Evolving Business Minds

Entrepreneurship and Innovation with Dr. Bo Bennett | #118

• Andy Silvius • Episode 118

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Discover the future of creativity as Dr. Beau Bennett, esteemed social psychologist and serial entrepreneur, joins us to unravel the complex tapestry of AI integration in the publishing industry. From his initial success at just 29, Dr. Bennett has continually redefined the intersection of psychology and business, culminating in his latest forays into AI. Our conversation traverses the nuances of how artificial intelligence is transforming the way we create content, from books to audiobooks, and why the human touch remains irreplaceable in the art of storytelling.

Embark on an entrepreneurial odyssey where we confront the gritty realities of starting and nurturing a business. Dr. Bennett and I swap tales of resilience, from the allure of sleek website features that can distract, to the critical importance of zeroing in on revenue-generating activities. We dissect the necessity for intelligent risk-taking and share personal productivity hacks, like working during peak times and staying active, that have been game-changers for our businesses and life satisfaction.

Wrapping up with a look at AI's seismic impact on business operations and job markets, our chat veers into the practicality of emerging technologies. We share compelling experiences with how AI has revolutionized mundane tasks, freeing up time for more strategic pursuits. And in a personal anecdote that speaks volumes, we discuss the life-altering benefits of a simple health swap—trading sugary drinks for water. Tune in for this illuminating episode that not only educates and inspires but also empowers you to make incremental changes for monumental results.

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Speaker 1:

All right, welcome to a new episode of the Evolving Business Minds podcast. Today's guest is a social psychologist, an entrepreneur and author of over a dozen books. By age 29, he had sold his company for about $20 million and has since continued to start new businesses and ventures. I want to welcome Dr Beau Bennett. Thank you Good to be here, Absolutely so. I will say it was a little challenging for me to prepare for this episode because there were so many different directions I could go and talk to you about when I was digging into everything.

Speaker 1:

It's like we could talk about human behavior and psychology and we could talk about business and all these other things, so it'll be a little bit of a mix of all of it.

Speaker 2:

Just like my life.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so before we get into it, why don't you take a minute and just let everyone know kind of an overview of what you do currently and how they can connect with you?

Speaker 2:

Certainly, what I do currently is I basically work in the publishing industry on my own companies. I have several different websites that are associated with online publishing, like book publishing, including using artificial intelligence to actually create books, which is just incredible technology, and also artificial intelligence to clone voices and do audiobook narration. Okay, like, in the past six months, it's taken my business in completely new directions. It's really exciting stuff. So that's what I've been working on. I've also been writing several different books using AI. Unlike the old 12 books that you mentioned, that I did it the old fashioned way, which took a long time. Yeah, and that's kind of what I do and that's what I've been up to.

Speaker 1:

Okay, this wasn't. I didn't plan this question for the podcast, but I am curious how do you feel like there's going to be any struggle with continuing to have like great quality content when it comes from AI, or are you programming like how are you working through that?

Speaker 2:

now there's like, if you just work with AI directly, like go to chat, gpt or something or one of the one of the good advanced AI interfaces, the larger language models, you can get some really good content, some decent content. The problem is putting it in a book format. That's where there's a lot of disconnect, like can't just copy and paste. It doesn't work that way. So what I've done is built a whole, like inside a background, that works with artificial intelligence and and reduces the redundancy and makes sense of things and organizes so it really produces a good product. So that's where we are now and, as you, you know, as your listeners know, as everybody knows, like AI is just progressing so far, so fast, that I just can't even comprehend where it's going to be a year from now and quality material that we're going to get.

Speaker 2:

I tell people right now that AI and this isn't original, I mean this is pretty much a consensus. Where AI is, it could write really good college level material. So that's better than the vast majority of people I don't know where, like maybe like 70 or 80%, but there's still that, um, that small niche where like, for example, myself, my PhD in social psychology, logic, reason, critical thinking I could outperform any large language model right now on those topics, and I think the same goes for virtually any expert who has like that level of degree, that level of information on it. But of course AI does a better job at knowing everything that's out there and, like I, use it all the time for research. So it puts things together. But it would need somebody like me to kind of go over the final product and to kind of refine what it output in order to have like an amazing product. So the best way I could put it is artificial intelligence very good Me, very good Me. And artificial intelligence Very good Me, very good Me. And artificial intelligence Amazing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a. Do you ever think it'll completely replace people in writing books? Uh, I mean, there's a, there's a vast majority of things that could replace, but do you think that eventually people will only use AI to write books? Do you think we will still have that human element?

