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Darren Hardy does it again in his book: The Compound Effect. Based on the principle that decisions shape your destiny. Little, everyday decisions will either take you to the life you desire or to disaster by default. A compilation of the fundamental principles that have guided the most phenomenal achievements in business, relationships, and beyond. This easy-to-use, step-by-step operating system allows you to multiply your success, chart your progress and achieve any desire.
If you're serious about living an extraordinary life, use the power of The Compound Effect to create the success you want.
The Moonshots Podcast goes behind the scenes of the world's greatest superstars, thinkers and entrepreneurs to discover the secrets to their success. We deconstruct their success from mindset to daily habits so that we can apply it to our lives. Join us as we 'learn out loud' from Elon Musk, Brene Brown to emerging talents like David Goggins.
Hello and welcome to the Moonshots Podcast. It's episode 205. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons, and as always, I'm joined by Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, Mark.
Good morning, Mike. It brings me some joy as well as a little bit of sadness as we come to the end of our Achieving Your Goals series today.
It may be the end, but we are gonna close with our bang mark.
Who are we studying today?
Today, Mike, I think, is the perfect culmination of our Achieving Your Goals series with Darren Hardy. The compound effect. Jumpstart your income, your life, your success. Mike, this is a great end to our achieving your goals because it's all about strategies that help you go out and achieve a goal.
You can triumph over your competitors as well as perhaps yourself because of setting in. Habits. This is the moonshot's message here, isn't it?
We are just slightly into this, so we should apologize to our listeners if they feel like, geez, Mike and Mark are very excited about this book, but it really is you're really right.
The ability to translate your goals into habits is perhaps one of the things that decides who wins and who loses in life. Because it's, many people entertain dreams, fantasies, and visions of grandeur, but it's really the habits that you stick to and your capacity to stick to them is what creates the compound effect.
And you might be familiar with the compound effect from putting money in a savings account back in the day when you actually used to get interest on your savings. . But every year you put a couple of dollars into the bank account, it earns interest. But the following year, because you've got interest on top of your principle, you then earn interest on the two of those combined.
And that's how you get one plus one equals three. And that is exactly the same thing with habits in your life to achieve your goals. And Darren Hardy has a big promise, doesn't he? He's, It jumpstarts your income, your life, your success. The question is, Mark, is he over promising in that
subheading?
To be honest, Mike, I don't think he is. . I believe I, yeah I'm gonna make the case here that the work that Darren has put into creating and communicating this insight around compound effect, really as we'll dig into in today's show, speaks to a lot of the work that we've already uncovered within habits.
James Clear with Atomic Habits and so on each. The US can take ownership over the things that we do each day. And when you do, no matter where you are, no matter what you want to achieve or what you've already completed in the past by taking action today, you can go out and perhaps get closer to your income goal, your life goal, your success goal by.
Beginning today and doing that 1% better each day. So I would make the case here, Mike, that he isn't over promising because at the end of the day, it's up to us to put it into action.
And this is super important because in a world that feels like it's in hyper speed and everything happens at the click of a button, everything is instant.
There is no delay gratification on Netflix or YouTube. Facebook on TikTok, but the reality is that success is a long game, and you need to let your efforts compound. You need to have the right habits, and we are going to discover what it really takes. The idea of an overnight success is one of the greatest falsehoods.
To ever exist, and we are gonna see how you can get to success, but how you need to let it compound. So Mark, let's tear at it. Let's rip it up. Let's get together. Where do you wanna start?
I wanna start by opening up to Darren Hardy himself, who's gonna speak a little bit about this idea of gratification and why we all need to put in the.
Today more than ever, we are constantly bombarded with ever increasingly sensational claims to get rich, get fit, get younger, get sexier all overnight for only three easy payments of 39.95. These repetitive marketing messages are distorting our sense of reality and what it really takes to succeed. It's time to clear the air.
You do want to be more successful, right? You do want to be healthier, have more meaningful relationships, and earn more money. Make a bigger contribution to the world, but what do you do? Who do you follow? Who do you believe? What plan do you invest in? With so many mixed messages, it could be perplexing. I know as Publisher of Success Magazine, I've heard it all.
I've seen it all. I've tried most of it all day, every day, I am sorting through this entire body of knowledge called personal development. Each week I get a chance to sit down with the top thought leaders of our day and the extraordinary achievers of our time to discover. What really works to help you be more successful.
The compound effect reveals the core essentials responsible for the success of every super achiever you will ever read about. This book is a distillation of the core fundamentals responsible for extraordinary and lasting success. This is the bottom line. Success is not doing 5,000 things really well.
