Transcript
Shortcuts Versus Robert Greene's Definition of Mastery
00:00:00 Jeff Sarris
The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited to achieve mastery.
Hey, explorers. This is Useful Not Famous, the show where we're the most useful people to anyone who's trying to be useful to others. I'm Amara.
Andrew.
I feel like I don't need a last name.
I think it's good to have one, though.
Overrated. But mastery. So, "The desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery."
That is… Where does that come from?
Cotton-Eye Joe! Where did you come from? Where did you go?
Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye Joe? Oh, that's going to be stuck in my head now.
You're the one that's doing it! Robert Greene. That's from Robert Greene.
-huh. And then he wrote The 48 Laws of Power and then Mastery.
That's the That's all the backstory.
But Robert Greene, like, "just looking for shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery," which we both read and found so apt. Because that is the thing is if we just define what mastery is, it's very like clearly "to become a master of doing something, of achieving something, of whatever it is."
And a lot of people say that is after a certain amount of hours. So, like 10,000 hours is sort of like, quote-unquote, the level of mastery. Obviously, it's like getting 10,000 steps a day.
It's more just like, "Well, this is just a general idea." But, go ahead. I just wanted to throw that in there.
No, that's good. Yeah, 'cause that's Malcolm Gladwell, the 10,000 hours. But…
Did he write Cotton-Eye Joe, also?
No, I think it was just Robert Greene alone this time.
You're like, "Focus!" Sorry, I'm a little all over the place today. Mastery, something, something…
Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hours and Steph Curry
Yeah. So, to get like what is mastery? And a lot of people say that's like 10,000 hours in whatever your discipline, your area of study, your whatever it is that you're doing to make money.
That is essentially like, just so you kind of have a marker of what is mastery, 'cause I read that, and I was like, "What the hell is that?"
Well, and it's come up before, but, what is his name? Tony Robbins. There was a recent interview where he was talking about something similar, and he brought up Steph Curry.
And how Steph Curry every single day would shoot something like 5,000 baskets, or some astronomical number before he would actually like start playing. Like he would shoot this number of baskets that meant every year he's he shot millions and millions of three-pointers. And he's not like, we don't even watch basketball, but he's known as one of the best three-point shooters of all time.
And you can see all these videos online where he'll just start right under the basket, take two steps back, two steps back, two– he just drains every single one until he's all the way under the other basket shooting all the way across the court and still drains them in there. It's crazy. But that mastery to be a master of shooting three-pointers, which can apply to anything you do, if he was looking for a shortcut, do you think he would be a master?
No, not at all! 'Cause like how– it is so funny because that sounds so crazy. Like when it's, I guess specifically sports-related, 'cause like basically everything else it kind of makes sense that people would try to find a shortcut.
But like, in sports, you like can't find a shortcut!
Well, when we If you think about it as sports, like think about business and everything, just be like, "Well, wait. This is the same." It is mastery of a skill.
Yeah. Well, and I would think of it like from an art background, like somebody trying to learn an instrument or somebody trying to paint a painting, paint a whatever. [laughter] I was like, "Paint a painting, that sounds redundant." Anywho! I didn't have my Wheaties this morning.
But the idea of Steph Curry, like, trying to find a way to shortcut that is absolutely ridiculous.
Yeah. What if I just put that, remember that, remember the Ab Roller or whatever it was called? It was like electrical stimulation on your abs.
So, it was like if he was just like, "Oh, I have this thing for my hand where while I sleep it just it does this over and over." [laughter] We would be like, "Are you nuts? Like, what are you thinking?"
You're getting like, I was going to say a BBL, that isn't… [laughter] Steph Curry going down the court with his smuggled basketballs! [laughter] Oh, no, my mascara, is it waterproof? I can't be crying already. [laughter] But it's it's a similar idea of finding a shortcut, but you're not actually, in like any discipline or whatever, or any life choice, finding a shortcut, you're not actually addressing the root of the problem or what it will actually take to sustain.
Well, yeah. How do you, so…
'Cause hard things are hard. I'm just going to say it. Hard things are very hard.
And mastery is transformation. So like, like the tag on the show… What are you doing?
I'm just laughing about Steph Curry. [laughter] Continue.
But mastery is transformation. So, say in like, we are the most useful to people who want to be useful to others. That is the transformation from watching the show.
The whole point, this show exists to make you better at what you do.
And there's people in our sphere who we know who listen and then just apply this to what they're doing, whether it's helping others, whether it's their business. And that's what we do this for. We want to help you transform.
So, all of this is just transformation. Mastery comes from action.
And action creates experience. Experience creates opportunity. And opportunity requires more action.
Like, I haven't said that much lately on the show, but that's the whole, that's the try angle. Like, you're trying in this thing that just goes around and around and around.
And it literally is exactly that. Like, the more things, what we've found, too, 'cause we're we're doing so many things right now, it's like insane.
Yeah, oh. [laughter] What? Didn't we say the same word? Yeah, we did.
Inciting! Inciting violence. [laughter] But it is exciting. I just mean it's an insane amount of things to be trying right now.
But I like, very…
Well, no, but yeah, no one knows how many things we're doing because…
No, 'cause also we don't broadcast it.
Yeah, 'cause we don't need to. We're working on it.
Where the hell was I going with this?
So, just how mastery is doing so much more.
Oh, yeah! But the triangle, like you always talk about, we're we're doing so many things, and in a wide sort of variety of disciplines. Like it's all related, but it's all various different things with various different people.
Those then inform the next step, which informs the next step, which is another thing that we were reading about. Like, whether you know or whether you don't know, Einstein worked in a patent office as a kid, as a kid! [laughter] Like in his early adult career.
Albert Einstein's Patent Office Strategy for Inputs
Reviewing patents. Fucking brilliant guy! [laughter] He's like, "No, that's terrible. That's not good."
Wait, he turned down other opportunities because those opportunities would take him away from his studies and mental studies.
