The Jasmine Star Show

Make Better Decisions Faster

• Jasmine Star

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What if the only thing holding you back... was a belief?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Alan Barnard—global expert in Theory of Constraints—to explore how entrepreneurs can shift from “That’s not possible” to breakthrough success.

We talk about:

  • The #1 belief that limits most entrepreneurs
  • Why bad conditions don’t equal bad results
  • A jaw-dropping story of coal miners who beat the odds
  • How to make better decisions faster

If you’re feeling stuck, behind, or like your goal is out of reach, this episode is your next best move. 🎧

Click >>PLAY<< to hear all of this and:

[03:41] Why “That’s not possible” is the most dangerous belief—and what to replace it with

[06:36] How Dr. Barnard handled a crisis with coal miners who were certain their goal was impossible

[08:51] Two powerful questions to shift your mindset and energize a discouraged team

[14:58] The surprising difference between good and great entrepreneurs—it’s not what you think

[20:30] The real reason you self-sabotage (and how to stop it)

[26:15] Jasmine’s personal moment of clarity about her own “predictive” behavior

[36:00] The 5 steps to overcoming any limiting belief

Listen to Related Episodes:

Connect With Dr. Alan Barnard:

📧 Join my Newsletter for a weekly cocktail of insider business strategy, personal reflections, and the journey of being a thought leader: https://jasminestar.com/newsletter 📧

For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode603

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Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Have you ever wondered what makes some entrepreneurs successful and others not? Perhaps you haven't reached the level of success that you want, but you know that you could, if given the right framework or way to accomplish it. Have you ever wondered what makes some entrepreneurs different than others and how they get outsized results? That is what we're going to be talking about today. In fact, our guest today told me that the best entrepreneurs don't have the best starting conditions, but they have the best starting beliefs, and that is what sets them apart. So today, I'm inviting you to have a starting belief that will set you up so differently than the point you have come up until today. So I want to start even before we get to beliefs. So before we get to your starting beliefs, I want you ready for a breakthrough. Until I couldn't think of somebody better to navigate this breakthrough. So I would like to welcome to the show Doctor Ellen Vernard. Thank you for being here.

Alan Barnard 00:00:57  Thank you so much.

Jasmine Star 00:00:58  You know, we met a bit ago, so I'm going to tell my side of the story.

Jasmine Star 00:01:02  And then you could color it in because I, you know. Okay. So I was invited to speak at an AI and efficiency mastermind, and I was invited to speak around marketing. And so I got an Uber down to Malibu, and I had arrived, shamefully, a couple minutes late. But when you're working at an AI efficiency mastermind, they were starting on the dot. And so I come in like maybe three minutes late and we've already started. And it was in a home. It was in a private home. It was very beautiful. Yeah. And in the back row I was like, I'm gonna I'm going to scoot in and I'm going to get past. And so as I'm walking in, I see a gentleman seated and you kindly stand up to make room for me to get to the chair and me and all of my five four on a good day. Magic. I'm like looking up at. I gaze up at the six six gentlemen and I was like, oh, hello, nice to meet you.

Jasmine Star 00:01:53  I am, I feel like a munchkin right about now. And that's what started our original conversation. And so tell me, how did you get to that same mastermind?

Alan Barnard 00:02:03  So I got introduced through a good friend of mine, Jay Abraham, to Nick Sonnenberg, who runs that mastermind. And the two of us has become very good friends, and he's invited me to attend a mastermind as a guest speaker. So I often contribute and talk about the things that I'm really passionate about.

Jasmine Star 00:02:20  Okay, so for those of you guys who remember, Nick Sonnenberg was a guest on my podcast, I'll be sure to link it in the show notes. So you and I are at this mastermind, and I believe it was kismet. And we were supposed to sit next to each other, and on one of the breaks you start asking what I do, and I'm asking what you do, and you kindly bring out from your side bag a children's book, and you said, this is for your daughter. And I thought to myself, okay, I don't know who this guy is, but I am about if anybody that brings me gifts for my kids.

Jasmine Star 00:02:47  I was like, this is amazing. Okay, so that's a little bit of context. So people on the show know that I don't bring anybody in who I don't know personally or their work has not impacted me directly. So after we met and after we have these conversations at the mastermind, I go into deep dive of your work and you had mentioned casually, well, if you ever want me to be on your podcast and I get that suggestion all the time from people. But it was after I did the deep dive that I said, Doctor Alan needs to be on this show because here is why I wanted to hear. Your goal is to help entrepreneurs make better decisions faster. Okay. But in order for us to make better decisions faster, you invite us to say, hey, what's limiting us? So right now, Doctor Allen's question is what is limiting you? So let's put that in your mind. What's limiting you? And then you said the most powerful limiting belief is that's not possible. Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:03:41  So can you share a story about a time that you spoke to a group of coal miners about reaching their goal, and they told you, well, it's not possible.

Alan Barnard 00:03:51  I literally get cold chills every time I tell the story. So thanks for the reminder. So imagine this I'm a theory of Constraints expert okay.

Jasmine Star 00:04:00  Theory of constraints okay.

Alan Barnard 00:04:02  Got it. It's basically the simple idea that doesn't matter how many links there are in your chain, your system, there's always only one weakest link, whether there's three links or 30,000 links or it's only one weakest link, find it, focus on it because that's how you strengthen all chain. Right. So I'm there to on invitation all day to give a lecture about theory of constraints, how to help this mind find a bottleneck, etc.. And I walk in and the energy is horrible. I don't know if you I'm sensitive to that right big guy, but I'm sensitive to energy. And so I asked around before we start and I said, what's going on? And I said, it's terrible.

Alan Barnard 00:04:42  There's a crisis here. They said, you know, Doctor Barnard, we should have let you know. We probably should have canceled the session. But, you know, it was too late. And I said, what's going on? And I said, look, we have a target to achieve 12 million tonnes for the year. So it's simple 1 million per month, right? And we had month for now and we had 3 million. We're already a million behind. And if we continue we'll end up at 9 million. And most of the people here will probably be fired. So I take this big gulp. Holy shoot. Okay. Take away the whole 200 slide deck PowerPoint that I wanted to present, and I said, okay, I think I, I, I have a sense of what I need to do. And we started the session and got introduced and I said I had a slide deck prepared, but I realized that there's a crisis, and I'm going to see if we can get through the crisis and pause here.

