Signal vs Noise

Oh, good day, Jim. It's great to see you. This is the Wabi Sabi, the art of imperfection. The imperfection is that I just pressed record by accident and we just got to get going. And so we're on like this is live and let's go. Listen, it's funny, you know,

Hit it. Yeah we did. Because we were midway through a conversation and then suddenly the the shot clock comes down it's like we're on it's like okay let's go let's just go so yeah

Oh, that's how we roll. That's how we roll. It's never perfect. And at least we're smiling at the beginning of this podcast. You know, Jim, like, um, I, I, this weekend I was in Munich, Germany and I was, uh, you know, speaking at an event, right? And it's the, it's the first time that I've done a two day event all by myself for at least five years pre pre COVID. And, and I realized I was, I was like setting this up. I was like, man, I, I gotta carry this for two whole days.

That's right.

all by myself and it's not like it's a retreat's a bit different, right? Cause there's a lot of like downtime for people to kind of think this one's like just me content content. And so for the last, I don't know, 48 to 72 hours, I haven't stopped talking. And I feel like, and then obviously you take some time off, you come back to calls and it literally don't think I've stopped talking even today. As I was just, as we were talking about, I've just been talking all day, I'm doing things, hosting, you know, doing interviews on podcasts and here we are just continuing the conversation. I just feel like I'm. little bit of an energizer bunny and just keep going here. And all of that is what's happening in my world right now. So that's why I'm excited. I'm pumped actually after this weekend. I'm pumped to really get back in and really start to see what the people need and looking forward to sort of what comes up in 2025.

So a lot of what you spoke about was about AI and the applications and implications, I guess, for a whole lot of other areas. So for people who weren't there, can just give us a short insight or overview of some of the things that you talked about that you can see and how it will relate to a lot of industries and people that we work

Yeah, think, you know, there's, I've been looking at AI for probably the last two years and, know, I've been kind of on the sidelines and, and try and decide if I want to get into it or not, you know, is this going to be a fad or is it not going to be a fad? And, and after a while, I remember I was listening to someone, a friend of mine just said, you know, the best thing you could ever do to yourself with regards to AI is like, you don't need to dive right in and just go straight for it. It's just like, you just got to test it, just use it and just use like any of the platforms that's available. you know, whether it be chat, GPT, Claude, know, perplexity, Glock, or, know, Gemini or whatever, and just use it for like five minutes a day. And that's why I encourage people on the weekend. And the things that I showed them, and I am not an AI expert at all. Like, I don't know nothing about coding. I don't know anything about technology and tech that much, but I stay on top of things like, just like you do, you stay on top of it enough that you got to know enough. And the things I've showed them that what you're able to do to get rid of the bottlenecks that are happening in your business and your practice and also in your personal life, that you can be solved in AI, it blows people's minds. And it gave me two signals, right? So today we're gonna talk about signals and noise, right? So the noise is that we think that AI is a fad and noise is that there is a lot of things that are going on, which is like AI development. Every single week there seems to be something new or something new platform, whether it be DeepSeq or something else. And so those can be noisy. But if you kind of filter through those noise and listen to the signals that... our life is just about to change. the signal to me at least, you know, and I'm not saying I'm right, I'm not saying I'm a futurist, but the landscape's changed and the amount of productivity and wasted work and wasted energy that could be solved by artificial intelligence, maybe that's the wrong way to put it, but just by using these platforms, right? These large language models that are available right now for free for most of the time, that can help you be more productive in your life. to really start moving forward and making your life better, it's absolutely incredible because it allows us now to take this chapter of our life to be able to use that extra time and energy to be more productive in other things that we never get to because we're spending, before we were previously spending time on things that kind of slow us down. Perfect example, I'll give an example and then I'll let you kind of go with this too. For example, it's like, it doesn't have to be like these big things. We're all talking about AI solving like big problems, but like, start with the small problems. Like writing an email introduction, like, Jim, if I was to introduce you to a friend of mine, you know, in say real estate, because you are thinking about moving to Portugal and you need a real estate agent, right? Not that I'm seeding any ideas to you to come to a warmer climate in Europe or anything like that, Jim. But if I did do that, like I would probably have to sit down, right? And I would say, okay, what do I know about Jim? Cause I'd like to do these and I'm not, I don't, I'm not a guy who's a go Jim, me, George, George, me, Jim, you guys should connect. Like I kind of spend a bit of time. I usually go, Jim, me, George, George is awesome this way. Blah, blah, blah, blah. He's the expert at it. And I would say, you know, George, Jim is a great friend of mine. Right. So I spend that time, but that time would be, I don't know, maybe five minutes. It might take me 10 minutes. Cause I'm a perfectionist that way. I kind of want to make this right, you know, but now I can kind of go, Hey chat, Jim is this. to me, right? George is this to me, write me an email to make them connect, right? Now, and then all of sudden it just spits out this beautiful like crafted, you know, message that, you know, may be in my tone, may not be in my tone, but if it's not, just change, you know, add some elements and all of sudden it's done. It's like that extra three minutes just from one little email is saved, but now it can actually go do something else. I can move on from this and you are happy, George is happy, I'm happy because I connected it to you and boom. And that's just one small example. We're not even talking about big examples here.

