Hey, everybody. Welcome to my guest tonight. I'm your host, Jeff Favilla. I've got
a great guest joining me all the way from the future. We're
talking startups, entrepreneurship, the philosophy with
Alex Kain. He built the systems he chased
the dream but saw the cracks behind
the gleam Now Alex Kain is here
to say there's a brighter
faraway.
Jeff R. Leads the show.
Together they help us grow
Find your North Star shining bright with
Alex Kain on my guest
tonight.
That was the first song I added lasers to. So, Alex,
welcome to the show. Thanks, Jeff. That was
incredible. I'm glad you enjoyed it. And. And we
were. I joked before the song played that you were calling in from
the future. I believe you're in Melbourne, Australia
right now, is that correct? I am in Melbourne. It's. It's a
beautiful day here. And if you want to know what's happening in the future,
just ask. I can tell you. Well, one thing we do want to
know is kind of your origin story and how everything led up to the
philosophy. And you had an early interest in business. Was that
something you studied in school or was it just a passion that drew
you towards business? Yeah, I think business. I just felt a
natural inclination to want to go down that pathway. And
look, my early days were just doing lots of things. I wanted to be
an actor, actually, you know, when I was at school, I did a
bit of that stuff and I thought, I'm going to be an actor. So I
went to university for one semester and I dropped out because I wanted to be
an actor. And then I took all these odd jobs. I was a private
investigator. I was. Worked in a dating
agency. I. I was a standup comedian.
I did lots of different things. But
eventually I landed into the business world and
had a few technology companies and, you know, stuff when the
Internet was first starting. And more recently, I
guess I started up a software company looking at helping businesses
with CRMs and that sort of thing. And I guess that led me
to this whole thing of looking at systems and
processes for businesses. And from there it just sort of
blew out to looking at systems and processes for the whole world.
You kind of mentioned comedy and acting, and those are two
skills, really, that give you different perspectives on the world. And.
And one, you're trying to play roles and see another character's
perspective to play the role. And in comedy, you're looking at
current events, you're looking at things that are happening around you and
trying to relate that to the audience. So those two things give you
a very unique Perspective. And whenever you, what
you started, you said you started your first business after kind of after comedy. Do
you remember what that first business was that you jumped into? Oh,
geez, I've done so many over the years.
Look, I was doing stand up while I was doing businesses. And in fact,
it was, it, it was that,
that made me leave comedy eventually because
I found it difficult having to have a logical,
you know, organized mind during the day, but wanting
to be creative and artistic at night.
And so for me, that conflict was too much and I gave away the
comedy. But, you know, I still keep my, my
customers entertained. Were there early processes
that you started to realize that, okay, if I do step one, two
and three, I'm seeing some success and if I repeat that
over and over again, then maybe there's something,
there's a pattern here, that the pattern rewards success. Did you
have any early wins like that? Well, I actually
learned about comedy itself by going to
Humiversity, so I studied comedy there and I
learned about the rule of three and all. So things are
processes and systems. You know, you may want to make them look like they were
off the cuff, but as you know, many comedians are so well
rehearsed to make it look like it was just off the cuff. So
for me it was a case of, okay, well, how do we apply these
systems and processes in our world to work for us?
And I guess the idea for my book came from the
idea that I started questioning the systems and processes and
going, hang on a minute, this doesn't make any sense at all.
A lot. I'm a marketing director by day, and I'm coming up
on 15 years, which is rare for a tenured director
in marketing to have that. And I think what you're talking about, some of these
processes and systems, I think that relying on
that, something that's repeatable month after month, makes it a much
more steady opportunity for people to grow in their career.
Whereas some people just step up to the plate and just start taking
giant swings and hoping to hit a home run, and they don't. And every
couple years they're kind of turning over that position. And some
of the things that you saw, you know, some of the processes, the,
the risk reward, the system for compensation and,
and getting ahead is, is that kind of where you started to see some of
the cracks in, in corporate culture? Well, I think as I was
becoming successful myself in my own businesses, I, I started
to question why didn't I feel successful? And I
think it was because I couldn't equate success
with just success for me, because when I looked around and
I saw so many other people doing it tough, it didn't
make sense to me that my success should just be
all about me. And so it was that
questioning of, you know, what I was seeing around me and
the, the messages that the media sends to us. You know, this is what
success looks like. Accumulate wealth, buy more stuff,
get more stuff. For me, it. It started to ring
hollow. And so I just started to
think, well, hang on, what's wrong with this picture? You
know, my whole life I've been told to aim for success, to,
to try and, you know, make lots of money.