Jasmine Star 00:05:42  Yeah, okay. So I deeply I can't help but feel so you know how you said you're sensitive to energy? I am sensitive to energy. And when I'm hearing this story, I can't help but feel that there might be somebody who's watching or listening, and they are at their own crisis. They're at a point of crisis. And so what you just said was, if they don't hit this goal, more than half of the people in the room will lose their jobs. Yeah. So they're in there saying the end is coming. And when we're in that point of crisis and you said, I've been invited to talk about this theory of constraints, okay. There is somebody who's watching and says, I am constrained and I am in a crisis. Right. And so I really want to personalize that. This is not about this keynote deck that you threw away 200 slides. This is about you seeing the humanity of somebody feeling like the end is near. And so for people who are watching or listening and you feel like I see the end and I don't think it's possible, that's where I wanted to contextualize.

Jasmine Star 00:06:36  So you step up on the stage and you say.

Alan Barnard 00:06:38  Yeah. So I think just resonating with that point is that we all go from crisis sometimes, right? We feel that we are falling behind exactly like this. Mine nose. It could be like falling behind in the targets that I've set for myself or committed to my investors. If I'm a startup or just in life, I feel like I'm falling behind. And it's the more I fall behind, the more impossible it feels to catch up. So getting back to this idea of impossible, right. So I'm going to raise an I'm going to link that back. So I get on stage and I said before we start I want to understand the problem. Right. So got this 12 million that you need to get to at the moment you're at 3 million. Continue. It will be at nine. Big problem. So I said before we start, I want to make sure that this is the most important problem for everybody around the table. And there's two little tricks that you can use if you're working with yourself or with your team.

Alan Barnard 00:07:32  The first one is get everybody to sign it. What will be the pain if we can't close the gap? How will this personally impact you? Not just the business, but you, your team? If we can't close the gap and many of them said, you know, we're not going to have jobs. We're going to pay penalties to to the customers because we're going to be running late. The investors will take money away, so we won't be funded. So we went around the room and that made it personal because often in a crisis stage, people are fighting against each other. There's a lot of disharmony, and you need to find a way to bring them all together. What's the simplest way to do them is to show that nobody's winning here. Everybody will lose. If we can't fix this problem. The second thing I did, because you need to lift up the energy, right? To say, imagine in eight months time, we've caught up. Tell me how this will benefit you and go around the room again.

Alan Barnard 00:08:31  So first thing is, if in a crisis, it means that there's a gap that feels impossible to catch up on. So what's the point if we can't? What's the gain if we can? That's a great way to start, whether it's a personal crisis or business crisis or relationship crisis. Have that discussion with yourself, with your team, with your partner.

Jasmine Star 00:08:51  Beautiful.

Alan Barnard 00:08:51  So we started with that and that lifted up the spirit. And I said, okay, we're only going to do two things. And to be honest with you, I don't know what number two was, but it felt like if I said one thing, it would have been insufficient.

Jasmine Star 00:09:08  Okay, so you tell this group of coal miners and I'm imagining big, rough guys.

Alan Barnard 00:09:12  Huge guys.

Jasmine Star 00:09:13  And you're very you're very svelte South African, you know, very nice chic glasses. And so you're speaking to this room of like, rough men. And you said we're going to do two things. You don't remember the second thing, but the first thing.

Alan Barnard 00:09:22  No, I didn't know this. The second thing, I didn't remember it, I literally didn't, but it just felt like I needed to have at least two things, right. The first thing I was pretty sure of, and this is imagine you're in a situation where you don't have enough of something to catch up. So there's a constraint. You don't have enough market.

Jasmine Star 00:09:42  I have that every day, Doctor Ellen.

Alan Barnard 00:09:44  We all have, right? You either don't have enough demand, which is wasn't true in their case. They just didn't have enough capacity or capability to to meet the demand. It could also be that you don't have enough supply, some external resource or not enough cash. So those are typically the constraints of your business and you should follow them in that sequence. So I said to them, okay, if you have a resource that you don't have enough of, what's the first thing that you need to do is to stop wasting that resource, right? First thing you should do. So what I asked them to do is I said, we've just agreed that the problem is we are falling behind and we need to catch up.

Alan Barnard 00:10:23  What I'd like you to do is on a flip chart. Write down for me all the initiatives that is currently demanding your budget and your attention and your team's attention. Those are the two scarce resources. On a personal level, it's our limited attention because the demand on our attention will always exceed available attention. And for the company, it's the budget, right? Management attention. So they kept on writing and we started sticking them up on a wall. So imagine this big boardroom with these big guys. Anybody that's watched South African rugby can imagine what these guys looked like, right? I felt small and we got them. When I got to about a hundred, I stopped them. Right. So imagine just for you personally or for the listeners or viewers, think about all the things that's currently taking up your your time and attention and budget, right. It's not uncommon that you'll have a hundred of those. So we got them stuck up. And then I said, okay, here's what we're going to do.

Alan Barnard 00:11:24  We just agreed that the one problem we have to solve is to catch up, right? We have to get more tons. So we have a goal to produce 12 million tonnes. We have a constraint in that we're not producing enough tonnes. Tons. We have a problem. We have to figure out how to get more. Tons. That's it. Right? So I said, can you go to every one of the flip charts and right at the bottom of the flip chart? How many more tons will that initiative give you? And you can imagine what happen. By far the majority would have no direct contribution. And this is how we waste our limited attention. We are so busy with solving many problems of which most don't matter. Right. Given the attention.

Jasmine Star 00:12:12  Busy solving problems that don't matter to the end goal.

Alan Barnard 00:12:17  Yeah. And it's not just about problems. It's also people. We are so busy spending time with people that's not going to help us get to our goal. So the first thing to do was I pointed that out to them that of these hundred initiatives, there were just five of them that actually would make more tons.

Alan Barnard 00:12:36  There were another five that they had to do because it was compliance issues, safety regulations. But 90 of them didn't contribute and we agreed to stop those. And it was like a massive pressure lifted off their shoulders. It's like the focus was just bam. So now I'm stuck because now I have to get to number two. What am I going to do with number two? So I thought, okay, let me just trust my intuition. Let me see where this takes me. I have this framework, which is where's the constraint of the bottleneck. Right. I knew that that was the key thing is finding out where's the bottleneck. So we can focus on strengthening that weakest link to make the whole chain stronger. So I've asked the first person that's in charge of basically exposing the order of call. That was the first step in the process of producing goal. It's like basically remove all the overburden, expose the ore of coal. I said, come up here. I said, okay, so let's do some calculations.

Alan Barnard 00:13:39  You're currently producing only 750,000 tons a month. You have to get to a million, but remember you behind. So you have to get to like 1.125 million. How are you going to do it? So imagine this big guy standing in front of you and it's like, how are you going to do it? And he looks at me and he goes, it's impossible. Now what do you say at that stage of my life, this was like, you know, early 2000. I had no mining experience. Zero. Right. And there's many of us as entrepreneurs, you somehow find yourself in a business and you don't really understand the game.

