Kindergartners Keep Beating CEOs — The One Thing That Makes It Possible
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[00:00:00] Speaker: you think that in a competition against kindergartners, you'd win every time. But here's a strange thing that keeps happening. Teams full of the best and the brightest, like MIT grads, CEOs, MBAs, well, they keep losing when they go up against five and six-year-olds. In today's video, I'm gonna walk you through the study that proves this over and over again. Then we're going to get into the psychology of the exact thing we lose the more educated and accomplished we become. And finally, the actionable steps to get you back to what those kindergartners have so you can use it to jumpstart your business again. It is time to live an extraordinary life alongside an extraordinary business. And the only way to do that is to create a business that grows faster with less work.
[00:00:45] Speaker: Here's the order we're doing this in because it does matter.
[00:00:48] Speaker: First, the study itself so you understand exactly what happened and why it's not a fluke. Second, the psychology. What specifically gets stripped away from us as we become more accomplished, because you can't fix a problem you can't name. And third, three specific actionable moves to get that back. Not mindset advice, not be more confident. Actual structural changes you can make this week. So hang tight till the end. That's where I'll talk about the room I've created because I want to replicate the same environment that the kindergartners have. It all begins with the study that has been repeated with the same outcome. The kindergartners out-beat everyone else.
[00:01:27] Speaker: Researchers have run this exact [00:01:30] challenge for years across hundreds of groups: business students, lawyers, engineers, CEOs. And, on the other side, kindergartners. five and six-year-olds.
[00:01:38] Speaker: The task is identical for every group. Twenty pieces of spaghetti. A yard of tape. A yard of string. One marshmallow. Eighteen minutes. Build the tallest freestanding structure you can, and the marshmallow has to be sitting on the top when time is called. And the hardest part, it must stay standing to win.
[00:01:54] Speaker: Watch the adults. They sit down. They introduce themselves. Somebody, usually the most senior person in the room, starts talking about approach. There's a quiet sorting happening, who has the strongest idea, who should hold the pen, who's actually going to lead this?
[00:02:07] Speaker: Think about all the rooms you've been part of.
[00:02:10] Speaker: I know I have been, and still am part of, ones where you mind yourself not to step on toes, not to offer a suggestion because you'll get backlash about how successful that person is. Or even worse, you feel awkward because maybe you'll be seen as lower level. unable to play at their level.
[00:02:27] Speaker: They'll think less of you, so you don't talk at all.
[00:02:29] Speaker: Or maybe you've had this one where you look for help and get back, "I can help you do that inside my coaching program, or my course, or my agency." I think that one stings the worst.
[00:02:39] Speaker: Then we quietly withdraw from the group and continue to build in isolation.
[00:02:43] Speaker: It's interesting that this kind of sorting eats the majority of the eighteen minutes. Then, with time running out, the CEOs, MBAs, they build fast
[00:02:52] Speaker: And the marshmallow goes on last, and it collapses. Constantly. Because the structure was never actually tested under the one condition that [00:03:00] mattered, the weight it would have to hold. And because there was this quiet hierarchy being built, nothing was ever tested. It was just trust that the one running the show knew the answer.
[00:03:10] Speaker: Now watch the kids. There is no sitting down. There is no sorting. They are standing physically shoulder to shoulder, and they start building within seconds. Watch closely and you'll notice something specific. They are not talking in full sentences. It's fragments. """Here." "This one." "Hold it." "It fell, build it again." A kid will reach across and adjust a piece another kid just placed without asking, without explaining, without the other kid stopping to defend it. It does not look like five children with five separate ideas.
[00:03:38] Speaker: It looks like one system moving through five sets of hands.
[00:03:42] Speaker: There is a knowing between them, something unseen.
[00:03:45] Speaker: Trust.
[00:03:45] Speaker: Yes, trust. Trust and belonging are strong and powerful human traits. We actually seek it out. Well, we used to. but in today's world with social media, it's become even harder to build real trust and belonging. But to see six-year-olds do this, I have one. When they're together, even with strangers, the connection and belonging is remarkable. That's why they can become instant friends and play together even when they've never said a word to that kid before.