But I wasn't seeing it being shared equitably, and I was seeing that
it. It didn't make sense. So that was probably the inkling,
the beginning of it for me, where I just started to say, well, hang on
a minute. If this doesn't feel right, what else doesn't feel right?
And, you know, my slogan in the book is just question everything.
What's the point of life? Is the opening line of the book.
And then are we doing all the things that equal
what that answer should be? Was there a catalyst moment, or,
you know, one specific point in time that you can look back on
and be like, okay, I need this to take a step back and
re. Envision that something is really, really wrong. This can't.
This can't be like that. There's no way this can be like that. There's got
to be a better way. I don't know that there was one thing. I think
it was a gradual awakening that crept up on me.
You know, I was. I was staying in nice hotels,
traveling, and, you know, I'd walk outside the hotel and there were people
sleeping on the streets around me. And I just felt, this doesn't
feel right. There is just such a divide between the haves and the have
nots. Why. Why do we as a
society enable this to continue happening?
So it was more about
what's wrong with us, you know, what's wrong with society that
enables certain injustices and unfairness to go on. And,
you know, some people point out to me, well, it's just human nature. Some people
are greedy. Some people just are just going to be like that.
And in the book I talk about, well, I don't know
that it's human nature. I equate human nature to our
operating system, right? That's how we function in the world. But
we can run programs that tell us how
we should operate in the world, and those are our Choice.
We're not locked in by human nature as such. But you've got to
be self aware enough to begin with to choose the programs that you
want to run. Whenever you start to see these things,
you know, you're staying at hotels, you're staying homeless, you had your own business
at that time. Did you start to look internally and start to see
maybe there were some ways we can improve people's lives inside the
company and have a better, more profitable company by
taking care of our people too? Yeah. And so
you, you know, always look inwards and look to help your team. And
you know, I, I know that, you know, my team, I always nurture them in
the best way that I can. But for me it felt like it
was bigger than that. It was because I can do my
little bit in my company, but then the rest of the world outside
doesn't change. And for me it was like we need to
change things on a systemic, structural level.
So you know, here where I live, we have problems with gangs
running around with machetes and things like that and you know, the,
just home invasions and that sort of thing. And I, I
think, you know, going from being a baby,
which is really a blank slate, to
a 12 year old running around with machetes, harassing people,
what happened between here and here?
What sort of programming changed a blank slate
into that? And so the idea began to
brew for me is that we need to change
society by changing society. Right.
And it's a simple concept, but it's also
complex. So our
kids learn in the home in the first
instance by their parents and their peers how to
behave in the world. Now there's no guarantees that their parents
knew how to behave to begin with. And so I see
that potentially the education system, an overhauled
education system could be the solution to, to helping us
transform society through teaching values in school
and not just teaching subject matter, but actually becoming
incubators to nurture great human beings. And I
think if we can do that, imagine over the next few generations
how the population could transform if everyone is
thinking more about others and not just themselves.
Yeah. Instead of sitting there for eight hours to be a cog in the machine,
be the machine, be, be the shining light in the world that makes
a difference. Like, but for your neighbor, for your community, and we
don't do that. Like you said, we measure in wealth,
productivity. And if you're not doing those things, the vet, your value
that you're bringing to society seems to be a lot less or
not as valued between your peers. But, but to be
there in school. And you're right. Let's teach other things. Let's teach
just carrying groceries for your elderly neighbor. Like, what does that do
to your neighborhood or to your community? And, and you mentioned these. You know,
we're currently valuing society by wealth and
productivity. What are some things that you think that we could start to
teach in school to bring, you know, to bring up the level
of society where we do care about each other and not just ourselves
and getting ahead of the Joneses. Yeah. Great. So
the, the philosophy is based on three pillars, effectively
respect, empathy, and gratitude. If we taught
those three things in school to kids from preschool
right through their schooling in, in an age appropriate and
culturally sensitive, appropriate way, it'd be very
difficult for a child to come out of that at the end and want to
break into people's homes and commit these sorts of burglaries, because you would
start to respect all people, all life.