Jasmine Star 00:14:16  Amen.

Alan Barnard 00:14:17  Right. And you have to figure it out. So I'm standing there and I have there's no magic wand or silver bullet that I can give them. And this guy is telling me it's impossible. And in that moment, this question popped up. And it's a question that changed everything for me. I said to him, it's impossible unless. And I realize in that moment, what happens is many of the things that become our constraints, our protection mechanisms.

Alan Barnard 00:14:47  It's trying to protect us from dying physically or emotionally. You know, more and more now it's about protecting ourselves against emotional death for not physical death, but it's the same mechanism. So when you say that something is impossible, it's a way of protecting yourself from failing. Because why would I try if it's impossible? Right. So it not only stops me from trying, it stops me from thinking about trying. It's really an effective protective mechanism. So how do you overcome that? If I say.

Jasmine Star 00:15:22  Okay, hold on, hold on line when we say that's impossible, it's a protective mechanism against ego.

Alan Barnard 00:15:31  Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:15:32  We don't want to fail. So we say it's impossible. And the minute we say it's impossible, we make it impossible.

Alan Barnard 00:15:38  Absolutely.

Jasmine Star 00:15:38  And then you will now shift from when somebody says that's impossible. You say that's impossible. Unless.

Alan Barnard 00:15:46  Unless.

Jasmine Star 00:15:46  Question mark. Question mark. Because you're inviting us to figure out. Oh, well, you know, I would need this. Yeah. So then what happens now when you say unless.

Alan Barnard 00:15:55  So immediately you switching the brain now at the subconscious level. Because the brightness date to validate our assumptions and beliefs. Right. So as soon as we say something is impossible, it immediately will find evidence to say, yep, you're absolutely right. This is absolutely impossible. Why would you even try it? But as soon as you say it's impossible, unless it's the question that moves the assumptions beliefs from our subconscious into the conscious mind, questions are incredibly powerful. So as soon as you say it's impossible unless you're forcing the assumptions or beliefs that made us feel it's impossible to bring it to the conscious mind. Because now I'm challenging you. Please give me all the reasons why it's impossible, right? But it's it's put in a positive way, right? It's impossible. Unless. What are the conditions that could make the impossible possible? And this guy just stared at me, and I was staring at him. It felt like minutes, and it was probably a couple of seconds, but it was very uncomfortable.

Alan Barnard 00:17:00  Imagine we surrounded by guys. Everybody's looking at us, and this guy was one of the most senior people. And he's like, it was impossible. Now it's impossible unless. And he looked at me and he said, okay, I'll play your game. I said, great, let's go. He said, it's impossible unless. And he pointed to this group of guys. He said, unless it was these idiots, and I turned out to be the accountants, I could convince them. I said about what? He said, there's this area that if I explored that I could flood the next operation with so many tons, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I said, so why don't you do that? He said, by telling me it's bloody unprofitable. So I said, okay, let's do the numbers together. Let's see. And that was the second thing I discovered. So one of the things that make it hard when we make decisions is we fear uncertainty. So when we think about benefit versus cost, right is imagine I'm trying to sell you something.

Alan Barnard 00:18:03  I'm asking you to make a decision to buy my product or service. And I say to you, Jasmin, the benefit is 20, the cost is only ten. You really should get it right. For me, it's a no brainer because you're getting two x. But what happens in a buyer's mind is the buyer is looking for certainty. And what I've learned is that there's a lot of uncertainty in benefits. So when they say 20, it's probably only ten. And there's a lot of certainty around cost. When they say it's ten, it's probably 20. So the seller I'm thinking this is a positive and there's a bias a negative. Right. So how do you help somebody make a decision when there's uncertainty involved. And the simplest way to do that is think about worst case worst case benefit. Worst case cost.

Jasmine Star 00:18:57  Okay.

Alan Barnard 00:18:57  So if the worst case benefit is still much greater than the worst case cost, it's a hell yes decision. Do you agree?

Jasmine Star 00:19:06  I agree.

Alan Barnard 00:19:07  So that's what I got him to do.

Alan Barnard 00:19:08  I said tell me, what is the worst case benefit that we'll get if we can mine that operation? And we did the numbers together and he said, I can go from 750 to probably 1.2 million.

Jasmine Star 00:19:21  Worst case. Worst case 1.2 million tons of coal. Worst case scenario?

Alan Barnard 00:19:25  Yeah. So I can basically go from 750. Add another half a million tons today. We said, what's the numbers? Multiplied by $100 per ton, $50 million. Right now I said, okay, so tell me the worst case cost to be able to do that. And he said, there's a lot that we've done our budget. I said, let's just go through the numbers. He said, well, I'll have to hire this piece of equipment, that piece of equipment, get these people. Worst, worst case cost was 5 million. Now for him, he never even asked for this. Because why ask if somebody will just say no? Because you remember your budget constraint. You're not achieving your target. There is no budget.

Alan Barnard 00:20:07  So that's another part of this. When we think it's impossible is because we think somebody else will say no, and there's no way we can convince them, so why even bother asking rather than just doing the numbers? And that really opened it up. So suddenly we turned to the accountants. We said, guys, can you help us out? We can give you a bare minimum of 50 million positive benefit. Maximum cost is 5 million. Would you go for it? It's a no brainer.

Jasmine Star 00:20:37  That's a no brainer.

Alan Barnard 00:20:38  Absolutely no brainer. And then all that we did was we repeated that same exercise with all the other links in the chain, all the other steps. It's impossible for you to catch up unless. And what happens in that? Unless condition is we, we start problem solving. We're starting to come up with all the reasons, right? It's like, think about, say you launch a new book and I say, Jasmine, how many do you think you'll sell? And say, well, you know, most books don't sell their first print.

Alan Barnard 00:21:10  That's how bad it is, right? So if you're selling a few thousand, you're really doing really well. And you might say, you know, if I could sell 10,000 or 50,000, that would be amazing. And I would ask you, I want you to set an impossible goal, right? So keep on increasing either the magnitude or reduce the time you give yourself until you say, now it's impossible. And then I'm going to ask you. It's impossible. Unless. And what will happen is those few and less conditions will immediately pop up.

Jasmine Star 00:21:41  I have to tell you, in researching doing the deep dive research in preparation of the podcast, I heard that unless the unless question and I have used it four times in the last two weeks when somebody said I couldn't do that or that was impossible, and they solved because all of a sudden we, we, we, we had something that was solvable. If you tell me it's impossible, okay. I can't do anything with that. You say it's it's impossible unless.

