00:00:00
I was looking at the top 10 jobs that are most likely to be disrupted by AI and I really do worry about this.
00:00:05
>> So the nature of the economy is changing for a long time. Blue collar work like
00:00:09
plumbers, electricians, brick layers has been devalued. But it could be in the next couple of years. These are the
00:00:14
roles that are elevated the most and that plumbers regularly earn more than lawyers. And for the last 25 years, I've
00:00:20
been building companies from scratch and I've been through the global financial
00:00:24
crisis and co but I have never experienced what we're experiencing right now. I've never seen more fear for
00:00:30
the disruption that is coming. And my real bare case for AI is that every time you go on AI, your request is going off
00:00:38
to a big computer in a Walmartized building somewhere. And those big ginormous computers, they last 3 to 4
00:00:43
years before they need to be replaced. And this year ahead, we're going to spend 650 billion and that could cause a
00:00:49
massive financial collapse. That's the thing that I'm worried most about.
00:00:52
However, I've never seen more excitement for the opportunities that are in front
00:00:56
of us. So let's talk about in a world of AI what are the skills that survive.
00:01:01
>> So I really believe that everyone should build a little bit of a personal brand
00:01:05
not like to become an influencer but position yourself with a group of people who know who you are and know what you
00:01:10
do and could enroll you in their opportunity. Second one if there's one skill set that everyone should be
00:01:16
learning at the moment it's how do entrepreneurs think? How do entrepreneurs behave? What are the
00:01:20
skills that make an entrepreneur successful? And entrepreneurs just simply follow six steps and we do it
00:01:24
over and over and over again. and we'll go through the six steps. >> So, are there any particular
00:01:28
opportunities that you think that anybody listening right now could pursue to make money?
00:01:32
>> So, I think one of the best opportunities is >> that is such good advice that we don't
00:01:36
hear enough. >> This is super interesting to me. My team given me this report to show me how many
00:01:43
of you that watch this show subscribe. 69% of you that watch this show frequently haven't yet hit the subscribe
00:01:48
button. And some of you have told us according to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly.
00:01:53
So, favor to ask all of you. Please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a
00:01:58
regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite
00:02:00
a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free thing that you
00:02:06
could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over
00:02:12
week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit
00:02:15
it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell
00:02:19
you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we
00:02:23
fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear.
00:02:27
I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the Dio and I will
00:02:30
not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the
00:02:34
show. Daniel, I think we're living in the most interesting, opportunistic, terrifying time to be an entrepreneur, a
00:02:49
professional, to really be anybody because this is a moment of such fundamental change. And I really wanted
00:02:55
to have this conversation with you today because I want to understand how you're
00:02:58
thinking about AI from an opportunity standpoint as an entrepreneur, but also just for everybody that's working in a
00:03:03
normal job and who is at risk of having their their career, their livelihood, their identity, their qualifications
00:03:09
made redundant because there is now an alien amongst us that can do so much. So this conversation really is about giving
00:03:16
people answers. It's about being honest with them about what's coming. And it's
00:03:19
about preparing them, setting them up so that they have an advantage in the face of the future we face. So
00:03:27
give me the 30,000 ft view. >> Well, my background for the last 25 years has been building companies from
00:03:32
scratch. And I've been through the com and I've been through global financial
00:03:36
crisis and I've been through uh Brexit and co. I have never experienced what
00:03:41
we're experiencing right now. I've never seen more excitement for the opportunities that are in front of us
00:03:46
and I've never seen more fear for the disruption that is coming. We are living
00:03:52
through transformational times that is very similar to 250 years ago where the end of the agricultural age ended and
00:03:59
the beginning of the industrial age began. >> I would argue that it's more significant
00:04:03
because there's two forces that kind of keep me up at night. The first force is
00:04:07
AI, which is you can think of it as just the replacement of the human brain from
00:04:12
a sort of productivity standpoint. And then the other is robotics. And the problem is they're coming in at the same
00:04:19
time. And I was watching I don't know if you saw this the other day. >> So I'll put this on the screen for
00:04:24
anyone that's watching the video right now, but this is a demonstration that
00:04:28
took place in China of how advanced their robots are. And I had to check multiple times to make sure that this
00:04:35
wasn't fake. They are doing back flips and landing perfectly on their feet. And
00:04:40
so when you combine intelligence with the disruption of our physical form, our muscles, our body, our ability to pick
00:04:45
things up and move them through through time and space, it begs the question like where do we
00:04:50
>> where do we fit in to all of that? Strangely, there's something called the
00:04:54
Jevans paradox. And the Jevans paradox is a paradox where when we think something is going to completely disrupt
00:05:00
the way that we uh live and work. It often has the opposite effect. We thought that YouTube was going to
00:05:06
completely wipe out television. And it's true that Hollywood lost tens of thousands of jobs, but YouTubing created
00:05:13
500 to 600,000 jobs at the same time. And it used to take 150 people to make a a TV show or a movie. And now it's 5 to
00:05:20
10 people making YouTube videos as a little team. and they can have a wildly successful YouTube channel. With the
00:05:26
Jebans paradox, if we currently said that in order to have a successful software company right now today or in
00:05:32
the last few years, you needed to have 10,000 customers and you needed to have a team of 50 people and you needed to
00:05:38
raise$1 to5 million to get a software company off the off the ground. If all of a sudden the cost and the commitment
00:05:45
drops dramatically to have a software company and you only need 500 customers to work it to make it work and you only
00:05:51
need two people on a team to make it work and you only need a tiny bit of funding to make it work. What happens is
00:05:56
like YouTube channels you can end up with literally millions of tiny little software businesses that are super
00:06:02
successful for 5 to 10 people and they do something niche and they do something special. They don't look like
00:06:07
traditional software companies either. So a traditional software company would just do the software whereas these
00:06:13
little software companies might do software plus they might do dinner parties where the clients get together.
00:06:18
They might have an annual ski retreat. They might have a podcast and a YouTube channel that goes with it. And all of
00:06:23
that could be done by 5 to 10 people using AI tools. So the Jevans paradox would basically say that there is
00:06:30
millions of unmet needs and that those unmet needs are not explored because the cost to explore them is too high. But
00:06:38
because the cost to explore those has come down, then now we can actually have millions of businesses that never
00:06:43
existed that we didn't even know we needed to exist. >> I was sat here the other day with Dra
00:06:46
who is the CEO of Uber. He turned around Expedia, made it super profitable, turned around Uber that was losing 2
00:06:51
billion, made it generate about 9 billion in revenue, 10 billion in revenue. And uh he sat there and said to
00:06:56
me that their 9,000 couriers and drivers won't have jobs in the future. And and I
00:07:00
so I sit and go, okay, so what what are they going to do? Are they all going to start businesses somewhere? Do they? And
00:07:05
also I think one of the interesting things about AI is the speed of transition. With the industrial
00:07:09
revolution, there's a little bit of a delay because infrastructure took time
00:07:12
to build. >> Takes a long time to build. >> But this is the first innovation that
00:07:15
I've lived through that is built on >> it's instantaneous. >> The internet.
00:07:19
>> The minute an AI learns how to be a lawyer in one place, it can be a lawyer
00:07:23
in every place. The minute it learns how to diagnose a disease in in one location, in one hospital, it can
00:07:29
diagnose a disease in every hospital in the world. So, it's this instantaneous
00:07:33
roll out uh because it sits on top of a network that already exists. >> This is what actually Boston Dynamics
00:07:38
said to me. I was watching a video of their new robot that's working in factories. It's a humanoid robot that
00:07:42
can work in factories, pick things up, move things around. They said, "The great thing about robotics is if one of
00:07:47
our robots on a shop floor in Boston learn something, all of our robots learn it.
00:07:51
>> It's it's wild." >> Like, hell. So yesterday Tesla built and
00:07:57
they took this wonderful photo because they built the world's first Tesla Cyber
00:08:01
Cab. Now if anyone doesn't know what a Tesla Cyber Cab is, it's the first ever
00:08:06
fully autonomous car that doesn't have a steering wheel and it doesn't have
00:08:11
pedals. >> Yeah. You just hop in and there's there's no steering wheel, no pedals.
00:08:15
You can't take control even if you wanted to. >> The Cyber Cab is the company's answer to
00:08:19
vehicles like the Whimo. The two-seater coupe unveiled in 2024 comes without a steering wheel or
00:08:25
pedals. It's guided by AI and they're now making them. The first one was made
00:08:31
yesterday. Again, 100 over a 100 million people's job is to drive and you can get
00:08:36
one of these now for Elon saying $30,000. Um, you can rent them, lease them. You can buy a bunch of investment
00:08:43
assets and set them out, >> set up your own fleet and connect them to different networks like Uber and all
00:08:48
of those sorts of things. And the cost to move around is going to go through the floor because you know my Uber to
00:08:55
come here today was probably $50 uh and that will probably be $6 or $7 uh once that is rolled out. So the thing that
00:09:03
with the Jevans paradox is it doesn't mean that everyone gets the same job and
00:09:06
that they get like uh there's just more of exactly the same jobs. It means that
00:09:10
the transformation creates exponential growth as a result of the transformation in an unexpected way. Mhm.
00:09:16
>> So growing up, my mom worked in newspapers and there was probably half a
00:09:20
million people working in newspapers as journalists and all of those sorts of things and that has dropped by 80% in
00:09:26
the last 25 years. But at the same time, the number of people who are bloggers, the number of people who have substacks,
00:09:30
the number of people uh who are doing the kind of work of journalists and actually making money as a result of
00:09:37
content creation has gone 100 100x. So, uh, I think it's something like three to
00:09:43
four times more people now make their money in a way that kind of looks like a journalist than there ever were
00:09:49
journalists prior to the technology that disrupt journalists. So, it's not that
00:09:52
it's not that those exact same jobs uh are are replicated. It's that something
00:09:57
similar emerges as a result. >> I understand this and I when I read about the Jews paradox, I like ran it
00:10:03
through my head multiple times to to understand like how it fits in different industries. But there is a part of me
00:10:08
that still thinks this is slightly different because in the example you gave where there was a a content
00:10:13
creation industry that was then disrupted by a content creation industry. I go yeah this this the skill
00:10:21
of intelligence was still of human intelligence was still rare and scarce and only humans had it.
00:10:31
M >> so the disruption of the content creation industry to a different content
00:10:35
creation industry was still owned by humans. That transition was still a human one. But in such a world where AI
00:10:40
agents can make, if you go on a lot of social media platforms, I shame which ones, it's just pure AI slop now. Yes,
00:10:46
it's just people's agents churning out content that they haven't touched or
00:10:50
done anything about. And then I was I I started saying to you before we started recording that what we're going to
00:10:54
experience and what I think a lot of people don't fully embrace about this idea of becoming a content creator for a
00:11:00
living or building a personal brand is when you look at some of the graphs and I'll throw the graphs from the Financial
00:11:04
Times article on the screen. There's now a plateau of people spending time online
00:11:08
for the first time in history. Well, in the first time in internet history, >> Gen Z especially were the first
00:11:14
generation to plateau. Yeah. >> In their time spent. But the amount of content, the amount of AI agents, the
00:11:19
amount of people that are now choosing to make to do content as a living is exploding. Yes.
00:11:23
>> So you have a supply and demand issue where there's a set amount really like a
00:11:27
set amount of hours consu sort of consumption hours and then you have this huge exponential explosion in available
00:11:35
content because a kid in Mumbai >> Yeah. attention is a limited resource but content is
00:11:41
>> and content is unlimited now. >> Yeah. and and more so so AI slop is just
00:11:45
rolling in and also AI slop doesn't do it justice. Some of my favorite things
00:11:49
to watch is AI generated. I'm enjoying AI. So think about it a little when it
00:11:53
comes to personal brand. Think about it a little bit like an airport that the airport has got this fog that is rolling
00:12:00
in. If your airplane is already above the fog, >> then you're you can continue to fly. But
00:12:06
if your airplane is not taking off already, then the fog is going to keep you on the ground. So like for example,
00:12:13
you've invested so much into your personal brand and people will come along to see you live and they would
00:12:19
love to go to dinner party series that you know involves you and there's a whole community around DOAC, right? So
00:12:26
all of those things means that your airplane's already up in the air, you can continue to fly. But if you were
00:12:31
starting 2 years from now or a year from now or maybe even 6 months from now and
00:12:35
you weren't smart about it, there's just too much AI generated content. You won't
00:12:39
get traction. you won't get you won't get that liftoff moment. Uh the same way
00:12:42
that opportunity is coming to an end because of that AI generated content >> what I'm seeing in the algorithm. So we
00:12:47
do some data analysis every year on the variance of performance of pieces of content we produce on different
00:12:53
channels. Now I've been making social media content for 15 years. So I have a
00:12:56
bit of a sort of a mental history of like every year us doing this this particular data analysis to see the
00:13:03
variance between the worst thing we post and the best thing we post. And this year we did the same we ran the same
00:13:08
analysis with my data science team led by Austin and my team to see if the variance between the worst thing we post
00:13:13
and and the best thing we post is getting bigger because what that kind of is a proxy of is is the algorithm caring
00:13:19
less and less and less about how many followers I have and is it caring more and more and more about whoever posts
00:13:25
the most interesting thing today which is if I was building a social media company and my primary objective was to
00:13:29
retain people. I wouldn't care if you have two followers and Stephen has 500
00:13:36
followers. I would just care about who post the best thing. >> So we did that analysis and it's it's an
00:13:40
almost perfect graph that looks like this. >> And this is the variance increasing.
00:13:45
>> Y >> which actually means that okay Steven's taken off from the sky but every day I
00:13:50
wake up increasingly it doesn't matter what I did yesterday. >> What we've seen is the end of social
00:13:54
media and the birth of algorithmic media >> interest algorithms we call them.
00:13:58
>> Yeah. So, social media was all about connecting with your friends and finding
00:14:01
out what your friends are doing. Um, and algorithmic media is just finding out what the algorithm thinks that you
00:14:06
should be watching today. But with that said, there's this multi-dimension to
00:14:10
it, which is you've got books, you've got live events, you've got the podcast,
00:14:14
and it's the multi-dimensional angle that actually really sets you apart. The
00:14:18
creators that just simply want to put a piece of content on YouTube and get paid
00:14:22
through AdSense revenue and that really simple that one-dimensional model, that's coming to an end. But the
00:14:28
creators that have a community and they meet up in the real world all of that is
00:14:32
is part of an overall ecosystem that is very defensible because one you know people want all of that packaged up
00:14:38
together. >> Why is it fundamentally defensible from if we think about first principles or
00:14:42
human masloavian needs. Let me give you a big answer to that which is if we go back in time to the agricultural age,
00:14:48
farmers had to know when was a good time to plant the crops and then they had to
00:14:53
go out and toil the soil and put the seed in the soil and the soil did most of the value creation in the economy. At
00:14:59
the end of that process, the farmer had to know this is the day to harvest and then we need to harvest that and we need
00:15:05
to turn it into something and take it to market. And AI is very similar, which is
00:15:10
that it's very good at doing the middle to the middle. It's not good at knowing
00:15:14
what to do in the very first instance or knowing when to stop and how to take it
00:15:18
to market. So the the entrepreneurs job is to do step one and two, let AI do steps three to eight, and then do steps
00:15:25
9 and 10 and to basically have a coherent cohesive view as to what you're trying to get the AI to create.