And you know what I think it what you just talked about lens really well into what we wanted to talk about today that signal and noise because you're right The signals are really like the trends. That's why I see it like here's a signal something's happening things are changing the noise is the day-to-day Addition and subtractions, know, there's this going on that's going on this some companies going up this going down And so you you can't separate what's sometimes fact from fiction And I think that that's, and I think when you, when you blend it really well with what you're talking about, you know, we are, we're in a generational change where think we'll see within, you know, we've gotten to see the internet. looked at how impactful that was. And I know there were people who thought, gee, this is just a trend. This will pass. No, it hasn't, you know, and I don't, you know, I think from the perspective of AI, this is what I look at it in there is that now you've seen the productivity gains from it. I know there are generative basically artificial intelligence and there's ethical issues that come up and there's all the kind of things that are coming up about that. But imagine saying to someone, okay, we've now got productivity gains and cost savings that we can give to you that are significant. How is that gonna go backwards? How are you gonna actually go, no, I don't wanna do this anymore. It's just like basically saying, no, I don't want live streaming. I wanna go back to VHS tapes. uh... because i'd like the idea that i've got a drive to a video store and uh... and spent forty minutes looking around for a video when i get it that i have a copy and and you know so if it's if the technologies gone backwards to me i don't see it as something that uh... you know like it's it's it's not just a affect in my opinion for that reason

Hmm funny thing though, Jim funny thing as I was There are come back it's a retro thing, right? It's retro the record so Across the street from the hotel like we're not directly across but just lightly, you know from when the parking lot walking to the hotel I looked across the the hallway. I started across the street. I was walking Marit so, you know and and and and and there was a DVD

Mind you, records are all going back, right? Yeah, yeah.

maybe VHS store across the road. like, I go, are you sure this exists? He goes, yep, because they're all over. I'm like, all over? That's the first one I've seen in like 10, 15 years. I'm like, I had to take a picture of it. Now, as I walked away though, I think it was more of an erotic, erotic VHS DVD store. But nevertheless, nevertheless, it was still a DVD store, which I have never seen for a long time.

Get out of town. Yeah, different. Yeah. that it's still wow. Wow. That's interesting. So, so, so that, you know, I don't, I don't know. Maybe it's that long tail that they talk about, you know, when, when you've got the really, really long tail, because what the internet's done is if you are really niche and you are really, really small market, the number of video store video participants who want to come in your town may not be huge, but if you open up to a whole global

and uh... Yes.

will and you go, hey, I offer video VHS videos in your, you've got basically got a whole global market. That's the whole long tail principle of marketing.

Well, it's exactly. So I think the main thing, you're absolutely right around the whole point of going back. I think that, you know, I put up a slide, one of my slide was, you know, the train is leaving, okay? I didn't say the train is left, the train is leaving. Meaning like, you still got time to run fast enough to kind of catch at least beyond the train, okay? And that's what I mean by like just trailing it and doing, you know, your chat GPT every single day for, you know, five minutes. It's because you just gotta at least test it, right? Just gotta play around with it. You don't have to do anything. I don't know about you, but like for me, I don't even use Google anymore, right? I don't even use Google in a way that I really just mostly focus in on a couple of things, right? What I focus on is I really focus on one or two things, which is I focus on recording, right? Sorry, not recording. Just because the recording just failed there for a second, so I'm just trying to remember what I saying. So what I kind of focus on when chat GPT is like I don't go on Google. What I tend to do is I actually just go on chat to find the answers. Right. I have never even done the Google thing that much anymore. Like if I'm even like the other day I was trying to figure out how to use like I had this PowerPoint slide. I started the keynote slide and I had to figure out how don't I didn't know how to change something because I don't use keynote that much often like like me rather than me trying to press all these buttons trying to figure it out. I'm like you know what chat tell me how do you you know create a you know, a slide thing on this on keynote and then step by step just walks me through it. But that's exactly like Google would have taken me at least two or three steps to find it. Cause I would have to write on which one's going to go, but it tells me right away. And that's what I mean by using a small because when the train is leaving me, it just means like, you just got to jump on board and just hang on tight and just see where it takes you. And if it's, if it's not for you, then you can jump off. But if you don't catch a train now, what my fear is for most people is that that train is going to be further away and now you won't be.

Yep. Yep.

you don't have the fitness or the energy to chase after it fast enough because that train is going to build the momentum and that momentum is going be really fast. And that, and all of sudden, like you're now created a massive gap. And now you really kind of, you'll tell yourself a story and like, well, you know, was it going to be a fad? And that train gets further and further away. And then now you're stuck. And that's what's going to leave businesses behind. think.

Yeah, I think you're right there. I the early adopters, traditionally the people who take up new changes and directions very early and they're starting to incorporate it. They're the kind of ones that try to bring it into the mainstream. Now I feel we're entering that area where it's going to start incorporating the mainstream. And I agree with you. I don't think it's left the station. I think it's leaving. Even the people who have benefited largely from it have been the early adopters. And now we're actually seeing the implications. There will always be the laggards. There'll be people who actually don't choose not to. And it always fascinated me, know, like there were, know, Warren Buffett traditionally does not get into these types of stocks. He's just not into those. He just looks for garden variety, um, service based industries that throw off a whole lot of cash. And interestingly, you know, when you talk about a guy who, you know, noise and signal, you know, this guy's compounded since 1965 at 20 plus percent per year. Right. Which is staggering. And he always said that he is the person who the discipline in financing in terms of him investing was watching someone constantly pitch and you just waiting until they pitch the right one for you. Right. That's his guy. That's his whole game. Right. Level of patience. And so he's not acting with speed. And yet you can't, if you put 10,000 bucks in his account and what he talks about, all this is not in 65. It's worth $300 million now. So, but for the longest time he didn't have computers, you know, and so you've always got these outliers who people would go, yeah, but you don't need it. Sure. You don't, you don't have to have it. Sure. There's, there's multiple, there were companies that, and I found as of companies who don't use this technology and they still are benefiting. I put to people that these are more the exceptions of the rule because this is going to become more day to day. And Eric's, we're touching, you're right about Google and chat where I go straight to chat as well because Google now will give me 16 options of whoever's high ranked and will go there. And I'm just going, mate, you're taking too long. This is just ridiculous how like before check, we were like, this is the greatest thing. And now a multi, multi billion dollar company has now seen to be behind the times. That's fascinating how quickly that changed and consumer trends will dictate that. Yeah.