[00:04:12] Speaker: During the study, when the tower falls, and it falls constantly, there is no pause. Nobody asks whose fault it was.
[00:04:19] Speaker: Somebody says something short, one or two words, and they're already rebuilding. The marshmallow goes on early, almost immediately, and the whole structure gets built around it, adjusted in real time, [00:04:30] off of each other.
[00:04:31] Speaker: By the end of 18 minutes, the kindergartners' structures are on average more than double the height of what the full room of executives and MBAs produced. This has been replicated enough times that it isn't a fluke. It's a pattern, and the pattern has a cause.
[00:04:45] Speaker: Coming up a little later, I'll take you through a few steps to get this in your life and business, but understanding why this matters is very important before you try to build it. So let's talk about why any of this matters.
[00:04:53] Speaker: Think about it for a minute.
[00:04:55] Speaker: You have some of the smartest people in the world constantly losing out to six-year-olds who might be starting to learn how to read. This matters to you. I know you've thought, I'll get another certification, another badge showing I'm capable.
[00:05:07] Speaker: I'll win more." So you do, but all you see are others you deem less intelligent than you surpassing you faster than ever. It's frustrating. I've been there and done that more times I'd like to admit. Just think of the Kardashians, especially when they first started all of this. You think, "Wow, they don't have any formal training."
[00:05:26] Speaker: And sometimes when you hear them talk, you think, "Really?" How are they getting so famous?" But they realize
[00:05:34] Speaker: the fundamentals of this experiment, to a T. Now people look at them in awe for what they've built and done.
[00:05:40] Speaker: Just like in the study, the adults in that room did not lack intelligence. They lacked something else entirely, something that gets quietly removed from you the longer you spend in rooms where you're being elevated.
[00:05:52] Speaker: Think about what actually happens to a person over 15, 20 years of education and career. You learn early and often that being wrong in front of people [00:06:00] costs you something.
[00:06:00] Speaker: A wrong answer in a classroom gets you marked. A wrong take in a meeting gets remembered. A bad call as a leader follows you, so you adapt. You learn to think longer before you speak. You learn to hedge. You learn to wait until you
[00:06:13] Speaker: fairly sure before you commit to an idea out loud. It's an entirely rational response to an environment that pushes
[00:06:20] Speaker: visible uncertainty and being vulnerable. The kindergartners haven't lived in that environment yet. Nobody has taught them that not knowing is dangerous.
[00:06:29] Speaker: Nobody has taught them to manage how competent they appear while they're figuring something out. So when their tower falls, there's no internal calculation happening. There's no, 'What does this say about me?' There's no
[00:06:41] Speaker: information. The tower fell. Try the next thing. This is how the Kardashians moved
[00:06:46] Speaker: through it too, just like the kindergartners.
[00:06:48] Speaker: There was never a thought of what failure would look like or how it would hurt the brand. They actually built a show around their failures. They'd struggle just like the kindergartners, and it would fail. They'd pick
[00:06:59] Speaker: back up and kept going, and the odd thing is,
[00:07:02] Speaker: That's what captivated us about them. And their mom, Kris Jenner, was the queen of seeing this. So what's the actual asset that the Kindergartners had? Not confidence, not fearlessness,
[00:07:11] Speaker: Immediate judgment-free support the moment something breaks, knowing that someone has your back when everything seems hopeless. Just think about it. You put a piece on the tower, it starts leaning. Your brain's thinking, Why is it not working?" But really, you can only see so much at one time. Then out of nowhere, a hand [00:07:30] crosses over you.
[00:07:31] Speaker: The person two shoulders down reaches out and adjusts your piece. It stabilizes the whole structure. There was no explanation, no hesitation, no trying to ruffle feathers, and it worked. You glance over and smile back, then you move to what's next. Just imagine how amazing life and your business would be if you had that right now.
[00:07:49] Speaker: I don't know about you, but I want that right now. And here's the uncomfortable truth for those of us who've built something real. The more accomplished we become, the fewer rooms you have access to where this actually exists. You get a bigger following, a bigger business, more letters after your name, and the number of people who will tell you the truth, catch you in amid failure,
[00:08:09] Speaker: Or let you say, "I don't understand this," without flinching actually shrinks. You end up, in more isolation the more capable you become.