Success is doing about a half a dozen things really well 5,000 times. The key is this, what are the half dozen things? How. Them really well. That is what this book details. Inside the book, you will also find strategies on how to win every time. This is the number one strategy to achieve any goal and triumph over any competitor, even if they are smarter, more experienced, or more talented than you are.
Also, we'll talk about what stops people from making progress on their goals. There are some landmines that people are mostly unaware of. But undermine their success. How painlessly easier than you think. Install the new disciplines needed for world class performance and results. On top of that, finally, how to get yourself to do the things you don't feel like doing.
The real key to motivation, getting it and keeping it. I'll give you the simple formula for improving yourself and your. A thousand percent over the next 10 years. I'll also show you how to capture the elusive but awesome force of momentum. Catch it and you'll be unstoppable. And one of my favorite chapters, The Acceleration Secrets of Today's Super Achievers, Do they have an unfair advantage?
You bet they do. Now you can too. The Compound Effect brings you the best success practices and disciplines collected from the best in the. Made simple and actionable regardless of your current level of success. I promise you this, inside this book is one profound idea that will make a major difference to your life.
Mark, if you thought for just a moment that we were excited, I'm listening to that. I don't think Darren Hardy's pretty excited about the compound. . How much coffee did that guy drink? Look, Mark, here's the thing I think he touched upon. One of the key things here, which is not getting distracted, doing 5,000 things occasionally, but doing one thing 5,000 times.
And it's all about the choices of what we're gonna translate from our dreams and ambitions into daily practice and, Building that bridge, it's not necessarily easy. We can find ourselves distracted. I personally find that I have this great temptation for brute force. Just, I'm gonna work harder than anybody else.
I'm just gonna throw myself at it. And invariably that leads me to doing too much, too many things and spreading too. This is all about putting in those daily efforts. And I think the other thing that he touched upon there, which is really important, there's gonna be times. Where we're a bit tired and we don't feel like doing it.
And I think that's another thing that I experience. When you wake up and you're like, Oh, gosh, and you're confronted with the choice, Do I hit snooze or not?
What do you think, Mark? Yeah I think you've certainly made the case. If Darren Hardy hasn't convinced us that the compound effect is worth considering and sitting in our Achieving Your Goals series, I think you've made the case right there.
Mike for me. Where Darren Hardy is really bringing this to life is communicating that when you want to or should work hard, you need direction. You need to know where you're going. You need it. Maintain that momentum. And this is a big idea that we're gonna run into a couple of times on today's show, isn't it?
This idea of getting things moving, but importantly in the right direction. And I think this compounds if if you, pardon the pun, compounds nicely with the work that we've already learned from people like John Doerr, Christina Wodtke, Michael D. Watkins, and Kim Scott, when you can combine the lessons, From the compound effect, this idea of maintaining the course and staying diligent and resilient, no matter what comes our way, and let's say 1% every single day, you can go out and maintain or achieve those goals that you've got in mind.
It's the North Star and then you know, there's some sort of magnetism when you've got your goals, when you've got your daily habits worked out, I think you get this momentum. It's like this magnetism, you are drawn to it and there's all sorts of other good things you can do around that mindset. Belief and manifestation to really make these things happen.
But just the capacity to turn up, you gotta make David Goggins proud that you turned up, that you were like getting uncommon, that you were comfortable with the discomfort. And I'll tell you people who are experiencing some lunar powered magnet, Are our
members, Mark? Yep. If Goggins is proud, he would be proud of all of our members who are supporting the Moonshot podcast.
So please welcome all of our members and supporters of the Moonshot Show, Bob. John Terry and Ken Dmar. Marja and Connor and Rodrigo. Yasmin, Lizza. Sida, Mr. Bonura, Paul Burke, Cowmen. And David, Joe, Crystal, Ivo and Christian, Hurricane Brain, Sama, Kelly, Barbara and Andre, Matthew, Eric, Abby, and Hoy, Joshua, Chris, Deborah and Lase.
Steve, Craig, Lauren, Javier, Daniel, Andrew, Ravi. eVet, Karen Raoul, PJ Nira, Ola and Ingram. Welcome and thank you for supporting the Moonshot podcast. And we should we call out Maja Mad who in a few days will have her first one year anniversary. Amazing Moonshots podcast. Thank you Mahan for your support.
I hope you're enjoying the show. I hope you're as excited as Darren Hardy seems to be about the compound effect. Two guys, Mark and Mike are pretty excited now, let's turn our brains now and really focus upon. What this whole compound effect truly and really is, Let's break it down, Moonshot style.
So let's have a listen to one of our favorite YouTube channels, Productivity game, Break Down the Compound Effect.
To understand what the compound effect is, let's play out a little scenario. Now, pretend someone offered you the following. Put in 30 minutes a day, the same time every day to push your skills and show improvement.