So under the motto of respect, I have developed
four relationships. The first one is our relationship with the
universe. Like what a privilege it is to even exist
just to be here. You know, you look at the world, the
universe, nature, our bodies, you know, we take them for
granted so much, and yet each and every person is a
miracle to even be here. So once you start to develop that
sense of gratitude for even just being alive, then you
can start to look inwards. So the second relationship is our relationship
with ourselves. You know, are we self aware? Do
we know what filters we're running that skew our view of the
world, what triggers us, what patterns we're running?
So once we start to get into that, we can actually start to catch ourselves
before we act in a way that's just running on autopilot.
You know, so many of us are just victims to that
autopilot mentality that, you know, we're just running a program
and we don't even question it. And yet, you know, we do
things that maybe in hindsight we might regret, but had
we been more aware, we could have actually modified our behavior at the
time. The third relationships that within a circle,
friends, family, people that we relate with regularly. And
you know, it's a sad truism that we often treat
strangers better than people that we care about, you know, and
so having that self awareness about,
you know, are we treating someone in the way they deserve to be
treated? Are we treating them because of how we feel or because of something
else? And then the fourth relationship is that with community.
So whether it's someone at the end of your street or someone on the other
side of the world. We're all connected through that invisible thread
of humanity. And it's very easy for us to
say, that's them, this is me, us and them
division. You know, we, we take, we become
tribal like that. You know, if you're not like us, if you're not part
of our echo chamber, then you're against us. And
that's very sad. And we see that even played out in our local
neighborhoods. You know, how well do people go and talk to
their neighbors? You know, you may know one neighbor either side of you,
but our neighborhood, that used to be the old village. The people you
surrounded yourself with, the people you shared the same air with.
And yet, you know, we tend to come home from work, lock
ourselves in our house, lock the doors, turn on the security, and
that's it. So in this age of being so
connected, we're so disconnected at the same time.
Yeah, I didn't hear addiction to technology and social media as one of
those pillars do. Do you find that the change in just
that technology in the last 10 years has kind of pulled people
further away from some of those pillars? Well,
yes and no, because I think there are a lot of people who find their
people online and that's okay, that's a good thing. I
don't think technology is necessarily good or bad. It is a tool.
But what I'm saying is that in the way that we're brought up,
it's how we utilize those tools that can then become the problem.
You know, there are great things to do with technology,
but, you know, have we lost something? Yeah, a lot of those
villages have now migrated online. Is it the same experience?
Maybe, maybe not. You know, so look, the times,
they are a change and right, and there's nothing we can do to stop that.
But we've got to find ways to be retain our humanity
no matter what the technology. Especially now with AI, you know, what are
we going to do about AI now? Are we going to embrace it? Are we
going to fear, Are we going to use it to better humanity, or
are we going to use it to just get more productivity out of
the same people? What about the other side of that
coin? If we work on the people and training people with
this new mindset, we still have corporations,
we still have politicians, there's still a system in place
that is it just a thing of numbers and
time will build up society to the point that the
people learning these new methods become the corporations, they become
the politicians. Or is there another way to attack this from top
down? Yeah, very good question.
So it is, it is a multi approach. So
what I'm talking about through the school system is going to take
generations, right? We, so the first generation,
they start today in you know, 15 years time
or whatever, they come out of school, they're thinking all this great new
stuff about Kumbaya and we're all connected. But they come
home to their parents who still think in the old way and so it
dampens some of that, but then they then become
the parents of the next generation. So when their kids come home,
they get it. So it's going to take maybe three generations to
see a real shift. So that's, that's the longer term approach.
But it's, it's something that we need to start now, right? Because
otherwise we just keep treating symptoms. You know, here with that
issue I talked about with the machete gangs, what they've decided to
do is just ban machetes. Now to me it's like, okay, you ban
machetes, let's find an ax now. Okay, so it
doesn't make sense. We treat the symptom, we don't actually treat the person
to. So that they never even consider that a machete or an ax
is something you would even entertain the idea of. And that's what I'm saying.