[00:08:18] Speaker: Isn't that funny? It's exactly backwards from what we need.
[00:08:21] Speaker: Today, women and men are lonelier than ever recorded before. Even with social media and all this technology, I really feel like it's we've lost the spaces to be like the kindergartners. We grow out of it too quickly. I wanna change that. ~I,~ like I promised at the beginning of this video, I'll show you how to start getting back to this, and at the end, I'll tell you about what I created so that you can have exactly what the kindergartners and the Kardashians have when they were building all of this, and it will help you live an extraordinary life alongside an extraordinary business.
[00:08:53] Speaker: Here's the three steps to get you started.
[00:08:55] Speaker: Step one, stop testing ideas in private. Test them in front of one other [00:09:00] person live before they're ready. The kids never built alone in a corner and revealed a finished tower. Every failure happened in front of someone in real time.
[00:09:08] Speaker: That's what let the correction happen instantly instead of after the fact. Look, Pixar does something like this when they're making a new movie. They start with just a rough drawing and a story. It's called Notes Day. Everyone came, even the person making the coffee. And everyone spoke. All the feedback was heard. It tests every aspect with people who might not even be familiar with how it's made, but can tell you if the story makes sense or not. Most of us do the opposite.
[00:09:34] Speaker: That means the only feedback you're getting is after the fact. One, you've already spent weeks or months on something that might have been wrong from the start. We build the offer, write the copy, record the course, build the whole funnel on private, and the first time another human being sees it, it's supposed to already be good. That means the only feedback you're getting is after the fact, once you've already spent weeks or months on something that might have been wrong from the start.
[00:09:59] Speaker: Here's a specific move. Pick something you've been struggling with the most this week. Before you go one step further, put the unfinished ugly version in front of one person
[00:10:08] Speaker: whose judgment you trust, and ask them to actually work the problem with you, not comment on it from a distance, not, "What do you think of this?" More like, "Come look at this with me while it's still broken." And to be honest, I've been doing this for about a year now. Sometimes people try to sell me their services, or they think I'm selling to them.
[00:10:27] Speaker: So now I say, "This isn't to sell anything. I'm [00:10:30] looking for someone who can give me true feedback and help me without any agenda." That helps filter the right people. Now I have built my group of kindergartners, and we work through some of the hardest stuff together. No judgment, no lies.
[00:10:42] Speaker: I tell them I'm struggling all the time, and they share the same struggles back. And the funny thing is, many of the struggles I've felt like were just me aren't. They have so many of the same problems.
[00:10:52] Speaker: That single shift doing the early fragile work in front of someone instead of alone is the single biggest lever most accomplished women are not pulling, and if you're able to keep this up as you go, it gets even better. Trust me. Step two, let go of the ego. Watch how much of the adult's 18 minutes went by to establish who was in charge before anyone even touched the spaghetti.
[00:11:13] Speaker: I get it. It's how we're taught from a young age. I have a 10-year-old, and that instinct is already fully baked into him. The pull to assert yourself as the dominant one, the one whose ideas win, starts early, and it doesn't go away on its own. Now, I wanna be clear about something. There is a time and a place for that kind of ego
[00:11:31] Speaker: When you're selling, when you're closing, when you're standing in front of someone asking them to trust you with their money,
[00:11:37] Speaker: A little ego is actually doing its job. It reassures the person on the other side that you know what you're doing. In that context, it's not a flaw, it's a tool. But here's what almost nobody separates out. There has to be a different space, a group of people where all of it gets shut down completely. Specific people who aren't there to be sold to and who you don't have to [00:12:00] sell to either. Where you're not defending your ideas because it's yours, where you can stop fighting for dominance entirely.
[00:12:07] Speaker: And I will tell you directly, that moment you find those people and actually let go around them, your business grows in ways you have not yet imagined because it was never supposed to be running every relationship you're in. And honestly, a lot of coaching industries right now run on exactly this dynamic, whether everyone wants to admit it or not.