At the end of the first week, you'll get $10 with a 10% raise at the end of each week. If you. Put in the time, day after day, or you were offered $5,000 to put in the same amount of time, but you don't need to do it on a consistent basis and you don't need to improve your skills. You can just use your existing skill set.
Now, which would you take? Let's say you took the first option and your friend takes the second. You start putting in a small amount of consistent work each day. After an entire month of daily effort, you've made $51 and 1 cent. Meanwhile, your friend just cashed in a check for five. Dollars after the second month, your friend is rubbing it in your face.
He's just made $10,000 not needing to push himself. And here you are working day after day for a petty $125 81 cents. Up to this point, your family starts suggesting that you should take the other offer as it's still on the table, but you don't get discouraged. You believe in what you're doing and you know the hard work will pay off one day.
After the third month, people are getting downright angry with you. You've only made $235 and 24 cents. They. This stupid decision and beg you to just take the other offer, but you ignore them and keep proceeding. A year goes by. You only have $15,541 to your friends, $60,000. He's living a comfortable life and doesn't really have a care in the world.
Meanwhile, people are openly ridiculing you for giving up such a great opportunity to make easy money. Only after 16 months have you made the same amount of money as your friend. Your friends and family only have one thing to say. It's about damn time after 16. Putting in the work day after day and receiving a 10% increase at the end of each week.
Only now are you starting to see significant results. The next month you make $40,000 in one month. The month after that, you make $59,000. At the end of that second year, you have accumulated just over $2.2 million, an average of 1.1 million per year to your friends, 60,000 a year. Your family and friends are dumbfounded.
Your friend can't help but think he's missed out on. Significant. Sure he is comfortable with 60 grand a year, but he's filled with regret. What this story illustrates is that small, unsexy, but smart decisions made consistently every day that are in alignment with your big vision lead to seemingly incomprehensible and incredible results.
Results that you can be truly proud of. One day,
Mike, what we're hearing from the productivity game, there is a great little story regardless of the specific. Of dollars and cents and so on. I think about what I'm. Taking away from that and where I'm getting a little bit inspired is this idea of the compound effect being something that you have to put in the time to do.
It isn't an overnight success. Like we heard with Darren Hardy in the first clip. It's not get a six pack within six days. It's not to get rich quick schemes or anything like that. Instead, it is a gain that you can create and you can put into practice over time. I think that, in the short term, you might be looking at the effects, the interests, if you will and wondering whether it's worth continuing on this course.
Oh, my friend, he's got the 10 grand versus where I am, but actually the effect in the long run. Is far greater. And I think this is the big distinction for me, it's the short term thinking. What's my immediate gratification? What's the money in my pocket? What's the effect when I wake up in the morning versus where am I working towards?
What are my goals that I'm trying to put into place with regards to my work, my personal life? Where am I trying to get to? And if. Really want to go out and achieve that. Putting in the practice, putting in the hard work is something that can be celebrated. It can be really enjoyable,
can't it?
Absolutely. I would propose to you that if you can get yourself there, that you can experience well-being, almost like achieving your goal. Which is a long term thing through knowing that today you did the work, and here's what I mean. If you can really make the connection between the thing I'm doing today and my long term objective.
So if I think about my wellbeing, one of the key things I need to do every morning is to stretch basically a mini yoga session. And I did it this morning and I've done it every morning for quite some time now. If you can just have a little bit of awareness when you're about to do those stretches, or maybe it's your journaling and you can go, You know what, I'm just gonna celebrate what I am doing this morning cuz I know how much this means to me.
I know how this is gonna contribute to my mental clarity, my sense of wellbeing, my fitness, whatever it's contributing to. In a funny way, you can close the gap between the gratification in the short and long term when you celebrate the rituals that, oh, by the way, they're gonna get you to those big objectives.
Yeah. And I think that's really important. However, the reality is we all face those moments where it's like, Oh my gosh, how much longer do I have to do this before I get to the objective? And I think that's where we are kind. Face our true self. Like even though you know you're doing the right thing, but you're tired.
You're fed up, you're not seeing the gains in whatever respect, be it mentally, physically, at work, at home, staying the course being absolutely gogans like and just pushing through. I think that's where. We really decide our fate, don't
you? Yeah. I, and I wanna build on this idea of celebrating those small repetitions.
I think you're totally right. When I accomplish the small. Behaviors, the smaller actions that I strive to achieve each day when I do them, whether it's journaling, stretching, getting a bit of exercise or just as we discussed in the show, preparing myself for tomorrow, if I need to, or I try to at least celebrate.
Each of the small little moments because it is something that does matter in the long run, doesn't it? And if you can celebrate them, then it doesn't feel quite so difficult.