00:15:32
>> Theoretically though, I could I could ask an AI agent to think about the goal
00:15:35
that will benefit me the most and make as many AI agents as it needs to to fulfill that goal. And then it would
00:15:40
make start one business and that would start another business. lots of different businesses,
00:15:43
>> start another business, build another website, contact a supplier. >> I think what you're into here is two or
00:15:48
three steps ahead of yourself where, you know, all of this is theoretically possible, but we haven't seen those kind
00:15:54
of examples happening yet, right? We haven't seen whether that will ultimately unfold. I'm not saying it
00:16:00
won't. I think we are moving into a completely new economy. Like like when you lived in the agricultural age, it
00:16:07
was completely like unbelievable to you what the industrial age would have looked like. like it's beyond all
00:16:12
comprehension if you had an agricultural age mindset to imagine factory production or coal production
00:16:19
>> and the thing the principle there that allows you to see what the future might
00:16:22
look like when it's exponential and not linear is imagining any rate of improvement and so this is how I think
00:16:28
always in my business is when I'm thinking about which bet to make I imagine if there's just 5% rate of
00:16:34
improvement per quarter eventually this happens >> and so with some things we've done on
00:16:39
this show we started two years ago and for the first 18 months it didn't work
00:16:44
and then 6 months ago it exploded because eventually the rate of improvement got to the point where it
00:16:49
was viable and now it's the single most important disruptive thing we've ever
00:16:52
done >> and I think about what I the example I just gave there of agents I'm like if
00:16:55
you just imagine any rate of improvement just imagine 1% a year >> and obviously it's way more than that
00:17:00
but imagine 1% a month eventually we get to a point where a team of agents >> if nothing if nothing disrupts it one
00:17:05
thing that is very likely to happen in the next three years is the whole thing comes crashing
00:17:11
It doesn't financially make any sense to build the data centers that we're
00:17:15
building. >> But you're not saying that AI is going to disappear. >> The technology itself is remarkable, but
00:17:21
the financial model just makes no sense whatsoever at the moment. >> At the moment, which is kind of typical
00:17:26
of bubbles, right? >> So over the last 180 years, there have been infrastructure buildouts that have
00:17:32
bankrupted the economy consistently again and again and again. In fact, there's a pattern. Whenever we spend
00:17:38
more than 3% of the overall GDP of the economy on an infrastructure buildout, it bankrupts the economy briefly for 10
00:17:45
years. Right? So this happened when we did railway tracks. In fact, it happened twice in the UK and twice in um the USA.
00:17:53
Then we bankrupt ourselves putting the electrification grid in place. We bankrupted ourselves putting uh highways
00:17:58
in place. Now there's something that makes this worse than ever before and that is that when we built train tracks
00:18:05
they lasted for 100 years. When we built roads they lasted 50 plus years. The telecommunications g uh fiber optics 30
00:18:13
years. All of these investments were multi-deade investments that we could get benefit from and and and leverage
00:18:20
for decades. Data centers last 3 to four years before they need to be replaced. So we are building something that has a
00:18:27
3 to four year life cycle that costs hundreds of billions and it has to be replaced every few years and there is no
00:18:35
financial model attached to this that justifies it at all. So one thing that I'm predicting is that in 2029 100 years
00:18:42
after the great depression we will see a massive financial meltdown based off the
00:18:47
back of these data centers that have been um developed at the moment. And for someone that doesn't know what a data
00:18:52
center is, >> so it's like a big Walmart or an airport filled with computers and those
00:18:58
computers are running AI, right? So every time you go on AI, you're actually, you know, your request is
00:19:04
going off to a big computer in a Walmartized building somewhere. But those GPUs, those uh computer stacks,
00:19:11
those big ginormous computers, they are like iPhones. They last about 3 years before they get superseded. This year
00:19:18
ahead, we're going to spend 650 billion. 650 billion sounds like so abstract.
00:19:24
It's the equivalent of giving every single person in America an iPhone Pro with AirPods. But here's the crazy
00:19:31
thing. 95% of people who have been given the the free uh iPhone are not willing to pay for it. And the tiny number of
00:19:40
people who are willing to pay for it, they're only willing to pay $20 a month,
00:19:44
most of them. So this $20 a month, everyone's getting a free iPhone effectively and then a small 5% of
00:19:51
people are willing to pay $20 a month. The numbers are just astronomically out of balance.
00:19:56
>> The numbers are astronomically out of balance. So what happens next? You're
00:19:58
predicting in 2029 there's a financial crash. >> There's not a 0% chance that the
00:20:03
financial model around what what we've launched with AI is catastrophic. It's a
00:20:08
huge financial problem that very few people are talking about. >> So let's talk about in a world of AI.
00:20:14
What are the skills that survive? And like what what are the professions that you believe survive? You've got
00:20:22
children, Daniel. When when they come to you and they say, "Dad, um I'm hearing
00:20:26
about all this AI stuff and I've seen these robots in China doing back flips.
00:20:30
What should I be learning now to make sure that the next 20, 30, 40 years of my career is prosperous?"
00:20:35
>> It's the entrepreneurial skill set that is the most important skill set. It is
00:20:39
essentially the skills of identifying an opportunity prototyping fast and cheap experiments to see if you've got
00:20:46
something that people want, taking it to market, making your initial sales, scaling up to your addressable market,
00:20:53
and then exiting and then coming up with a new idea. Because even if you're in a
00:20:57
big corporate, they're going to want to prototype things. They're going to want
00:21:00
to spin out new products. They're going to want to come up with new initiatives.
00:21:04
And we need to step through that process of is this a good idea or not? Can we validate it? Can we scale it? Right? And
00:21:11
you want to go through that process as fast and as cheap as possible the way an entrepreneur would.
00:21:15
>> And on that first point of identifying a good idea. Now is there any way to know if the idea
00:21:22
that I have is a good idea or a bad idea? >> Yeah, this is a step that entrepreneurs
00:21:27
call validation. And the rookie entrepreneurs that fail, they don't do this step very well, right? So they
00:21:33
don't do market validation. They don't do product validation. They simply get
00:21:36
excited about an idea and then they go all in on the idea. And what really experienced entrepreneurs do is that we
00:21:44
come up with ways to do fast cheap experiments. So for example, last year I had two ideas and I I actually kind of
00:21:51
liked one a lot and I liked one a little bit. And what I did is I set up a waiting list campaign and I basically
00:21:59
invited people to join the waiting list for idea number one and about 750 people
00:22:04
joined that waiting list and they filled in a set set of questions so that I knew
00:22:08
that 750 people were interested in this idea. This was my favorite idea. And then the second idea I invited people to
00:22:15
join that waiting list and 4 and a half thousand people joined that waiting list. So even though this wasn't my
00:22:21
favorite idea, it was way more exciting for people and way it was sitting on top
00:22:26
of a much bigger need. So off the back of collecting 4 and a half thousand people on the waiting list and
00:22:31
collecting all the data and the information, we went to some angel investors about a week later after doing
00:22:37
that and we raised quarter of a million pounds. So about300 or $400,000 and all of that took about a week or
00:22:43
two. With that example, how do you know that the business itself and the delivery of that idea actually meets
00:22:51
their expectation? Because I can think of multiple examples where someone clicked on an idea that I had, but
00:22:58
actually the delivery of that idea fell short of expectation because sometimes things can sound good when you you see
00:23:04
the flyer or the poster or the advert, but the reality of the experience is actually not that great.
00:23:10
>> So, let me walk you through the six steps quickly. Step one is called founder opportunity fit and founder
00:23:16
opportunity fit is finding something that you want to do. Step two is validation. Right? So this is where we
00:23:21
actually try and see is there a market could we could we build something? Could we sell something? Right? So that's two
00:23:26
validation. Can we build it? Can we sell it? Step three is called product market
00:23:30
fit. And this is the next step where you're actually trying to figure out can
00:23:34
we actually make this live up to people's expectations so that they really like it. Is there a group of
00:23:38
people who buy this and they're happy with the purchase? And we want to do that carefully and cheaply. And then
00:23:43
finally once people say well or the next step once people say yes we can do that
00:23:48
we go to market and go to market is making sales. And then after going to market we scale up right step five. And
00:23:56
then the final step is we exit. So we go through those six steps and we call that
00:24:00
a value creation loop. And that value creation loop goes through those six steps and each step has its own little
00:24:06
job. And what we're trying to do is just validate, go to the next step, achieve
00:24:12
the milestones, go to the next step. And and that's how we do it as entrepreneurs.
00:24:16
>> So in a world of AI, are there any particular opportunities that you think
00:24:20
are um new and exciting that anybody listening right now could pursue to make money, whether it's passive income on
00:24:26
the side or to leave their current role and pursue entrepreneurship for? >> Well, the starting point is that
00:24:32
everything is an opportunity because what do entrepreneurs do? we find things that could be done better, faster,
00:24:38
cheaper or with more emotional benefits. >> But has AI created any particular
00:24:41
interesting opportunities in your view that you think that's a a huge arbitrage
00:24:45
opportunity? >> I think one of the best opportunities is a small SAS company. So software as a
00:24:50
service was an elite level business opportunity that very very few people could enter. That was something that
00:24:55
only maybe tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of founders at most globally could have a software company.
00:25:02
So it was very very elite. And the reason it was elite is because it was very very hard to mobilize the talent
00:25:08
required to build a software company. You probably needed, you know, maybe 10, 20 or 30 uh developers to build a
00:25:15
software product that would actually be a good software product. You needed to raise millions of dollars to get through
00:25:20
the costs of developing software uh companies. And you probably needed 10,000 customers to have a break even
00:25:26
software company. Now, because of AI, all of those costs have massively come down. And there are software companies
00:25:33
that are wildly profitable that have 500 customers or a thousand customers. They
00:25:37
service a tiny little niche. Uh they attach a community and some media and some training to those little software
00:25:44
niches. So one of the most exciting things is that if you essentially said that I would like to take what I know,
00:25:52
turn it into a playbook, take that playbook, ask AI to advise me on what software we could create, and then use
00:25:58
AI tools to build out that software. you're able to get very deep into that journey for almost no money.
00:26:06
>> I was thinking about this the other day because in my company, we're rebuilding
00:26:09
our entire ATS ourselves. >> So, an ATS is basically the system you use when you recruit people. Everyone's
00:26:16
name goes into the ATS. It's kind of like a like a search engine. Yeah, like
00:26:20
a database of where candidates who have applied for your company currently are. >> And over the last couple of years, I've
00:26:25
paid tens of thousands of dollars every year for an ATS for my companies. And this year I thought, you know what,
00:26:30
actually I reckon we could build an ATS in a couple of weeks ourselves and it could be bespoke to us. So we started
00:26:35
that project. I saw the the first version of it yesterday. We started a week ago
00:26:38
>> and the first version the the version of it I saw I was like, "Oh, this is
00:26:42
significantly better than what we were using before because it's bespoke."
00:26:45
>> Yeah. And this made me think about the the opportunity of creating software
00:26:49
generally, which is that in a world where it becomes, as you say, like cheaper, easier, faster, we're all going
00:26:55
to be using more software, but we're probably not going to be paying other people for their software,
00:27:03
especially when it's these kind of tools, productivity tools and systems. >> It's purely a tool, it's very easy to
00:27:09
replicate. But if it's a tool that comes with a community, if it comes with education and training, if it comes with
00:27:15
agents that >> education and training. >> Yeah. So like for example, if you were
00:27:19
to do an ATS, right, an applicant tracking system, a a hiring tool, and you had the DOAC uh system and method
00:27:26
that I can go and attend the training as to how you on board people, how you create culture, how you do things at
00:27:32
DOAC, I'm now interested in the software because it comes with that exciting
00:27:36
training. if there was also a boot camp that I could go to that was attached to that product. If there was also an
00:27:41
annual retreat or a dinner series, if there was also uh some funding opportunities that came with that. So
00:27:48
once upon a time you were just simply going to focus on creating a software tool because that was so labor intensive
00:27:55
and also it had a natural moat or protection around it that you didn't have to get creative. But now we live in
00:28:02
a world where the AI lets you to build the product pretty quickly. It helps you to do all these other things that we
00:28:07
talked about and suddenly it's actually quite a a fun product that you that you
00:28:11
can spin up. What you've already created would have probably cost 500,000 in 6
00:28:17
months. >> Oh my god. 6 months. I wish. >> Not that long ago. >> Yeah. It would probably cost It would
00:28:21
have probably taken about 18 months total end to end. >> And you've done it in a week.
00:28:25
>> Yeah. And so everyone else can do it in a week. And in fact, if anyone if that's
00:28:30
anyone's business right now, there's going to be a thousand new ATS systems a
00:28:35
day. One's going to trend on Twitter. You know, people are going to download
00:28:37
that one and then they're going to jump ship because a new one emerges and it's
00:28:40
better, it's more agentic, whatever. And so, again, I think are we seeing software generally become a commodity?
00:28:45
>> What we're going to see is we're going to see all business opportunities be
00:28:49
like YouTube content. I mean, if I went back 25, 30 years ago and said there's
00:28:54
going to be 10 person unfunded little TV studios that produce content every single week for almost no money.
00:29:02
You you would think that's crazy. I mean, Seinfeld used to cost 5 million an
00:29:06
episode. Um, The Simpsons and Friends, these were all multi-million dollars per episode. And we've now replicated that
00:29:13
that can be done like by a tiny little team for free every week. It's interesting because the minute we say
00:29:19
that the answer is to do these things that are now easy and free and cheap to do, it's almost like we we then don't
00:29:25
acknowledge the fact that if everyone's doing it, it's no longer a valuable
00:29:28
thing to do. >> It's less valuable. >> Yeah. As it becomes easier, the other
00:29:32
access is the decline in the value. So, we're saying we're saying to people go
00:29:36
be a content creator. But the very fact that they can without needing a CNN size
00:29:41
skyscraper or production equipment also means everybody can which means that that that actually is losing value at
00:29:47
the same rate that it's becoming easy theoretically and and so what I continually think about from first
00:29:53
principles is what is it that I can bet on that is irreplaceably human which only I can do and a kid in Mumbai cannot
00:30:01
do. And so when we say software I go kid in Mumbai and then we say content I go kid in Mumbai. Well, uh, physical
00:30:07
experiences in the world, real world, I agree with you. So, standing on a stage and telling your story is something I
00:30:14
mean, you already see that thousands of people show up to see this and to be part of to be in a room with other
00:30:20
people who are sharing an experience. See, the thing that the AI version of you can't do is turn up to an event.
00:30:26
>> I agree. So, I I say what I say because I genuinely want to be challenged here.
00:30:31
I I'm I sit here with these AI experts and CEOs because I genuinely I hope that
00:30:37
they say something that >> tilts the current belief that I have and like makes me go, "Oh, actually, you
00:30:43
know, that's a good point. I'm in search of good points on the subject matter."