Jasmine Star 00:22:07  And then you give me this totally far out. That would never happen. And then we could say we could make that happen. Here's the steps to make it happen. And it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that, oh, it was the unless component that I then became to solve for. And then secondly, after doing the research, you would ask the coal miners, what is our one goal? Yeah, and it forced me to look internally on the team and I assumed that the team knew. What's our one big massive goal for 2026. And so I sent everybody an individual message and I said, can you please reply? While I don't need the details, please be specific. Yes. And I'm really proud that the team all responded that we knew what the goal was. And there was one team member who maybe didn't have as much close proximity to the financial outcome that we were going for, and it allowed me the opportunity to say, oh, you're not dreaming big enough. This is going to require a different version of you to get this outcome.

Jasmine Star 00:23:04  And she immediately got on board. And so I just want to say that I started immediately implementing with myself. I have a big goal for 2026 on a personal front, and I immediately said, I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't spend it. It's an investment for me. I can't spend that every month. I can't spend it every month. And then I asked myself, well, I can't spend that unless what? What needs to be true? And then I just reversed engineers find financial numbers and growth that we would need to do. And then I said, okay, I think we can do that. So I'm going to earn myself yes, to overcome the impossibility. So that's why I wanted you on the podcast, because I was out here like home spinning this for myself. But for people to hear that you did this with coal miners, and then you've done this with entrepreneurs and you've done this with states, you've done this with countries. Thank you. Thank you for helping us get out of our own way and asking ourselves unless, yeah, okay.

Jasmine Star 00:23:53  So if we want to hit our goal, one of the things that getting into specific alignment you had said, if you want to hit a goal and you maybe have like a small team or a few people around you, you said, what do you need to stop doing? Can you expound more on the importance of if we singularly focus on our goal and people will say, well, this is really important, but how do you create that hierarchy? Okay, okay, team, we're stopping to do this. So I told the team we're going to be stopping something in 2026. And all of their jaws were on the floor, right? Like it doesn't make sense. So how could I have gotten better at communicating? This makes us money. This is good. We're going to stop doing it because it's a distraction from the big goal.

Alan Barnard 00:24:35  Yes. So we all know the power of focus, right? We all know we should focus, but most of us don't. Right. And some of it is because of ADHD and other characteristics, and others is because we're just not clear enough about what we really want.

Alan Barnard 00:24:52  So I'll give you an example of how important it is. Say I asked you, Jasmine, how long will it take you to do a one day task?

Jasmine Star 00:25:02  What one day task?

Alan Barnard 00:25:03  Yes. How long will it take you?

Jasmine Star 00:25:05  Well, wouldn't it take me one day?

Alan Barnard 00:25:06  So the right answer would be it depends. Okay. But it depends on two things. The first one is the variability in the task itself. Because when I say one day, it means on average it should take you a day. Right now, best case scenario, you might find it a little bit simpler than what you expected, or you were actually more skilled than what you expect could do it in half a day, or it's a bit more complicated. Could take two days, but that's normally the level of variability around the task, a specific thing. The other depends. It depends on how busy you are. Yeah, right. So if you had nothing else on your plate on average, that would take your day because you could start immediately.

Alan Barnard 00:25:49  But what if you were 50% busy already? Well, now the task would take two days. Because one day we'll be waiting for you to finish what you're working on, and then another day to do the task right. What if you're 80% busy? So now it has to wait four days in queue for the other things that's occupying your time and attention and budget. And then the one day doing so. It takes five days. What if you're 90% busy? The same one that it does will take you ten days. And here's the killer. What if you're 99% plus, you already will take 100 days. And I want to get you to think about this. How many times has it taken you a hundred days to get a one day task done? And that's because we are too busy doing stuff that we shouldn't be doing.

Jasmine Star 00:26:45  Oh that hurts. I know it hurts. Is it so true?

Alan Barnard 00:26:49  Yeah. And that's why that first step has to be after you've set this goal that's so ambitious, it forces the mind to focus.

Alan Barnard 00:26:57  Right? And then it says, well, what will block me from focusing on solving the most important constraint or problem is because I'm busy doing other stuff. But now I have a reference point that says this number one on my list. Will it help me get there? No. Stop it! Or at least freeze it. Number two. Will it help me now? Or just a little bit? No, I need big steps. Right. That's why that step one of what to stop doing is so critical.

Jasmine Star 00:27:27  I love I mean, I hate that, I hate it. I know I hate it, but it's so right and it's so true.

Alan Barnard 00:27:32  It's so fun to start things that's so hard to stop things. It's so fun to. Say yes. So hard to say no or not.

Jasmine Star 00:27:39  Now especially. I might add to this. Especially when something is successful on paper. We have a lot of ventures that are very successful and that are contributing like profitably, but they are a distraction to the big step that we need to take in a different direction.

Jasmine Star 00:27:54  And so that's hard. It is hard, it is hard. And I feel after listening to a lot of your work and then this conversation, I'm confirmed. Last night at dinner I was talking to my husband and he said, I think we need to stop this. And he said, how did you get to that decision? I logically laid it out and he said, great, So why haven't you already cut it? And I said, well, because I want optionality. So I don't need to make the decision now. So I'm going to wait till the very end because I need to see how the year is shaping up. And he said, it sounds like you're dwelling in a place of hedging your bets. Yes. And I was like, oh, absolutely, 100.

Alan Barnard 00:28:26  Right. But we have to understand optionality first, right. So what is a good option? A good option if you think about option traders right. They're really good at selecting options right. So they buy options. So what are you doing by looking for an option that has a big upside if it works.

Alan Barnard 00:28:46  And a small downside if it doesn't. Yes that's a hell yes option. Yes. Right. The hell no option is one that has only a small upside if it actually works, and a huge downside of it doesn't.

Jasmine Star 00:29:01  Okay.

Alan Barnard 00:29:03  Those are the ones that we absolutely should stay away from.

Jasmine Star 00:29:06  And those are easy for me. I'm the queen of no. I'm my My friends will call me the Queen bubble Popper because they'll come up with I like this idea. I was like, yeah, no, it won't work. Yeah, it's the ones that for me are there is a positive upside. And even if it wasn't as good, it's not that much of a low side.

Alan Barnard 00:29:22  Okay. But I want to challenge you a little bit.

Jasmine Star 00:29:24  Please do.

Jasmine Star 00:29:24  One. This is not in my notes. This is making me a little uncomfortable, but okay. Okay.