Let's be super selfish about it. I put in my to-do list every day to do my stretches. So you know what? I get to hit that button and say, And there's nothing like crossing off something like on a to-do list.
So that's my little indulgence. So Mark, what I even do, I even have things in my to-do list, which are daily habits that lead to my goals. So I want a happy, connected, loving family. So you know what I do? I have a daily task to spend quality time. With my son and wife because I know those will contribute to my and my family's well being.
And if I have been too busy and haven't had a chance to spend quality time with them, this is really like a moment of truth in my to-do list because I have to say I didn't get that done today. And that helps. For example, I will be away traveling tonight, so I made a point this morning of chatting with my son before he went to school.
I'll make a big effort over the weekend when I'm back because it's a goal of mine and I'm gonna be missing some of this quality time. I'm investing before and after in order to make sure that I hit my objective. Now this, at a certain point, our listeners are going, This mic guy is just banana. But this is what I do to make myself accountable to the goals that I have.
I, if I don't have those daily tasks, such as journaling, it's a daily task and it feels so good to tick it off. It also keeps you accountable. Whatever you can do to make the daily habit feel awesome, then there's less of this feeling of lack of gratification or deferring gratification. You can just love the process.
Yeah, exactly. You, if you can learn to love the process and you can see the benefit over time, whether it's hanging out with your family investing time there, whether it's working on the success that you have at work, through implementing goals and strategies as well as OKRs, you can start to see that compound.
Over time. And I think the key word that you've just caught out, this idea of accountability and ownership is so important. I think a lot of us go through life and feel like things are out of our hands in terms of success or promotions or anything that is a bit of a stress from a day to day perspective.
But I think the truth and you are calling it out and it's reminding me of William H McRaven. Your bed in the morning. There are certain elements, certain pieces, certain actions and behaviors that you can own day to day that you feel in control of. So whether it's spending time with your family or making the bed or taking your dog for a walk, those things are yours.
You can control it, and I think we can all get a lot of. Motivation from just taking control of those small pieces of our days because it ultimately has that compound effect of feeling comfortable, confident, positive, in that day to day life. I think
The best way I can make an analogy to what we're learning here about this compound effect is what we did in Michael Jordan.
He turned up to training first, last to leave, played the hardest, and he did that continually, and that's how he became the greatest ever of all time. If you want to realize your goals in life, translate them into these daily habits and you don't have to worry about the goals so much because if I wanna have a great vibe in the family.
That's a big kind of goal. And how do you do it? I just gotta turn up every day and make sure I spend time where I sit down and give my son attention. Conversation interest, whether we are playing football out the back of the house or whether we're chatting about the ufc, it doesn't really matter.
The fact is that I know I've gotta go in and spend that time and it's. For me to spend that time. But if I just focus on that quality time, just every day I stretch, every day I walk, or I run every day, I make sure that I do the things that contribute to my health and wellbeing. Then I don't have to worry about being chronically unhealthy in my old age.
This. This means you can just be immersed in your day at the moment because you know what you're doing is right. This is super powerful, but this whole frame of thinking, it's a little bit different to how a lot of our lives work these days, isn't it? Mark?
Yeah, it can be very challenging to put up with the constant changing of directions, of priorities, of inputs, whether they're coming from our work or our personal lives.
So this next slip we've got, we're gonna hear again from the productivity game. He's gonna talk about this idea of staying true to the compound curve, the compound effect from Darren Hardy, as well as the idea of our microwave mentality. The small
changes you make every day offer no immediate result, no big win, and no obvious.
I told you it will pay off. So why bother? It's hard not to think this way. When we live in a culture that promotes what Darren calls a microwave mentality, we expect instant downloads, fast food, and same day shipping. To stay true to the compound curve, we need to trade the need for immediate results for immediate alignment with our core values.
Darren says that your core values are your internal compass, Your. Beacon, your personal GPS, acts as the filter through which you run all life's demands, requests, and temptations, making sure they're leading you towards your intended destination. Getting your core values to find and properly calibrated is one of the most important steps in redirecting your life towards your grandest vision.
When you know that what you're doing from moment to moment, that the choices and decisions that you're making from moment to moment are in alignment with your core values, you stop. Have instant results show up in your life. You are content in knowing that you are becoming the person that you want to become.
To discover your core values within your work setting, complete the following exercise. Think of someone successful within your field or the field you wanna work in that you respect. Then ask yourself what key attributes most contribute to their success? When I do this exercise, I think of people that are curious, love learning, and push themselves to produce great things in the world.
Therefore, my core values in work are learning. Things that challenge the status quo. Now it's my duty to know if my actions are in alignment with my core values, so I need to monitor every single choice that I make while working. Darren says that most of us are sleepwalking through our daily choices.