00:30:46
So, when I said what I just said about content software becoming increasingly commoditized and because it's becoming
00:30:52
commoditized, we're like tempting people to go do more of it without acknowledging the fact that the very
00:30:56
fact that people are doing more of it means it's less valuable and it's more
00:30:59
of a commodity. And what I'm saying though is that these things have to go together. So simply like anyone who's
00:31:05
doing real world experiences, I think what's going to happen is you'll go to a
00:31:08
conference and that conference will come with custom software that lasts 2 or 3 weeks that is really really interesting
00:31:15
and it relates to that conference and that software was created as a SAS product for the attendees of that
00:31:21
conference and it kind of pops into existence very briefly. These things used to be separate and now they all
00:31:26
cluster together, right? So, it's a buffet of things that you all put together. If we take most successful
00:31:32
businesses now, they do social media. That used to be a standalone business. It was crazy to think that a hair salon
00:31:40
could also be a media business. I've met with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs
00:31:44
and the number of people who want to go big is tiny. It's a fraction of the entrepreneurial community. What most
00:31:50
people want is a business that provides an amazing lifestyle. They want to live and work from anywhere. They want to be
00:31:56
able to travel. They want to do three or four days a week. They want to drop their kids off at school. They want to
00:32:02
uh do non-monotonous, interesting work that is a little chaotic, a little creative, a little bit fun, a little bit
00:32:10
challenging. They want to work with a small group of people that they get to know and enjoy and travel through life
00:32:14
together. And those are the types of things that the majority of people actually want. Very few people actually
00:32:20
want big. So, one thing that I'm noticing is that it's probably harder than ever to build a big business, but
00:32:26
it's easier than ever to build a small successful business. So, if we were to
00:32:31
say that a business that does 1 to 5 million of revenue with a team of 10 people, that is like totally
00:32:38
like super uh possible. But once you go beyond that, it's becoming harder and
00:32:43
harder because you get disrupted more frequently. So you have to be an elite athlete of entrepreneurs to withstand
00:32:48
the constant disruption and and um the the constant change that's coming. So
00:32:54
because your natural mindset is to think really really big, you're probably missing that for many people who are
00:33:02
working in a annoying corporate environment and their job is monotonous and they feel tethered to a desk or they
00:33:10
feel tethered to a team that doesn't really care about them. you know, a lot
00:33:13
of those people are going to actually end up in small dynamic little businesses that will never be big, but
00:33:17
they'll be great. They'll be fun, you know, and people will, you know, have
00:33:21
flexibility and they'll have uh, you know, great, you know, great opportunities as a result.
00:33:27
>> I think you're right. I do have a bias towards trying to find, you know, big
00:33:30
opportunities. But actually, I think the big blue ocean opportunity, which is, for anyone that doesn't know, I think of
00:33:37
red oceans from the the book called Blue Ocean Strategy as very competitive, >> hyper competitive horrible markets where
00:33:43
it's like a race to the bottom. You're all doing the same thing. Like you're
00:33:47
all saying the same thing, doing the same thing, and you all think that your unique positioning is is unique, but
00:33:53
it's actually not. The market doesn't value it any differently. Like a wine
00:33:56
company saying that their wine is a year older or that using a fancier word on the label. It's a red ocean, a blood
00:34:00
bath. A blue ocean is an uncont uncontested waters where you have room to grow much less competition and there
00:34:08
is actually something fundamental to your proposition your business idea the thing the value you're giving to the
00:34:12
world that is unique >> I'm looking for blue oceans >> and yes I will try and build a big boat
00:34:19
in the blue ocean >> because that's my nature but also life is easier when you sail in blue oceans
00:34:25
for everybody even if you want a lifestyle business I think one of the great examples at the moment is if you
00:34:29
started a marketing agency when I started In 2014, especially a social media agency, you were in the blue
00:34:34
ocean. >> You were briefly >> briefly. And they say, you know, blue oceans often last for 10 years. In 2024,
00:34:40
my best friends, I'd say 70% of them run marketing or brand agencies. >> Yeah.
00:34:46
>> I'm having the same same therapy session with them once a month at the moment.
00:34:49
And if you look at the big five, big four, big five agencies in the world, the WPPs and Martin Surl's business,
00:34:55
>> they're all >> they're all competed to way their margins. They're struggling. Yeah.
00:34:59
>> They're losing their profit. they're losing their market share.
00:35:01
>> And AI and digital technology means that this disruption cycle happens in months,
00:35:06
not years anymore. So you said a blue ocean can last for years or decades. Not in the world of AI. In the world of AI,
00:35:12
as soon as we've identified that you've got a blue ocean, we can replicate that
00:35:15
real fast and we can come and fly out to your blue ocean with with an with lots of competition. Here's something that's
00:35:20
interesting. Throughout all of history, whenever you find societies that have low social mobility and hyper
00:35:28
competition, there's lots and lots of festivals. So you go into medieval times, they've got a festival for every
00:35:35
season. They've got a festival for every life event. There's just constant
00:35:38
festivals. You go into rural Africa, rural India, and it's festivals, festivals, festivals, right? Weddings,
00:35:44
funerals, seasonal festivals. It's a huge part of human culture that we have
00:35:49
lost in big cities. like we don't do a lot of festival or rare it's rare that
00:35:53
we do a lot of festivals these real world experiences but I don't necessarily think it's a blue ocean
00:35:58
because uh as soon as people realize how much people want to do festivals and want to do real world experiences a lot
00:36:05
of companies can also add this to the mix I think what is defensible is community experience and embracing the
00:36:13
constant chaotic change and coming up with new stuff all the time >> one of the bets I'm making and it goes
00:36:18
back to what like again reasoning up from those principles. If the question is what can I do that an AI agent or AI
00:36:25
could not do and especially in the context of what humans will continue to need.
00:36:29
>> Mhm. >> When you were born Dan, you're born with a bunch of needs and those needs like
00:36:33
fundamentally haven't changed. One of them is like connection. >> I think you'll always be able to discern
00:36:37
what is real human connection from artificial connection. I remember being 16 years old and in my psychology class
00:36:44
at the back when they told me about the recess monkeys experiment where they got
00:36:47
a recess monkey, this little small little monkey. They pretended that its mother was a wire mesh. So they made a
00:36:53
wire mesh mother. The recess monkey grows up to be a psychopath because it's
00:36:57
it fundamental human need of connection is not met. They then did it with a cloth and the recess monkey grew up to
00:37:04
be a bit more stable. And then obviously they showed the examples where the recess monkey actually had a physical
00:37:09
flesh mother and it was it was fine. So I say this to illuminate the fact that we have fundamental needs that if not
00:37:15
met there will be consequences. One of ours is connection. So, as a content creator, I can sit here and I can tell
00:37:21
you what happened today, right? I can say at 6:00 this guy broke into this bank and then he left. I think that's a
00:37:28
commodity. Now, >> I think the thing that I can do as a podcaster, as a behind-the-scenes
00:37:32
content creator, as a streamer, >> this is why I'm so bullish on streamers
00:37:37
>> is they're making irreplaceably human content. There's no AI that can an AI
00:37:41
can tell you what menop what happens in menopause. An AI can't tell you its experience of menopause. Yes, we need to
00:37:47
find something that only we can say as humans. And every single person has this by the way, but a lot of us overlook
00:37:53
what we can say as a human. I recently came across a financial planner and his name is Matt Pitcher and he gave a TED
00:38:01
talk and the TED talk is about what it was like for him to meet 100 people who had won the lottery. So, he had a
00:38:09
partnership as a financial planner with the uh British lottery. And every week someone wins the lottery and then he
00:38:15
goes in and meets them a week later after they've discovered they've won the
00:38:19
lottery. >> Wow. >> But what he did did is he looked back at his history and he had lots of different
00:38:23
things that he was doing, but he looked back at his history and he connected some dots and he said, "Hey, wait a
00:38:27
second. There's something that only I can talk about. There's something that
00:38:30
is that is my thing that I've experienced that I live through that I've sat in those living rooms. I've sat
00:38:35
eye to eye with those people and only I can talk about that." And because of
00:38:39
that TED talk, he's he's had half a million views in the first few weeks and
00:38:43
you know, his business is obviously going to explode and all of those kind of things because he found something
00:38:47
that only he could say. I believe that every person has something that's human
00:38:51
that only they can say that's highly relatable. You shared with me an interesting philosophy. Uh when we first
00:38:57
met, I did my first episode on Diary of a CEO and it got millions of views. And I said to you, why is it that my episode
00:39:03
got millions of views, but a few weeks ago there was a billionaire CEO who only got a few hundred thousand views. And a
00:39:10
few weeks before that, there was a billionaire CEO who only got a few hundred thousand views. And you said,
00:39:15
Daniel, relatable beats impressive. >> Yeah. >> And a lot of people think that they have
00:39:19
to cure cancer or launch a rocket to Mars or that they have to win a Nobel Peace Prize or float a company on the
00:39:25
NASDAQ. And actually each individual person, we have to discover what I would call your personal intellectual property
00:39:31
or your personal intellectual capital and your personal story, your personal playbooks, you know, your your triumphs
00:39:38
and your disasters, the things that you've done that are interesting to a certain group of people that you can
00:39:43
quantify, that you can describe, that you can give me what it was like. Those are your personal playbooks. Now once
00:39:49
you have personal playbooks, you have the ability to turn that into all sorts of products and services through AI. But
00:39:55
you but it starts with having personal playbooks. >> I think this is the key mistake that a
00:39:59
lot of content creators are um making, which is because it's easy to make stuff
00:40:03
now, it's tempting just to churn stuff out. >> Yeah. >> Whereas I'm making less content now in a
00:40:10
world of AI. If you look at my LinkedIn, I used to post, if you go back like three or four years, I was just churning
00:40:16
stuff out my quote picture, anything fluffy, like just fluff >> data. >> Yeah. Now I go, well, if everyone can do
00:40:21
it, the reason why my LinkedIn, you'll see almost every post I post now is a
00:40:25
human story about something I've gone through, you'll see photos of me, you'll
00:40:28
see photos of my family. >> You're saying stuff that only you can say.
00:40:33
>> Yeah. So, we all have to find what is the thing that only you can say. And no
00:40:38
robot, no AI could ever say that because it hasn't lived that experience. >> Yeah, it's got all the data. It's got
00:40:44
all the knowledge, but it's got no lived experience. And also from a business
00:40:48
perspective, an AI can never stand on a stage. An AI can never host a dinner party. Uh an AI can never meet someone
00:40:54
face to face and put their hand on their shoulder and say, "Hey, I've been
00:40:57
through what you've been through and you're going to be okay." Right? So all
00:41:00
of those things AI can't do. So once you discover something that only you can say
00:41:05
it it becomes a superpower. >> I think my best performing post this year was actually me proposing to my
00:41:10
fiance a prime prime example of something that is irreplaceably human which is getting down on one knee and
00:41:16
telling another human being that you love them. There's no AI that has ever I
00:41:20
mean listen >> it's never experienced it. >> Yeah. Exactly. So and there's something
00:41:23
so human about that. >> It's relatable. It's not impressive. It's relatable. Um from first principles
00:41:29
I ask myself which type of content am I making is creating the the strongest parasocial relationship
00:41:35
>> with the person on the other end. If I post on my LinkedIn everything happens
00:41:39
for a reason. Am I how much have I moved the needle on our our relationship my relationship with you? Probably zero. If
00:41:46
I talk about something more human, some struggles that I'm having uh from a human perspective, if I'm more honest,
00:41:53
authentic, and open or vulnerable about the experience I'm going through, like
00:41:57
streamers who sit there for seven I think did I say this last time that I I asked a streamer a couple of questions.
00:42:03
>> And I asked the streamers like, "What do you do?" And he was like, "Oh, nothing.
00:42:05
I just sit there and >> sit for seven hours and watch Judge Judy with the audience and we chat." I say,
00:42:09
and this is a prime example of Parasocial. >> They actually talk to you. They go chat.
00:42:13
Let me know if you think X Y or Z chat. Drop W's in the chat. That's a friend.
00:42:19
>> That's the closest thing to a friend. It's the strongest parasocial
00:42:22
relationship. >> Well, you said about the football game where the loudest cheers in the audience
00:42:26
came for those streamers who were just connecting with people. >> They've built friendships basically with
00:42:30
their audience. So, of all, I think in a world of AI where justformational content, which is this thing happened or
00:42:36
this is what the gut microbiome is, is going to become commoditized. The thing that isn't commoditized is content that
00:42:42
creates relationships with audiences and then as you say then converts that relationship into stronger experiences
00:42:49
like IRL events and so on and so forth. I've got a couple more ideas that I I
00:42:53
haven't fully shared with the world yet but I'm just I'll wait for the right
00:42:56
time about all of this stuff. >> See it's not one piece that is adding
00:43:00
the value. It's the ecosystem of pieces. So it's having something to say that
00:43:04
only you can say. Let's call that your personal playbooks. Let's call that your
00:43:07
personal intellectual property. It's having the people or your community that
00:43:11
you're going through life with, right? That's called that your ideal customers,
00:43:14
your ideal personas if you want to make it a clinical definition of in marketing
00:43:18
speak that that gives rise to a personal brand. When those two things touch, you
00:43:23
then end up with a personal brand, right? As if by magic, you end up with a personal brand because you've got
00:43:27
intellectual property and you've got an ideal customer who connects with that
00:43:30
and then you you are the person who embodies it. So you you give rise to that. And then the question is, well,
00:43:35
how do you make money from that? Well, you productize it. You create products and services. And it's the product and
00:43:41
service ecosystem that makes money. It's not one product or service. It used to
00:43:44
be that you could just have a a product or service that you offer. And now it's
00:43:48
the product and service ecosystem. The people that I see making the most money at the moment, they don't do one thing.
00:43:54
You don't do one thing. Right? So, if I look at uh your personal P&L, you've
00:43:59
probably got 27 different ways that money came and hit your bank account last month. There's speaking, there's
00:44:04
podcasting, there's AdSense revenue, there's sponsors, there's shareholdings
00:44:08
in different companies that you've got. Um, there might be some one-to-one coaching that you might have done. There
00:44:14
might be an appearance fee. There might be some book royalties. There's multiple
00:44:17
books. Uh, there might be some software that you've launched. So there's all
00:44:20
this stuff that sounds crazy and chaotic in a pre-AII world, but in a postAI world, it's not that hard to create all
00:44:27
these different products and services and to be launching different things and to be going on a journey with people and
00:44:32
having a product and service ecosystem. I'm the same, by the way. I've probably
00:44:35
got 20 different things that, you know, that I'm involved in at any given time.
00:44:39
>> I was reading yesterday that the for the first time, I mean, I was reading a few
00:44:42
things. One of the interesting things I read is that Spotify said their best developers haven't written a line of
00:44:47
code since December thanks to AI, which again is a whole another conversation. Maybe we should touch on that. What are
00:44:53
the occupations that you genuinely believe won't exist 5 years from now as we know them?