Speaker 2:

I think it will never be only Because part of the writing process is. I mean, that's why a lot of people write books. People know that they're not going to become a bestseller, or probably not. The odds are stacked against them. However, they do it because they love it, and that's why I wrote my first 12, 14 books. Whatever I mean, I love the process. I really enjoy putting my ideas out there. That's actually a part of me and it's personal, but yet it's something that I also want to share with everybody. So it's the process of writing the book that that's so enjoyable, and I don't think that'll ever go away. I think people will still always do that.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Well, I listened to a lot of pseudo psychology, pop psychology, back when I was a kid. I just loved like the pop psych from people like Zig Ziglar, dennis Waitley, anthony Robbins and it really motivated me and inspired me and I just loved it. So I knew like I kind of wanted to head in that direction. But I also knew that I really wanted to make money as a kid and I knew that psychology probably wasn't the best way to do that. So I kind of put the whole psychology thing on the back burner.

Speaker 2:

I went to school business school for for marketing and in one one of in one of the classes I took was consumer marketing and I really enjoyed that and that was really getting in the minds of the consumers. So it was like my first academic introduction to real psychology and that also sparked my interest a little bit more. But I got so busy after I graduated and did so much with business that it wasn't until about 20 years later that I actually went back and started doing psychology academically and I got my PhD, maybe like 10 years ago or 12 years ago or something.

Speaker 1:

When you were discussing the pseudo, the pseudo psychology, right, the pop psychology. Do you think there's anything to all of that?

Speaker 2:

the pop psychology. Do you think there's anything to all of that? Yeah, I do. I think that it's the best way to describe a lot of. That is kind of like an exaggeration. The key points are there. There's some really good like foundational information, but it's it's pretty much exaggerated, uh, made to be um kind of addictive in way, like made to get your adrenaline going, and so it's not completely factual, but it's. You know there's, there's definitely something to it, and this is like a broad view of what we may call pop psychology or, or you know, the self help movement in general. But there are some really good science-based self-help, and then there's some that's completely out there. That's barely uh could even use the title pop psychology, it's so they're on the extremes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, um, I think anyone I don't want to say everybody does this, but I think anyone who's in business at one point or another goes down the self-development path because business kind of drives you into just challenges for yourself and things you wouldn't normally face. Funny because it's like over over time, like especially within the last few years, there's just so much popping up out of the woodworks and so it gets kind of um, what's the word? It just it gets. It gets kind of annoying listening to all of it. There's obviously the people like tony roblin, tony robbins, who have been proven in the industry and been around for a long time, but it's kind of hard to know who you should follow. What's real, what's not for the average person.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, my biggest complaint I have in the self-help movement is virtually virtually all of the the gurus like to tell you what to do, and it's usually based on this worked for me, therefore it'll work for you, which is just not true. That's not the way it works. Like my personal situation, there were so many factors that came into play. I was in the right place at the right time. That's really what I attribute the vast majority of my success to. I was in the right place at the right time. I was at the birth of the internet revolution in 1994 and I just graduated college and I was looking for something and I found it and I had the opportunity. I didn't have any debt. I didn't have any like family to support any car payments. I was just in the right place to just jump in and learn web programming, learn what this whole thing was about, the internet, and start building something that's.

Speaker 2:

That's kind of what I attribute my success to, and and I think that in the self-help movement, a lot of people will look at a lot of the gurus will look at some of the the typical, uh, the typical traits that you find in successful people, like perseverance, uh, the ability to be flexible, um, not being afraid of failure, and you could go on with the list of the different traits and saying, yeah, this, this is what it takes. The truth is and some self-help gurus will tell you this, or at least allude to it is that it's not typically and virtually never, just one thing like one trait or a handful of traits. Every little trait, every little self-help improvement every time you develop yourself a little bit better, you are increasing your odds of success, you're increasing your chances, and that's what it's about. It's a statistical game, it's a numbers game. The better you can make yourself and by self-development and learning things that will help then the better your odds are that you will achieve the goals, what you're looking to achieve, and eventually achieve what you define as success.