Half the time we're not even aware that we're making them to make sure that I am aware of my choices. During my work hours, I've started writing down every work related decision that I make. At the top of each hour. I write down what I focused on the last hour. Then at the top of the page, Down my core value of learning and creating, I then objectively cross out every decision that I made that doesn't align with my core values.
This exercise has sharpened my focus. I've started to notice things that aren't in alignment with my core values. Almost immediately knowing that I am making small decisions that are moving me towards the person I want to become is enough to quiet my monkey mind from wanting to see instantly. The act of aligning each work decision with my core value provides me with the reassurance and motivation to stick with my daily pursuit of achieving a compounded, incredible result in my life.
Sometimes knowing that we're making good choices isn't enough to know that we are on the right path, the compound path, we need to focus and measure the percent gains, not the net
gains. Ooh, we are opening up a whole new trajectory on core values here. So these are the, how you achieve your plan, how you achieve your objective.
Mark, I think we should play a little game here. Are you ready? Oh, I'm ready. I reckon we should throw at each other just some of our core values that you and I have things that you will check in, beliefs, values and principles that you might check in on how you're living your life, how you are being the best version of yourself.
I'll lead with a couple warm it up a bit and then you can hit me with some of yours. So I think one of my first ones is, To make. , my number one priority. Is huge for me. Here's another one. Be still for there as much here. This one's really important for me because I'm a bit of a chatter box and sometimes I'm too energized and I need you to just slow the hell down and just listen.
in fact be still, like stillness is the key if you listen to Ryan Holiday. So there's a couple of principles for me. What's top of mind for you about principles of how you wanna be
in this world. Yeah that, that's interesting. I like those for me. You are right. Sleep is spot on.
I try to also, I think in being inspired by moonshots, I try to make sure I learn something new each day. So that helps me therefore deliver on the idea of being open-minded to other people. Yes. From a behavior perspective, I try to be relatively nice. And what I mean by that is not let the distractions or the stresses of work impact how I might interact with neighbors or friends or my family.
I'll try and do my best at maintaining, not so much a division, but more of an appreciation that these others, that other people aren't necessarily the cause. Of feeling stressed or anxious or pressured from work. So trying to be proactive in reflecting on what I've got going on and where it is focused.
Oh, good. And not, Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So not, it's not impacting areas that are not necessarily. Directly impacted from that work. I'd build on the sleep by also adding exercise. Oh yeah. Something outdoors, ideally with fresh air, maybe a bit of sunshine or maybe rain if you're based in Australia.
If you've got El Nio, it's a bit scarce on that front. And do you ask yours, do you try and ask yourself, Have I done these things today? Have you held yourself accountable to these things? How does that work for you?
Yes. So for me, it will often be in the reflection that I'll do when journaling.
So when I'm sitting down, I tend to journal in the morning. So I'll reflect perhaps on the day after, as the day previous. As well as want to, what I want to try and achieve. In that day the coming day, and that's where I'll probably hold myself accountable. So thinking this is my intention, this is what I want to try and do, whether it's behavior or actions or habits that I'd want to try and achieve, that will then hopefully set me up for success for the rest of the day.
I definitely use the journaling thing and I try to hold myself accountable to them, but I also, I really do try in the moment to celebrate them when I'm doing them. I've got some other crazy ones like observing without judging. Go slow to go fast. Go high when they go low. Oh
you're pulling out all of the mantras
from Moonshot.
I totally stole that from Michelle. I
from, but
I like it. Embrace the discomfort. Very moon shotty. This one's really good and costs you nothing. Huge benefit. Smile and breathe. Like when in doubt. Just smile. So when I'm driving the car sometimes I'm like, Oh, I just have this thing I should smile.
Like why not? Yeah. , why not? Totally similar to you. Be curious and open to the new. Get outside and move. This one's a good one. Do not dwell on the past or worry about the future.
Yeah, that's a good one. It's sometimes challenging. I was gonna say it was pretty
hard. .
But I believe that as we're learning in today's show with Darren Hardy, as well as the insights and the breakdowns from productivity, the game is over time.
They, it does get easier. The challenge is when you are trying to, not let External factors influence how you feel, how you are producing work, how you are creating or delivering key items in your day-to-day life. It does become easier over time when you put in the practice of, let's say, it's reflection, let's say as we've discussed in the show before, when if you wanna start journaling, it's just one word a day.
1%. Yeah. Just do a little bit today, because eventually after a while, You might either learn the best way that you like to reflect or you like to work with other people or you want to try and be productive. or you just get into a bit of a habit. Bit of a routine and it becomes a lot easier to then go out and let's say it's journal or go for exercise, whatever it is, it really does have a long term tail, if you will.