00:45:00
>> People say lawyers are going to be disrupted. >> Well, I recently had a law legal case
00:45:05
that I had to resolve and it was going to cost us £50,000. So, $60,000 uh as a start the process with a law
00:45:13
firm. We took matters into our own hands and we used Claude and we actually fixed
00:45:17
the process and resolve the process by spending 20 a month, $20 a month. And Claude gave us a coaching session on how
00:45:24
to handle it. Gave us multiple decision tree pathways. Gave us the documents that we would need. Gave us an Excel
00:45:31
spreadsheet of do say this, don't say this in the negotiation. And it made me
00:45:35
realize, my goodness, what a lawyer's going to do. Uh because if all they do
00:45:40
is charge for time for money to regurgitate contracts, I don't need that anymore. Right?
00:45:45
>> Multiple reports say legacy legal tech and data firms have lost roughly 20% of
00:45:50
their value so far in 2026. >> 280 billion was wiped off the value of publicly traded companies like that in
00:45:56
the last week. Like it's wild. Um because we're not going to need that. I
00:46:01
don't believe we're going to need these business models as they currently stand.
00:46:05
I think they're going to have to change and adapt. I think a lawyer needs to
00:46:08
take a completely different shape. Part business coach, part lawyer, part prompt
00:46:12
engineer. They're going to be the key person of AI in the room who the lawyer's job will be to work with you on
00:46:19
your AI prompting and help you get the resolution. You're probably going to need a lot less of a lawyer's time. Blue
00:46:25
collar work has been devalued. And we've seen people who work with their hands
00:46:29
and people who uh turn up to your house and fix your house in a devalued role. And it could be in the next, you know,
00:46:37
uh, couple of years. These are the roles that are elevated the most and that plumbers regularly earn more than
00:46:43
lawyers simply because the nature of the economy has changed. One thing I've
00:46:47
learned over the last 25 years is the pendulum swings. Things that very few things stay the same. There is always
00:46:53
this swinging pendulum. And the swinging pendulum is like, oh yeah, white collar
00:46:57
work behind a screen is the high value thing. Oh, no, it's actually blue collar
00:47:01
work with your hands. You talked about supply and demand. We dis the government disrupted the natural way children go
00:47:09
out and find opportunities in the world by making university loans come along. And they said, "Oh, everyone can just
00:47:14
take out a university loan and go to university. In fact, you must and you should go go to university. Get yourself
00:47:19
in debt or else you'll never get a job anywhere if you don't do a university
00:47:22
degree." And lots of young people who should have been plumbers, electricians,
00:47:27
and concreers and brick layers went off and became a m got a master's degree in
00:47:32
the mating habits of butterflies and you know some random degree that doesn't
00:47:36
have a job attached and they ended up in 60 70 $80,000 worth of debt to get this
00:47:41
degree that no one was asking for. That market distortion means that we now don't have many plumbers and
00:47:46
electricians and the blue ocean is now being a trades person. There's a phase a lot of companies hit
00:47:53
where they're no longer doing the most important thing, which is selling. And
00:47:56
they get really bogged down with admin. And it's often something that creeps up
00:48:00
slowly and you don't really notice until it's happened. Slowly momentum starts to
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00:48:57
>> Steve, what are you doing? >> Uh, just making myself a delicious coffee
00:49:01
>> from the freezer. >> From the freezer. Have you not heard about Contier?
00:49:04
>> No. >> Oh my gosh. This is going to change your life. A couple of months ago, the
00:49:09
founder of this business called Matt sent a big shipment of this coffee to our office in London. What most people
00:49:15
don't know is that the processing of coffee takes out a lot of the taste. So,
00:49:18
what they do is they flash freeze it at the optimal moment when it's most tasty
00:49:24
and they send you in the post the coffee in these little frozen ice cubes. Now, Matt sent a big shipment to my office. I
00:49:30
moved it to the kitchen. I said to the team, "Knock yourselves out." And then I
00:49:33
saw so many messages in our Slack channel of people going, "Oh my god, what the hell is that? It's so
00:49:38
delicious." All I have to do is pop it out in the morning using the little button on the back of this thing. I pour
00:49:44
my hot water in and I mix it and that is done. You can get $30 off your first order of Cometier coffee if you go to
00:49:53
cometier.com/stephven. Try it and please Instagram DM me, LinkedIn me and let me know if you love
00:50:00
it as much as I do. I was looking at the um top 10 jobs according to AI that are
00:50:06
most likely to be disrupted and it said things like drivers with Mackenzie estimating 30% of them will be automated
00:50:11
by 2030 customer service representative and call center reps which I used to be.
00:50:15
>> Mhm. Same >> 50% headcount reductions after AI roll out according to some estimates some go
00:50:20
up to about 80%. I actually saw a tool on my timeline yesterday that is real human voice indistinguishable from
00:50:26
humans that's just launched and is causing a huge stir. So that they're thinking that will replace even more of
00:50:32
the customer service roles. I I did speak to the CEO of Cler TLDDR as he said we currently have 7,000 employees.
00:50:39
We're going to be able to get down to 3,000. He said after summer because of
00:50:44
um AI and we'll be using our existing team members that are in customer service roles to do more sort of bespoke
00:50:51
white glove VIP >> VIP stuff will go up. In fact, Jean's paradox would suggest that a lot of the
00:50:59
dehumanizing repetitive work will go away. But actually, if there are AI bots that are really good at setting
00:51:07
appointments for a VIP human person to have a conversation, then that work will go through the roof. Because one of the
00:51:13
reasons that people, like right now, most companies wish they could have more VIP conversations, but the appointment
00:51:19
setting, they don't have a lot of the low-level appointment setting stuff happening. And if the appointment
00:51:23
setting stuff, if the cost of that goes to zero, then the the the affordability of the VIP level treatment um becomes
00:51:31
you know becomes uh much more feasible. >> Retail cashes, admin assistants,
00:51:36
bookkeepers and payroll clerk, sales development reps, warehouse workers with um Amazon and others reporting that
00:51:42
robots now assist or replace labor in a roughly 40% of fulfillment tasks. And that Boston Dynamics video, which I'll
00:51:47
put up on the screen, shows a humanoid robot working in a factory. What's nice
00:51:51
about some of this is that many of the jobs here are jobs that a lot of people don't actually like doing. They are
00:51:57
repetitive and dehumanizing. They're late night. They're early mornings. So
00:52:02
potentially, provided there is a Jeins paradox that something happens that's more fun, more
00:52:07
humanizing, more interesting, more VIP, more chaotic, and you know, all of that sort of stuff. It could be a very
00:52:14
positive thing. >> Fast food workers. Um, or >> I used to be a fast food worker.
00:52:18
>> So did I in McDonald's? I think it was two days. I did two years at McDonald's.
00:52:21
>> Oh, really? Because this disruption is happening at record speeds. Where do all
00:52:25
these people go? Because, you know, even in examples, oh, they could do AI labeling. They need to be upskilled and
00:52:31
trained. And I worry that the rate of disruption isn't going to meet the rate
00:52:35
of creation of new opportunities. >> And I really do worry about this. Like I
00:52:38
think people wonder why I have these conversations on this podcast over and over again. My philosophy to talking
00:52:42
having conversations on this podcast is basically I'll say to my team I'll say
00:52:46
Steve you want to have a conversation about >> you know this particular subject the gut
00:52:49
microbiome and I'll say >> we've covered it >> which basically means I'm no longer
00:52:54
curious y >> I have the answers I know about the trillions of gut micro and I know how
00:52:59
the gut brain access let's move on >> I keep having these conversations about
00:53:02
AI because I feel like I'm getting no good answers >> okay so here's what's interesting there
00:53:07
is something which you have which is this elite mindset which is how do I organize society
00:53:15
so that everyone gets a job and everyone does stuff right and this is this is the
00:53:20
trap that many people have fallen into and it's actually at the root cause of
00:53:24
socialism so the root of socialism is that I know better than everybody else and I will come up with a way of running
00:53:32
society so everyone gets looked after that's the top down mindset the crazy mindset that actually works is if If we
00:53:41
give people education and training and we make opportunity transparent and we actually let people know what's actually
00:53:47
happening in the market and we give them price signal data, they will selforganize and reorganize and they
00:53:53
will have a bottom-up revolution and they will find amazing interesting things to do. The money is in the
00:53:59
economy, right? >> You think that's true? >> That's called capitalism.
00:54:02
>> I know, but >> capitalism works >> in the UK. Let's take the UK as an
00:54:05
example, cuz we're all just screaming at each other about brown people. We're not
00:54:08
talking about the the real alien, which is like the fundamental economic disruption of AI. Yeah. There's a report
00:54:14
that came out yesterday showing that unemployment in the UK has hit >> it's 25% up and youth unemployment has
00:54:20
grown by more than 25%. >> It's like 16.1% of people that are between 16 and 24 unemployed now.
00:54:26
>> Yeah. >> And we're still not talking about the economy. We're talking about brown
00:54:29
people. >> When people feel that they can't get ahead, they look for somebody to blame.
00:54:33
And this is historically consistent. What is really happening is that the government has become so big in the
00:54:40
economy. The the UK government is now 45 to 50% of all spending in the UK economy. That's essentially a socialist
00:54:46
or it's getting socialist. Every amount of government spend is a market distortion regardless of what it's for.
00:54:53
And I'm saying there plenty of things governments should be spending money on,
00:54:56
but all government spending is a market distortion. It's not market driven. And
00:55:00
there is a monopoly on spend. So therefore, it is a market distortion. The more government spending you have,
00:55:05
the more market distortions you have. >> What do you mean by market distortions?
00:55:08
>> So a market distortion is where the markets are not really able to function
00:55:13
because there is some big organization like the government spending money and taking away price signals and taking
00:55:18
away the realities of the market. So a a great example is what happened with student loans. So rather what in a
00:55:25
capitalist society what would have happened is that young people would have heard oh my goodness there's a shortage
00:55:31
of brick layers. Have you heard that brick layers are making £300 a day? Wow, I would love to make £300 a day. I'm
00:55:38
going to go be a brick layer. Guess what? It's a brick layers apprentice. I'm going to go and be an apprentice.
00:55:42
I'm going to get paid to learn this trade. And there would be a market driven pull towards being a brick layer.
00:55:48
A young person would get a job at a bank and the bank would say, "Hey, can we
00:55:53
please pay for you to do a finance degree because we need more people who've got a finance degree and we will
00:55:58
actually pay for you to go through that." So that's a functioning market.
00:56:02
It's basically based on uh needs and wants and things that are needed within
00:56:06
the economy. What the government did is they created a what's called a market
00:56:09
distortion. They said to all young people, we are going to give you as much uh lending as you like to go out and
00:56:16
take whatever university courses you want. Um there's no price data, there's
00:56:20
no signaling data. It's just you if you want to borrow £50,000, you can go to
00:56:25
any course. If you're really interested in the breeding habits of butterflies,
00:56:29
go and do a master's degree in that. and um you know, happy days, right? You you
00:56:34
could it doesn't matter whether there are jobs associated with it, you must go
00:56:38
and get a a university degree. So, they set up an entire system that pushed young people to go get £50,000 worth of
00:56:45
debt and do a degree that no one was asking for. That's a market distortion.
00:56:48
We now have a bubble of over 280 billion pounds worth of uh debt that will probably never be repaid. Uh we have a
00:56:56
entire generation of young people who are saddled with this debt that takes away all motivation. There's no point in
00:57:03
working because they pay such high taxes every single time they make a payment to
00:57:08
pay off their student loan. They they pay 600 but the debt goes up by 650. Right? It's it's absolutely insane. And
00:57:16
that's a classic example of governments meddling with the markets creating a
00:57:20
market distortion. And now we have hundreds of billions of dollars worth of people who are very angry, very upset uh
00:57:26
because they are trapped in a student debt that will not go away for decades. >> Rashi Sunnak, the former prime minister
00:57:32
of the UK wrote an article last week which you might have seen where he said that if the UK fails to fix its
00:57:38
productivity problems and seize the AI opportunity, the country risks becoming a tourist theme park.
00:57:46
>> Yeah. Not even a good tourist theme park. you know, there's there's, you
00:57:50
know, there's not a lot, you know, at least a lot of other countries have beaches and mountain ranges and ski
00:57:56
resorts and, you know, the UK doesn't have a lot of that. We have to let markets function. The issue that we
00:58:01
have, and this is this is actually a trap that you're falling into is trying
00:58:05
to figure out top down, how do we organize society, which is socialism, right? The top down approach of trying
00:58:11
to fix this problem for everybody is the socialist mindset. And it does it it doesn't work. If you were the prime
00:58:17
minister >> Yeah. >> and you you can see the future that's coming.
00:58:20
>> Yeah. >> What would you do? >> So the number one thing the UK needs to
00:58:24
do is reduce government involvement where we need to get the government spending down less than 35%.
00:58:30
>> Where'd you cut? >> Right. So the key thing that you need is that you need well there's loads of
00:58:34
places to cut, right? Like getting involved in trying to do wind farms and solar farms and all of this 40 billion
00:58:41
and all this sort of stuff. Preventing companies from accessing natural gas that is just sitting under our feet is a
00:58:47
crazy thing to do. Spending 20 billion trying to give away one of our islands to someone is a crazy thing to do.
00:58:52
There's all sorts of crazy things that the government is spending money on. Bureaucracy is a crazy spend. Do you
00:58:57
know that the um Birmingham City Council, they wanted to migrate from SAP to Oracle
00:59:04
>> and from a CRM system with SAP to a CRM system with Oracle, a software system,
00:59:09
right? So they wanted to migrate from one software system to another software system. They thought that it would cost
00:59:14
£19 million which in itself is a very high amount to migrate from one software to another software. It cost £220
00:59:20
million. >> So are you saying that you think the government should just do less stuff?
00:59:24
>> They should be involved in less stuff because what's happening right now is
00:59:28
that there is so much government spending that the benefits for succeeding are being eroded
00:59:35
by taxation and people are just leaving. See, here's the thing. There's with
00:59:40
capitalism, the only benefit of capitalism is the creative entrepreneurial process, right? That
00:59:46
creative entrepreneurial process that produces amazing companies and amazing innovations and it creates stuff that is
00:59:52
better, faster, and cheaper for everybody's lives. That comes from capitalism. But if you take away the
00:59:58
incentives for doing that, you essentially don't have that happen within your country. And then as soon as
01:00:03
you don't have that, you don't have any economic growth. And then as soon as you
01:00:06
don't have any economic growth, all you're left with is the debt. And the
01:00:10
debt erodess your economy and kills your economy and you don't have any growth to
01:00:15
counterbalance the debt. So you enter a downward spiral. And that is basically the same socialist scam that happens
01:00:20
over and over again everywhere that it's tried. You're essentially trying to get
01:00:23
rid of the worst elements of an economy, which is cronyism and extraction. But that happens under socialism. you just
01:00:30
simply lose the one thing that doesn't happen under socialism which is the creative process, the entrepreneurial
01:00:36
process, the innovative process that creates new value in the economy. So what we've currently done in the UK,
01:00:43
we've taken away all incentives for people to be in the UK and to succeed. I'm sure you know people personally who
01:00:51
are no longer in the UK as tax residents, who should be in the UK as tax residents. They like the UK, they
01:00:56
enjoyed living in the UK, but what happened? they left. You and I had a debate with a guy a year ago and he
01:01:03
said, "Oh no, people are not going to leave the UK. We can tax them as high as
01:01:06
we possibly can. We can ramp up the taxes." >> Gary Stevenson. >> Yeah, Gary Stevenson. And Gary's
01:01:11
prediction was that rich people are not going to leave. And he also predicted that the house prices are going to
01:01:16
explode and that we're going to have these horrible house prices. What's
01:01:19
happened? Housing market has gone flat because people are leaving. the economically active produ producers,
01:01:26
providers, they have left in their droves and the economy is now in real trouble. If you ask anyone who has left,
01:01:32
what do they tell you is the reason that they left the UK? >> Well, it's one of two things. It's
01:01:35
generally, I think they feel a sense of pessimism about building their future in
01:01:39
a place that that feels like it's unmanaged decline to some people. >> And then the other cohort will say tax
01:01:46
reasons, >> high taxes and and it just feels like you can't get ahead. And also the third
01:01:50
I'd say is they they think that talent is elsewhere. So they think they have a
01:01:54
better chance of getting capital and talent employees if they move to America or Dubai or wherever else.
