed to switch the entire organization from the Falcon 9 to Starship, which is now, you know, beginning its launch and testing sequence. And he said publicly that one starship is operational. We're going to burn the ships again and stop producing the Falcon 9. And driven again by that massive transformative purpose of getting to Mars. And any sane entrepreneur, I'm not saying he wants insane, he's brilliant.

22:14He is insane. That's just calling it a time of time. It's going to, you know, you're going to milk this, you know, this, the most successful watch vehicle for the rest of forever. I mean, it would be there's 50 countries would give their GDP to have Falcon 9 on their soil. Anyway, that's a great example of focus. Let me go to number five here. An MTP feels true and authentic for you. It's got it, you know, when you say it, it has to be ring true in your heart and soul as the CEO, as the entrepreneur or as the head of marketing for a company. It can't be this made up greenwashing. You have to truly feel it.

22:52What do you think about that one? Absolutely, and it speaks of it builds off the emotional side, right? If you have to wake up at 6am for 10 years to be able to solve this problem, and if it's not true and authentic, and really a representation of what you were put on the planet to do, then it's never going to work. Everybody, let me take a quick break from my episode to talk about something important for your diet. Now, as you know, I'm a huge longevity and health champion. Part of my focus on exercise, sleep, and diet. And when it comes to diet, I'm super careful on what I eat. But throughout the day, when I need energy, I'm looking for a snack.

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24:54Now back to our episode. Number six, I think this is important. As people are crafting your massive transformative purpose, it's brief, it's easy to remember and recite. You know, when someone comes to you at a cocktail party and says, tell me about yourself. You know, I will sometimes just break out my MTP, and I'll say, listen, I'm someone who wants to inspire and guide entrepreneurs towards creating a hopeful, abundant, and compelling future for humanity. And that starts a whole conversation. And so it is the filter, it does drive me. And you need to be able to remember it, and it's gotta be, it's a meme virus that's going out there with people know, Oh, that's who you are.

25:37That's what you stand for. That's what your company stands for. Totally agree. In my case, it tends not to work that well. Because in the cocktail party, somebody says, what's your, what are you about? And I go, I'm both transferred. They kind of mother gently and kind of pull away. And get another drink. Because they hang out their head around the scope of that, right? And I think the, but in general, you're absolutely correct. It has to be easy to remember, and you have to be able to live it. But it's like it's an abbreviation of even the elevator pitch. Oh, forget 30 seconds. It should be five seconds.

26:09There's one key point that I want to make, and I don't know if you have it on the next line or not. It has to be declarative, right? Google doesn't say we're organizing the world's information. It's a call to action to the community saying, organize the world's information and we'll give you the tool set and create an environment where we can, you can do that and help us do that. And so it's really important. People often get stuck in what I'm going to do. and it should be what is a call to action for a broader community to get involved in, like cure cancer would be one. You know, what I want folks to remember when they're working on their MTP, and it's not easy, and people have worked for a while, so we'll get it instantly.

26:45People will know it in their heart and they're so ready. But, you know, there is no - I cursed those people because it'd be like 50 years to find my MTP about like, why couldn't I have this when I was five? Well, and some folks do. They know it from a child, right? I knew it from the first time I saw a Star Trek and the Apollo 11 moon landing. That's who I am. That's what I'm going to do. Now, I'll come back to that in a minute because it's while it's still there deep inside me, it's not my current MTP. So there is no right or wrong answer and people are trying to find the right answer. No, it's what feels right for you.