And which becomes much, much easier over time, doesn't it?
It does. And I think this is where you can just have this Bias towards action, right? Just get it going, start moving, start letting the compound happen. And don't be a victim of fear, doubt, fear of failure, wondering what others might say.
Get outside, start doing. Things that contribute to a compounding effect. Start doing things that are in alignment with your values, with your objectives. And even though you will not have ascended to the top of the mountain, you can enjoy the climb because you'll know you are going towards the peak of the mountain and you're not languishing down in the valley of darkness.
Another place you can. In this world, if you wanna ascend to the highest peak, it's to moonshots.ao. That's where you can become a member and support us, for which we would be very grateful. That's where you can get the show notes to this show and Mark if journeying all the way to moonshots.ao is not enough, you need some other challenge.
You need some way to contribute to the sharing of our message. What else could our listeners and members do if they wanna co. Moonshot.
Assuming that our listeners and members aren't sitting in the room that you and I record our podcast in, and instead they're listening to us through their devices, whether it's browser or mobile, it's likely that our listeners are consuming us through maybe Spotify, Apple Podcast or another podcasting app of choice.
What you can do listeners, as well as subscribers, is leave us a rating or a review. Ratings and reviews really do make an enormous difference for us because it enables our show to get out into the ears as well as the hands of listeners from around the globe. And each of those reviews, each of those ratings we get to see and we can call out and celebrate.
And they really do make a difference, not just for Mike and I and the Moonshot's family, but also for. Around the globe. So please, if you want to go a little bit deeper, listen to our show notes. Check out the sources of the clips, as well as our recommended reading lists, you pop over to moonshots.io or in fact, open up your podcasting app of choice and leave us a rating or a review.
Well said,
Mark. And as we ascend the mountain, as we begin to allow the compounding to happen, The continuous repeating of daily habits. Maybe it's only five or six things, but they really do make a difference. We start to experience momentum and one of our favorite YouTubers, Brian Johnson, has got some thoughts on this compound effect and then the role of momentum.
So Darren has
some great stories about Mr. Moe momentum and what happens when you consistently apply these daily disciplines and experience the compound. Is that you have this momentum that comes into your life and all great performers are very good friends with Mr.
Mo. Darren tells us
and he likens it to the space shuttle.
The space shuttle you may know, uses more fuel in the first few minutes of the trip. Then it does the entire rest of the. It's amazing. Why is that? Cuz it needs to escape gravitational pull. So do we. When we're creating new habits, when we're committed to creating a better life, the rocket launch phase of a space shuttle mission takes a ton of energy.
It's hard work to rewire our brains and to actually create new habits. But then what happens? Then Mr. Mo comes on and all of a sudden, When the space shuttles out there past gravitational pull, it just needs to make a subtle change, not a lot of energy, and it gets dramatic results, right? Mr. Mo comes, so you wanna stay with it long enough to get Mr.
Mo and then stay with it long enough to keep Mr. Mo in
town.
Mike, I really have this analogy, this visualization because there are many times in my career as well as my personal life when things get hard and I question whether I'm. Whether I'm motivated enough to stay the course, whether I can be bothered to keep on pushing that grindstone, that feeling of trying to carry a heavy weight up a hill.
Like any habit when you're starting out, whether it's journaling or exercising or whatever it is, it becomes. They become, There comes a moment when you think, Can I be bothered? And I love this analogy of the rocket ship breaking through the atmosphere, requiring all of that energy in exchange for the ease that comes afterwards.
This value exchange is so vivid in my visualization as I hear that clip when you put in the work and get that moment. At the beginning, it becomes, it's like a, like climbing a hill or sprinting up a hill. The truth is that it eventually evens out, doesn't it? And then suddenly that hard work that you've done, maybe it's stretching, maybe it's training that muscle, maybe it's growing the muscle, It then becomes that little bit easier to then repeat or can remain consistent going forward.
What do you think
I, I'm wondering how. How do you try and engineer this momentum of all these good things? Laddering up feeling like you're on track. How do you do it? Are there some, is it getting up early? Is it organizing yourself? Like how do you make it happen? How do you increase the odds of momentum?
I think as we've already discussed we've spoken, I think already about the ideal of reflection. So looking at where you are planning your day ahead, or perhaps reflecting on the day previous. So I'll try to do a different build. I think for me, where I can observe myself benefiting from repeatable habits is something like waking up.
So even though at the beginning, whether it's let, in fact let me break it down a little bit, Mike. I have over the past, let's say six months, made it one of my habits to get up and go for a swim in the open ocean a few times a week. So on average, it's probably maybe two to three times said
differently.