Alan Barnard 00:29:28  So thinking about that, it might not work. It's not a good way of deciding whether a good option or not.

Jasmine Star 00:29:35  Or it might not be as profitable.

Alan Barnard 00:29:37  Okay. Let me give you two extreme examples.

Jasmine Star 00:29:39  Okay.

Alan Barnard 00:29:40  You have an option to play the lottery or Russian roulette okay okay. So lottery very very big upside if you win. Yeah. Right. Very small downside if you lose you lose a couple of dollars. Right. But what's the probability of winning is almost zero. But is it a good option. Yes because it has a huge upside of it. If it works, very small downside if it doesn't. Whereas if we evaluated by the probability of success because again, we're trying to protect ourselves from failing, we might have given up on that. Now compare that to Russian roulette. What's the odds of winning? It's five out of six. There's not many things in life that you have such high odds in your favor. Right. So, because we are so drawn to certainty, we might inadvertently pick options that are actually like Russian roulette. Why is it such a bad option? Because what's the upside? If we win? We stay alive.

Alan Barnard 00:30:53  We were alive before we started. Right. What's the downside if we lose? We lose our head, which is kind of an important part, right? So it's all about us not thinking about the probability of success as thinking about the impact of success that makes all the difference. So when you give that framework to yourself and your team, it'll it'll help you and all of us select better options.

Jasmine Star 00:31:19  Doctor Alan, I feel very annoyed right now. I feel annoyed because it's so clear. It's so clear. And I came in with this example that I have this conversation with my husband. But what it brought up for me were three other things. Three other things that the upside is not the lottery ticket. Everything that I am deciding between. I am in a place in my life where I want the lottery ticket life. Yeah, and I'm playing the lottery while having two Russian roulette opportunities in my back pocket. And I'm not thinking about it that way. Yeah. Hot dang hot dang.

Alan Barnard 00:31:54  There's another thing about setting really big goals that are so ambitious that feels impossible.

Alan Barnard 00:32:00  So there's a story behind that. I don't know if you've read Doctor Benjamin Hardy's and Dan Sullivan's book.

Jasmine Star 00:32:05  Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:32:07  Benjamin Hardy on the podcast. Check out that it's one. It was one of the he was on the podcast in late 23. He has one of the highest podcast in all of 23, in almost 24. I will link it in the show notes, but yes, big fan love him.

Alan Barnard 00:32:20  So I was at the Joe Polyscias Genius network. He had invited me to speak on the stage, which I was super, super honoured about, and we were sitting up for the interview and Joe said, you know, while we're sitting up, I'm just going to ask the audience. I wanted to think about three things that can increase the profitability of your business, because as a group of entrepreneurs can increase the profitability of your business by 10%. Think of three things, right? So we continue setting up and we are about to start up. And he says, oh, by the way, Doctor Barnard, what did you think of my question.

Alan Barnard 00:32:56  And I said, it's actually a very bad question. And he's like, what do you mean? I said, well, how many ways are they to increase the profitability of your business by 10%? There are many, many, many ways, right? I can increase it by increasing my selling price, by increasing the volume that people buy, the frequency that they buy. The variable cost reduction, operating expenses. There's so many ways. I said, so if as entrepreneurs, we are trying to find the one thing to focus on.

Jasmine Star 00:33:36  It's difficult.

Alan Barnard 00:33:37  Using percentage as an improvement target is a really bad idea. Whether it's 10% or or 100%, it's still too small, which means there's too many opportunities. And I'll get back to having the 100 list of things that I'm working on. Of course, each of them can help a little bit. And a sane plus a sane plus, a sane plus a cent will finally accumulate to a fortune. No, it can never.

Jasmine Star 00:34:02  So Joe asked the group, how can you increase your profitability by 10%? And then you even said what? You took it a step further and said, if you would ask them, how do they increase the profitability by 100%? You said that that's still too.

Jasmine Star 00:34:13  Much.

Alan Barnard 00:34:14  To still. So I said the right question would be asked them, is there one thing that can increase your profitability by ten x, not 10% or by 100 x, not 100%?

Jasmine Star 00:34:29  Wow.

Alan Barnard 00:34:29  And I said, so think about that. How many ways are they to increase your profitability by ten? There's very few. They might only be one. But that forces the brain to find that one. Because even if you are only 50% successful, it's still five x or 50 x, right? So that's the other element of it. As to it's really important to set very, very ambitious goals to the point where everybody says now it's impossible for two reasons. One is that it will help you to find that one thing. Yes. The other thing is, I want you to think about what happens when we say that the goal is realistic. Why do we say that something is realistic is because we think we know how to do it. Also, we wouldn't call it realistic.

Jasmine Star 00:35:15  Right, right.

Alan Barnard 00:35:17  But that means we won't think out of the box.

Jasmine Star 00:35:20  Correct.

Alan Barnard 00:35:20  It's only when we set a goal that's absolutely impossible. And then we ask ourselves, that's impossible unless that we think completely out of the box. So those are two really, really strong reasons to set very, very important and high goals. But there's a warning with it, both for yourself and for your team. Do not confuse a target with a commitment. A target is inspirational. It gets us to think out of the box. A commitment is the minimum we have to deliver when we turn the commitment into a target, Good or vice versa. It immediately becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People will argue and fight to get the target to become lower and lower and stuck.

Jasmine Star 00:36:08  Don't confuse the target for the commitment. So this feels like a very good segue. We're talking about ten x thinking. We're talking about that being a forcing function to cut away all the other noise and say, this is the thing I'm going to focus on, because even if I only reach half of that, it's still better than any of the other options or paths that we could have chosen to.

Jasmine Star 00:36:27  Okay, now when I say this, a lot of entrepreneurs are overwhelmed and they feel very overloaded. And so when we're all of a sudden getting down to the things that we could be doing, we're lessening it. But it also impedes us from making good decisions because all of a sudden we're like, okay, there are so many factors. Can you explain why and how we can make good decisions faster? So what if I had this like ten x idea and then I was like, okay, I can get down into maybe there's like 2 or 3. And all of a sudden I'm paralyzed between, well, which one do I choose? How do I make a better decision faster.

Jasmine Star 00:36:56  Right.

Alan Barnard 00:36:56  So I want to go back to that 100 day, one day task, right?

Jasmine Star 00:37:01  Yes.

Alan Barnard 00:37:01  So the first thing that we want to do there is how do I get a one day task to take one day?

Jasmine Star 00:37:08  Yes.

Alan Barnard 00:37:08  Not 100.

Jasmine Star 00:37:09  Days. Yes.

