1258: Disruptors: Break Free from Ordinary Limits and Challenge the Status Quo with Author, Disruptive Theorist and Researcher Craig Copeland

Craig Copeland 0:09 Hey, we're here with Craig Copeland, who's the author of the book, disruptors, the gateway to genius level thinking. It's a book based on 14 years of research and interviews. It's packed full of insights and methods for remapping how we think, act and live in a profoundly different and radical new way. So Craig is the author of disruptors and three personal development books in total. He's been a keynote presenter and award winning speaker. So we're here just to talk about this idea of disruption. Disruptors, their qualities how to figure out what they've done correctly. That way, in what we're trying to achieve, we can also disrupt an industry and kind of get these amazing results that you see, the jobs, the Zuckerberg, the musk, all these crazy, kooky characters. What did they do? Right? What can we avoid? Craig, glad to be speaking with you Thank you. Robert, glad to be here.

Robert Plank 1:07 And so what did I miss out there and introducing you, as far as hyping You and me both up for this conversation you're about to have? What are you all about? What gets you excited?

Craig Copeland 1:19 I think I would have to say research. Basically, I love questioning things. I love being curious about things. I think that one of the reasons I wrote the book is because I think too many of us get into the rational side of our brains, and we kind of just accept what's in front of us. We move forward. We're very into just immediacy, Googling something, getting a quick answer, and going on. I like delving deeper, and I think I learned that from the people that I researched in the book, they're always curious. People always explorers, always discovering, always curious. So yeah, that's my methodology,

Robert Plank 2:14 breaking the monotonous routine it sounds like of saying, Well, why is it that when I want a car to pick me up, I have to pick up the phone and call a taxi. Can't I just push a button? You think about Roku said, Why does your TV need a power button? Apple said, Why does your phone need a keyboard? And I was just reading just this morning, or watching, rather, a video about the Google Docs team that said we took out the Save button. Everyone wanted a save button. And we said, hey, you open up a Google Doc and Google Drive, you type it and don't worry about saving because we have all dealt with a computer crashing at some point and we lose hours of work. So don't worry, we'll save it for you. And people didn't understand it first, and they begged them and say, Please, can we just have a save button? I'll feel better. They said, Nope, we're gonna do this crazy, wild thing, no save button. And so as far as all of the various stories and approaches and possible jumping off points from what you found in your research, what do you think's a good entry point toward talking about disruptors and what they've done?

Craig Copeland 3:20 You mean for individuals, people wanting to become that type of mindset, is that what you mean?

Robert Plank 3:27 I just mean, like, the disruptors that you found in your research, these huge names, these huge companies and like, what do you think is the like, a good example or something exciting?

Craig Copeland 3:38 Okay, so basically, how I got to this level, just what I call disruptors, is I was initially trying to find out what made people successful, and the difference between someone like me who wanted to be successful versus someone that was of notoriety and had success, and was out there, and then I started thinking, Well, what is success? And there's that book, Think and Get Rich by Napoleon Hill, and at some point, I don't know when it was, and I'm sure other people have had the same epiphany that think and get rich didn't necessarily mean monetary wealth. All of a sudden, that struck me, and I was like, well, get rich. What does that mean? Exactly in and I start to realize, is that rich in knowledge, is that rich in accumulative things, material, goods, wealth, friends, social gathering, whatever. So it started to have different definitions. And that made success have different definitions for me. And as I dug deeper, I realized after. Attempting to talk to many people, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, when he was alive. Jeff Bezos, who lots of others. I was getting no results. I was getting nowhere. And I thought, why is success something that we should value? What is behind the success? What really makes something successful? And to me, the answer was discovery. And so I flipped the paradigm, and I started to look at what discovery was. And that's, that's what led me to disruptors.

Robert Plank 5:47 So I love it. And so as far as discovery, like, What have you discovered in all of all these attempts, in this research, in putting it all together, like, what kind of discoveries?

Craig Copeland 6:00 So the discovery I came across was I had to step outside of business, because everything seemed to revolve around business. Like, how was business successful? How did they discover what they did, how they create their products. And I realized, while I was deep, diving into all this, that it was kind of a fluke, and the Fluke was based upon a few things, one being the essential need for curiosity. So when people were curious about something, they were explorative. They were discoverers. They were adventurous. They were willing to what I refer to in the book, and what I say pull out a thread to see where it leads. Now the difference between innovation and disruption. I'll explain this is that these people had no end game, like they weren't in it to say, hey, if I discover what's at the end of this, I'm going to be rich or successful or happy or prosperous, whatever they were just looking into what made this tick, perfect example. A prime example is Steve Wozniak. He was just playing with the computers. In fact, according to all the stories in his home brew club, he wanted to just give that knowledge away. It was Steve Jobs who figured out how to monetize it. So to me, that's the starting point. Is the discovery, the curiosity.