You're crazy, but yeah, please continue.
said differently, a little bit crazy and. What I have observed, particularly at the beginning of doing this, my mind would say, Oh, Mark, do you really want to get up at five 15? It looks a bit cold out there. I think it might be raining. What about your shoes getting wet?
Your stuff's gonna get, it's gonna be cold in there. There's all these little internal voices trying to put me off, but. I find that I will wake up on, on the days that I'm planning to go for a little bit of a swim, I'll wake up naturally, perhaps at an ungodly hour, but I'll still wake up regardless, and there's no question in my mind whether I'm gonna go up and do it or not.
It's instant, Okay, I'm gonna go let's get things in shape. And I think so. Experience of creating a compound habit and putting that into practice each day has actually been very enjoyable. It isn't something that has become a pain. In fact, it's something that I celebrate. It's something that I'm quite pleased with doing, and I think this momentum being the key to success is because It's repeatable.
It's something you put into practice each day. And fundamentally, when it comes to how to put it in practice, I think it's just to work hard. Work, it's being inspired by the individuals that we uncover on moon shots. It's taking lessons from the successful individuals that we dive into, as well as just knowing that other people are doing it as well.
There are people out there, there's so many of us who are trying to be that best version of ourselves that I think, Okay, if they can do it, so can I. Does that make sense?
It does. And I think That's why we go and celebrate all of these amazing superstars and authors and experts who put in the work and get the results.
That's why we love the Goggins. That's why we love Albert Einstein, both of them. Had the fundamentally same approach. They worked hard every day. They put in the work and it compounded like crazy. Mike Gordon, Oprah, Walt Disney, the list goes on. They met, I think they best friends Mr. Moe . Yes. Yeah, I think they really did.
And for me, look, the job that I tried to, Is if I want to perform well in my work, pursuing my dreams for work with the show, with my clients, with the companies that I advise, then. I know that I can lay a foundation similar to yourself. Good sleep, good diet, good exercise, good mindfulness. Those are all things that are like big rock solid foundations on which I can wake up and bring my best self to the work at hand.
I can think clearly, I can make decis. Choices. I can support mental coach, help people get the job done. This to me is like the way I think about what I can do to improve the chance of having great momentum or flow state is do those things, sleep well, eat well, exercise. Those are all of the things that lay.
The foundation. And I think that the challenge that we all face is sometimes we get a little bit off track, right? And sometimes we face hardship and it doesn't just knock you off the bike. The worst thing is you don't get back on, and that's the battle of life. And I think we have to accept that we're always in that battle with life.
It ain't perfect, is it Mark?
It's to go a little bit tangential. It's like gravity, there, there's always something that's pulling you back. There's always something that's grounding you. And I think similar to the rocket analogy that we heard, you need to break through it.
The status quo, or as we heard in the earlier clip the microwave mentality and the idea of sleepwalking through your choices. It's very easy. Cause it's the path of least resistance, isn't it? It's very easy to just allow life to pass you by, or perhaps worse, allow life to dictate to you what you do and don't.
So I think the big lesson that I've learned from digging into 205 shows is the idea that you can take ownership over how you interact with other people. How you interact with your own mind, that monkey mind as we were hearing in the clip earlier. You can take control of it.
And I think this compound. Affecting these small habits that you can put into practice is just a demonstration of taking, as they say, the bull by the horns or taking that little bit of control and not sleeping. Walking through choices, making sure that you keep momentum as well as going out and staying true to the goals that you know, John Duh.
And Christina Woodkey and Kim Scott have inspired us to go out and.
How good is that ? That's just what we're all about. Like I think about what we're hoping for all of our listeners is that they can get some momentum from listening to the show. They can build their habits, they can set goals, they can think differently.
They can be great leaders, great communicators. They can build great businesses, great products and services, and I think it would only be appropriate to let Darren Hardy bring us home, Mark. So where are we gonna go?
We're gonna hear one more time in show 205 on the Compound Effect from Darren Hardy who's gonna tell us the strategy that can get you and I and all of our listeners beyond the pack, and it's simply by avoiding the comfort zone.
But
There is one strategy that can accelerate your success, okay? That can get you far beyond the pack to have you break out from the peloton, so to speak. And here's what it is. I learned it when I first got into real estate. I went to a seminar. It's a theme there. And I was the only guy that asked the lecturer to lunch.
And so we went to lunch and I sat down with him and I'm only 20 years of age right now. Okay. And I'm in the real estate business and just getting started. And I said, Tell me what I gotta do to be successful. I says, I'm willing to do anything. He says, Are you really willing to do anything? I said, I'm willing to do anything it says, Then I'm gonna give you the ultimate key to your success.