Yeah. SEO is dead. Yeah, SEO is dead. Like I'm not saying that SEO like completely gone, but you got to start worrying about where this is going to head. And in terms of what's available to you, and you got to adapt. Now, sure, depending on who's listening, right? If you are maybe like close to retirement, and you are, you your practice is not going to be, you don't need to change that much, you know, to before it changes at all, like you're to retirement stuff. sure you probably don't need it, right? Like you don't need to change because you you're your practice will probably be you'll prove more pretty moved on and sold it to the next person. However, like, if you're young, or at least in the middle ground, there's the people who are going to lose out if you don't jump on this train, because you don't know where it's heading. Now you talk about Warren Buffett. Yeah, he is an outlier for sure. But there's two things, right? He's still in the game. Like he's not like he's not playing, right? Yeah, he might not invest in these stocks. Or know, he's not doesn't invest in traditionally. There's two things I would say about that. Again, not a Warren Buffett expert, but one is he has more cash. His cash reserve on Berkshire Hathaway is absolutely ridiculous. I saw a chart the other day and I'm just going to visually show this. It was like this, like $365 billion in cash or something like that. And the next closest one was like Google and Apple, which is down here on the bar chart. It was phenomenal how much more cash reserves they actually have. The cash reserve can be deployed at any given time. Um, so he's still in the game. He's still on the train at least, you know, he's probably looking at it, but he's like not buying. Maybe that's not what this fit within this philosophy. That's fine. But I guess I also got to consider, and this is something I love to hear from you because you're the expert in this is that. You know, Warren Buffett made his money, you know, compounding and, making strategic calls through the year, right? It was like, sometimes like it's one call like with Geico, I think from, from the early days, I think, uh, and. and certain decisions that he made, a grain again, major and great bets. But I wonder if the bets he made in the past, will they continue to work in 2025 and beyond? I don't know the answer to that, but I'd love for you to comment. you know what mean? The fundamentals will continue to continue, but I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts.

Look, I'm yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I totally look, sure. I'm not expert either by any means. And but what, what I think is that there's, you know, he, he was, he's been amazing is that he's used principles that have stood the test of time and they still are like fundamental businesses. You've got to make a profit and you've got to compound that and you've got to have expenses less than, um, revenue, all those kinds of things. Most internet-based companies and startup companies, particularly the .com age, they burnt through cash. And so consequently, he could actually look at this and go, this doesn't make sense. So even though he was in an industry, now he's bought Apple, he's bought stock in Apple. So he's not averse to technology, but for him, the major driver has to be fundamentals. They've got to make sense. I've got to understand the business first and foremost. I've got to understand what's going on. So I think, look, yeah, he's 97 years old. So He's not necessarily looking at disrupting things, for him, he's lived through, we've got to look at it again. He's lived through depressions. He's lived through world wars. He's seen the impact that major uncertainty has, pandemics and the like. During the pandemics, when most of these banks were going insolvent, he did the bailout. And for, think it was GE or something, or one of the companies, he gave them almost like a risk-free 10 % return guaranteed. He was going to get, he was going to basically get. first rights of his money back. So he's, he's a, he's a, he's a player. He's a baller really in that. And he was according to those times. So to me, I think the landscape has changed in that you don't necessarily have five years or 10 years to buy an industry because a lot of it becomes obsolete or automated or, or taken over or that technology is gone. So that's why he tends to, tends to stick with industries that are going to be rank and file sticking around. what we're noticing right now is what the only disconnect that I see with that is there are industries that traditionally would have been great industries to invest in and now actually potentially being disrupted or superseded or taken over. So to me, that's where I think the model is still relevant to a degree, but you also have to have a really good understanding of the trends of what's going on. Because if you suddenly decide I'm going to invest in service-based industries that do a lot of data entry, you're gone, I have my opinion, because the trend, no human is going to be doing it as efficiently as a computer. So it doesn't matter whether you're earning 25 % profit this year, within two or three years, you're potentially gone.