We're not treating causes, we're treating symptoms because it's
instant. It's something simple that we can do. We're not prepared
to do the hard work. And particularly for politicians, what I'm
promoting is a multi generational thing. They're not
interested in that. They won't even be in power. So it's of
no consequence to them. They only want short term fixes
that help them get reelected. So you're right on
the one hand in saying that if
we bring up the kids today to be good human
beings, when they get into positions of power, will they be
more others centric? I say yes.
Do we need to still do things in the meantime? Yes, we
do. So I say that our
lack of respect for all humanity contributes to us
allowing homelessness to exist. We could solve
homelessness tomorrow. Homelessness is not a housing issue.
It's a people problem. It's people who decide that it's not enough
of a priority to make it go away. They'd much rather
put money into other things. And so when you have other
people thinking differently in the next few generations,
homelessness doesn't need to exist in that situation because
if you respect each other, you wouldn't allow that to happen.
So I think time will tell, but that's where we need to
head to. Do you. Have you seen maybe like a
domino or a ripple effect? When people read the
book, they start to adopt some of the philosophies in their
daily life. Does it get almost contagious sometimes? Where,
okay, I'm doing this now and I'm going to think this way. And my
best friend is tagging along with me and my parents see that. And
there's just different things that, you know, it might actually be
exponential. You just don't know. Ten years from now
that, you know one little thing, the butterfly effect, affects the next
thing, affects the next thing. All of a sudden we got hurricanes. I don't, I
don't think that's how the butterfly effect works. But, but for the philosophy,
have you seen it almost contagious at times?
Absolutely. There are some people who have reached out and they
just get it straight away and they talk about how they've
changed in their life or how they now see things
in a different way. And I think it is one of those aha
moments, if you're that way inclined, that you'll read it and you go, oh,
yeah, I never thought about that. Or why didn't I think
that was like, I talk about inflation, right? Just as a
simple example, because, you know, we've all been living through a cost of
living crisis and, you know, things have been crazy and
inflation's been high. And how do governments combat that? They put up
interest rates, right? Who does that affect? Mortgage
holders. Are they the people who have lots of disposable
cash? No, it's the people who have money sitting in their bank
account who now earn more money, which goes against treating
inflation in the first place. So things like that don't make sense.
But we do it because maybe that's how we did it.
But these days we have so many more levers available to us to
influence things. But I think politicians are generally
scared to make big changes because, you know, you upset the
apple cart and bye bye. You never hear
bankers complaining about high interest rates. They seem to. They never say, hey, let's
lower these. That's it. And that's it. Look, the current
system is serving a lot of people very nicely. Thank you. You know, there are
a lot of people who do not want to see the philosophy come in.
But, you know, I say that
if you need to accumulate a lot, like
I'm talking extreme wealth. I'm not talking just, you know, comfortable life. I'm
talking people who have extreme wealth and you want to spend that and
buy more toys and things. Great. But
you know what, what's the gap you're trying
to plug in yourself? You know,
I would much rather see people who are content with being and
looking after and contributing. You mentioned before that, you know, success
is not seen as, you know, anything
unless you're making a lot of money. Right. And I
see that contribution
should be a currency. So not everyone needs to make
money to feel that they got meaning and
purpose in their lives. And so, you know, we need to have a
world where if you want to work, go and work. Maybe
you want to paint and bring joy to yourself and to others, maybe you
want to write poetry, maybe you want to be a stay at
home parent, maybe you want to look after the elderly.
Everyone should have those abilities to pursue what
gives them joy and purpose in life. So one of the
concepts, a little bit controversial that I talk about in the book is a
universal basic income. You know, so it's a little bit of money
that everyone receives every month just to cover
food and a roof over your head. From there you
decide, do I want to go and do more? Do I want to
be creative? Do I want to have a job so I
can earn more than that? But it gives everyone a
minimum level of, okay, a minimum level of
dignity to exist. Not everyone is
built to go and run corporations, right? But if
all I want to do is just paint and write poetry every day, and
it may not be commercial, but for me it gives me joy and
pleasure. Why can't I do that? But I can't. I still have
to feed myself. I still have to take a job maybe that I don't
like and I still have to keep doing that and maybe find the little
leftover time to do the things I enjoy.