Speaker 1:

I think it also depends, too, how much you absorb from the season of life you're in. I think we receive pieces of information that may not be relevant to us in the moment, but maybe somewhere down the line. It's also funny to the you know, the gurus and the marketers online. The FTC is starting to really crack down on it, too, because people are just taking advantage of a lot of people and and throwing claims out there that are that are bogus. So, yeah, so I'd like to pick your brain about business, cause that's what most of my audience is that listens to this podcast and with you having years of business under your belt and selling a business for quite a bit of money, what would you say are some core elements or frameworks needed to start and scale a business?

Speaker 2:

Well, I will admit that things were very different 20, 30 years ago than they are now, yeah, but I should also say that I started businesses six months ago, so I'm like constantly starting different things. So I think I'll address your question with maybe some of the foundations and then some of the specifics for the year 2024. Okay, so I think some of the foundations when it comes to starting a business or starting something is I mentioned this before too not being afraid of failure. I think too many people are really afraid to fail that they don't take the chance.

Speaker 2:

There's so many things that are going to go wrong and you could classify them as failures, or pull the Thomas Edison and say it's just one more way that, uh, or one step closer to success, or whatever he said, uh. But I mean, that's the the kind of attitude that you have to have, because things go wrong all the time. You fail and then you just kind of got to get up and do things again. So, starting with that mentality also, you have to be in the place where you can actually do this. There are people who are in like a very tight financial situation and maybe like desperate to do something, and they kind of see this as a gamble, in a way. Like I have $100 left to my name, I'm going to put this in like a Google ad or something.

Speaker 2:

Like I have $100 left to my name, I'm going to put this in like a Google ad or something, and that's just setting you up for disaster because you need to have money to work with. Like I mentioned, there's a lot of failure at first, what I really prefer to call trial and error and it's usually a lot of error that goes along with the trial at first until you find something that works with the trial at first, until you find something that works. So you have to be comfortable enough to be in the position where you could risk something, whether it be some of your money or some of your time, because, let's face it, it does take a lot of time. So once you're doing that, I think those are some of the foundational things that hasn't changed in the last hundred years. I think that's pretty much the same.

Speaker 2:

When it comes to now, like in 2024, it's never been easier really to do your own thing, to start a business, to start something online.

Speaker 2:

I mean, you basically get a website and just kind of go nuts. You basically get a website and just just kind of go nuts. I've had the, the, the privilege, the fortune of being a programmer, kind of by trade, so like I could build whatever I could think of. You know, I could build it on on a web foundation and I have, so it makes it very easy for me to try out new ideas and very inexpensive as well, because obviously, I don't charge myself, so I could build these things and I'm also a graphic designer, so I could do web basic, web design. So but if, if you don't have those skills, which most people don't, then you could easily find people with those skills, like on Fiverr or wherever you hook up with some good people that, uh, that you trust, that do a good job, that don't charge a heck of a lot and and work with them and, um, really, it doesn't take long to to have a like a functional website up and running where you could start selling a product or service.

Speaker 1:

I agree with you that it is very easy to start a business these days. The barrier to entry is very low. There's a lot of tools and things that we can use to help us start, but there's still such a massive failure rate in business, and I think it's because a lot of people focus on some of the wrong things. Wouldn't you agree with that?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I would also point out something that you said the barrier to entry is is a lot lower, because it's a lot easier for anybody to start a business. What that means is that there are more players in the game, which means, just statistically, your odds of succeeding, of being one of the winners, is a lot lower. So, unlike 30 years ago, when there was a decent barrier to entry, you have to go down to the town hall, you got to get your certificates and all of this stuff. You had to go to the bank, bank and a bank account. Um, you almost have to get like an approval, a seal, from the mayor. I mean it kind of crazy back then, but uh, now it's a lot different. So, yeah, you have to. Um, it's going to be a little bit different. And you said like a focus on the right things. Is that what you were? You mentioned?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I've been guilty of this too. I mean you get into business and you want to focus on the flashy stuff, but really it doesn't mean that it's money producing. You know, and people get caught up in in making the content and doing the things that look cool, uh, but at the end of the day, the back end of their business is a complete disaster and there's no money coming in.

Speaker 2:

Quick little anecdote there. It's really funny. After I sold the company, I started Archie boy holdings, which was kind of a holding company for a bunch of different businesses, and I had kind of like an incubator type of thing going on with a lot of the people that used to work with me in the former company. So this one guy, he, uh, he built this website with this like flashy, and this was back in early, uh, 2002 or something. So it was just like this, like it made this noise and it was this big flash and it was just like just this stupid animation. He kept on playing it over and over again. He was so proud of it and we're like well, what are you doing? You know what's the site, what are you selling?