Alan Barnard 00:37:10  It's don't overload yourself. Well, that's a.

Jasmine Star 00:37:12  Key thing, I mean. Yes.

Alan Barnard 00:37:14  So stop. Constantly evaluate what's on your to do list and just stop most of them that because unless you do that, everything will take 100 days. That's the problem, right?

Jasmine Star 00:37:25  Right.

Alan Barnard 00:37:26  Every one day, tasks will take you 100 days. And stuck in some of those, those five tasks out of the 100, those are the ones that really, really matter. That can change everything for you. So by stopping the 90, at least we'll release a lot of capacity. And now a task that used to take a hundred days can take ten days or five days, or maybe one day as it. So that's the first part when it comes to decision making. So imagine I have these few decisions, Few options left. I still have to pick between them, so they're a really useful framework to use. Is a framework that Jack Canfield popularized in his book Success Principles. It's E plus R equal. Oh, I don't know if you've ever heard of that.

Alan Barnard 00:38:12  So e plus r equals O. So E stands for events. So these are the things that happen to us. They can be positive or negative. You can think of them as stressors in our life. Could be a positive or negative stress. They're typically out of our control. Can we influence them. Probably. But they typically out of our control. The R is for response and the hours for outcome. Right. And what Jack Canfield used as formula. He said that the number one principle of success is to take 100% responsibility for the outcomes that you get in your life. If you blame the events, you can never move forward because then you completely expose the randomness of life. Right? So what I do with that formula to help even kids make better decisions is to say, let's have some fun. Let's look at the math behind this, right? So imagine a positive event happens to you and you have a positive response. So I say, Jasmine, wow, you look beautiful today. And you say thank you so much.

Alan Barnard 00:39:22  My energy levels was a little bit down. That really made me feel positive. So it's a double positive outcome right when you have a positive event but a negative response. So I give you the same compliment. And rather than responding positively, you go, what do you want? Right. It kills.

Jasmine Star 00:39:41  It.

Alan Barnard 00:39:42  If there's a negative event, imagine I criticized you and rather you defending or attacking back you go, oh my God. Sounds like you're having a bad day. How can I help? It wipes it out. Negative. Negative response. Double negative. Right. So that when it comes to decision making, this is as a sort of a decision making 101 that we teach the kids. It's a really good formula to think about it, because it also helps us to think about the mistakes that we can make. Right. First mistake is with the E is we don't distinguish between noise and signal noises. All the things that are happening that we shouldn't respond.

Jasmine Star 00:40:22  To.

Alan Barnard 00:40:22  But we are. How can I stop most of that? The signal is those five things, or three things that I should concentrate on when it comes to the R, that's where it gets deep.

Alan Barnard 00:40:37  We often don't respond, but we react. We make about 35,000 decisions every day, which is based on what you said previously, is where part of the overwhelm comes.

Jasmine Star 00:40:50  From, right?

Alan Barnard 00:40:51  We are completely overwhelmed and unfortunately, women suffer from this much more than men. There is something called decision fatigue. It was picked up first when I studied parole board judges, and I tried to figure out what gives a judge the reason for granting parole or not. And what I noticed is beginning of the morning when court starts, about 60% of people get parole before lunch. Zero. It's like, what the hell is happening? Is there some bias? You know? Are they scheduling the court with all the easy cases in the front and in the most difficult? And I found that it's decision fatigue. So as you are fatiguing your mind, it gets overwhelmed. It will default to the safest possible decision, which is in that case don't grant. But in our lives It don't take action. That often feels like the safest decision.

Alan Barnard 00:41:53  And women struggle with this much more than men, simply because you're making many more decisions than we do. You're thinking about everybody, including like, what to wear. You know, woman thinks about that for an hour a day. Most men five.

Jasmine Star 00:42:08  Minutes. Right.

Alan Barnard 00:42:10  So? So that's the part is. Why do we react? It's because we feel overwhelmed and then we react emotionally. So we over or under react. And that's where that's the biggest mistake we should prevent. It's to say of all these decisions that I'm making every day, the majority of them don't matter. That's the good news. They really don't matter what I'm wearing, what I'm eating, how I get to work. You know, but there's a few of them that really matters a lot. And those are the ones that we want to think about. Right? So Daniel Kahneman, who wrote the famous book Thinking Fast and Slow. He called it system one and system two said system one is our fast and automatic mode of thinking, right? You're not even thinking about it.

Alan Barnard 00:43:01  System two is our slow and more deliberate way of thinking. So if it's a really important decision, the worst advice that you can get is to go five for 3 to 1. Decide. It's terrible advice. I cringe every time I hear somebody give that because it's only valid under one condition. When you have built up so much intuition about that subject that it becomes instinctive. Got it right. But if you don't, if you are new to it, the worst thing is to trust your gut. You haven't put in the 10,000 hours to become an expert, rather found somebody that has that has that expertise. So the second mistake, First mistake is the events we respond to. Things we shouldn't. The our partners. We react. We don't respond. So how can I slow myself down? And often that comes from being comfortable with not knowing. As soon as I realize I don't know what the best responses are. I need to think about it. That gives me that space, that small little space that I need to get into flow.

Alan Barnard 00:44:13  I don't know if you know that there's five F's when it comes to stress responses.

Jasmine Star 00:44:18  fight. Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:44:20  Flight freeze. And that I don't know the other two.

Jasmine Star 00:44:24  Yeah.

Alan Barnard 00:44:24  So the easiest way to remember is imagine you're in the wild and there's something really dangerous coming your way, right? The safest option is to flee if you can flee, right? If that's not an option, then it's freeze. Standstill. Hope they don't notice you.

Jasmine Star 00:44:43  Okay.

Alan Barnard 00:44:43  Right.

Jasmine Star 00:44:44  Okay.

Alan Barnard 00:44:45  Number three is fawning. So it's different from freezing. It's actually playing along, being completely subservient. A pleasing them, And hoping that they won't kill you.

Jasmine Star 00:44:57  Okay.

Alan Barnard 00:44:57  Right. Which is often the best option, right? Then it's. If that doesn't work. And I really starting to attack you, then you have to fight. Those are the four instinctive f's of stress responses. But there's another one which I know is an important word for you. Flow.

Jasmine Star 00:45:16  Oh.

Alan Barnard 00:45:17  Right. What does flow mean? It means pausing and igniting your cognition rather than intuition or instinct, which is the fast and automatic way.