Even though they were higher-paying, they didn't afford him the freedom to be able to focus on other things, whereas in the patent office he could get everything done in 2 or 3 hours and then focus on creating literally the theory of relativity is what he was doing at work, which is amazing!
Now, the one other thing that isn't talked about that we were talking about regarding that: choosing the patent office alone, it was a an entry-level clerk low-paying job.
But almost like a step back.
It was very much. It was a low level thing that you don't normally have someone of Einstein's caliber doing. However,
And because he had connections to have the like cushier jobs.
However, you don't normally have someone of Einstein's caliber doing that. However, he put himself in a scenario where he was uniquely suited to know what was happening on the cutting edge of patents and creation. And all of these brilliant people have their secret ideas that then they slided across the table over to Einstein to try to get a patent to protect their ideas.
He was seeing all of this before anyone else in the world was seeing it, and that's what he did for a job, two to three hours a day, reviewing these applications of ground-breaking concepts and ideas.
And that's why I brought it up because it's, granted he wasn't like doing the things that the patents were for, but he had so many inputs of so many different ideas.
I was just going to say, 'cause there is a difference between having a bunch of inputs where that actually stunts your growth and stunts your productivity, but it was literally things that people actually had, yeah, like a higher level and a higher caliber of things.
Like, probably world-class inputs, just across the board.
Yeah, I would say so. 'Cause also, especially back in the day, like it was actually really difficult and you only did that if you like you meant business. [laughter] but that is that's so valuable to have all of these different inputs because it helps you, like taking different actions and having all these different inputs, you can actually piece things together and see things maybe you wouldn't have seen before or maybe you didn't realize, "Oh, this is actually a much better way that I can do this." Like that's where innovation comes from is like building on, like we've talked about stepping stones a hundred million times, but basically where you're at right now, the next like tiny step forward that you can take from that, obviously not going from right here to building rocket ships, like especially for us, unless you're building rocket ships, then cool, like that's amazing!
But taking those little baby steps to eventually get to maybe a goal or just keep going, keep going, asshole! [laughter] that's my favorite.
So, that's like one of our one of our tagline kind of things for us, and we have a shirt that says "Keep going, asshole," backward so you see it in the mirror for yourself.
Yeah, but it's just those little baby steps that you get to bigger and better things constantly. But you can't stop and you can't only focus on the ideas of things, 'cause it is very easy to get stuck in the ideation of things 'cause you get very excited about the idea, and then you have some momentum, but then you get sidetracked by something else, and then you don't keep going with it.
That actually is a huge setback, unfortunately.
Comparing Social Media Inputs to Books and Journals
So, I think we're talking about the difference between world-class, high-level inputs and inputs.
My tongue felt fat when I said inputs. [laughter] Why does it sound weird?
Mountain Valley, not a sponsor.
Hey, hey, Mountain Valley, if you want to sponsor, that'd be awesome.
I'm sure after the video that we posted that one time, they'd love to. [laughter] But, yeah, I guess what would you say is the difference What is a world-class input and what is just an input?
So, I think there's a very simple way to actually choose. If it's social media, it's low-level. Not low class! [laughter] I was going to say, "High class, low class." No, but if it's social media, there's very few areas within social media where you're going to get high-level, world-class things.
Whatever you think about it, like Twitter actually is one of the spots where you get high-level engineering, AI, like very specific sort of nerd guy categories, generally speaking. It's not like only guys, but, you know, like that's where AI people live now. They don't live in Back in the day, it would have been like Usenet and forums and all these things.
Now they live on Twitter. So, you can get high-level stuff there. But where you really get it is where someone, a human, sat down and spent 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years writing this book with everything they've ever learned within their area of expertise, because that book doesn't exist yet.
Like there's a book called Chaos. That's all about chaos theory. And the intro to that book is from someone who they talked about how they were going in going to college for chaos, to learn about chaos theory, to like be the best at this, discovered this book and realized this person already figured it all out.
Like the theory is basically like codified now. So, this person decide the person who read this realized, "I'm not going to go down that path because it's already been like tread. That path has already been taken.
Now, what I've learned here, what can I apply taking a different stepping stone in a direction I want to go?"
That actually brought up an interesting thought in my head, 'cause just because somebody writes a book doesn't mean it's a an amazing book.
So, how do you then… I know this is a completely separate…
Real quick, I just wanted to say, most books will be better than most social media.
Yes, so there is like a hierarchy, 'cause I was going to say the vetting, like the barrier to entry. It is much more difficult to write a book than to post on social media.
Before 2025, because the problem now is if it's all AI, yeah, so then it's like it's sort of like we have a 2024, 2023, and before threshold, unless it's someone that's already established that you know is really successful and a thinker and all.
Yeah, but that is very difficult to find. Something, which this is like so nerdy, and I honestly don't, recommend it to people, but a way that I find things that are, I guess, more valid, more has more of a barrier to entry that I find has more value in it are actually journal articles and studies, because just for me, because that's also the background that I come from, is like, "Well, yeah, you go read a journal article," 'cause it does have to get peer-reviewed.
I'm not saying that's going to be like the most amazing thing, and it's probably going to be very boring, but you will find like little nuggets in there and you at least know that there was relatively a high barrier to entry to get that in there, somewhat. Not 100%.
It's still hard, I think, with research.
Well, 'cause I'm thinking of some of the people that I know who have written them, and I'm like, "Oh, this was just like…" But again, now with AI, it is really hard to figure out what actually is We're just talking about taste at this point, like Pierre Bourdieu, where it's like where he's a theorist. He wrote about taste in a book.
In a book pre- pre-1980s, I think it was like '79 he wrote it. It's a really good book, but it's very like It's very heady. I don't recommend it. [laughter] but he's talking about taste and like the different signifiers.