Robert Plank 7:48 That's a cool idea of basically having fun in a way, right? And I think that I'm not sure if, if today's generation has it anymore, but see these other generations when you're talking about the being a kid playing with a computer. I mean, remember the days of of just like creating fun graphics, or how much fun it was just typing in a Word document, or if you had a computer that could talk to make it say, like funny words, just the experimentation and the curiosity both the inner and the outer, right? Because there's a curiosity of trying new things. There's also curiosity of going back and seeing why you have been doing that kind of thing. And it's child like, in a good way, in the way that we sometimes forget and we try to make things practical. Like, I won't even try this unless I know it's there's this goal, I know what, to make me money. And there's something to be said about goofing off, obviously not all the time, but seeing what happens, and just trying new different things, proof of concepts,

Craig Copeland 8:48 right, right. There's a gentleman, Sir Ken Robinson, who has basically said that, in our beginning stages of growing up, we are those things. We are curious, we're adventurous, we're we're messy, we're explorative, we're creative. And then society teaches that out of us, so we can basically the end result fit into society. So we drop those things and we start thinking rationally, logically, pragmatically, reasonably, and we forgo all these things that society says to us, basically, are non profitable. So there's no profit in creativity. There's no profit in being adventurous. There's no profit in being explorative, yet disruption is proving the contrary. So here's an example. Here's two examples. Stan Lee, we know. We all know Stanley by now. Marvel, common. Six he created some of the most iconic superheroes today. The other example is Jk Rollins. She created one of the most iconic children's books, Harry Potter. Neither of them were looking for an end result of becoming the wealthiest people around, or creating multi billion dollar industries that wasn't their agenda. Their agenda was creativity, discovery, exploration, imagination, fantasy. And as a result, the difference between innovation and disruption anyway, the innovation part is when someone learns to take that disruption and turn it into a business concept. And the distinction is it needs to continue to be improved, and that's where innovation comes into the picture. Does that make sense?

Robert Plank 11:08 It does. And as far as the like, the the big no, my management plan, like, is it important to disrupt first and then innovate? Is that what you're saying, like, kind of focus on one and then switch gears to the other. I

Craig Copeland 11:20 would say that innovators are more on the business side. So innovators are people who are looking for things to make profit on things to sell, things to improve upon. An example would be convergent thinking. So convergent thinking for business or for innovators, is funneling down getting the best idea or product that you can create. We think of the sponge. A sponge used to just be a sponge. Then it became a sponge with a scrub application and scrub daddy, we had all these things. So you're always in innovating, same with batteries, same with light bulbs, etc. Disruption, which is the creative side, isn't looking to necessarily turn something into a business idea. Marie Curie didn't want to necessarily turn her idea into a business. So they are divergent, and divergent always means explorative, seeking creative Curies. They are never necessarily looking for an end result.

Robert Plank 12:40 So it seems like a powerful combination. When you take combine the chaos, the kind of tearing down of disruption, with focusing and the improvement of innovation. And so as far as the journey that you've been on, right? You started off trying to get the attention of Bezos and all these other guys, and then you did this research. Was there anything that surprised you as far as what you learned and discovered?

Craig Copeland 13:08 It surprised me in what, what manner like about my

Robert Plank 13:14 Just as far as your own personal knowledge, something where, like when, when you first started this journey, you thought one thing, and then in the course of figuring out the value, like, I've been completely wrong,

Craig Copeland 13:25 right? And I think that, without giving away the whole book, because I think there's good tools to use within the book, the thing that was most surprising to me is the difference between intelligence and genius. There are two completely different things, and I, like most of society, thought it was the same. I thought if you weren't intelligent, you could never be a genius, and the examples within the book have proved just the opposite, that you don't need to be one to be the other. Genius comes out of the intuitive mind, whereas intelligence comes out of the rational mind. So intelligence tests have things like cognitive, analytical, logical reasoning, all these things to test your intelligence that is your rational side of the brain. The genius part comes on the creative, intuitive curiosity side. So imagination. These are things where we create. We create a new idea, a new concept, a new widget. That is all on the genius creative side, so that that was that was interesting to discover. Yeah. And it was backed up by five of the top people in Mensa who also confirm that intelligence has nothing to do with genius,

Robert Plank 15:13 and as far as US applying this ourselves. Do you think it's helpful for someone to say like I'm I'm more intelligent than genius. Do people have different modes? How do we apply it? And, you know, there's then there's the thought of, like, if I'm this, I should partner with that other person. How do we use it in our own life and business?