01:01:58
>> Yep. And if you go to Dubai low taxes and if you go to America lower taxes um
01:02:04
more opportunities. So we are living in a time where you know a lot of countries
01:02:09
are exploring this socialism thing and unfortunately it's a scam. But even what's interesting is even your mindset
01:02:16
is we need to fix this top down as opposed to fix it bottom up. With AI, we need to give people price data, price
01:02:21
signals. >> What does that mean? >> It means that they need to be able to
01:02:24
see what's happening in in the economy. A young person needs to know that someone's making a lot of profit. They
01:02:29
need to be able to see there is opportunities to do this, there's opportunities to do that. They need to
01:02:34
also see, oh, this is no longer an opportunity. So, this was great. This was a great opportunity 5 years ago, but
01:02:39
it's not such a great opportunity now. A lot of young people are going to discover, oh, wait a second. I could get
01:02:45
into house renovations because a lot of houses need renovating. And they go, "Oh, cool. I've heard about someone
01:02:50
who's making money doing that. I'm going to go do that." So, that's just having
01:02:53
access to price data. >> When I look back over the last couple of years, data from Henley and Partners in
01:02:58
2023, it says 3,200 millionaires net left the UK. In 2024, 9,500 millionaires net left the UK. In 2025, projected
01:03:09
16,500 millionaires are expected to leave the UK, which is a record outflow. And
01:03:16
predictions that have not yet been published warn that the trend is likely to continue into 2026. When you think
01:03:23
about this, like I guess there's two questions, which is why does this matter?
01:03:26
>> Mhm. >> And then the next question is what should I do about it on an individual
01:03:30
level? >> So why does it matter is because 1% of people pay for 30% of the bills and uh
01:03:35
10% of people pay 60% of the bills. So if those people leave then those bills get passed on to everybody. We've seen
01:03:42
this here in New York. So we're at the moment we're in New York and this
01:03:46
socialist mayor Mandani has basically just come out today and said we need to put everybody's taxes up because we need
01:03:54
to spread the bills of the city across all the residents um because people are leaving. Right. So he wants to propose a
01:04:01
9.5% tax rise on all people uh who who own homes regardless of the value of those homes. So essentially when rich
01:04:09
people leave they leave behind a lot of bills that everybody else has to pay that they were previously paying.
01:04:16
>> In his February 2026 preliminary budget, New York Mayor Zorhan Mandani proposed a
01:04:22
9.5% property tax increase to address a projected 5.4 billion budget shortfall. This proposal acts as a last resort
01:04:30
alternative to his preferred plan which was increasing taxes on top earners and corporations to fill the revenue gap. H
01:04:37
>> he promised free stuff and he promised that everything was going to be paid for
01:04:41
for free. Nothing is free. Someone has to pay for everything. If the rich people leave, there is not people who
01:04:46
can pay for all the free stuff. And that's what New York is suddenly discovering. So why does it matter?
01:04:52
Because rich people essentially create the growth. They are the high taxpayers. whichever way you want to say it or
01:04:59
discover or discuss it. It is a small group of people who pay a lot of the uh taxes, you don't want those people to
01:05:04
leave the economy. What do you do about it? The number one thing to do about it is you need to identify the opportunity
01:05:10
that's right for you. That's called founder opportunity fit. What you're
01:05:13
looking for is an opportunity where you can earn money no matter where you are in the world. If you're somewhere that
01:05:20
you don't perhaps like being for any reason, you can pick up and move. Um, so
01:05:24
the best kind of businesses and the best kind of opportunities at the moment are
01:05:27
the ones that are not geographically limited to a particular city. >> It says that in New York, personal tax
01:05:32
income remains pretty strong, but business tax collections have started to soften. Recent reports show they are
01:05:37
roughly 378 million lower than initially projected as business formation slows down in New York.
01:05:44
>> Yeah, it's the same story. We've seen this over and over again. Um, socialism
01:05:49
is like a hot stove that every generation has to touch for themselves. that essentially every generation of
01:05:55
young people, they think they've discovered something new. They think, "Oh my goodness, what if we just go to
01:05:59
the rich people and take it off them and give it to everybody else and we'll
01:06:03
redistribute the wealth." And even though it's been tried for 180 years
01:06:08
since KL Marx came along, uh it just doesn't work. It it is a disaster and it
01:06:13
ruins economies over and over and over again. And trying to offer lots and lots of free incentives without any
01:06:18
productivity gains is a downward spiral. What's your bare case for the future of
01:06:24
AI? >> Well, the bare case is that we have something called the angles pause. The
01:06:27
angles pause is what happened in the industrial age where for 50 years all the wealth went to the top uh because of
01:06:33
the new technology of the industrialization. When we went from agriculture to industrial age, that new
01:06:39
technology displaced so many people that there were revolutions off the back of it.
01:06:43
>> I mean, this is going to be even faster and more disruptive. >> Yeah, it's very disruptive. Yeah. I said
01:06:48
this once before in a conversation I had about AI, but I went to my friend's
01:06:51
accelerator in San Francisco, which used to be a software accelerator. And when I
01:06:55
walked in there and went around, he has, you know, so hundreds of entrepreneurs in there building stuff. I was like, why
01:07:00
is everyone building robots? And he was like, oh, because and he showed me this,
01:07:03
I said this in a couple of episodes ago, showed me this frying pan which had an arm, a robotic arm attached to it. And
01:07:08
he was like, cook your dinner for you. >> Yeah. >> And and he was like, so 10 years ago,
01:07:13
the expensive thing wasn't actually the robotic arm. He's like, "All these
01:07:17
pieces, all these, they've been around for for decades." He goes, "The
01:07:20
expensive thing was the intelligence." >> He goes, "Now it costs sense. Back then
01:07:23
it would have cost me tens of thousands to to buy the intell intelligence that would know how to make your omelette for
01:07:30
you." So he goes, "What you're seeing now is we're actually in the the
01:07:32
Renaissance age of robotics." And I looked around everywhere. I was like, "Oh, there's what's that machine over
01:07:36
there?" He goes, "That makes your perfume for you in the morning." Yeah.
01:07:38
>> You tell it how you want to smell today. It makes it has all the sense loaded in
01:07:42
and it'll make you and you can see the making >> anything that is currently got a
01:07:46
Bluetooth in it will have intelligence in it. So your toothbrush will tell you whether you've brushed your teeth well
01:07:51
enough and book it'll probably be the thing that books an appointment for your
01:07:54
dentist uh and all that sort of stuff. >> I'll go even further. I'd say even
01:07:58
things that don't like my bed sheet my bed sheets my pillows my mattresses >> and they they will all have access to
01:08:03
agents and all that sort of stuff. My bare case for AI is not about the intelligence side of things. I generally
01:08:09
believe that more intelligence means a better society. Um, there's never been a
01:08:12
situation where lots of intelligence was a bad thing. Um, so I think intelligence
01:08:16
has a pretty strong bullcase to it, but financial bubbles are a real thing and I've lived through a couple of them. And
01:08:23
what I've discovered is that they have widespread massive impacts on all sorts
01:08:27
of areas of society that you wouldn't even expect. And my real bare case for
01:08:32
AI is that we overinvest in these data centers. We cause a massive financial collapse. uh and that we wipe out
01:08:38
pension funds. I don't know if you know this, but they're packaging up the debt
01:08:42
for these financial uh assets and they're selling that to um pension funds as private credit. So all of these huge
01:08:50
data centers, what they're doing is paying 6% above inflation as a packaged up debt. They send it over. Now when
01:08:57
they go to the pension funds, they say, "Oh, this is backed by Google and backed
01:09:00
by Microsoft and backed by uh Amazon." and then they say, "Oh, you know, it's a
01:09:04
6% um financial instrument backed by these huge companies." But unfortunately, the mathematics of
01:09:11
spending 600 billion a year on something that only has a three or four year lifespan, every single time in the last
01:09:18
180 years that we've spent more than 3% of our economy on an infrastructure buildout, we've ended up with either a
01:09:23
massive recession or a depression. >> Did you hear the Anthropic CEO? For anyone that doesn't know, Anthropic is
01:09:29
one of the large AI companies. Yeah, they're they're the maker of Claude. Did
01:09:33
you hear what he was saying the other day in the article he wrote about his concerns?
01:09:37
>> Yeah. Yeah. I I saw at Davos. >> Yeah. He wrote it just after he left
01:09:41
Davos. Um Daria Amed. >> Yeah. >> He said, "Humanity is about to be handed
01:09:48
almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems
01:09:54
possess the maturity to wield it. I believe we are entering a right of passage, both turbulent and inevitable,
01:10:01
which will test who we are as a species. We are considerably closer to real danger in 2026 than we were in 2023.
01:10:10
If the exponential continues, which is not certain, but now has a decade long track record supporting it, then it
01:10:17
cannot possibly be more than a few years before AI is better than humans at essentially
01:10:22
>> everything. >> Everything. The same AI enabled tools that are necessary to fight autocracies
01:10:28
can be turned inward to create tyranny in our own countries. There is an alarming possibility of global
01:10:36
totalitarian dictatorship. AI is so powerful, such a glittering prize that it is very difficult for human
01:10:44
civilization to impose any restraints on it at all. And he said this remarkable thing about um in that essay about
01:10:52
imagining if there was an island with 50,000 >> geniuses on it >> a billion a billion geniuses on it.
01:11:01
>> Yeah. >> What would happen to society? And I think there's I don't know like do you
01:11:05
know what I hope I'm really wrong about this but when I think about this idea
01:11:09
that there's 50 million geniuses on this brand new island >> and I ask myself
01:11:14
>> I'm willing to work for free. >> Willing to work for free. when one
01:11:17
learns something, they all learn something. >> You just take that as a first principle.
01:11:21
You go, hm, society is going to be very, very, very, very different. And maybe all of the advice we've been giving for
01:11:27
the last 5, 10 years about how to be successful, how to be an entrepreneur, how to succeed in business, maybe
01:11:32
>> it's for an economy that no longer exists. Yeah, we're going for we're
01:11:35
going from a fundamental industrial age economy to a AI age economy, right? That
01:11:41
is that is different. We will have different economic models. We also have a problem of aging. For all of human
01:11:47
history, we've had a small number of old people at the top and a lot of young
01:11:50
people at the bottom. And we now have 65% of all wealth in the economy is held by people over 65. And then you've got
01:11:57
the financialized economy and the government economy which is inflationary and that they pump money in as stimulus.
01:12:04
So while the entrepreneurs are making everything cheaper, even free, the governments are actually inflating the
01:12:10
economy and the financial systems inflating the economy slightly faster than productivity gains. Right? So
01:12:16
what's happening is the entrepreneurs bring down the cost of everything and the governments and the financial system
01:12:22
top it up with new stimulus. According to the rules that the government runs by, as AI creates huge deflationary
01:12:30
impacts, they can actually just inflate the economy like unbelievably. they can pump huge amounts of stimulus into the
01:12:36
economy. So this whole idea of um UBI, universal basic income, it actually stacks up from economic fundamentals
01:12:45
basics uh principles uh where you can actually provided you're getting the productivity gains where things are
01:12:52
costing zero because of AI, you can actually just pump money into the economy and give give money away for a
01:12:58
period of time while we're going through that transition. Hopefully that prevents
01:13:02
massive craziness from unfolding. And hopefully as a result of having a huge amount of intelligence, we find really
01:13:10
interesting fun ways to structure society and do things. We're not necessarily leaving utopia. We
01:13:17
shouldn't necessarily be grieving the loss of shitty jobs and grieving the loss of dehumanizing
01:13:24
low connectivity jobs. We have ruined the way that we pair bond. We've ruined
01:13:30
the way that we do community. We've ruined the way that families run. We've
01:13:35
got people working two jobs just to survive. Like that's not something to be
01:13:40
grieving the loss of. We need a new system. Maybe AI is going to actually give us the breathing room that we need
01:13:47
to actually create a system that gets us back to a little bit towards the way that humans have flourished.
01:13:52
>> Are we going to go to towards UBI? >> It seems like in the short term that
01:13:55
would have to be the case. So Sam Alman's over here working to build open AI, working 24 hours a day. Let's just
01:14:00
say theoretically. >> Um we're going to have to take some of his hard work away and give it to
01:14:06
theoretically we're going to have to give it to someone who is maybe not working.
01:14:11
>> Yeah. And I mean Sam Alman, funny enough, he actually backed a study called Open Research in 2024 that looked
01:14:17
at the impact of UBI. And it showed that recipients who received UBI, which is money basically given to them, worked
01:14:25
fewer hours and earned less money than the control group. Instead of using the freedom to find better jobs to improve
01:14:30
their education, many participants simply dropped off the workforce or reduced hours for leisure, resulting in
01:14:36
a net decrease in household income despite cash payments. >> Yeah, humans want stuff to do. We need a
01:14:41
we need a meaningful struggle. We need something that we um that we're up to in
01:14:44
the world. And that is that is a very difficult thing. The likely thing that I think will probably happen is that these
01:14:50
data center investments will be so catastrophic financially that governments will have to bail them out.
01:14:55
And then the governments will have to own all the data and all the data centers and then the tech companies will
01:15:00
have to essentially pay royalties back to the government over long periods of time to manage this kind of uh
01:15:05
infrastructure buildout. So you'll have to have something where the government
01:15:09
actually owns the primary asset and that is the thing that pays for the UBI. I mean we're we're kind of theorizing and
01:15:15
just kind of >> we're going to find out. >> We are going to find out.
01:15:17
>> This is going to be on the internet someday. >> The mathematics bend reality at age at
01:15:21
about 2029 once you the financial engineering required to make this thing work. You need something like a 45 times
01:15:29
growth in the number of people paying for subscriptions and the number of businesses. Like you take something that
01:15:36
is over the last uh 5 10 years there's been a product that has gone exponential
01:15:42
which is ampic and GLP1 weight loss drugs the amount of spend to build out and satisfy that demand is actually
01:15:50
pretty minimal. Those companies spend about 20% of their revenues building new factories to produce new GLP drugs.