Yeah, you got, you got to think, I think it's, it's doing both, right? One of the things I taught about this weekend is like, here are the foundations of, you know, running a successful profitable business. Um, you know, especially in a car project business, right? Here's the, here's the. Funded fundamentals and how to communicate value to, you know, your clients and prospects. mean, those are fundamental stuff that hasn't changed. And, know, I created that from 12 years ago, you know, when I first started that and it still holds true to this day. I don't think I've changed. maybe upgraded a few things, but really the frameworks is exactly the same on how to create value. The difference I find is that, you know, I feel what's needed to be added is also have the foundation, but also have the ability to adapt accordingly, you know, over the year, as your practice grows or your business grows or your personal personal growth. Because if you don't see what's around the corner and adapt accordingly, again, the gap becomes too wide and that could be the problem. And you need to add and look and see what the landscape you got to. you know, what I talk about is like ride the wave, right? Meaning like you do have to kind of know where the wave is going. You're gonna have to see, well, this perfect Wayne Gretzky quote, right? It's like, it's not skate, don't skate to the puck, you know, where it is. You're gonna skate to the puck where it's going. And so that's what we kind of figure out is like, where is the future going? And for most of us, we don't know it. The future is so unpredictable. It's so, we don't know where it's gonna go and how fast. But I would say this. One, it's probably coming faster than you think, right? And two, I do feel that if you don't pick up some of the lingo or the language, we could fall behind, which I've been saying this over and over again in this particular podcast. And it's such an important element that we do need to see what's actually happening. So that's me. I feel like that's where we kind of really have to our focus in on at this moment, because there's so many disruptive industry right now in regards to so like lawyers, accountants, know, bookkeeping, you know, even radiographers, like those things that you would think you know, our safe jobs or whatever, they're being disrupted. Like, why would you need, you know, hire, you know, a three $400 per hour lawyer when you can, you know, hire some assistant AI assistant to really read all that data for you, and actually produce case reports and, or, you know, all these laws that you would have taken hours for someone to kind of research in the library, right, or using, know, whatever technology they had. Why would you go to a radiographer when an AI radio offer can actually determine you know, cancers and read that x-ray better with greater accuracy than a human eye, right? And again, I'm not saying a human eye isn't an experience doesn't count here. It does, but for majority, if the AI is beating majority of the time, then you're kind of really in a profession that could be disrupted. And I think every profession can be disrupted. It's just a matter of time and how and when, and oftentimes most people... never think their own industries can be disrupted. But I think that's a good conversation to have in your head is how can I be disrupted? How can I be disrupted by something else? And then so you can actually learn to protect yourself.

And I think the things, most important things are speed and cost. They're the things that what these new technologies do bring that we have to be aware of. even when we talk about some industries, will they potentially be changed? Possibly. And why we even talk about this? Because you and I aren't AI experts, as you say, but what we're seeing is that we have clients who have businesses who ask these questions. And so these are the questions and conversations that we have regularly about, okay, well, how do you adapt to change? You know, are you, are you hiding away from it? Are you putting your hand in the sand or you're actually leaning into it? Are you, are you over committing too quickly? Are you just being really impulsive? Like, so these are all peripheral issues that are playing out on this current experience on this current example is AI, right? So, uh, that that's what's going on, but

Mm-hmm.

You look at plumbing, for example, you talk to plumbers and know, those of us who been around for a while realize that if you had a block pipe years ago, that it'd be some young bloke, young apprentice who's sticking his head in or arm in to try and find that blockages. Now they've got like basically fiber optic cables that go in there. So it shows you the impact of technology. So sometimes there are going to be essential skills and tasks and roles that are required. but there's the advent of new systems and procedures and technology that makes that job more efficient, more effective, more cost effective. That's the part. And if you can ask those questions like, how can I use this rather than how can I be scared about it? I think that might help you.

Hmm. I have a perfect example of where one of my clients this morning I was talking to and there was a whole bunch of excuses on why he hasn't done certain things. And he goes, I have a list of all these ideas, but I'm just short on time, he says. I'm like, okay, well, what are we talking about? Like, what is it that you are short on time on? Like, what is it that you can't do? He's like, oh, this idea, I got this idea, I got this idea. I'm like, okay, do you have these ideas in your head or is it actually written down? First of all. ideas in your head doesn't count. Like, you gotta write it down to see if it's actually legitimate ideas you actually want to action. And he just gave a couple examples. I'm like, okay, you know, he says his time. Really what he's saying is like, I don't know what to do next. And I'm thinking to him, I'm like, guys, like, come on, give me one example. He gave me an example and I just said, I just literally typed it on chat GBT and I'm like, there's your answer. Right? It's right there. Tell me now this is an obstacle. right? Because before it would have been an obstacle like, I don't know what this after write this email, let's just say it was an email, I don't know what to say, I need to create this newsletter and this email, because I don't know what, and just typed it in one and like, within less than 10 seconds, it created something for him, even gave him options. Here's the optimal three titles you can use. Here's the like the, you know, the actual writing of it. So now you can't really complain that it's time, because it's right there for you. And what what it's removing its bottlenecks. is like you can't now use the you some other external thing as an excuse for you not to proceed. It's like, Oh, I don't know how to do that. Well, maybe chat, like put it on there and see what what what the AI tells you to do. I'm not saying it's perfect. But it's better than just giving up or not even starting in the first place just because you don't know some

Yeah. Yeah. And you're right. It's sometimes the resistance is I don't know. And, and so consequently, and I've been guilty of that, you know, when I, when I, the moment, but the moment that I find a new technology and I go, I can really use this. Like, honestly, AI has made my life so much simpler. Like there'd be with different enterprises and industries and stuff that I work in and coaching all that. could be a hundred emails that I'll get, uh, every, every time, every time I wake up.