Alan Barnard 00:45:28  And let me think for a moment. Let me be conscious of what's happening around me and see what's the best possible response here. So when I'm in flow, I become a hyper productive, hyper creative. But it requires that pause that and I can pause by breathing, by just taking a deep breath. I can pause by saying, I don't know what the best response is. Let me think about it, right? Whatever you need to do to get you to pause that triggers system to makes you think about it. What are my options here? What is the best option?

Jasmine Star 00:46:06  Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:46:07  Events plus response equals outcome.

Jasmine Star 00:46:11  Yes.

Jasmine Star 00:46:11  My greatest opportunity. I have become so much more honed. Much to the chagrin of many of the people who I've been friends with, is now, I know, signal versus noise. I've cut a lot of noise out of my life by cutting out noise. I've also cut out people and time spent with people, and that's been difficult. But now my signal is so clear.

Jasmine Star 00:46:30  What I need to do the deep work on is not having a reaction, but a response.

Alan Barnard 00:46:35  Let me clarify.

Jasmine Star 00:46:36  Please, so.

Alan Barnard 00:46:37  I don't sit confusion Illusion. If you have built up enough intuition about something, enough instinct, you should react in fully automatic mode. It's when you haven't that you should respond where you want to think deeply. So it's it's slowing down. Your thinking will help you make a faster decision.

Jasmine Star 00:46:59  And you know, for me, it's deeply ingrained. And it's from childhood it has been conditioned that I am the I'm the eldest of five children in immigrant family, and I had taken a lot of responsibility. And so when you have so much responsibility and my mom battled cancer for nine years until I stepped into the family in that role, it was to have the reaction was always it was Jasmine will always have the reaction. She'll know what to do. And what I've done is carried that into business, and I feel like people are deeply responsible to me on the team for the vision.

Jasmine Star 00:47:28  And so I'll give a reaction and I need to have the courage to say, I don't know, give me a second. And I'm telling you, when I can slow down, I make a much better decision. And I receive this because I want different outcomes, I do.

Alan Barnard 00:47:43  And part of that is just feeling confident that you can trust yourself and trust those people around you.

Jasmine Star 00:47:49  Yep.

Alan Barnard 00:47:49  You know, that allows you to to slow down your thinking a little bit.

Jasmine Star 00:47:53  Oh, yeah. And the five F's. Flee! Freeze! Foreign. Fight. Flow.

Jasmine Star 00:48:01  Flow. Flow.

Alan Barnard 00:48:02  Yeah. So when should I go? Into flow? As. As when it's really important. Right. That at least I should take a few seconds. Or maybe minutes or an hour or two to really think about it. So the last mistake is what happens with the. Oh. And that to me was very interesting. Very few people think about what they really want. And it turns out that that's massively important to decide how to respond.

Alan Barnard 00:48:29  Right. It's like what you are. It's like I remember it's like you have kids that are naughty. Right. And then they you, they stop playing the ball, you're going to break something. And then you hear the vase falling over and breaking, right? And now you react right because you want to teach them a lesson. Right. Versus pausing for a moment and saying, what do I really want from this? The vase is broken, right? Right. I want him to really learn the lesson. If I react emotionally, if I act angrily, they're going to lose respect for me and forget about the bloody lesson, right? So I had this with my two boys. My ex-wife would react to get very angry because she would warn him, you know, for her to stop throwing balls around the house and then something would break, right? And she would and she would say, go to your dad. So I'd be sitting in the office and the two would walk in and I would say to them, okay, so tell me what happened.

Alan Barnard 00:49:27  And I would point to each other, right? And I said, okay, so what do we need to learn from this? Right. And what punishment do you think would be appropriate? Because we want to make sure that you. You remember this and never do this again. And they start fighting against each other. What's the best punishment? Right. And I'm just sitting there and watching this play. But I give a punishment that I think is fair. And then I learn the right lesson. So we also need to think about that as every event that happened and we responded that we think about what the outcome is that we really wanted. And that we do a debriefing afterwards to say that we get what we really wanted or needed. And in the future, if I get another event like that, is there a better way to respond?

Jasmine Star 00:50:14  I receive that with such profundity because I had a conversation with our CEO and we were talking about like our growth projections, and there was a point, like an inflection point without additional staffing that we would be having more revenue but at a lower profitability percentage.

Jasmine Star 00:50:32  Right.

Jasmine Star 00:50:32  And so when I go back and I track to the outcome, the outcome isn't more revenue. The outcome is a certain percentage of profitability, as indicated by me. And I was like, that makes no sense. And had I only looked at the factors. Right. So I'm having my signal, I'm having the event money and then having a response. Very good. But what was the outcome? The outcome was a certain percentage of profitability. That's important to me. And I think that now having this equation to anchor that in, I have a better communicative style of saying, that's great, but it's going against the thing that we ultimately want.

Jasmine Star 00:51:04  Yeah.

Alan Barnard 00:51:05  And that's so important because another thing that we kind of intuitively, subconsciously do as business owners, as we start confusing the means with the end. Yes, we start thinking about my job is to keep everybody busy, right? No. My job is to create a company that has high value. And profitability is a key part of that.

Alan Barnard 00:51:26  The multiple I can get is another key part. And eliminating risks that can increase my multiples. But when you start thinking about. I'm looking at everybody. Is everybody busy? Do I keep everybody busy? The coal mines is the same. I try to keep all the resources busy. Right. Everybody's producing tons, but most of the tons are not needed. Now they're just trying to keep busy. And it's the busyness that causes everything to take much longer and everything to be done much less than what we can. So if you think about that, just imagine every person in your company is 99% utilized, right? Everything will take years to complete. If they are sitting there waiting for you to assign them that one or 2 or 3 tasks that are most important things will flow.

Jasmine Star 00:52:14  Good Lord.

Alan Barnard 00:52:15  Right. You don't want work to be waiting for resources. You want the resources to be waiting for the right work and get it done as fast as possible with the best quality, lowest cost, and get it to flow.

Jasmine Star 00:52:29  One thing that we started before we. The cameras were rolling.

Jasmine Star 00:52:32  Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:52:32  I said, what is the win? Like, what's the win? And and many people will sit here and say, oh, I would like to point people to my podcast, or I would like to have more people on my newsletter list, or I'd like to have them to sign up for this thing. And when you sat in the chair across from me, you said, Jasmine, the only thing I want is to empower people to make better decisions faster.

Jasmine Star 00:52:53  Yeah.

Alan Barnard 00:52:54  When it really matters, that's the important part to add to that, because most decisions don't matter. But there's a few that really.

Jasmine Star 00:53:02  Do.

Alan Barnard 00:53:03  And it's getting those right that makes all the difference. Being able to know what is a hell yes decision and a hell no decision. Everything in between probably doesn't matter.