This is more like a class kind of thing, like society class, but basically how do you find What are the signifiers that something actually is going to be worth your time and is vetted, and like you can actually believe this person? 'Cause I think especially today with AI, that's going to be very, very important. Like how do you How do you find that?
What would you say?
Well, I wanted to stop on the journal thing because the problem with the journal stuff real quick and the academia is it's very, very biased now. The people The peer-review system is unfortunately a little broken.
I think it depends on what the subject is.
I think, but also there is a really strong bias in a lot of the areas of importance. Like, let's say like health and diet and all of these things.
There's so many factors that I actually personally don't know that I trust the journals as much as I do It sounds stupid, I think. Like saying it out loud sounds ridiculous, but the people who would have otherwise written a journal, but chosen instead to devote all the time to writing a book and then doing a podcast tour on the biggest shows that they could get on to explain these ground-breaking ideas.
I agree to some extent, but what if then they wrote the book now and then it's just a regurgitation, like presumably they used AI to help them write it. Like what if it is just a regurgitation of all the ideas?
So, that's the tough part. But that's actually where I think the long-form conversations like this.
But people who are brilliant. [laughter] Just like us! But I think that's where it's super helpful.
But then doesn't the But then the hard part is there are popular shows out there. Is that because they're like the better shows or is it just purely because they've been doing it the longest? Like I struggle with that wholeheartedly.
Well, I only wanted to say with the individuals though. So, not critiquing the shows, but the individuals who put all this effort to getting their fresh ideas out there.
Yeah, so there's like the 'Cause yeah, I'm not saying that journals are like the only, thing, but it is…
'Cause I know tenure-track is a really big issue where you're just publishing things to publish it and just so you don't lose your job. Well, and there's so much money and manipulation in what you need the results to be in a lot, especially in the health sphere. 'Cause you can always cherry pick data for anything.
And like it's been such an issue for so long that I actually…
But that's like anything, then, too.
Exactly. But there it feels I think if it's one person manipulating, it's one thing. When it's an entire system manipulating for a certain outcome, that's where I get caught up.
But then isn't everything biased? 'Cause like we all have our biases.
It is. -. Everything is. But I think it's harder to 'Cause like a book is just a way to persuade you to think a certain way.
Exactly. -. That's what the show is, too.
I'm persuading you to think my way.
Bullshit! [laughter] Not going down without a fight!
Like all I wanted All I wanted to say was I actually I think there's a lot more potential to curate by listening to long-form conversations because people can't like fake their way through 90 minutes, 2 hours, 3 hours of someone who's actually doing a good job interviewing them, asking difficult questions. So, like the one guy recently…
So, then we're back to the 10,000 hours thing, where it's somebody that actually has done the work.
Oh, yeah. And you only know For me, you only know that because you got to You either were vetted from someone else, like I might have said to you, "This book is amazing, you need to read it," or you might have said to me the same thing, or I might trust so-and-so interviewer, and the latest episode has, like there was a doctor / scientist, I think PhD doctor, not MD doctor, talking about sleep.
And I've done so much sleep research over, like, the last 15 years, and the stuff that he in his lab has sort of uncovered is stuff I've never heard before that changed how I think about it completely. So, then I instantly downloaded the sample of his book that he has. And I think that's a way where you can find sort of the high-level thinking because they can't really You can only fake it so long.
Eventually, you start to You start to see the expertise crumble when it's not actual expertise.
Yes. And I do agree. I do still think I guess it depends on the discipline, because I wasn't thinking health, specifically.
Like I'm thinking more, like sociology, psychology, not even psychology, but like sociology, like more human studies, I guess, versus medical, if that makes sense.
I think maybe lower stakes. Less So, stakes might be the wrong word, but things that are less divisive right now. Does that make sense?
Oh, yeah. No, I'm just thinking how to explain what I'm thinking.
Oh, sorry. Does that mean what you're saying, or no?
Yeah, I think so. 'Cause yeah, I wasn't talking health, specifically. Like that's a whole fucking bag of hammers that I will never touch [laughter] 'cause it is extremely divisive and everybody has an opinion and probably most people are wrong.
Like they say, just like as- assholes, everyone has two of them. Yeah, you have a top one and a bottom one. [laughter] Could you imagine if you had an asshole for a mouth?
I was like I was like I couldn't tell if you actually heard me say two, and 'cause you were just like looking, I was like…
I was formulating my joke.
You could see the wheels turning.
Just like before when we were having breakfast.
What? Oh! [laughter] If you're listening, I was just staring into the ether 'cause I was thinking of things. I don't need to perform my thinking like, " little pipe and my Sherlock Holmes hat." [laughter]
No, I know. That's how I know, 'cause we were talking and that's how I know you're thinking it through, which is fun. You're just like…
Just staring into the void. I didn't even realize I was doing it until you're just like… [laughter] I don't know, it's how I think.
-huh. So, yeah. High-level versus low-level, like consuming and scrolling on social media non-stop, like we all know that's not good for us in any way, really.
And finding more of the high-level things is a challenge. It's not simple, but it's worth the effort. And curation is something that Kevin Kelly talked about probably maybe 2012.
He's always been a futurist, founder of Wired magazine, he's done all these things over the years. And he wrote, I think it was in What Technology Wants, in that book. And then he was like, "The future, right now in 2012, whatever year it was, we pay for access." And he's like, "In the future, we will pay for curation," which couldn't have been more true.
Like right now we have access to all of the world's knowledge all of the time. We've never had this. We can get anything we want, and especially with AI, we can be convinced that we're getting the accurate version of anything we want, even if it's not accurate, but we can be convinced it is.
So, we're at like an interesting time for curation. There's what did I say, 1,400 books published every day, or something? There's some number that's unfathomable, and this is before AI.
Like, it was like 2 or 3 years ago, I think it was 1,400 books published every single day.
So then it's like, how do you filter through that? Going for trusted sources. Like I know that you give me good recommendations.