Of

And I've got to sift through those. And so I'll sift them through a sorting process. I'll simplify that. The ones that I respond to, I might go, listen, I want to go for a walk. I'm going go for a walk for, for an hour. I'm going to draft up these emails and voice to text has been phenomenal for me. So I'll go draft up this email, do it this way, this way, this way, respond, whatever. I'll check them when I get home. What would have taken me an hour? And I'm not the fastest type in the world. So anything that I can speak a lot faster than I can type, I can tell you that. And so consequently I can. my productivity goes up through the roof. these, and, you know, one of the things if I, you know, I'll mention, like one of the things that I've launched in conjunction with a group is a data room in data storage in the U S and so we, the technology is that I'll call someone, we'll have a conversation as soon as I finished very much like, um, you know, certain, there's a transcript of everything that was discussed and talked and typed and emailed to that person. That is just gold. That is just, it's gotten rid of friction. It's got rid of time, all these efficiencies. So I'm using that to optimize my user experience for the people that I work with. So if you think about it from a business and go, how can AI technology improve the customer journey? If you're in business, that's going to take you down a totally different pathway to Um, you know, do I need to fear it? And really, if you embrace elements of what it can do, I think it could serve you really well.

Yeah. For me, the use of AI has definitely increased that productivity. mean, maybe my daughter's using AI. can make my kids using AI every single day, pretty much. Um, and I'll give you a couple of examples. Like one, my daughter has a business idea, you know? Uh, and she's just using chat and she like the, the, branding for this product. Like we haven't even, she hasn't even created this product, but she has this idea around this product. I love it. I don't want to share it now because obviously it's more when it's time and it's an incomplete, but the branding of it and the playfulness of Chad dealing with these obscure kind of taglines and like mockups and it's been incredible and she's having so much fun. She hates going to school right now because like school is boring and she's so much more excited about building this business than it is to go to school. And that's the downside of things, right?

Yeah, to an incubation period.

And another thing, like she's on the student council and the student council decided they made a promise to have a casino night for the upper years. And so they did. They had a casino night. Obviously you can't win money because that's gambling, but it's more like just having fun. But they had to keep track. Like who's the winner? And so she, I introduced her to Replet and she goes in there. I paid for an account for her just to kind of play with it. And for a month she was like, she just entered. So for anybody to know the no replicates, basically, you can tell it goes, here's what I want. I want to create a dashboard or a program to keep track of my score from a casino night. You know, it does ace. It basically tells us this premise and it codes it for you. Like line by line in front of you. And it is absolutely insane. So she created this algorithm and code and that, you replica created for her that she used on the night. And she kept track of everybody's score and the cake created a winner. How amazing is that? That is absolutely ridiculous. She doesn't know anything about computer science, nothing about code, and that's the beauty of where AI, and that's just the beginning. That's just tip of the iceberg.

Yeah. Well, that's a definite signal, right? That's a signal. That's something to go, Hey, this can be done so simply, right? That's a classic case of a simple, the noise would be all the, the stories around it, the fear, the, um, people's experiences, people resisting people, like all that. That's the noise. That's the stuff that you get in the newspaper every day where you get it one day and the world's finishing tomorrow. And then the next day you go and the world's fantastic. And so. Even in the same day, you read a newspaper. It's really fascinating to me. I've really minimized the amount of news content that I absorb. I know we've talked about this before, but I stick to the business areas, particularly because they're quite relevant and I'm interested in them. But you can read an article in the same paper within a page or two and that's a view that's totally diametrically opposite, right? And you go, how is this possible? How is this possible? That's So you'll get you tell me about the giggle. What was the cause of the laugh?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, because the news is such an interesting thing when you know the giggle for me is that The first thought was the amount of energy that AI causes the usage of in the world is so much energy and energy consumption, but no one talks about the negative effects of that. It's like, where are the environmentalists now? Not to say against the environmentalists, but there was other proponent like how Bitcoin was like, this is causing so much energy loss, even though they...

No, no. Yeah.

use more reusable energy than most other things, right? But it's just funny how that contrasts. That's what I mean. That's the contrast I see, because you hear all these positive things, but then you never hear about all the negative things. But when it comes to other industries or whatever, then it's all about negativities. But I also look at the other thing too, as well, you said, signal versus noise, is that the noise is that the world's coming to an end. AI is going to take over the world, right? And I am kind of scared of that too, right? Because I'm scared of what AI is able to do and what the ramification is.

Yep.

But that's no different than how I saw social media and how social media is going to make this impact and how that's going to social media affects us. But at the end of the day though, the signal here for me is like, you and you alone cannot stop this train. This train is moving with or without you. And so rather than trying to like, poo poo it and just say, this is not going to be great for the world. And I understand that. I understand why it might not be great for the world, but it's also having the understanding that You got to at least be on the train so you can actually decide for yourself whether or not, um, because the train is leaving, as I mentioned, like it is moving forward and like, so like social media, it is moving faster than, than we expect. And social media moved and we all thought was like, is this a fad or, know, whatever, because there's a lot of social media apps have gone come and gone. But the reality is now, if you look back, you know, 10 years later, or even 15 years later, it's like, wow. You know, if you didn't jump on early, um, you're all you've been playing catch up. Well, you have an opportunity right now. I think as since social media, think this is the sort of the S next big thing where jumping on now doesn't mean you're going to be an expert in the future, but it does allow you to kind of stay on the train long enough to be able to see the evolution of where it takes you. And this, um, AI has been around for a very long time. It's just that we've been hearing about it. So we're kind of the laggards in a way already, you know, we're already kind of in the middle and it's already catching fire. And thing is that because it's already catching fire, that's the signal to me that we do have to stay on. So you have to stay in touch. Now the hard part is actually keeping up because every day there's something new. There's a new, new LLM is a new thing. And you're like, man, I can't keep up. But if you're not on the train, you wouldn't even know it exists. And I think that's what we're trying to say.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, you reminded me of a scenario when I first moved to Darwin in what have been 1990 something. They hadn't connected a phone into our apartment. We bought an apartment. haven't connected one. So we had a temporary mobile and it was kind of like, if you ever watch these 19, these World War II movies where you had a guy with a battery on his packer. just.