01:15:57
Right? So capex is about 20% of revenue. We're seeing with the AI stuff, capex is
01:16:02
hundreds of percent of revenue, right? So, it is a financial feat that we've
01:16:08
never attempted before. >> I've had so many founders speak to me and say, "Why didn't this particular ad
01:16:13
that I ran on this platform work for me? Maybe the copy wasn't good, the creative
01:16:17
wasn't strong, but usually the problem is they're not having the right conversation because that ad never
01:16:22
reached the right person." And if you're in B2B marketing, that is much of the
01:16:26
game. And this is where LinkedIn ads solves that problem for you. Their targeting is ridiculously specific. You
01:16:32
can target by job title, seniority, company size, industry, and even someone's skill set. And their network
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01:16:45
you're putting your brand in front of the right people. And LinkedIn ads also
01:16:49
drive the highest B2B return on ad spend across all ad networks in my experience.
01:16:53
If you want to give them a try, head over to linkedin.com/diary. And when you spend $250 on your first
01:17:01
LinkedIn ads campaign, you'll get an extra $250 credit from me for the next one. That's linkedin.com/diary.
01:17:09
Terms and conditions apply. We have finally caved in. So many of you have asked us if we could bundle the
01:17:17
conversation cards with the 1% diary. For those of you that don't know, every
01:17:20
single time a guest sits here with me in the chair, they leave a question in the
01:17:23
diary of a CEO and then I ask that question to the next guest. We don't release those questions in any
01:17:29
environment other than on these incredible conversation cards. These have become a fantastic tool for people
01:17:34
in relationships, people in teams, in big corporations, and also family members to connect with each other. With
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if it was possible to buy both at the same time, especially people in big companies. So, what we've done is we've
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01:17:58
change in your company, head to the diary.com to inquire and our team will be in touch.
01:18:03
>> Let's bring this back to uh >> back to reality, >> the reality of the person listening and
01:18:08
uh the pressing questions they have about all this stuff and what they should do. Is there anything else that
01:18:12
you would give people that are listening right now in terms of advice to be able
01:18:16
to weather the incoming turbulence that the CEO of Anthropic describes there? Yeah, look, the things that I know are
01:18:23
good for people is I really believe that everyone should build a little bit of a
01:18:28
personal brand. So, a personal brand means that 2 to 20,000 people know who you are. They know what you do. They
01:18:35
know you what your experiences are like. They could approach you about an opportunity that would be a good
01:18:40
opportunity. So, build a bit of a personal brand. Don't be invisible uh in this particular time because you know it
01:18:47
is one of your assets which is to take some of your knowledge some of your playbooks and to let people know that
01:18:52
that exists. So I think build a bit of a personal brand. Second one is have a go
01:18:58
at entrepreneurship, right? Join an entrepreneurial team, do an entrepreneurial side hustle, read some
01:19:04
entrepreneurial books, watch some entrepreneurial um videos that are out there. start the process of thinking,
01:19:10
okay, the school system taught me to be a standardized uh employee, a standardized labor. Uh the school system
01:19:17
wanted me to fit in with an office or a factory, but actually there's this whole
01:19:21
other way of creating value which is non-standardized called entrepreneurship. This is spotting
01:19:25
opportunities and coming up with solutions to it. So, you know, play around with the game, even if it's a
01:19:32
small game. Like you might notice that there are dirty cars on the street and you might say, "You know what? I'm going
01:19:36
to go and knock on doors and wash the cars and see if I can make a couple hundred bucks in a day because I've seen
01:19:41
an opportunity. I've seen something that's wrong and I I'm going to go and
01:19:44
have a go at fixing it." >> A lot of founders are telling me, Mark Cuban said the other day that one of the
01:19:48
great opportunities now is catering for the gap between small business owners that don't know how to
01:19:53
use AI and helping them learn how to use AI. >> Yeah. Huge, right? Join a join a join a
01:19:59
founder team and help them do that. Um as I said as well 65% of all the businesses by valuation are people over
01:20:06
65 now. So there is a mathematical certainty that 2/3 of the businesses that run the economy by valuation have
01:20:13
to change hands in the next 10 15 20 years. So this is a massive business opportunity. Uh baby boomers want to get
01:20:20
rid of their businesses. They want to retire. Baby boomers are willing to fund you to buy their business if you present
01:20:25
yourself well if you've got a little bit of a personal brand. So, that's a that's
01:20:29
a huge opportunity. So, look into that. Um, you know, Cody Sanchez, a mutual friend of ours, she talks to people all
01:20:35
the time about how to buy a baby boomer business and and take it over and run it. So, um, you know, that's a that's a
01:20:41
great opportunity. Play with these toys called AI tools. Someone has given you a
01:20:47
free iPhone which you can just use called AI tools um on the free account. That is such good advice that we don't
01:20:53
hear enough because I think people think there's where I am right now in my life
01:20:58
and what I do and then there's like Sam Alman and Elon Musk and I I either I'm
01:21:03
one or the other but actually what I'm seeing as an employer who's employing we
01:21:08
probably employ I'd say 20 people a month at current rate. >> We're hiring 20 more people a month
01:21:13
>> is increasingly on our culture test when we're screening who the right candidates
01:21:17
are. We're looking for some kind of evidence that they're playing or messing
01:21:21
around with AI. >> Yeah. >> And one of my team members >> is she was trying to figure out how to
01:21:27
get a 100 different documents to synthesize and understand the data within these documents. Now, there's two
01:21:36
types of people I can hire to do that. There's the old fashioned way of doing
01:21:39
that where someone might sit there for four or five weeks and try to figure out how to get an Excel document to have the
01:21:45
right formulas. And then there's her who we hired. Even though she doesn't have
01:21:50
skills in that particular thing, she has no experience in it. But because of her
01:21:53
mindset and her agency, she went, "Hm, maybe I could put this into Claude Co-work and ask set up an agent to run
01:22:00
this for me >> by the time dessert came." She pulled her laptop over to me and showed it to
01:22:05
me. And she goes, "Stephen, I've ran all those hundreds of documents um into this
01:22:09
file and I can see the sentiment on every single post you've made on every single social platform, including every
01:22:13
LinkedIn post you've made over the last couple of years. And we can see that
01:22:17
actually even though these point posts get more likes, these ones are actually the best posts you're doing."
01:22:22
>> She did that by dessert. >> Yeah. >> That and I thought there a isn't that
01:22:26
interesting. How do you find people who have that bias in the modern world where
01:22:30
they lean into change? She's not curiosity, isn't it? >> Yeah. It's curiosity, but there's also
01:22:34
something which is like and being fluid about your identity and what you know. >> Yes.
01:22:39
>> Which is she has no experience in that. >> But I can try. >> I can try.
01:22:43
>> And the one thing for anyone watching or listening is that don't use AI as a
01:22:48
search tool. Don't use it the way you used it a year ago. Give AI your hardest
01:22:53
problem and say, "Hey, help me to solve this problem." So, for example, you
01:22:57
might say, "I'm really struggling with these areas of my life. Here's all the
01:23:01
data. Here's all the information. Here's the PDF documents. Here's the, you know,
01:23:05
the the backstory. Help me solve this. Help me write it. What kind of piece of software might I be able to use to to to
01:23:12
build here?" I'll give you a real example. One of our team members used AI
01:23:16
to analyze all the sales calls for the last 3 months and discovered a huge opportunity. What they discovered is
01:23:22
that 75% of all of our sales calls, the person who we were on the phone to mentioned that their spouse was a
01:23:29
decision maker and that they needed to talk to their spouse and that decision-m because it was a family business and
01:23:34
that there was either a spouse or a family member. There was no point in our process where we invited collaboration
01:23:40
with other family members. So none of our sales calls said, "Do you want to
01:23:44
bring someone along to the sales call? Like would you like to have someone do that?" The AI analyzed it, discovered
01:23:50
that opportunity, wrote a script as to how to invite people onto the call so that that you get all decision makers on
01:23:56
the call and now our sales conversions are going up dramatically. >> I think this is the the real bification
01:24:01
in terms of the employment market of what we're seeing is certain people have
01:24:05
a a positive relationship to disruption in technology and change. They get excited by it where others fall into
01:24:11
cognitive dissonance where they they get so concerned that it's going to take out
01:24:14
their business that they ostrich head in the sand. And then the these other people have this in inherent figure out
01:24:21
ability. I could say to a certain team member of mine, here's a big problem and
01:24:25
they would grab onto this big problem and even though they have no proficiency in data or technology or AI or CL, they
01:24:32
will just they'll plug away at it on a computer and they'll figure it out and
01:24:36
they'll use all available tools, not their identity, what they learned in university or their experience as the
01:24:42
only tool in the tool box. That's the difference between employee mindset and
01:24:46
entrepreneur mindset. Entrepreneurs see problems as opportunities. They get excited by problems and they apply the
01:24:51
entrepreneurial process. And employees say, "Hey, wait a second. I was never
01:24:55
trained for this. I was never told how to do this. I was not given the rulebook for this. So therefore, I'll just ignore
01:25:01
it. I'll stay away from it because problems, it's not my problem." And this
01:25:04
is the big fundamental shift. We need to say, "Hey, problems are great. We want
01:25:08
problems. And is this problem for me? How would I test my assumptions? How would I build something quickly and
01:25:15
cheaply? How would I then test that? How would they I then scale that? Right? And
01:25:20
it's just those kind of few steps that if you embrace those entrepreneurial steps, then life becomes great.
01:25:26
>> I have a contrarian take that I think writing is actually more important now
01:25:30
than ever before because writing is a proxy of understanding. And in a world of AI, what I'm finding when I look at
01:25:36
like my innovation teams or where breakthroughs are coming from in my company, it's actually someone had a
01:25:41
really good question. >> Yes. >> So they were like, could we theoretically analyze all of our sales
01:25:47
calls using Claude to see if there's something interesting in there? Now that
01:25:51
starts with someone understanding sales calls, understanding the tools that allow you to analyze them. They have
01:25:56
lots of reference points. They understand lots of um variant things. And that means they ask a really great
01:26:01
question. So for me, one of the ways that I've been um been able to understand more things is to to write
01:26:06
more often about them. >> Can I go one step further? >> And that is a process called pause
01:26:11
reflect document. And pause reflect document. If you do it correctly, you go into nature away from noise and away
01:26:18
from technology and you take a pen and a paper and you sit in nature on a bench and you just pause and just let some
01:26:27
boredom set in. You reflect on what's going on. You try and zoom out to the bigger picture. You do some journaling
01:26:36
and you do some dot connecting where you say, "What are some of the dots that
01:26:39
have happened in the last 5 years? What are some of the bigger picture impacts that I've made? What are some of the
01:26:44
problems that I've struggled with? What if this was possible? What if that was
01:26:47
possible?" We live in this incredible fast-paced world where the one thing that no one allows themselves to do is
01:26:55
to pause, reflect, document with a pen and paper. And those people who I know who are doing incredibly well are doing
01:27:03
more and more of this. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Same same. I mean, you're one of them.
01:27:07
You're a person who's I mean, look at this. >> Yeah. >> This is a lot of books.
01:27:12
>> That's my head. >> But you tweet every day. You post every day. You're constantly experiencing
01:27:17
something in the real world, writing it down to develop your thinking, which Richard Fryman talks about the process
01:27:23
of understanding where you learn something, condense it, so an average person can understand it, then you share
01:27:27
it with the world to collect feedback on that thought. He said that's the like
01:27:31
the fastest best way to learn. Yeah. Yeah, >> but actually in a world of AI where chat
01:27:34
can do all of that for me, we're deferring our ability to sort of condense, compress, and understand to an
01:27:40
AI because we think it's creating an efficiency gain or a productivity gain in the near term. Like maybe today's
01:27:46
email will will save you 30 seconds, but that the tax you're paying I think is an
01:27:51
understanding. >> And understanding is the is a proxy of therefore, you know, writing great
01:27:56
questions. >> I find myself writing more. I wrote a memo this I was up till 2 a.m. last
01:28:00
night writing a memo. >> Yeah. which means you were up late thinking. >> You were thinking clearly and that was
01:28:07
what you were really doing. A great question I want people to reflect on. I want them to think about the last 5
01:28:12
years and ask the question when did I do something special that impacted a certain type of person.
01:28:18
I can explain how I did it step by step and how it felt and it would be of interest to plenty of people. All right.
01:28:25
And that question contains what we talked about earlier which is lived experience feelings playbooks and
01:28:34
connecting the dots looking backwards and actually coming up with some things that only I can do things that only I
01:28:40
can say. So that that particular prompt that particular question to sit in nature and think clearly and memo and
01:28:46
and document and write a memo about it. You know I I see so many people and you and I have done this over the last
01:28:51
couple hours. We think so much about the future and the uncertainty of the future
01:28:55
but a lot of value comes from just looking backwards and connecting the dots and then thinking what what is it
01:29:01
that I now know that I want to take forward and add value to others. sort of adjacent to that but related is another
01:29:07
thing I think a lot about which is um trying to get more information and experiences from a wide set of reference
01:29:15
points because when I think about innovation generally innovation is the connection of like two ideas or thoughts
01:29:22
or principles that someone else hasn't put together so I think about the like
01:29:26
non-stick frying pan it was a guy who was fishing and was trying to make get a material so his tackle his fishing
01:29:33
tackle didn't stick together and his wife walks past allegedly and says, "I'd
01:29:37
love some of that stuff on our pans." And that ends up selling tens and tens
01:29:41
of millions of non-stick pans. And even the even when you think about the iPhone, that was a combination of a of
01:29:46
an internet device, >> a music device, >> and a telecommunications device
01:29:51
>> put together, which you rarely found those three things in one space. Three
01:29:54
different reference points. To achieve that, someone would have had to understand music, the internet, and
01:29:59
phones. >> Yeah. Yeah. And even Steve Jobs himself, his skill stack contains typography and
01:30:04
design which is why why he was able to disrupt Blackberry. >> He stumbled into a calligraphy class at
01:30:10
university and loved calligraphy and he was the first company to ever have fonts
01:30:14
and those fonts became a huge differentiator on the first Mac and it was only because he had like combined
01:30:20
calligraphy with uh with with computers he created the font uh idea. >> So maybe the future's owned by the wide
01:30:27
not the narrow in this regard. definitely become more of a generalist, become more curious and go out of your
01:30:33
comfort zones, right? The the industrial age asked us to simply specialize and do
01:30:37
one thing over and over. The grandfather of capitalism is a guy called Adam Smith
01:30:41
and he said ultimately efficiency is about doing one thing in the process over and over and over, but he said it's
01:30:47
going to destroy the human spirit. He actually wrote about the fact that that destroys the human spirit. having to
01:30:51
just twist this knob over and over that creates the most value in the economy, but it's horrible for you as a human.