So, now I'm going to turn to you for like, "Oh, she really liked this book. Let me check it out and see if it's going to be for me," or, "She uses this hair product, let's see if it's for me. She uses this dietary, this supplement." Like, there's so many different things where that's why the personal brand and the stuff we do and we build for people is so important.
I like this smirk. You're like, "Oh, he's he's reining it back in."
Oh, 'cause that's what I was literally just going to say, is what we were talking about, I think it was last week, about building a personal brand. Or maybe it was two weeks ago. But with AI, you can make Proof.
Yeah, exactly. Like you can make anything and everything nowadays. So, how do you like in the age of AI, you're going to need proof so much more.
Like proof that you actually know what you're talking about, that you're a real person, that these are actually good ideas. So, building your personal brand is going to be one of the best ways to essentially, like, survive, quote-unquote, that's super dramatic, but to survive the AI world that we're going to be in, 'cause like it's here, it's not going away.
Finding Human Utility and Tastemakers in AI
I mean, this is actually perfect. So, useful, not famous.
How are you useful in an AI world? That's the question! Not you.
I mean, [laughter] but that's the question you need to start answering right now. Like, how am I useful? If it's entering data into a spreadsheet, no.
That's That's not the answer. I don't care what you're doing, I don't care how effectively you're typing those little fingers, [laughter] like you're not useful anymore. You're You're past your expiration date.
So, thinking how to be useful in the future, and one of the things is tastemakers, being a tastemaker, because a trusted source, I don't even say, I don't even want to say tastemaker, but what we will turn to is people who we trust their taste.
And there can be enough people, 'cause like we all like different things and we all want to hear different voices, different people, whatever. So, there's plenty of room for a lot of different tastemakers. So, like if you think that you can't be, like you can't throw your hat in the ring, well, you've already given up.
Like you don't know. There are going to be people out there that want to hear from you, specifically, because they like the way you say something, or they like the way you act, or how stupid you are. Like they love it! [laughter]
Well, yeah. Speaking from experience. [laughter]
And I mean TikTok is a good example. There's so many people who are famous, not useful, but people want to hear from a lot of individuals, no matter who they are.
It actually does sort of go back to Pierre Bourdieu, who I brought up earlier, about taste, which is actually really interesting. He was just talking about like class signifiers, blah, blah, blah, but like who do you trust, actually, online? 'Cause there are a lot of So, like speaking from my experience on my TikTok, if I'm looking at like luxury jewelry or luxury handbags or something, there are specific people who I watch their stuff to see what they say because they have the money and the resources to buy these insanely priced purses.
Like it's stupid how expensive they are. But I'm Their taste, because they have money, I subconsciously view them as having taste. So, I believe them and I listen to them, and not that's the only signifier that you should have…
I just want to add one thing, because I feel like that can be misunderstood.
You're interested in seeing very expensive, otherwise unattainable goods.
So, who can get very expensive, unattainable goods? People who have a lot of money.
Or people who spend a lot of money. [laughter]
Either way, but I want to just make that distinction, because I don't think money and taste go together in any other context. I think it's only that one. So, I don't want people to think, "Well, I don't have money, so I can't be a taste kind of person." It's like, well, no, I don't care if you have zero dollars.
Oh, no, and that's not what I'm saying.
No, I know it's not. I wanted to just sort of clarify, 'cause I could hear it being misunderstood on the other side of these microphones.
I was getting to my point!
But because I view that as being the tastemaker, like for that specific thing, it doesn't actually mean that they are the tastemaker. It means that, yeah, they purely just have the resources for that, but those are people that are sort of setting the taste, you know what I mean?
Well, that's a tastemaker for you. So, that's true. That's not even debatable.
But it is always a trickle-down effect, which is something to think about. So, like how I brought up to you, too, like I think that experiences are the luxury item of the future. Purely.
Bar none. Everybody can buy any designer whatever they want now. You can put it on a credit card, you can never pay for it, you can pay all cash, whatever the fuck you want.
You cannot do that with experiences. Like you can put on a credit card, but it's very different. It's…
Certain ones, but also some you have no access to unless you have deep pockets, you have connections, you have whatever.
And there's there's a specific, we're friends with someone who knows what would be called a fixer for celebrities, where when…
…when the ultra, ultra, ultra-rich want something that no one should ever have access to…
Not because he's like ultra, ultra, ultra-rich, like he's he does very well. However, he has the connections to provide you with an experience that is one a one-of-one experience no one else on the planet could possibly get.
-. So, it's that is another path– like there are so many paths forward. I know everybody's freaking about freaking out about AI, but it's it's just a different landscape.
It's just like all the revolutions and all the industrial revolutions and steel revolution, like all the things. You just need to pivot. Like it's not as scary, 'cause so many people are so gloom and doom about it, and it's like, well, no, you just figure it out, ding-dong!
And like if you can figure it out early, that's even better, because then you can just totally cash in.
Do you think in an AI world mastery matters?
. See, again, like this entire conversation, it depends on the subject, like the discipline. 'Cause we come from very different, like you and I, we come from very different disciplines and backgrounds and subjects where I see certain benefits in what I've learned, historically, but you see benefits or maybe not benefits, what the hell is the opposite of a benefit?
Disadvantage?
Disbenefits! Unbenefits! [laughter]
Dead benefits and disbenefits.
Damn right! But you see the exact opposite because of how you're viewing it. So…
Wait, what do I see the opp– like in what you've learned? Or what do you mean?
So, what I just said about journal articles in the areas that I've come from, hugely beneficial, because some idiot on TikTok versus a peer-reviewed journal, even though it's going to have its flaws, I would probably trust the peer-reviewed journal over some idiot on TikTok, personally, because I have been that idiot on TikTok. [laughter] so anyway, so your question was in an AI world,
In an AI world, does mastery matter? Does mastery matter? I mean, I do think so, more than ever, because then that ties to proof.