Yeah, the big, big rock. Yeah.

Rotate to get this before that we had this big it was a brick man. It was just 10 kilos, right? So that's that's what we came from. But I remember after a few years we moved down to practice and we were back in Melbourne it was around about 2001 2002 and one of the guys I used to take care of there he was in I think I can't remember whether it was Ericsson or Nokia or one of the companies but he said listen we've Expanded the technology camp. I remember distinctly coming in one day and saying We're just on the verge of releasing a mobile phone. And what this will mean is that we'll have access to, you know, can contact someone, there'll be what'll be called texts. can have, you could really much reach anybody 24 seven. They'll be able to do work from anywhere and whatever. And then he had this pause and he goes, so is it a good thing or a bad thing? Right. And it's really fascinating because

Hmm.

To me now, this new technology is, it's not dissimilar to different introductions. Thanks Siri. Siri's jumped in and given me some context, but it's no different to new ways of being that challenge how it's always done. So you talk to people and they go rock and roll was the, when Elvis was coming through, they're like, this is just the devil music, you know? And so because it's different.

Devil.

But even back then, back in, you know, 25 years ago, there was a guy looking at this and going, I'm about to bring this technology. It's going to be revolutionary. Will it necessarily be great for people switching off? Uh, I don't know. And so this, this embracing this new technology, you're to have its benefits. you going to be people who going to be affected from who will benefit? We don't know until probably after how society handled that. And I think that's what you're talking about, which have been some of the fears because it's the unknown because never has technology or something moved so quickly. that has the potential to radically change so many things in such a short period of time to the scale that it is postulated to be able to.

Yeah. And I think you can see it clearly over the last couple of years as I did that, the quote is, can't attribute to the right person. You probably know this, which is like, first, it will be ridiculed, right? It'll be laughed at at the beginning. And then secondly, it'd be violently opposed. And then thirdly, will be, you know, I think it's like, you generally accepted and you definitely, yeah, accepted as truth, right? So. Yeah. That's a great quote to me. And I see that in everything, right? So when AI first started, you kind of laugh at it as like.

except for this yeah that was up sharp and hard sharp and how uh yeah

of those images, you know, look at those, you know, things that's just kind of ridiculous. And, you know, these comments are, you know, you chat, she beats, like they're not even right. You know, it's not even the right answer or whatever, like, you know, you laugh at it. But then like, if you just wait a little long, which we, well, most people laugh at it and just forget about it. Right. But the problem is people, can see like, wow, like laughing at it, but this is just like 1.0 and they kind of dive into it. And now you start to see like the 2.0, the 3.0 versions of things now, and you're starting to really like. But then some people start to oppose him like, oh my, this is a death. This is what's gonna cause the world to collapse. maybe it will, maybe it won't, I have no idea. But the problem is, is that when you start to think that way, you go against it, it's like, you know, like I said, is you're gonna be left behind. the challenge, the challenge is that what we gotta get in our heads is that if we continually to see all the negative things, like, but this, you know, the momentum is already there, right? It's gone past. that evolution of like people resisting it, it never got squashed. It gives us squash right at the beginning, it's done, right? There's a lot of great technology that was amazing and just got squashed. Maybe Concord would be maybe like an idea, like, you know, that was a great idea at the time, but just maybe not, you know, too fast too soon or whatever, right? There's certain, you know, ahead of its time, certain, yeah, exactly. And then it gets squashed and then it never goes anywhere. So just, it's still great technology, but just never got past the first hurdle, right? But I feel like AI has gone past that first hurdle now and there's no stopping it now.

ahead of its time sometimes, yeah.

And so what I feel like there will be a counter AI in the future. I guarantee it. I don't know what that is, but there'll be counter. No different like social media right now. Everybody uses social media now for business, for personal life and everything else. But there's a culture of like, hey, screen time off, like no screens. And that's the counter, right? You talked about how we went from cassettes to records, records to cassettes to DVDs, and now to streaming and Spotify. But there's a counter to that, which is Let's go back to the retro and the records, right? It's a niche, right? There's always going to be that retro in the future for how it was or how it used to be. No doubt about that, right?

Yeah, there's, definitely the nostalgia group, you know, and most of these, most of the guys who are looking at records are talking about, and then it was, it's funny because do you remember when we went from records to digital and the sound quality had dropped and you were like, now we're just so used to it that you accept that, but there was a massive, what felt like a, um, a decrease in the sound quality in the digital format of music. And so the purists go, no, I want to go back to that. So I totally understand that. nostalgia and wanting to indulge that because that was a unique sound. I totally totally understand it.