Craig Copeland 15:32 Right? You can have both. I mean, there's no reason you have to forego one to have the other. You can definitely have both. Einstein has always said that we have made the servant the master, which is rational thinking, and we have made the master the servant. And I'm paraphrasing, but you can basically look it up. What he means is that the creative side is the more prominent, powerful side that we're naturally born with. We're naturally born with this we learn the other stuff, the rational thinking later on, but society has taught us to make that the more important side he's suggesting, and I agree that you don't do that. You keep both, but you never make the rational your dominant thinking style. If you want to create, expand, explore, develop, and eventually innovate, you need to have the intuitive side be your stronger side, but then back it up with the rational.

Robert Plank 16:49 Ooh, that's cool, and I can see how that will get us a lot further where we're not limited by this rational thinking where you say, Hey, let me think of something crazy and cool and creative and outside the box, and then let the rational then try to back that up. And it seems like that's a recipe for taking better, calculated risks and for just defying the status quo and all these things that we want to look into doing right? You want to think better and broaden our horizons in this. And so as far as you, Mr. Craig Copeland, and your accomplishments, you've written this excellent book, and what else do you have to share about like, what you've created, what you've built, what you have to share with us,

Craig Copeland 17:34 basically. So basically, I think that the key to all this, and I've said this in some of my articles and my blogs, is the key to tapping into your disruptive nature. Your true disruptive nature is to think like a four year old, what would a four year old do? And that involves being a little messy, daydreaming, uh, being playful, exploring, being curious, curious about everything. Why does that do what it does? How does it work? You know, what makes it so? Always do that. I think we forget to do that, or because we're ego driven. We're embarrassed to do that. We're embarrassed to ask questions that we don't know the answers to, and that's where exploration really is. I mean, that's what space is all about. We don't know the answers. We have to be curious to explore space. You know,

Robert Plank 18:40 yes, that's a great message to not let ego and pride get in the way and look explore this unknown, and speaking to that, in those last few minutes of our conversation, I'm always curious about the questions that I'm not asking you or that I don't even know to ask you. So in this conversation we're having about disruptors, innovation, being bold, uninhibited, unapologetic, creating the impossible, everything that goes along with that. Is there a missing, hidden question in our conversation? Is there something I should be asking you? I just don't know what to ask you.

Craig Copeland 19:16 Yeah, I think, I think the key for me that I found is, again referencing back to ego, if you can take yourself out of the equation, if, if it doesn't involve, if the end results don't involve the self, Your ability to create and explore will expound exponentially. So I think, to me, ego limits creativity. That's the simplest way I can say it. If we take our ego out of the equation, creativity is fun. Explorative, amazing, adventurous and useful on every level

Robert Plank 20:08 that's powerful. It makes me think about that scamper acronym they say, like, substitute, combine, like, there's, there's the acronym, like, where you like, look at different ways of approaching a problem, right? There's like the like R, which is reverse, there is like P, which is put to different use. And so in that, you think of like, okay, all these things that are in place. What if I pulled out one piece, and how would, how would it still function? And speaking to that, we say, well, how would it look like this, business or this problem I'm solving, if I remove myself from the equation, take the ego out of it, it's helpful. As far as looking at the any problem from new angles perspectives, and trying to get these different results. And so as far as someone getting more out of you, Mr. Craig Copeland and checking out this very excellent book, disruptors, the gateway to genius level thinking. What are some next steps? If someone is impressed by your ideas so far and they want to check out the book, plus so much more, where should they go? So the website to go to is Craig Copeland dot blog, where you can find out about the principles behind disruptive thinking. There's a simply genius newsletter, and you can get this weekly disruptive thinking insights based on 14 years of proven research. And there are links there to articles, plus to the book from Mr. Craig Copeland, which is called disrupt the gateway to genius level thinking. Who is born with this everyone. You can cultivate these special gifts, but what has kept you from utilizing these powerful tools until now is knowing about these eight simple yet revolutionary attributes we all share, and after 13 years of research from Mr. Craig, you can get the information and guidelines to gain complete access to your own unique latent mental abilities. You can find it by going to Amazon, searching Craig Copeland and find this book called disruptors. And then the website is Craig Copeland. Dot blog, that's C, R, A, I, G, C, O, P, E, L, A, N, D. Dot blog, go there and claim every week you'll get one mind altering email article with radical new breakthrough ideas. Apologies for the technical difficulties, Mr. Craig, but we close out the show while sending people off to the book and we'll talk to you soon. Bye for now. Why podcast.com? Forward, slash, free. Go there right now to see what you could be missing in your podcast. Maybe you aren't active enough on social media. Are you writing and broadcasting an email for every episode of your podcast? Do you follow up with your podcast guests? Do you do things to make your podcast interview and content creation easier. Go to dfy podcast.com/free to claim your gift right now.