Imagine if we all did the things we enjoyed, what would happen to our health
system, you know, what would be the flow on effects of that in
society? Yeah, you mentioned billionaires. And
you know, sometimes the media puts them on a pedestal with giant
yachts and rockets to Mars and all this
crazy stuff. And then you also hear the next story on the news is about
the billionaires of the 18 and 19, early
1900s who would build libraries for the community and
theaters for the community. And they wanted to make sure their legacy lived
on and on. And is there, you know, part of the philosophy is
what do we do with all this wealth? You know, is there, is it
necessary to acquire so much or, or can it
be passed around and still have a nice comfortable life? Is
there do you address anything like. Of the top
one. 1%? Of the top 1%? I
actually do. And, you know, it may not be popular with the. The top
1%, but I talk about having a wealth ceiling as
well. So, you know, it's. And, you know, we can determine
what that number is. So it's
more about. That would help to fund the universal
basic income. So if you've got a very successful company,
you can get to a certain level, but after that level, it's going back
to help fund the pool for all of society.
So you still are doing well, Maybe not as
extremely well as you were, but do you really need to.
But the knowing that you're actually contributing and helping the rest of
society as well, I think needs to be taken into account
for all of us. We all need to be in this together, and
some people are just more in it than others. That's all.
The philosophy. Where has it taken you so far? Do you.
I've seen you on a ton of podcasts, making a lot of appearances, doing a
lot of media. Do you present at conferences or.
Or give private speeches to different organizations?
So that's the next thing on my list. So the book was just published in
June, so I've been really just trying to get out there. And the
easiest way to do that at the moment's been, you know, with the media online,
that sort of thing. So the next thing will be really
going and doing that public speaking, not just to
regular audiences, but also talking to
people in the education sector, talking to politicians, and actually
getting that groundswell happening. You know, the
second half of my book, the first half talks about the concepts of the
philosophy. The second half addresses the different sectors, so
business, politics, the economy, health
system. So all those things
need overhauling. And it's so really going into
those organizations and talking to government about that and saying,
well, we need to question everything, and here's how we do it,
and here's the changes we can enact now
to start seeing real difference. I talk about the health system as a sick
system. It's not a health system. It's a sick system. We
can make it a health system, but let's not kid ourselves. That's not what it
is. And the same with our justice system. We don't have a justice. We have
a legal system, we don't have a justice system. You know, justice is only
there if you've got the money to pay for it, but other than that, it's
a legal system. And do you see the philosophy as
something that evolves and grows over time or, or
do you see other books, you know, other chapters of this coming
out in the future? Well, look, I think the,
the philosophy will continue to grow because, you know, I,
I don't claim to have all the answers. What I'm loving about it is
these sorts of discussions because it is other people who will
probably come out with more ideas than I've even got.
This is really just the starting point for these sorts of discussions.
And I really want to see a movement with this.
You know, I look at the success of Me too, globally.
You know, it starts with a single voice and then some other voices who
also come out. And that's what I'm starting to see happen. I'm the,
I'm the spark, but the ignition is coming from others.
And so that's where I see it going in the future. And if
people want to pick up the book or connect with you, Alex, what's the, what's
the best way for people to reach out to you? So, look, you
can either find me personally on LinkedIn, but
the website is the philosophy.net
and on the website there are links there where you can find the
book on Amazon. It's available as paperback
or Kindle or audiobook as well on multiple different
sites as well. So. And there's also an online platform there. So if people are
interested in having these sorts of discussions, you can join up there
and enter into some of these rooms and have chats about some of these
topics. Awesome. Alex, this has been so much fun.
Thank you for joining me. On my guest tonight, Alex Kain. I'll have
all those links in the show notes. Let's go back back to the theme
song.
Jeff Rippella leads the show.
Together they'll help us grow.
Find your North Star shining bright
with Alex Kain on my guest
tonight.