Yes. But, you can't stop progress. And that's the thing, the progress was continue to move forward. Right. And, and it's really dependent on the Disney new technology. Now it really, it's not so much about AI. It's actually what it will open up. I don't really have the feel on my feeling is that it's not what we see now is what we don't see yet. Right. And it's, it's what AI will bring to the next phase of where we can actually create some change. And we haven't seen it I don't think it's invented yet. I think it's the hardest time now to actually navigate, to advise your children to what to do next. Right? I'm in that space. All right. So it is like what jobs or careers can you even go to that's not going to be disrupted in the next five years? Because whatever we use, I guarantee you that that, that pretty good career or job was most likely going to be disrupted.

Yeah, totally agree, totally agree. Yeah. Yeah. You ain't getting the gold watch. You aren't getting the gold watch, uh, sticking around a company for 40 years, 50 years, uh, totally, totally good. Because not only that, like as a trend, uh, you know, people of this demographic youngsters now they're not known to be sticking around one company for a lifetime anyway, but more often than not, the industry can then be developed rise and then basically decreased all within a five, 10 year period. And that's the speed with which it's changing. I kind of think of it as, know, that little kid or a little cousin that you had that started playing sport and it was, he might've been uncoordinated, not really good at it when he was six and seven, you go, oh, that's cute. And then you see him five, 10 years later and you got bigger and you got better and you're really good at this. It was because there were iterations. And I think that that's what, how I understand people who dismissed, um, elements of this when they saw the mark one and thought okay this is not great how is this going to add value not realizing that the iterative changes and the the changes upon changes and the improvements are what exponentially increase something at when you've got something that can indefinitely keep improving itself we don't know what we don't know which is our assessment the essence of what you're saying

Yeah. If you talk about Buffett and how he made his wealth is actually through compounding. Well, this is exactly the same thing. It's exponential compounding and, and we don't know. And we, most of our human brains, I know my brain can't really fathom the concept of sometimes compounding and how fast exponential growth happens. And before it's too late, it's like, it's already happened. You know, I, I've been playing around with chat for, say, you know, six months to a year, and I can't believe the evolution of how chat is, how it talks to you. how it thinks and how, like how much improvements there are. They're incremental, but it is pretty decent bounce. mean, chat's not even the best one out there anymore, right? There's other ones that are, that I ignored and I'm using them like, wow, Gronk, like this is actually pretty good. Like this is actually even better than chat or, you know, using other tools and each, each week is, you got different metrics and different things, but it's so important to kind of test them all. Cause you don't know who the winners are. You know, this is going back to the days when we went from VHS to laser disc. I don't know if anybody remembers laser disc, but. LaserDisc came before DVDs. DVD one versus LaserDisc, right? Or even one step further, there was beta versus VHS and VHS one, right? So it's like, you know, we're dating ourselves now, but that's the thing. We don't know who the winners are. We don't know if it's going to be chat. We don't know if it's going be Gronk or Claude or Perplexity or Gemini or whoever, or maybe a new player that's coming out in the market. We have no idea. But the point is, is that I think we just got to play in the game, play in the sandbox and just see where it takes us.

I remember them. I did. Yeah.

and being on that train and while the train is moving, we can kind of test it and see. And we might miss it, but at end of the day, at least we'll actually start playing the game.

Yeah, I think that the signal is the trend and I think we've highlighted, I think we've identified it, that that's the trend we need to be, find some way of actually being at the effect or being at you know, a Gretzky, you know, go where the ball's going to go or go where AI is going to go. And you'll be able to be supported and benefited by that. I think that that part of it, the noise is just the uncertainty, the uncertainty of people not knowing. and offering opinions and a lot of the times opinions are unqualified and they're not based on data or fact, they're just perceptions. And so a lot of the times you've got to look at where you're getting your source of information. And you know, if a lot of them is just opinion based from people who don't really know much about it, but just a scaremongering, then you're to be taken up by the noise. But if you focus on trends, look at what's going on, look at movements. focus where you're getting your information. think that will serve you well and you can make some good decisions.

People are gonna ask you one question before we leave, but I'll say a story so you can think about it, which is like, you know, give us your prediction as best as you can, what the future is gonna look like and how it might impact AI impacting the world. But I'm leave you sort of before you think about that and say that, I'll sort of give you some thoughts around what you just sort of said, which is the thought about fear, right? If I look at AI robots, you know, what Tesla's building and all these robots, you know, people are like, there's two camps usually. One, that's kind of cool and... second camp is usually like that is freaking scary. I've never bought one of those in my life. Um, but if I think back, if you think back, uh, in the past 10 years, let's say 10 years ago, did you ever think that you were going to get into use an app and get into a stranger's car and then let them drive you to wherever you want to go from one destination to another? Right? No one would have said you over X was, I was going to say, I was, I even used Uber, right? Uber to me was black car service. Like, great. And then when I went to Uber X, I'm like, why would I use that?

Yeah. what I thought.

Why would I get into a stranger's Honda? Like I can use this black car. And then nowadays like it's all Uber. Another example is like, who would have thought 10 years ago that you would be able to go book a room in someone's house in a stranger's home, right? To be able to use that instead of your hotel. might be even better experience. Who would have thought that? Like renting a room or even a house of yours so you can actually make some money out of it or renting, like who would have thought of that? But that's the difference, right? And. That's what's scary 10 years ago, but what is normal to us now? So I think that's the future. So what do you think? What's a prediction from Jim?