Jasmine Star 00:53:13  So one of the things that we were talking about was of the many things you do. You have a series of apps that help people live in harmony.

Jasmine Star 00:53:24  Can you explain how. Okay, so it's Harmony apps. Com but how did you decide to name the company that I really liked the idea of the naming behind it.

Alan Barnard 00:53:31  So as I mentioned, I'm passionate about helping people make decisions. So we're trying to understand in my research lab, why do we make and often repeat bad decisions? And part of it is we don't realize the consequences fully. It's that like that crisis thing, we actually in crisis almost all the time. So you want to understand why is it that we make bad decisions? And there are different reasons. One is we are more emotional than what we think. Right? So we don't rationalize and then we decide. We decide that, then we rationalize. We find reasons to justify what we've done rather than thinking through it. Another thing is like thinking about the the overwhelm side. That's why some of the apps that we built is digital twins. That can help us model a full supply chain. A recent example would be, you know, Ralph Lauren came to us and said, we are experiencing shortages and surpluses in our retail stores.

Alan Barnard 00:54:30  What is the bad decision that is causing that? And with the digital twin, we can go back and say, this buyer bought this amount of goods at that price to get a price reduction, but now it caused us to sitting with too much, etc.. So all of that is the range of apps that we've developed is called Harmony. And the reason for that is that when we are making bad decisions or when we are procrastinating and making a good decision, it causes disharmony. It hangs over us like a dark cloud and follows us around. So when we are able to make a better, faster decision that brings harmony back in our life, with our partners and at work.

Jasmine Star 00:55:12  I love that so. Doctor Alan Bernard. Com and Harmony apps. Com. So entrepreneurs are the vast listeners of the show. Where would they go to get more information on how to learn more about the research you're doing and what you are putting out in the world.

Alan Barnard 00:55:26  So before I get there, one more thing. So we said there's three things.

Alan Barnard 00:55:31  There's the goals we set. Yes, there's the decisions we make. And then there's the actions that we take. Oh, right. So I don't want to leave without sharing.

Jasmine Star 00:55:41  Just one insight.

Alan Barnard 00:55:42  On the actions to take. I learned this lesson from a business, but now we got involved in one of the largest SAP implementations, a big IT system $5 billion implementation. After six months, there were already six months behind on a five year project and the consequences would have been horrible. I got engaged. We helped them figure out a few things that they can do. We were able to catch up and deliver the project on time, and the executive of this company took me out for dinner and he said to me, you know, thank you so much for what you've done. Do you have any questions for me? And I said, yes, I, I'm curious to know what is it that I said, that gave you the courage to take the action. It takes courage to take actions.

Alan Barnard 00:56:30  It takes courage to make decisions. But it takes even more courage to action those decisions. And what he said, I'd never forget. He said to me, there was one thing that you said. You said, we're going to do an experiment. He didn't ask me to make a change or improvement. He said, we're going to do an experiment for the next month. And I realized that we don't learn from experience. We learn from experiments. Right. So if you think about touching a hot stove plate, right as you touch it, it burns. You imagine it burns you a day later or a week later. How long will it take you to learn the lesson? So my last piece of advice is to think about every decision you make as an experiment, to go and try to create what I call a minimally viable experiment. So you get minimally viable product, which is a step further. But it's to be very clear what's the assumptions I want to test and what's the fastest feedback I can get.

Jasmine Star 00:57:30  So good.

Alan Barnard 00:57:31  Yeah. So another f that I can add is not just the flow part but fast feedback.

Jasmine Star 00:57:36  That's that's.

Jasmine Star 00:57:37  A double.

Jasmine Star 00:57:37  F.

Alan Barnard 00:57:38  Double f I'm sorry. So that to me is the essence of what I do is, you know, how do we get into flow. How do we get the right response, get into flow when it really matters? And how do we get fast feedback?

Jasmine Star 00:57:49  Oh so good. It takes courage to make decisions and it requires more courage to take action.

Alan Barnard 00:57:56  Take action. That's when the rubber meets the road.

Jasmine Star 00:57:58  And then when we tell ourselves we're going to take an action, we're not going to treat it as if it's the end all be all. When we take an action, all we're telling ourselves is this is an experiment, and we're going to learn from the experiment, and that will act as the gumption to get us to where we want to go.

Jasmine Star 00:58:10  Yeah.

Alan Barnard 00:58:11  And a good experiment is one that I'm clear what assumptions I'm testing. So I assume that if we made this offer, we will sell more or they will pay more.

Alan Barnard 00:58:20  Great. What's the fastest way we can test that assumption before we even build a product? Right. So that's that's a key thing. So getting back to your question about the app. So we've built various apps all under the Harmony apps.com. You can go there. So one of the apps is I took that. E plus R equal O framework and took it to another level. Because one of the challenges with responses I always have two options. Yes. Right.

Jasmine Star 00:58:45  Yes.

Alan Barnard 00:58:45  So I can change something or not. Or I can change one thing. Change another thing. So I developed this method called a pro con cloud. And there's an app they called Harmony Decision Maker. And that will help you to find out what is the problem that you're trying to solve. Really important enough. What's the options you have? What's the positives and negatives of each option. Because that's the other complexity. We think response equal outcome. There's always two responses and always two outcomes for every response. So it teaches you how to think about your options.

Alan Barnard 00:59:16  What's the pluses of both and the minuses of both, and then pick the best option, one that gives me all the pluses without any of the minuses. So that's a Harmony decision maker app. And then we have a whole range of digital twins that people can use.

Jasmine Star 00:59:28  To model their policies.

Jasmine Star 00:59:29  I had this panel of our guest.

Jasmine Star 00:59:30  He's a researcher that's coming in and teaching us how to make decisions, and then he's contextualizing it for entrepreneurs, specifically harmony.com to get more information about him. It's Doctor Eleanor bernard.com. Thank you.

Jasmine Star 00:59:43  Thank you.

Jasmine Star 00:59:44  Thank you. He flew in from Las Vegas today and is flying home back to his research lab today to serve you. So please do me a favor and leave a review for the podcast or connect at Doctor Alan Bernard. Doctor Alan Bernard, thank you for being here at the Jasmine Star Show.

Alan Barnard 01:00:02  Thank you so much. And I've just published a new book. It's called From Crisis to Catch Up to Keep Up. So it's available on Amazon. They welcome to check it.

Jasmine Star 01:00:10  Out.

Jasmine Star 01:00:10  Rate check it out and leave the man a review y'all. Thank you.

Jasmine Star 01:00:14  Again.

Alan Barnard 01:00:14  Thank you so much.