01:30:57
And what and he recognized that problem from the very beginning. What we've been
01:31:02
trained to do is just twist the knob, twist the knob, twist the knob, do the same thing over and over. What we need
01:31:07
to relearn how to do is allow us to become more human and say, "Actually, I'm going to explore nature. I'm going
01:31:14
to explore this weird passion that I have for um, you know, particular theater companies and how they run. I'm
01:31:20
going to go and explore this thing about like entrepreneur accelerators. Um, you
01:31:24
know, I'm going to combine things. It's those rare combinations and you need to
01:31:28
trust your instincts that you're actually pulling on a few threads and bringing them together. I do that while
01:31:35
still focusing on a job, etc. Because I do this for a living. >> So, I get to sit here, you know, someone
01:31:40
walked in before you and they were talking to, you know, Alex Honold was talking to me in that chair before you.
01:31:45
That's why the little taipe statues behind us about, you know, then you've
01:31:48
talked to me today about this, then the next person will talk to me about neuroscience and bringing a human brain.
01:31:52
And that's allowed me to kind of connect these interesting reference points. What
01:31:55
I'm saying here is you don't need to like >> quit your job and go and live in Peru to
01:32:00
to to orchestrate your life in such a way. I think you just need to be really intentional about resisting the urge to
01:32:07
be a narrow person and to identify too much with one's identity. And so when I
01:32:12
left my former business, one of the chapters I wrote my book is how do I now resist all my labels? Because now I'm a
01:32:18
social media CEO. And it's so tempting, >> yeah, >> to gather around social media people, go
01:32:24
to social media parties, put it in my bio, get social media opportunities, and just go further and further and further
01:32:29
down that narrow line. So that's why I went and worked in psychedelics and biotech. I worked in cancer biotech. I
01:32:35
started to DJ. I started a podcast called The Diary of a CEO. I tried to do as many things as I possibly could to
01:32:40
remain wide. Yeah. And your superpowers are extra superpowers when you take them
01:32:45
somewhere new. >> So if you've got social media superpowers within the social media
01:32:50
bubble, everyone's got those superpowers. But if you go and take them into a completely new place, you
01:32:55
discover that actually what you what you learned over here becomes a massive differentiator over here.
01:33:01
>> Is there anything else the audience need to know about the big opportunities you
01:33:05
see as we head into the future? >> We all want the future to be bright. We
01:33:09
all want the future to be uh amazing and we love the idea of trying to improve the world. One of the best ways to
01:33:16
improve the world is to improve your own situation because the world is made up of people who have their own situation.
01:33:23
You know when we try and fix every problem on the planet it feels completely crushing and it feels so much
01:33:27
weight on your shoulders. when you actually say what's my opportunity like if I could if I improve the world by
01:33:33
building myself a really great business that helps a few people that helps 500 clients do something and if I'm actually
01:33:40
out there adding value in my unique way and I'm finding a way through this AI
01:33:44
weird adventure that we're going on that's actually helping the world right
01:33:48
so you're bringing yourself forward you're discovering something I really
01:33:52
want people to resist the trap of trying to fix everyone and fix everything try and figure out what is your opportunity
01:33:59
What is your way of adding value to others? What is your way of getting paid? What is your way of doing creative
01:34:03
entrepreneurship? Uh what's your contribution to the world? And that is actually a contribution.
01:34:09
>> Is that difficult to do? Because I think it assumes certain level of self-awareness that is not always easy.
01:34:18
>> If you find it difficult to do, find someone who inspires you and see if you
01:34:22
can join their team. So that's totally a valid move as well, right? just get onto
01:34:26
a team where someone's figuring this stuff out. Um, you know, follow your inspiration and sometimes your
01:34:33
inspiration is to start something. Sometimes your in inspiration is to help propel something forward, being part of
01:34:38
someone else's team who does inspire you. Self-awareness is is a skill that we all have to learn. We're all on a
01:34:42
crash course with reality. Every single one of us is on a crash course with reality. There's a lot of narrative on
01:34:47
on the internet that everybody can live their dream, you know, and I wonder whether every it's good I wonder
01:34:58
whether it's good advice to tell everybody to like quit their job and pursue their dream.
01:35:01
>> I believe that the new size of business that makes the most sense is small and
01:35:05
dynamic and lean and is probably close to 10 to 50 people. Um, and that is the new size of company that is really
01:35:13
shaking things up and doing stuff. In fact, it's probably 2 to 20 people. I think that being part of a small,
01:35:20
dynamic, vibrant, entrepreneurial team is a great place for people to go and have a look and explore. Does that mean
01:35:28
that everyone's suitable to quit their job and go start something from scratch
01:35:31
with a blank piece of paper? Probably not, right? That's that's a particular
01:35:35
role called the founder. Not everyone's ready to be a founder. In the same way,
01:35:39
everyone could probably get a black belt if they if they joined a martial arts and stuck with it. But not everyone can
01:35:44
start as a black belt. That's not where you start >> even in those numbers. So if we said
01:35:48
everyone's gonna have, you know, a team of 10 to 50, those numbers suggest that
01:35:53
one in 50 or one in 10 people are going to be a founder. >> Possibly a lot more people are going to
01:35:58
be founders. I really believe a lot more people are going to be founders. I also
01:36:01
don't think it's wildly unnatural to be a founder. If you go through all of
01:36:05
history, most people worked in little family businesses. That was actually the vast majority of people. Mo, you know,
01:36:11
most businesses never got past 30 people. That our natural way of being is in family groups and tribal groups and
01:36:17
little groups of less than 150 people. We've built up this idea that to be a
01:36:21
founder means Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or something massive like that and that you're trying to build something that
01:36:26
changes the world. I've got so many friends and clients who it's them, their
01:36:31
assistant, and uh someone who's like head of customer development, and there's three or four of them, and
01:36:37
they're having a great time, and they're doing 600, 700 grand worth of revenue,
01:36:40
and they got loads of flexibility. Everyone takes their kids to school. Everyone finishes up at 4 4 p.m. Um they
01:36:47
can travel, they can live and work anywhere. Um you know, that's really cool. This is your most recent book,
01:36:52
Lifestyle Business Playbooks: How to Have Fun, Freedom, and Fulfillment with Your Own Business. You've written a lot
01:36:58
of books. You could have written a book about anything. What's this book about
01:37:02
and who is it for? >> This book is about the times that we're living in, right? So, what I'm trying to
01:37:06
do, I'm trying to give people some hope. There's such a negative narrative that
01:37:11
AI is going to wipe out everything and that technology is going to destroy everything and that, you know, all this
01:37:16
negativity about the times that we're in. I'm trying to create a counternarrative that actually more than
01:37:23
any other time in history, you could live and work from anywhere. You could have a group of 500 to a few thousand
01:37:29
clients all over the world. You could add value to people in a unique and interesting way. You could have a career
01:37:35
that's based on randomness and creativity and fun. And that there are some new rules to play by. and that if
01:37:42
you learn the playbooks of entrepreneurship and if you learn the trends that are unfolding that actually
01:37:47
it could work out really really well for you. >> A lot of people want to, you know, they
01:37:50
want a side hustle, they want passive income. What's your general perspective
01:37:54
on the reality of being able to generate passive income and a side hustle? I think passive income reflects people's
01:38:00
desire that they currently feel that they're working really hard and they hate work and they hate going to work
01:38:06
and that earning money is a horrible thing and therefore they just wish it would just kind of take care of itself.
01:38:13
The truth is that when you discover what I would call a lifestyle business where
01:38:17
you work a reasonable amount of time and you have a lot of fun with great people,
01:38:22
you don't necess the as if by magic the desire for passive income just evaporates. you go, "This is this is
01:38:28
better than passive income because I'm on a creative journey and I'm making
01:38:31
great money and I'm having a lot of fun and I'm expressing myself." I think
01:38:34
passive income ultimately comes from assets. It's not it's not passive income, it's asset income. Um, you're
01:38:39
either going to have to create an asset, which could be a business that is a digital asset. Um, or you make so much
01:38:45
money in your lifestyle business that you own traditional assets like houses or stocks and shares and all that sort
01:38:50
of stuff. Um, but I'm not really focusing people on the idea of passive income. I'm focusing on the idea of
01:38:56
having a lifestyle business that supports the way you want to live. Anyway, >> a lot of people would would want that,
01:39:01
but they're scared, right? They're scared that they have to quit their job
01:39:03
and I've got a mortgage to pay. I've got kids. So, it's easier said than done,
01:39:07
Daniel. >> Yeah. So, that that's why in the playbooks, playbook one is called a side
01:39:10
hustle or an apprenticeship. So, an apprenticeship, let's say let's say you
01:39:14
currently earn $100,000 a year for uh a really big corporate, but you know that's not your future. An
01:39:22
apprenticeship might be that you join four boards for 20 25,000 each and you actually work with some startups that
01:39:29
are more entrepreneurial and you take a position where you have four companies that are paying 25 grand. So you still
01:39:35
earn 100 grand a year but now you've got four smaller startups that you're
01:39:40
learning from and they're learning from you and you're learning from them. So
01:39:42
that's that's a version of an apprenticeship. Um, an apprenticeship could also be that you go from working
01:39:48
for a big traditional company to getting a job that pays almost as much but with
01:39:52
a smaller, more interesting business that you can learn from a founder. A side hustle is where you do stuff on the
01:39:58
side and it's open and shut. You build your entrepreneurial confidence. So those are like starting points and then
01:40:04
after that and the these are not designed to make a big leap financially. After that we talk about a twoerson
01:40:11
scout team scouting an opportunity. We talk about a fourperson fire starting team getting something started. We talk
01:40:18
about an eightp person core team running a really cool little lifestyle business.
01:40:23
So it it it's not like people think that they have to go from zero to 100 in one
01:40:27
jump. And it's like no, there are little steps along the way that make this really easy.
01:40:31
>> I think uh it's really important with all of this advice to like know your
01:40:34
nature and to know who you are and kind of honestly to like know what you want from life,
01:40:38
>> which a lot of people don't and they're handed what they want from life from
01:40:41
like scrolling on Instagram or LinkedIn. and they cool >> I need to build a $5 billion AI company
01:40:45
etc. I think I've I've noticed with myself that I started a business. I was
01:40:49
really I was ambitious about the goals for that business and then you know I ran that business for some time. I left
01:40:56
that business when I was what 20 maybe 20 years old. Went to work in Silicon Valley as basically a consultant.
01:41:01
>> Mhm. >> And that was okay for a time being but then eventually I realized that
01:41:06
>> the money really doesn't m it's really about like doing it with people you like
01:41:10
and having a and having a challenge. So that then led me back into the ambitious
01:41:15
building businesses. Did that for six years. But big big business around the world
01:41:19
>> and then left that and then I went through a period where >> I guess I was kind of a consultant
01:41:23
freelancery type guy for a while again fundamentally unfulfilling for me. >> Yep.
01:41:28
>> Because going on a mission with a group of people, an audacious mission really
01:41:32
regardless of what it is that filled me up. It was never really about the money.
01:41:36
>> A lot of people discover this. A lot of people discover that more is not better.
01:41:40
Uh, a lot of people discover that bigger is not more fun. Do >> you know what else they discover? They
01:41:44
discover that their idea of independence and freedom is also not what they thought. And this is like a quite a
01:41:50
contrarian take, but I have more responsibility now than I've ever had. >> Yeah.
01:41:55
>> I could choose less responsibility, more freedom, and I would be less satisfied
01:41:58
and less fulfilled in my life. >> Totally. Look at rich kids. They've they've got everything taken care of,
01:42:03
and there's all this financial resource around them, and there's nothing for
01:42:06
them to do. They live in a constant state of depression. We love responsibility. We love creative
01:42:11
tension. Uh we love being up to something in the world. There's nothing greater than being up to something to
01:42:17
being on a mission, especially with a great group of people that you're traveling through life with that you're
01:42:21
on this rock with. Um and you find your group of people that you want to be up to something with and you natter and you
01:42:26
solve and you get curious and you run ideas past each other and you voice note at 2:00 in the morning. You know, that's
01:42:33
that's where the juice is. That's where the joy is. Um there's a chapter in
01:42:36
there that says know when enough is enough. And it says that a huge part of the times that we're in is you know we
01:42:41
live in a time of endless scrolling. There's no cue that says you've been
01:42:44
scrolling long enough you know go to bed. And it's same with business that we
01:42:50
think bigger would be better. Having a bit bigger business another you know another product another thing another uh
01:42:56
million would make you happier. And the truth is it's it's not the it's normally
01:43:01
not the case. Well, what is the case though is that we all need increasing levels of challenge. It seems to me, you
01:43:07
know, this is why crosswords get more difficult and video games get have levels because they realize through the
01:43:13
studies that when something becomes incrementally more difficult, you drop into a flow state and motivation
01:43:18
increases and if it doesn't, then you lose motivation. And so, I think this is
01:43:21
why even in my life, like I'm striving to make things bigger and better because
01:43:25
it's actually just a proxy of like I want to be challenged. >> Well, there's a couple of things. You
01:43:29
can either go really big with one thing and just be really really focused or you
01:43:34
can have challenge across a portfolio of interests. One thing that is happening to your generation, if I can be so bold,
01:43:40
cuz I'm just 15 years older or whatever, is that you've taken all the energy that
01:43:46
normally went into kids and you're putting it into business, right? And the normal natural thing that is meant to
01:43:54
happen around this age is that you're meant to struggle with a business or struggle with a way of providing and
01:44:00
also struggle with raising kids and all that sort of stuff. So there's this reservoir of creative energy that is
01:44:08
meant to be divided amongst a few projects. And I'm seeing a lot of people that that misplaced maternalism or
01:44:14
paternalism goes into just one thing and then we're expecting to get the joy and
01:44:20
the fulfillment that would normally come back from family >> and we wonder why that's missing. You
01:44:25
know, it's like, oh, I'm pouring myself into the creation of these companies and
01:44:28
they're proxies for kids. And it's like, why don't I feel this warmth back? Cuz
01:44:33
your biology is not wired to receive warmth back from something other than a kid. So this is happening because we're
01:44:40
not having we're not having kids. So one of the things that uh well one of the
01:44:45
things I encourage everyone to do is have kids because it's the best thing ever and to have a portfolio of
01:44:49
interests that you don't have to struggle to get to a billion. You could say, you know what, the business
01:44:54
bucket's full at 3 million and I'm really really happy with a revenue of 3
01:44:58
million in a team of 10 and now I want to have a portfolio of interests that includes health and fitness or travel or
01:45:04
teaching at a local uh you know youth group, you know, or I want to play a bigger role in my church. Like there's
01:45:10
all these other things that you say, okay, these are the portfolio of interests that that are more human.