I guess proof of your mastery matters the most, but then what is that? Like there are certain things now that you can offload to AI and you absolutely should, like data, all those things, which is hilarious because growing up it was like, "No, you should have a data job," or, "You should be a medical professional." Now it's like, "Well, data people, bye-bye!" you still need curators, blah, blah, blah.
That's an interesting question. I feel like I need to think about that. What do you think?
So, I think that's all that is left.
Like I feel like you do need the proof, though, of your mastery.
But then what does that mean?
Let's So, let me just say, either having mastery or not, like sort of ignoring the proof side.
Oh, yeah, you definitely need to…
Data Collection in Tesla and Optimus Robotics
Like I think that is the only path through the AI world, because AI can do every menial everything already. There's very little. So, I was listening to a thing where every company is a digital company, and like, now or it will be.
Now, which I thought was very interesting. So, Nvidia, Nvidia makes chips. Nvidia makes [laughter] Nvidia makes the chips that AI use, that everyone uses for AI.
However, they don't actually make the chips. They design it digitally and send the digital files to Taiwan, is what I understand, and that's where they're made. So, they don't actually make the chip, they make them in the sense…
But that's how every single company works when you actually sort of step back and look at it. They're in the…
Oh, my god, they're the middleman!
…digital design. Like they're creating, but they're not the manufacturer.
So then, they're also the tastemakers, though, because like we buy from Amazon, like we just because it's easy, and they're the middleman between people who want to sell things to us and us who want to buy things.
Yeah, but, and then just thinking, like, everyone So, one of the some of the rare companies that are not only in data are Tesla and SpaceX. They actually manufacture their cars 100% in-house, and they actually manufacture the space shuttles. They can't outsource those things.
They've invented the entire workflow of all of it. Very few companies have. It's almost zero when you really look at it.
They all go out to factories to make the things they want made. So, then once we're there, it's like they are master– they have mastery in the thing they do, but just like all of us, their mastery is still sort of bits and bytes. So now, Nvidia can make better chips because they are masters of making chips when they integrate with AI.
They're not just, "Let me have AI make these chips now." They're taking their mastery, compounding it with AI, and like we talk about 1/10x, 10xing, a lot of people are 1/10xing their output into what they're doing and letting AI handle 9/10ths of the work. But the companies and the people who are going to be the future are the masters, the ones who are taking what they know and do, and using AI to 10x what they're able to do with their knowledge combined with AI and creating something so far and beyond everyone else.
Like a 1/10th to a 10x, is that a 1,000% jump? 'Cause it's not like just a 100%. It's like a crazy difference between those two that is going to be like, I think, the biggest divide we've ever had in history.
But you have to be a master to do anything like that. Any menial job doesn't just doesn't matter anymore. There's nothing of importance.
Like assistants, secretaries, all those things, I mean, they should have been gone by now, but they're 100% gone.
Anything that's been outsourced to other countries and things, like, unfortunately, that's just It's gone. Like you just you outsource to AI now.
Yeah, the data is very interesting. I feel like that is a really good point, just thinking for the future, like for what we're doing and what we're trying to do..
Well, here's the thing. So, if we zoom back a little,
…what mastery looks like for us…
But then do you only think that data actually is the future in AI? 'Cause almost putting things into buckets, like you have your personal brand and then you just are not like an influencer, but you're the tastemaker and you have your cult following and people follow you and listen to you and buy your products or buy whatever.
Then you have like the data ver- like it feels like…
What you just said, we'll call power.
Well, yeah. Like in Like a personal brand equates to power.
Well, yeah, it's more the awareness side of things.
And I think power just because it's broad. It could be to sell products, it could be to influence things you want.
But I would also say that data is power to me, as well. Like it's it's just interesting thinking of these two different sort of buckets, 'cause I've never actually thought about the data side before, which sounds absolutely stupid. That's,.
Okay, anyway.
So, wait, no, no, no. Go on, 'cause I don't know where you're going. I'm not sure what, I'm not sure what you're saying yet.
No, I'm just trying to think, like, for the future, for example, what would future jobs be? Like 50 years from now. You're not going to have, like, you're going to have the in-person people, so like a plumber, a shoemaker, [laughter] like all those like old school kind of things, but the necessity things, like the tradespeople for plumbing.
But you look so skeptical.
Or do you think it's going to be fucking robots or something?
Yeah. I think that's a foregone conclusion already, because…
So I guess it just depends on when we're going to have robots, is the question. Not if, but when. So, I guess I said 50 years.
I meant like 10 years.
Yeah. I mean, it is February 20th-ish, 21st. The estimate for what do they call it, the Optimus robot.
Or no, it wasn't even for that. It was for an entirely different thing. But an estimate for a world that I don't even want to get into the topic, 'cause it's so crazy, but the estimate was 30 months.
30 months for a world that looks nothing like right now because people are thinking about the limitations and putting all their effort at what's the constraint? What's the constraint? So, we think about this for ourselves, too.
What's the biggest constraint in any of our businesses? Now, let me put all of our effort into annihilating that constraint, because then you can just expand and grow and do all these things. 30 months.
That 30 to 36, but 30 is like a healthy estimate for the long vision for it. So, that's two and a half years. The Optimus robots specifically, the hardest part of a robot is the hands, if you want to have human-like hands.
Apparently, that's already done.
Now it's training. So, how do you train an Optimus robot? They're doing the same thing that Tesla did.
So, Tesla has around 10 million cars on the road right now. It All the data from every drive from every one of those cars educates the AI in the car, so then it learns every possible scenario that it could encounter, and that's why you can have self-driving after 15 years of Tesla existing.
So, see, then Tesla is a data company first and foremost.
Exactly. Yeah. And then Optimus, they're doing the exact same thing, but you can't just throw robots on the street.
Part of what they did for Tesla is created a like a simulation, a simulation theory, but a simulation of the world for Tesla cars to operate in and train on. And they were very successful at doing that for Tesla. So, they have the same thing for the robots.