I'm like, I'm ready. He said, Go fail. I said, What do you do? What do you mean to fail? He says, Yeah, go fail fast. Go fail a lot and go fail really big. And I thought, Man, isn't the whole idea of success avoiding failure? And he said no. It's quite the opposite. The key to your success is your failure. And then he gave me this quote from Thomas Watson, who used to be the president of IBM, where he said, Your key to success is massive failure.
Now don't just hear that as some motivational line. Let that marinate on your brain in a little bit. The key to success is massive failure. What if that's true? Now based on the look on your faces, same look I had on my face. Okay, So he explained this to me a little bit. He took a cocktail napkin and he drew out this analogy.
He said, Look, on one side of the pendulum is joy, love, happiness, and success. The other side is pain, rejection, sadness, and failure. He says, Look , if he just stands still, you won't experience any pain, rejection, sadness, and defeat, but you won't experience any joy, love, happiness, and success either. He says, you can't live under a bridge ev eventually you gotta go and mix amongst people.
So what ends up happening is people are only willing to experience so much rejection and so much pain and so much defeat. And so they only experience so much joy, so much love, and they end up just operating in what is called this comfort zone. And if anything is outside that comfort zone, they're like, Oh no.
And they just stay right here in this comfort zone. But they complain, Why don't I have more success? Why don't I have more love? Why don't I have more happiness in my life? He said, So you can't push the pendulum on the side of success. He must have gone to a Jim Roan seminar. What you pursue will elude you.
He said, The only side of the pendulum you can control is the side of pain, rejection, sadness, and defeat. So your job is to push the pendulum as high, as wide and as fast as you can on the side of pain, rejection, sadness in defeat. He says, I promise you, it'll swing an equal proportion on the other side.
So I just took his word for it, so I just pursued it with reckless abandon.
Mark, is he going to step into the arena, kind of like Brene Brown? Is that where
He's going with this? Yeah. I think that's a great connection actually. I think you're totally right. You can't succeed unless you give it a go.
Unless you get in that arena. Risk. Risk yourself,
right? And fail.
Yeah. It's a similar message to Elizabeth Gilbert with Big Magic. The idea of just having a go, no matter whether your book or your idea or your product has been done before, it hasn't been done by you. And I think this empowerment message is again, coming through from Darren Hardy there, which is, saying you can only control certain things, so why not work?
On those things you can control because you can then hopefully influence or at least direct the successes or the striving for the goals that you are setting yourself. I think that's a pretty empowering message, don't you think?
Absolutely. And totally at home here on the Moonshots podcast, I have to say, wouldn't you.
Yeah, it's spot on with the moonshot message. So
you're Darren Hardy, you're amongst friends . So look we heard about, the science of compounding, putting in that daily work. We somehow managed to incorporate microwaves into this discussion. Mark what's standing out for you? As, our journey today with Darren Hardy and the compound.
Look, I think reflecting on the series so far as well as the practices that you and I have learned and discussed on the show previously, I've gotta say the idea of Mr. Mo and the momentum, it just stands out to me. It really gets me going. The idea that I can put in the extra fuel to try and break through the atmosphere, and then it may not be easier, but it certainly becomes a little.
Less stressful, I suppose after that, I think is a great takeaway for me. What about you, Mike? What is particularly written down as your mantra following today?
I'm so sold on this idea and I try so hard to live by the compound effect, the daily habits. I think perhaps that what he was saying at the end, there is an invitation to step into the arena, to expose yourself, to risk failure along the way.
It's just to not. This habitualization of your work practice, it's also making the stakes real, swinging big, going for something that really matters, Leaving a legacy that, for me, is incredible. He can squeeze that into the compound effect idea. That is a talent indeed.
Yeah, it really is.
I think that's a great bookend and conclusion to our Achieving Your Goals series, don't
you think? It really is, Mark. So I want to thank you for being part of this show and the entire series on setting and achieving your goals. But today I really want to thank our members and our listeners for. Two, because as we book ended the series with Show 205 and Darren Hardy's work The Compound Effect, and it started with that classic moonshots idea put in the work.
Because if you do that, you'll experience that 1% better. That one plus one equals three. The. Beauty of compounding and we're fighting against the microwave mentality, the instantaneous real time world in which we live. We have to get over that need for gratification in the now and actually pave the way for the tomorrow.
And along the way we'll meet Mr. Mo and we have to keep that momentum going, growing, and building and sustaining if we wanna break through the barriers. And Darren Hardy called us into the arena. He asked us, he demanded of us to avoid being in comfort. To make the stakes real, to swing for the fences and be the best version of ourselves, and that's what we certainly love to do here on the Moonshot Podcast.
Okay, that's a wrap.