01:45:16
>> Lifestyle business playbook. going to link this book below for anyone that
01:45:19
wants to give it a read who is compelled by the lifestyle that Dan has described
01:45:24
there where you can have fun, freedom and fulfillment with your own business. As you know, Daniel, cuz this is, I
01:45:30
think, is your seventh time being on this podcast. Record breaker. We have a closing tradition. The question that has
01:45:37
been left for you is, what fear have you overcome to become who you are today? You know, I grew up on the Sunshine
01:45:46
Coast. Uh, I dropped out of school or I dropped out of university. I've got zero
01:45:52
qualifications. Um, I'm not particularly good at anything in particular. I've got no skills. Yeah,
01:46:01
there's me at 21. I tell you, this was a huge fear. Running my first ad in the
01:46:05
newspaper. I put everything on a credit card just to run an ad in the newspaper for $8,000. and it had to work or else I
01:46:12
was in serious trouble. >> I've had a weird 25 years. I've boom busted over and over again. Um, so I had
01:46:20
a massive boom in my early 20s, built a $10 million company rapidly and then lost it. And then I built another
01:46:26
multi-million dollar business and then lost it. And then I got wiped out by a co experience and had to reinvent the
01:46:32
business. And then I had a negative experience with a co-founder and had to reinvent the team. So I've had these
01:46:37
kind of like huge forif for for the first 15 years it was boom bust boom bust boom bust and the fear was is that
01:46:44
it would never feel a sense of fulfillment. I'd never get to a place where I could actually say it was all
01:46:50
worth it. Um and to just keep going and going and going when I felt exhausted uh
01:46:56
was a massive thing. You know have a family. >> Yeah. and the fear of will I be able to
01:47:01
provide for the family and the fear of uh will my business ideas be valued by anyone else other than myself? Am I
01:47:08
doing something stupid? Am I doing something um that will fail again? So, it's been a lot of fear. Um but you know
01:47:17
what? It's been a wonderful journey that every time I've pushed through that
01:47:20
fear, we get to the other side. And actually, it's better on the other side.
01:47:24
It's even better. Had you known how hard it would be, do you think that 21-year-old Daniel would have done it?
01:47:32
>> I don't think I had any other choice. >> But if I'd sat that Daniel down and I'd
01:47:36
say, "Daniel, this is what's going to happen in the next 20 years. You're
01:47:38
going to go up and then you're going to lose it all. Then you go up, you lose it
01:47:41
all. You're going to feel like this at this moment. It's going to be the worst
01:47:43
day. Then you're going to feel like this and then this and then this and you're
01:47:46
going to be working hard the whole time. Then you're going to lose faith."
01:47:49
Would you have done it? >> Secretly, yes. And the reason for that is I kind of I kind of like the roller
01:47:56
coaster. Feel like I needed to go through boom bust boom bust boom bust because I I secretly didn't want a
01:48:05
straight line. I think I think I actually want the the the I want the more interesting story. At 24, I was
01:48:12
offered $14 million for my company. Uh and I blew it. I I screwed up the negotiation and we ended up all walking
01:48:19
away from the deal. I think it would have been the worst thing possible had I had $14 million at uh at age 24.
01:48:27
>> So I've drawn a a little graph here on this iPad. One axis is your success and
01:48:32
the other axis is time. Could you draw for me what your career looks like in terms of success over time including the
01:48:39
ups, the downs, etc., etc. >> Well, if we just talk objectively what other people would have seen. Um I do
01:48:45
this nightclub party and that's amazing. And then I go and I get a job with a
01:48:50
mentor and then we build this business that's like 6 million in its first year
01:48:54
and I'm like right close to it and we go from zero to like 60 employees and then
01:48:59
I have a fight with my mentor and he tells me go start your own business. So, I go right down to start from scratch
01:49:06
again and I'm in I'm in a really negative place. And then we get started
01:49:10
and suddenly I've got myself a multi-million dollar business. And then the government changes the law and we
01:49:15
have to reinvent that business. And then we get a new amazing contract and now we
01:49:20
do a million a month. And this, by the way, this is only like age 24. And then we screw up the negotiation and it's
01:49:27
right back to the start. And then I go to London and I start a new business. And that goes really really well really
01:49:33
quickly and like one year in we've got the palladium theater and we're doing
01:49:36
hundreds of thousands a week worth of sales and then the global financial crisis resets the whole business and I
01:49:41
lose the major contracts that we have and and then I relaunch the business and then co comes along and we're by by this
01:49:49
stage we're in uh 11 cities doing a couple of million per city and then I relaunch the business as a digital
01:49:56
business and it goes off the scale again right I'm running out of space here and
01:50:01
Now we've figured out, okay, we own the assets, we own the brand, uh we've got a
01:50:04
great team, we've got multiple businesses, and at the moment, and this is around the time I have kids as well,
01:50:09
and it and it starts to really uh become more stable and more fun and uh less up
01:50:15
and down. But that was my starting point. Up, down, up, down, up, down. >> And this is over the period of how many
01:50:22
years? >> This was this was from 20 to 35. It was just boom bust, boom bust, punch in the
01:50:28
face, get back up, punch in the face, get back up. Uh, zero millions, zero millions, zero millions. I say all of
01:50:36
this because I think it's important to people for people to realize the reality
01:50:42
of what it takes and how hard it is. And, you know, oftent times if we want to get, you know, have a high performing
01:50:48
podcast or write a great selling book, we kind of describe it as a linear journey. you're going to do this, then
01:50:52
you do this, then this is going to happen, then you do this. Stick at it for long enough, and then and then why?
01:50:57
But actually, in my experience, the graph either looks like a boom and bust cycle, which is kind of what I'm seeing
01:51:01
here in your graph, or it looks like nothing, nothing nothing, nothing nothing, something exponential.
01:51:08
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> I mean, even this podcast, if you look at the graph, it is nothing, nothing,
01:51:13
nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing exponential. >> 2 million, 4 million, 8 million, 16
01:51:17
million. Yeah. And so the question for me always becomes like what would it take for you to survive either in your
01:51:26
story this boom and bust scenario >> or in many of the things I've done in my
01:51:32
life this no man's land >> period of no it takes a certain something in someone
01:51:39
>> Yeah >> to be able to weather such a storm and well I guess what what is that you said
01:51:44
a second ago I had no choice. Yeah, I had no choice because I have no skills. I'm not good at anything. You know, I've
01:51:50
got friends who are good at coding or good at editing or they're good at designing. They've got accounting or
01:51:56
they've got dentistry or something like that to fall back on. I have no qualifications. I've got a driver's
01:52:00
license is my only qualification. Um, and I'm all I'm good at is organizing
01:52:05
teams and getting people in the room and getting them excited and essentially encouraging them to work with me and and
01:52:12
build something together. So, I kind of didn't have a choice but to keep playing
01:52:17
the game, keep trying. >> And by the way, I wouldn't change any of that. Like, there's there's no point
01:52:22
there where I'd go back and say, "Actually, cuz where where I am now, every single one of those crushing drops
01:52:28
is where I really learned something that I leverage today." actually something I
01:52:32
said to someone who works in my team as my business partner now, George Gibson, when she emailed me two years ago asking
01:52:37
me to invest in a startup, a startup that I myself had failed at. I basically was trying to say, "This is not going to
01:52:43
work, but do it anyway because the actual thing of value here might not be the million-dollar exit. It's going to
01:52:50
be the lessons you learn from the failure are going to then be leveraged as I did at 20 years old when I went to
01:52:56
Silicon Valley and started talking to people about this thing. I'd spent two
01:52:58
years failing and was getting paid $70,000 a month to talk about this thing as a 20-year-old with no qualifications
01:53:04
because I was one of the very few people who had failed in social media and therefore had a deep understanding and a
01:53:08
rare skill. You're no longer going on BBC News night or in Forbes as the person who did this, but of all the
01:53:15
things you've done in your life, this great failing is going to be the most valuable asset you have. And this is
01:53:20
what your story proves because every time it goes higher. >> Yeah, it really does. Yeah, it was it
01:53:24
was amazing. like the the like I can tell you what the moments feel like at the bottom and they're horrible and
01:53:31
alcohol's involved and uh you know like wanting to just completely hide and you
01:53:36
know never be seen by anyone ever again and then suddenly you go okay I mean I've got this friend of mine who who's
01:53:42
an entrepreneur who's failed several times and he says you feel like you're
01:53:45
on a tight rope and then you fall off the tightroppe and you realize it was only 6 in off the ground you know it's
01:53:50
not as bad as you think and you can hop back on the tight rope and go and you can go again But
01:53:56
every single time it's just gotten better and better and better and bigger and bigger and more more stable and more
01:54:02
like reliable. >> There is another story which is one that doesn't have the survivorship bias
01:54:08
because now Daniel, you've been wildly successful. Walk down the street, people
01:54:13
know who you are. They, you know, you've got millions of people that tune in to
01:54:16
watch you give advice. But there's also a version of reality where that wasn't
01:54:20
the ending. And I actually know someone who has fought for 15 years to build businesses
01:54:26
all across the world >> and they they just don't have that self-awareness piece.
01:54:32
>> Mhm. >> I don't know if I'm self-aware. Like none of us can actually know cuz that
01:54:35
requires self-awareness. >> We've all got our blind spots. >> They'll continue to start businesses and
01:54:40
it's putting their family at risk now. >> They go through the same boom and bust
01:54:43
cycle, but it never goes higher. >> Y >> and if you were to ask me objectively,
01:54:48
do I think they'll ever have the moment you've had now? You have a survivorship
01:54:52
bias that I have. We did something, it was hard, and then it paid off. >> Here's the thing. There are no happy
01:54:58
endings. Uh, life ends abruptly. One thing that happens when you get a little older is you start discovering
01:55:07
that actually when when you're under 40, you think everything ends well. And then
01:55:12
later on, you discover there are no happy endings. Everyone dies. You get a phone call one day and someone who is an
01:55:18
amazing person has a stroke. And that's them. That's them hit. That's
01:55:23
that's it. What you thought of that you thought they'd have 20 more years and
01:55:26
they don't. You know, their entire life changes. You you're left with the realization
01:55:33
that it's just an adventure. Sometimes sometimes the happy ending that other
01:55:38
people would call as a happy ending or an objective happy ending is actually pretty miserable in the middle of it.
01:55:44
There are people who have everything. you've met them and objectively they have the houses and the cars and the
01:55:49
private jets and all that sort of stuff and they're not particularly happy. They're miserable. And then there are
01:55:53
some people who they lose all of that stuff, but then they reconnect with a group of friends and they're like
01:55:58
happier than they've ever been. >> Something's given you this insight.
01:56:04
>> Yeah. So, someone very close to me, very dear to me, recently had a stroke, you
01:56:08
know, and yeah, you realize that the happy ending is not guaranteed. In fact, the opposite
01:56:13
is guaranteed. you realize everyone everyone dies, everyone decays, everyone gets old. If you're lucky, you get old.
01:56:20
Uh and if you're unlucky, you don't get old. Um so you have to there comes a
01:56:25
point where you have to release the idea that you're going to have this happy
01:56:28
ending. You're going to have moments of triumph and moments of disaster. You're
01:56:32
going to lose people. You're going to have everything taken from you. It's
01:56:37
guaranteed everything is taken from you. >> How did that change your perspective?
01:56:41
this loved one going through this, >> you you realized that uh you real or I realized that the mental
01:56:53
timeline of endless decades spreading out ahead, endless amounts of health, endless amounts of relationships
01:57:02
is not it's a it's a nice fantasy that keeps us together, but it's not
01:57:08
guaranteed. And then the impact for me is to treasure relationships. Um there comes a moment
01:57:17
where I don't know if this has ever happened to you yet, but you go, "Wow, I
01:57:22
didn't know that was the last conversation." Um, you don't realize this, but one of
01:57:29
the legacies that you leave behind, not you because you've got this body of work, but one of the legacies that
01:57:35
people leave behind is little voice notes that they leave in your phone that they leave in your WhatsApp
01:57:42
and you listen back to some of these voice notes and you go, "Wow, I didn't know
01:57:48
that was a treasure. Didn't know that was a special thing." Um, and this
01:57:53
particular person who got impacted with the stroke, he was wonderful at voice notes. He he had this thing that he
01:58:00
would do called uh, it's not lost on me, voice notes. And I don't even think he
01:58:05
knew he was saying this, but it was his one of his favorite phrases, which was it's not lost lost on me. So he'd he'd
01:58:10
leave a voice note and he'd say, "Stephen, it's not lost on me how much
01:58:14
you're dealing with at the moment and it's not lost on me that you are responsible for a lot of people's lives
01:58:20
and all this and I just want to acknowledge you." So, so he would leave these voice notes and um and he did this
01:58:28
with everyone like it came out of the woodwork that everyone got these lovely voice notes from this guy and um
01:58:37
yeah, you you don't realize but like literally that is a huge part of people's legacies. You think you're
01:58:43
going to leave behind all this money. You think you're going to leave behind
01:58:46
all of this big stuff. You think you're going to leave behind some huge financial structure. And in the end, you
01:58:53
leave behind some really touching voice notes as as one of the things that will be most treasured if you're lucky.
01:59:00
>> You've been listening to the voice notes? >> Yeah, I have. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really
01:59:04
nice. Really, really nice. >> What is that emotion in your face, Daniel? What's the range of emotions?
01:59:16
Um, it's just the deeper awareness that the the the real, you know, we talk a
01:59:23
lot about technology, we talk a lot about business, but the whole game is relationships.
01:59:32
>> It's very easy to get that wrong, >> isn't it? >> Very easy for you to get that wrong
01:59:38
>> because um you're surrounded by such a whirlwind. And people want so much from you. You know,
01:59:48
a lot of people want a lot from you. And you think you have to lift people up around you and you have to do this
01:59:54
heroic effort. Actually, little text message, little voice note means a lot. It's interesting. You for me, I figured
02:00:02
out that we're that we're on a rock. We get a few little laps around the sun.
02:00:07
That's it. We get this. We like literally pop into existence like an electron spinning around a a neutron,
02:00:14
whatever it is, and we we get we're we're on the rock. The most valuable
02:00:19
thing is that we're on the rock together. Like you zoom out enough, we're all just little dots. We're all
02:00:25
just little dots trying to figure stuff out. Um and we're all trying to make
02:00:29
sense of our own lives and we're all trying to ignore how, you know, difficult things can be. And um but then
02:00:36
you realize that it's just the fact that we are moving through time together. But
02:00:41
yeah, you you as I said, you hit a point where you realize that uh there is no happy ending. Unfortunately, there's not
02:00:47
uh you you you know the the ending is sad. When you hit a certain age, people that you really love get old get old and
02:00:54
die or they get illnesses. They lose a big chunk of themselves in one fell swoop. So, um, while those moments are
02:01:02
happy, while you've got those happy moments, treasure those happy moments. Really, really embrace them.
02:01:08
>> Do you have any regrets in this regard that might help me avoid having similar
02:01:12
regrets? >> I really don't. I'm really, really happy that things like I'm really
02:01:19
the biggest relationships are with my kids and with my wife and family formation.
02:01:28
I've I've had unbelievably high highs. Like I've been on the big boats. I've
02:01:33
flown on the private jets. I've had parties in my honor. I've had big paydays.
02:01:39
All of that cool stuff that people dream of. Family formation is where like the core the core of it. Like that's the
02:01:46
core of happiness for me, you know, the the the intergenerational passing of life. Uh which is which is kind of like
02:01:56
wow. like that that we I think we've forgotten how cool that is. I think we've forgotten the idea that you're
02:02:03
passing on consciousness and that this being has their own consciousness. They do their own thing. They come up with
02:02:09
their own ideas. They have their own challenges. Um yeah, it's wild. >> Daniel, thank you. We're done.
02:02:18
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