So, you have 10,000 robots living in an artificial world together, making each other better exponentially faster than we could. Which is how Go, the IBM Watson computer years ago, they figured out how to make Watson play itself millions and millions and millions of times, where suddenly the game of Go, all of the experts, no one could beat Watson.
Watson was the best Go player ever in this game that's 3,000 years old or something, right?
Like, it's been played for millennia, and the best players can no longer beat Watson. So then, people actually just hung it up, 'cause they're like, "Well, sort of, what's the point now? There's something that is so much better than a human could ever be." It almost feels like pointless to get good at it and enjoy it.
And this was like 2015, I think, when Watson did that. But now you apply this to robots. Same exact thing, and it's happening very, very, very fast.
Yeah, we were talking to someone who they have a very like person-forward business, and they didn't think that they were going to be replaced by AI and/or robots, which again, like not 100%. Like nothing's 100% yet. It's just like how we still handwrite things very seldomly, but there is that little bit.
Like you can still handwrite. It's not like outlawed.
"We"? What's this "we" handwrite stuff?
Okay, it's just me. [laughter] I'm old school.
Which is good for your brain. That's another topic, but handwriting apparently is very good to stave off Alzheimer's.
Yeah, so I hand– I handwrite on my iPad, but because the way that I think is like as I'm writing things out, I'm like, "That's it! Like that's the thing," versus like typing, I have no connection to. Anyway, I digress.
But they the person that we were talking to doesn't believe that they're going to be replaced by AI or robots, and I think like not to be a Debbie Downer, but sorry, Mom. [laughter] Her name's Downer, no. [laughter] you have to sort of operate under the idea that you will be replaced. So, again, another thing that we were reading this morning: How do you become irreplaceable?
How do you become so incredibly vital to people or robots [laughter] or AI? But how do you build something that is irreplaceable in this day and age, and especially moving forward? Like, if you're a person-forward business, so that means you're always interacting with people, you're maybe helping them buy or sell something, or you're providing a service, or whatever it is, how do you make the experience This sounds insane.
Even better than working with AI or a robot that can do it in half the time, probably a third of the cost, like, I have no idea what things will cost in the future, I'm not in the future, me end, but…
Technically, people are listening to this in the future, but go on.
Oh, this is the past! [laughter] but how do you what do you Again, we're going back to experiences. I just keep fucking talking in circles, but going back to an experience, how do you make an experience that's so remarkable that people are like, "Well, I'd much rather do that than have it done in 5 minutes by Jerry the Robot," [laughter] like whatever it is?
Just what is it and how do you do that? Like, I wish I had more answers. I'm talking so nebulously, but it's it's all the hypotheticals of just how the fuck are you going to make it in the new world?
Like, how do you survive?
Building Indispensable Businesses Through High Effort Content
Well, and like with from that what you said, being indispensable to people,
Like that those are the businesses we've built. Like my brand agency, people have stuck around for so it'll be 17 years this year.
So, yeah, the some people who were who've been around, let's say 15, 16 of those 17 years, because we are indispensable to what they do. With MAVEN, we and this is from mastery, so let me rewind all the way back to 2009, way back when in 2009. So, how do you become a master?
I looked for all the shortcuts, and then there I am. No. Like, there's no way to do that.
So, for the first year of doing sort of brand design, websites, all these things, which now sounds antiquated when you think of websites, but let's remember in the 2009 world.
Back when you were handwriting. [laughter]
I would be building sites for clients approximately 14 hours a day and 7 days a week, year round. I think I did that for about 16 to 18 months, every single day. I got kind of good at doing it in a year and a half.
What have we done with MAVEN? Three years ago, whenever we started, however many years ago we started flying to people, so we've been doing MAVEN now for a while, but we weren't flying to people, so like three years ago we started flying to them and doing it in their market. Suddenly, we're producing 10,000 videos a year.
So, what happens when you're producing 10,000 videos a year?
You get chapped fingies from editing.
And you figure out a couple things. So, MAVEN is indispensable to the people we work with, and it's not by accident. It's because we want to be as useful as possible.
And when you're extremely useful because you have mastery of something, you're indispensable. And I think that's always going to be true. Like AI makes everything easier.
But if you're trying to make all of your content with AI, you're taking the path of least resistance. You're taking the path that everyone else can and is taking. So, you have nothing that can set you apart.
Yeah. There's absolutely no way to win when you're competing on AI-generated content. There's no way.
If an enormous company, if TikTok, which I am very confident they're doing this, if TikTok decided we're going to create every single user account using our AI, which is called Seedance, which they can create any movie. You can be like, have Tom Cruise fighting, John Wick, or whatever it is, and it will do it perfectly.
Have Keanu Reeves Matrix fighting Keanu Reeves John Wick. It creates that movie for you in minutes.
This is from Seedance. Seedance is from ByteDance. ByteDance owns TikTok.
So, what are they doing? They create AI to create all of the content for their platform, so they never have to worry about users anymore. I don't have to pay someone because they get a lot of views and I want to keep them here.
I can just make that person and have tons of fans all over the world, and it's not even a real person. And you can't compete with that ever. So, if you're using, ElevenLabs or something to generate yourself, you're you're on borrowed time.
Like, you are taking the completely wrong path, because you're never going to be able to get anywhere unless you're doing something that everyone else can't do in their underwear in bed. And that's the big thing. That's where mastery comes from.
Yeah, and also then that's back to the barrier to entry. Like if it's, like posting to social media, we work in it, I would argue, very easy. But depending on how you do it, because there are easy ways to do it, which is the lazier way, but it's the way that everybody else does it, or there's a way that's a little bit more difficult, a little bit more strategy intensive, which is the way that we do it, and the way we do it with our clients.
Can I just add low effort, high effort, instead of hard, easy?
Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, low effort is the stuff that you can do in 5 seconds and it's just like, bleh. Higher effort takes a little bit more time.
It doesn't have to be hours on end, but it's the stuff that is not quite as easy. There's a little bit of friction, it takes a little bit of time. And that's the stuff that we do with our clients, because then that's how you stand out in a sea of very low effort content, which now there is in quite an abundance.
So, and what makes MAVEN indispensable is we Everyone we work with puts as much effort into their social media as though they were using AI, but they're getting high effort content.
Because we now, we do two days every quarter with people. With some people, we're only doing one. We have everything so dialed and laser-focused.
We don't need two days to produce three months of content across all platforms, including long-form, because we've been doing this every single day for years and years on end. So, it's not even that you have to be putting in all the high effort, but you need to have your system in place for high effort output, because low effort is going away.
It is The low effort stuff is typing the stuff into an Excel spreadsheet. I heard like an analogy that all the best businesses in the future will be the ones who are completely autonomous using AI, because if you think about a spreadsheet, if your spreadsheet was all done automatically except, I don't know, 2, 50, 100 of the cells a human had to had to calculate those cells, you'd be like, "Why are you having a human calculate those cells?
You can have software do all the rest. Why'd you decide this one sheet you have to manually do?" We wouldn't do that. That's silly.
It'd be the same idea once AI can do all of the things that are basically calculating in a cell in a table. Like, same idea. It's just we can't see it yet.
We can see in the rearview mirror, whoever that was that said that, like we
Yeah, that's fascinating.
We predict the future looking in the rearview mirror, but until we're there, we don't know what it's going to be. So, we just we need to be able to do the high effort things that aren't easy for everyone else to do, and be arguably the best at it.
-. Yeah, and I'm under no pretenses that obviously we can be replaced with AI, but…
I This is something another thing we've been working on, how to replace ourselves with AI. So, like what can we Excuse me, I just choked on my own spit. [laughter] But like what like This is sort of a an engineer way of thinking of it, or like you said, like a computer engineer way. How do you break it?
So, how would you replace yourself with AI? What would you do instead, I think is a really good way to think about it instead of being afraid of it, just being like, "Well, yeah, what would I use, or what would I build, or what…" Well, what would I build, that's very, that's a very, very hard thing, which you can do, like, by all means, like shoot for the moon, whatever, 'cause you'll land among the stars.
But [laughter] Boo! [laughter] No. But how would you replace yourself with it? Like what are the things that you…
If you were the boss, if you, if I think, step out, exactly. So, now if you're the employee of your organization and you need to trim the fat, how would you fire yourself? So, I think that's easier than being like, "How would I replace myself?" But it's like, how can I…
Yeah, how can I not pay myself anymore?
Exactly, and that's something that, we dabble in often, 'cause it's like, okay, well, what would I do differently? Like, how would I'm an outsider and I'm working at another company, I'd be like, "Oh, you should do this, and you should trim that." Like I think it's an interesting thought experiment and then you'll see things in a different way instead of being reactive, being proactive.
So, like reactive is when something happens and then you react to it, and you're already sort of set back. Proactive, which I know I'm like defining words in a stupid way, but like just trying to make sure we're on the same page, 'cause I keep not saying things the right way, apparently, but being proactive and saying, like trying to figure it out before it even happens and how to like plan of attack, like, okay, robots are taking over tomorrow, but I already have my systems in place, so I should be okay. [laughter] With the robot overlords.
Should be okay. [laughter] You're saying everything… You're saying everything right. I think this is a really rich discussion.
No, I'm I'm sleepy, also. I feel like my brain I didn't have matcha today, too, so I really feel it. Like, I've noticed it.
We just got back yesterday, like literally last night from oh, my god.
So, this is This is a bonus day.
Yeah. That was honestly the most miraculous thing ever that happened yesterday.
Resolving Airport Delays and Travel Logistics
Yeah, we're almost at an hour, but let's quickly give the cliff notes.
Okay. Super quick, because this, honestly, like I should have gotten that, guy's name because this was amazing. So, we were supposed to come home tomorrow, but we finished filming…
Yeah, we were supposed to come home the next day.
Yes. So, we were supposed to come home today, in a couple hours. And instead, because we've refined our system so much, we were able to actually, and like Michelle's awesome, but we were able to bump up our travel day the afternoon of yesterday instead, blah, blah, blah.
So, I bumped up our flights. I was like, "Okay, cool." We were just hanging out. We finished filming yesterday morning, and then we just grabbed lunch, blah, blah, blah, we go to the airport.
Literally as soon as we pull into the airport, we I see, "Oh, my god, our flight's delayed 5 hours!"
Yeah, they just delayed it. Like it wasn't like we just didn't notice.
Yeah, 'cause otherwise I would have just we would have hung out somewhere. But also, I'm like, "Well, no, we should be at the airport just in case things change."
We've traveled enough to know you need to be there in case things change.
Yes, and this is very important for the rest of the story, and I'll be as quick as possible, but we pull in and then it's like, "Well, shit." Okay, well, we're here, like it's comfy, we'll just hang out, we have tons of things we can do, blah, blah, blah. So, we like are moving through security, and then I check my phone, and then I'm like, "Oh, okay.
Now we've been bumped another hour." So, now it's 6 hours! [laughter] So, like, great. But it's fine, like we already have bonus time, as what we're calling it, where it's just like, "Well, no, we're like we're flying home early, so it's fine. We'll get home tonight."
Yeah, which that's another topic. But it's like, "It's fine. We're comfortable.
We're safe." Like, first world problems, our travel's delayed. Okay, cool. We travel enough where it's just like, "Okay, whatever.
Like, we're just going to play Solitaire or do work, whatever." You got me hooked on Solitaire yesterday. [laughter] So, we're sitting in the food court. We're at a table, and this is important, I promise. Every single detail is important.
We're sitting at a table. I'm all spread out. I have all my things everywhere 'cause I'm working on my computer, trying to get things done.