Yeah, look, it's a good question. It's a good combination, combination of both excitement and also concern. You know, definitely I'll be, I'll be honest. Like I've watched terminate a way too many times to not at least consider that that's an option. That's kind of AI going rogue. So I totally that that is a possibility. I can't discount that. I, I am excited by it though. I'll be honest because you're right. You don't, we didn't know what was possible before. And now we're embracing new ways of doing things. But fundamentally in all of this, I always look at it and go, whenever I'm fearful about something, I try and understand why I'm feeling fearful. is it, and once I, whether it's AI or something else, I always go, okay, name the emotion you're feeling, it's fear. Okay, what are you scared of? Right? And the scare, the fear is, part of it is to go obsolescence in terms of what we do and what we don't now doesn't have a necessarily a need. So there's, there's that part of it. So you go, okay, if my need is the products and services that I deliver may not be valuable, what do I need to do about that? And, and the second part of it is the unknown. So to me, I always, whenever I get in touch with what I'm scared about, I'd go, okay, what can I do about that? What's within my control now, rather than burying my hand in the sand, I lean into the fear. And that at least allows me to move and use it. rather than actually be fearful of it and rather than trying to trying to yeah basically stand up and try to stop the waves coming I just try to find a way that I can surf the wave that's really what to me is a metaphor of what I try and do because I'm never going to beat the so that's

Yeah, love that. Any prediction of what future is going to look like? One little thing. I'll tell you mine and you can think more. I think within 10 years, I think within 10 years, I think we'll all have a personal assistant of some sort. And it's not an actual physical body. I think it will be some sort of personal assistant as an AI in the cloud. And that's, you know, would have already had a couple of systems already booked in, like already linked into your style, to your personal preferences, what you like and what you possibly could like in the future. And basically if you want something done, you can actually speak to it automatically as if it's a

What I... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not clear enough.

Jarvis from Iron Man, like that's like pretty much like constant and having that person with you to be able to do all the tasks behind the scenes and have that conversation. So if I'm like seeing you across from the room and I'm coming to see you and I'll be talking to like, Hey Jarvis, who is that in front of me? Right? Remind me, give me some context. And then, and then boom, like it's right there. And as if nothing skipped the beat or, and you tell me to do something. I'm like, yep, we can do that. Let's go, you know, create that. then

Yep. Yep. Yep.

They're already listening and they are already starting to create that email, create that system, or create that product. I've got this idea. there's machines working behind machines, working behind machines, that I feel like that could be a real possibility in the future.

Yeah, I love that. I can definitely, I can piggyback on that one. Definitely. I can, can, I can see that being the case. And you know, there's been a lot of literature talking, and I think we might've spoken about it at some stage about the single person billion dollar companies that will come about because of that. If you've got, if you've got an extended team of people in the clouds who can actually do a lot of what other people previously did and it's causing, costing you nothing, you can go more efficiently. Consequently, then you'll see the proliferation of a whole lot of single industry businesses, for example, on services that can be done. So I can definitely see that. I don't, I don't know. Like I, I, I, there's certain things that I have, um, an ability to look into the future and go, I can see that happening. This one, I don't know. I really don't know, to be honest. So I'm, I'm, open, but because I don't know, I'm open and curious and find out where's this going and how can I use what's there? So I'm kind of like, I'm not. Future Casting it but I'm actually looking at it on the day to day and go okay. How's this? How's this change? Okay? Where's this going? I like to look for trends basically so when I don't Yeah

Yeah. I would love to kind of maybe pick this up again a year from now and then see, you know, what, has changed since then, uh, since today.

There'll be avatar. There'll be probably avatars of both of us carrying this and we'll be doing it. I know. know. See, but yeah, but that, that, that for, yeah, I know. But that's what, for that, I'll be honest. That's part of the reason. you are, you asked me what final thought we're noticing. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but there's a shift away from SEO optimization. So people who used to get a lot of leads from those kinds things aren't getting as many leads anymore, but the people who are putting

Yeah, that's already happening now. We can literally record this podcast without us being here. So, uh, but no, we are still real. We're still real.

in live events, um, where people can go ahead. This is real issue are going really well. I, I've had someone spoke to me about this. Hey, have you thought about getting an avatar? I went actually no, because I don't want that because you know, if that goes rogue and then you're suddenly basically your image or your avatars speaking and talking about stuff that you never spoke about and you've lost it. So that's the part that I think is it can be a little bit, uh, bit rogue, but, um,

Hmm, real life. Yeah. I demonstrated there was a, there was a lady in the room on the weekend. She's like, you know, I'm an introvert. don't like doing videos. I don't like to talk. I'm like, okay, give me an idea. Like, what do you want to talk about? So then she gives me an idea and I just kind of created, I like, I know how to think. just literally did it in like less than three minutes. do. Okay. This is what you want to talk about. Let's say you talk about chiropractic and posture boom. I pressed the button and I press this and there was there a lady, I chose the lady speak on posture right there on the screen. It looks exactly like. not like her, but it was just like someone just talking and I was like, this is unreal. And like showed them live in person, like in less than three minutes that can be done. That's the thing. Like you, you know, talking about removing roadblocks and it's, you're the bottleneck and you know, I know I'm the bottleneck and trying to figure out like, do I remove that as quickly as possible so that I can actually be having more productive life.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for, thanks for jo...

All right, well, that's it for us. Yeah. Thank you for joining us in the Wabi Sabi, the art of imperfection. And let's look forward to seeing you on the next episode and also a year from now when we talk about the updates from AI and what has created. All right. Talk to you guys soon. See ya.

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