[00:12:26] Speaker: One expert at the top positioned as the one with the answers, and a group of people underneath quietly ranking themselves against each other, wondering if their question is smart enough to ask out loud. That's an ego-based structure. It doesn't matter how good the coach is or how much you like them. If the room requires you to defend instead of building alongside people, the ego dynamic is still running the whole thing.
[00:12:50] Speaker: So I want you to actually ask yourself this. If you're currently in a coaching program, a mastermind, a group like this right now, are you actually getting the growth you were promised? Or are you getting information, sure, maybe even good information, while quietly staying just as stuck as you were when you joined?
[00:13:06] Speaker: Because those are two very different things. And if the second one is true, that's not a you problem. That's the structure doing exactly what an ego-based structure does. This isn't only an individual problem either. It happens at scale, even inside groups full of brilliant people.
[00:13:22] Speaker: Pixar, one of the most creatively successful companies on Earth, ran directly into this. As they grew past 1,000 [00:13:30] employees, the openness that built the company early on had quietly hardened into hierarchy. People had real concerns and ideas and didn't feel safe raising them anymore. So leadership shut down the entire studio for one day. Every single employee from directors and accountants and ran the whole company through open problem-solving sessions where title didn't matter at all.
[00:13:51] Speaker: Several of the ideas that came out of that day got implemented immediately.
[00:13:55] Speaker: Even the most talented people alive needed someone to deliberately build a group where hierarchy didn't apply. It never happens by accident. Here's the honest part. Almost none of you have this right now, not because you haven't tried. Most of you have probably attempted some version of it, a few peers to talk to, a group chat, a small circle you lean on, and that's a real start.
[00:14:17] Speaker: If you have even two or three people like that, people you can fully be unpolished with, protect that.
[00:14:23] Speaker: Don't let ego creep back in. But here's what I've watched happen over and over. The moment people try to take that beyond two or three people, the moment they try to actually build it into something structured, consistent with real standards for who's in the room and how it stays ego-free at scale, it falls apart.
[00:14:41] Speaker: Not because the idea is wrong, because building that well and
[00:14:44] Speaker: Keeping it that way as it grows is genuinely hard to do alone, and almost nobody has the time or the systems to hold it together. So here's the move. If you already have two or three people, go protect that relationship starting today. Say it out loud to them. Agree together that [00:15:00] ego isn't welcome in this space.
[00:15:01] Speaker: That alone will change your business. And if you don't have that yet, or you wanna build out further than two or three people with real structure behind it, stick with me to the end of this video because I built exactly this, and I'm going to tell you exactly how you can be part of it.
[00:15:16] Speaker: Step three, find people who can shoulder it so you can regrip. In Navy SEAL training, there is an exercise called Log PT.
[00:15:23] Speaker: A team carries a massive log roughly the size of a telephone pole on their shoulders together for extended stretches of time. It's brutal, and here's the part that matters most for us. Nobody on the team is asking each other for help out loud. Nobody is saying, "Oh, my shoulder's giving out. Can you take more?"
[00:15:41] Speaker: There isn't time for that, and there isn't a need for it either. The team feels it. They feel someone's grip start to slip, feel a shoulder dip half an inch, feel a stumble before it even becomes a fall, and without a word, without a signal, the weight redistributes. Someone else absorbs a little more for a moment, just long enough for that person to reposition, regrip, get fully back under the log.
[00:16:05] Speaker: Then it shifts back. Nobody stops. Nobody makes it a moment.
[00:16:08] Speaker: The team just moves as one thing, sensing where the strain is before anyone has to name it. How cool is that? That should sound familiar. It's the same thing we saw with the kindergartners and the spaghetti towers. One brain operating multiple sets of hands. Nobody's negotiating who takes the weight. No one's waiting to be asked.
[00:16:26] Speaker: Just people so connected to each other that struggles get noticed [00:16:30] and absorbed before it ever turns into a collapse.
[00:16:32] Speaker: This is the actual point of this entire section, and honestly, of this video.