Then we're just like, it's been maybe 2 or 3 hours, and I see on my phone there's like a little update thing and it says we still have 4 and a half hours. So, then it's like, "Okay, well, maybe we should move to one of the booths because they have a plug so I can charge my stuff and then it's just more comfortable." Yeah, 'cause we were sitting on hard chairs.
We get to the booth. I had packed everything up, you had everything packed up, thank god. I look at my phone and I keep checking it for updates, because on the way to where we were, our flight was delayed by 3 hours, but what happens, which if your flight is ever delayed, just go the hell to the airport, because then our flight was actually bumped back up only a half-hour delay before.
This is on the way to Buffalo. So, I knew, well, things might change. And this is the first time, also, we're not sitting at our gate.
We always sit at our gate, we're always right there. This was the only time we have never been directly at our gate or right across from it.
Because this is the longest delay we've ever had, like by a long shot.
'Cause we fly United and they don't really delay too much, but this is a little different because going there, it's a tiny airplane.
Yeah, typically at the most it's like maybe an hour, and then even then it's like not a full hour. So, we're not at our gate. [laughter] I open my phone 'cause I keep checking it, and I see in the app, this motherfucker's on a different flight than me. [laughter] Mind you, it's very important because I had changed our flights, so I'm like, "Oh, my god!
Did I put him on a different flight than me?" 'Cause we were supposed to be on the same flight. But then the kicker. It was the flight was supposed to leave at 7:20.
I checked my phone at 7:16!
And it said, "Final boarding all groups."
And I was like, "Well, we should go to…" 'Cause also the Buffalo airport is so tiny, which is perfect, because we could literally just run around the corner and we were at the gate.
But when you see all groups are boarding, and I'm the only one that's supposed to be on the flight…
Yeah, so I was supposed to still be on our delayed flight, which didn't leave until 10:30 or 11:00 at night. He's on the 7:20 flight. And I was like, "What the hell?
I'm still on this other flight." So, I'm like, "We should go to the gate right now and see what's happening." So, I like run through the airport. I'm like, "He'll catch up with me." Like, he'll figure it out.
You told the story one more time. I was like right behind you.
I mean, you were a few feet… Anyway, I digress. [laughter] I was just like focused. I was just like, "I'm going to go get this." And I go up to the poor guy that's at the gate and I was just like, "He's on this flight!
I'm not on this flight! Can Am I not on the flight?" I was like not even making English [laughter] 'cause I was just like I just wanted to get us on the plane. If you were already on it, I was like, "Well, I'm small.
Just put me in the overhead, like I don't care." So, the guy's like, "Oh, yeah. Well, I was trying to call you and page you, but you didn't show up." And I was just like, "Oh!" 'Cause I had gotten a random phone call, but I don't answer my phone. Who answers their phone?
No one answers their phone. Well, realtors answer their phone.
It did say Buffalo Airport. Like I should have been like, "Oh, I should pick this up." Even still, I would be like, "Well, that's like spam." But whatever, or leave a voicemail. But anyway, I digress.
But this guy is such a saint. You were on the flight, I got on the flight, and we literally made it in the nick of time. The guy that was the gate agent, like who like checks people in, he was just like, "Yeah, I'm trying to get everybody off that 10:00 flight, because who the hell wants to fly out of here at 10:30?"
Yeah, and there's room on this one, and there's only now three more people on that 10:00 flight.
Yeah, 'cause I was when I had checked, I was like, "There are only three of us. Like, I'm one of the three people on this 10:00 flight." So, nobody else got on the flight after us. We were the last two people.
Like it felt like we were leaving like an apocalypse, like a movie or something. I was so grateful. I was like, "Thank you!
I just want to get out of here!" [laughter] Like, not even bad, but just that was the craziest thing. If I hadn't checked my phone, we would have been on that 10:00 flight and landing at like midnight.
So, here's the stepping stones, the butterfly effect, all of it. Because you set…
This is the craziest travel thing we've ever had.
No, but what you said was 'cause I have Cozy Solitaire on my phone, sometimes I'll play it, and I just I downloaded it on your phone.
And then you were looking at your phone because you were playing Cozy Solitaire, and we're not on our phones much at all.
So, that was the only reason you were there. So, it's sort of this trickle-down, butterfly effect of things that all had to happen perfectly… …for you to actually be like, "Oh, let me just see if it updated."
I was editing before it, and I was like, "Well, I should keep working and like get stuff done." But then I was like, "I'm tired. I'm just going to play Solitaire. Like I just want to like turn my brain off." That was the luckiest, like literally, we left 10 minutes later.
Like we were the last two people on that flight. It was like the most amazing thing possible. So, thank you gate agent at Buffalo on February 20th at night.
Man. He's very nice. [laughter] I just felt so bad. I was just like I was just like, "Flight!" [laughter] I like don't even know what I said.
Again, I was just so confused. I'm like, "I am not flying on a different flight than you. That's so silly."
Well, no, 'cause my thought was like, "Well, if you're on this plane, I'll sit like wherever. I don't care."
Yeah, or I'd just wait. Either way it was going to work out, but it's so much nicer to get home at a decent time, not basically midnight.
Yeah, so we were only 2 hours delayed then instead of six.
[laughter] But yeah, so that was our story for today. Hopefully, I think this episode is a very useful episode, just saying. I feel like this was a very heady episode.
And we kind of went all over the place.
I actually think it's really good. I think we had some…
I think we're stretching minds, man.
Yeah, I'll feel more mentally with it tomorrow, I think.
Your eyes just got really sleepy. You must have peed your pants. Okay, bye.
Don't tell the people! [laughter]
She hasn't peed her pants.
Hey, hey, hey. That was my punchline.
Oh, sorry. I mean, go ahead.
No, but she doesn't pee her pants.
Often! [laughter] You're so funny.
Okay, we'll see you next week.