[00:16:37] Speaker: It's about what it takes to build people around you who can feel when you're struggling before you have to explain it, and who take a piece of the weight without being asked, just long enough for you to catch your grip again. Think about your own life right now. Do you have that?
[00:16:52] Speaker: If you were quietly drowning, not because you told them, but because they actually knew you well enough to notice. Or is everyone around you so caught up in their own log that nobody would ever see your shoulder starting to dip?
[00:17:04] Speaker: most accomplished women are carrying everything completely alone, and worse, surrounded by people who wouldn't even notice if they started to slip. That's not because the people around you don't care. It's because the relationship was never built deep enough for that kind of wordless awareness to exist.
[00:17:19] Speaker: That takes real time, real proximity, real shared struggle to build, and It doesn't happen in a group chat you check twice a week. Here's a specific move. Stop waiting until you're completely underwater to say something, and at the same time, start building the kind of closeness with a few people where you won't even have to.
[00:17:39] Speaker: Show up for them the same way. Notice when their grip is sliding before they say a word,
[00:17:43] Speaker: And taking lightweight off without being asked. That's how this actually gets built. Not through more networking, through real sustained closeness with a small number of people who are in it with you. This is what step one and two we're quietly [00:18:00] building towards. Testing your ideas in front of someone instead of alone.
[00:18:03] Speaker: Letting go of the ego so nobody's performing. Both of those things are what makes this third piece even possible
[00:18:10] Speaker: Because you cannot get to wordless felt support with people you've never been vulnerable with in the first place.
[00:18:17] Speaker: Take from the spaghetti tower because I don't think it's what most people take from it. It was never a story about kids being braver or more creative or less afraid. It's a story about what
[00:18:27] Speaker: becomes possible the moment you are never actually alone with the hard part. Real-time support instead of feedback after the fact. Ego set down so nobody's performing for each other, and people close enough to feel when your grip is slipping before you even have to say a word. Think about the Kardashians again for a second.
[00:18:45] Speaker: Everybody loves to say they got lucky or they didn't earn it, but what they actually had, whether anyone wants to admit it or not, was exactly this: a tight circle building in public, failing in public, picking each other back up in public with Kris right in the middle of holding together the whole thing.
[00:19:02] Speaker: That wasn't an accident. That's the same system as the spaghetti tower, and the same as the log. People who could feel each other's weight shifting and move before anyone had to ask. You already have the skill. You already have the experience. What most accomplished women are missing isn't inside them, it's around them.
[00:19:18] Speaker: And I told you at the beginning of this video, it's time to live an extraordinary life alongside an extraordinary business. This is how. Not by getting another certification, by finally having the people.[00:19:30]
[00:19:30] Speaker: That's exactly why I built the Time Billionaire Society. Every piece we just talked about, testing your work live instead of alone, setting the ego down completely, having people who feel when you're struggling before you say it, that's not a metaphor for what TBS is.
[00:19:44] Speaker: That's literally how it's structured. It's a small, real community of women founders where the whole point is that nobody performs, nobody carries it alone, and nobody has to explain themselves before they're understood. And here's why that actually matters for growth. Most of the spaces out there hand you information, good information sometimes, but you still operate inside the same hierarchy we talked about this whole video.
[00:20:07] Speaker: Still hedging, still not testing things live, still managing how you look while you're trying to apply what you learned. So growth happens, but it's slow. It's capped.
[00:20:15] Speaker: It's never actually the extraordinary you are promised. This room is built so that cap doesn't exist, so both your business and your life can actually grow at the same speed you are capable of together, not managed against each other. I built it because I looked for this everywhere and mostly found the opposite.
[00:20:32] Speaker: So I built the room I couldn't find, the one that actually works like the kindergarten team and the log carry we talked about. I'm hosting a live info session where I'll walk you through exactly what this is, how it's structured, and how to know if this room is what you've been missing. If any part of this video sounds like your life right now, I want you there.
[00:20:50] Speaker: The link is in the description. Go grab your seat. I'll see you there. And remember, you can absolutely live an extraordinary life alongside an extraordinary business with a community that stands shoulder [00:21:00] to shoulder and gets who you are at the core
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