Speaker 2:

And there was nothing he just like and he focused on that and that's all he focused on. Like the whole week we had this conference and we had to watch this stupid flashing animation over and over again. But the point is exactly what you made. He was completely focusing on the wrong thing. He was focusing on the flashiness, the animation, and there was no substance behind it. There was no business model. Needless to say, he didn't do very well.

Speaker 1:

Is he still in the business or did he?

Speaker 2:

No, he's dead, Okay, not because of that, though.

Speaker 1:

Okay, well, that's a way to end that story, but yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that's the end.

Speaker 1:

But it does happen so much and I saw this a lot. I came from a real. Well, I didn't originally come from real estate. I came from being a mechanic, you know, uh, working on machines, and then I went into real estate and started running businesses from there.

Speaker 1:

But you see, a lot of people get into that industry and they have this desire to be uh, have more free time and freedom in their life. And it couldn't be farther from the truth, because when you go into business for yourself, you don't have somebody telling you what to do. You're the one who's got to make the money and you don't just have a paycheck that's going to show up at the end of the week. And there's a lot. That's why there's so much failure rate in real estate is people focus on, they get in, they check their emails and they just do the stuff, because they're avoiding the things that are actually going to push their business forward. And I see that a lot with the internet space these days. People are spinning up a business and then they just don't really know what the key actions are to move it forward and actually make it productive.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they have this idea of what it's like to be an entrepreneur sort of a glorified idea and not the reality of it. And I think, well, I know that not everybody is cut out to be an entrepreneur, not everybody is cut out to have that kind of risk. Now, moving a little bit over to psychology, we all have this base level of risk avoidance that we have. That's perhaps learned and definitely a lot of it's genetic as well.

Speaker 2:

So you could have some people who were just like risk anything and they usually make the good entrepreneurs because if they just keep on risking and they keep on betting, eventually they're going to win Right. But that's not completely true, because some people could risk things a little bit too much.

Speaker 1:

It's like a combination of risk and consistency.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, you have to be not only consistent, but you have to have a level of intelligence and knowledge in order to make sure you're risking the right things to back up the risk in a way, right yeah, so that's something that you have to have as an entrepreneur definitely.

Speaker 1:

So, from your experience in owning operating businesses, what are some critical lessons you've learned from things that haven't gone as planned or have maybe failed entirely?

Speaker 2:

I think I could tell you a story of one change. Maybe I've done so many things over the years. I'm just trying to think of the best anecdote, the best story that would illustrate these points. But let's just say that I mentioned before how I'm a programmer and a graphic designer, so it's very easy for me to whip up these websites yeah, and and just like I wake up in the morning, hey, this sounds like a great idea.

Speaker 2:

I don't usually think about them too much, it like if it's a good idea, I'll either put it down on my list and then I'll get to it eventually, or I just do it right away because it'll take me like a day and I get really excited about it. So I've done a lot of these different websites that I really thought were like this thing is going to take off. This is going to be huge. Uh, one of which was about, uh, two years ago, two, maybe three years ago, in 2000, 2021, uh, when I when I got my Oculus, my Oculus quest you know the uh virtual reality headset and I was just like amazed at the, the 3d photos, like the when, when you look at like a photo within the Oculus, it's like you're there.

Speaker 2:

you're there in the center. So if you just go to like Google earth or something, you could walk around and it's just like the coolest thing. So I I thought about like how cool this would be for a website where people could take 3d pictures of of homes in real estate and and just go through and you could, you could do like a virtual walkthrough and I mean this is a thing. But I created an entire website to make it extremely easy. Where people don't need these um, you know $4,000 cameras which you needed at the time. You could just get something like off Amazon literally for a hundred bucks like a like a 360 degree 3d camera.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And uh, I, I created the software, the web based software for the whole, where you could upload everything. And uh, I did it for my house as a demonstration and you can move around, you could look and you put on the glasses and again it's like the most intense experience, like you're actually doing a walkthrough of the house of the property without actually being there, actually doing a walkthrough of the house of the property without actually being there, like this is, this is the future, like, like how could this go wrong? But it went wrong. I mean, nobody was ready for it. I got like maybe like five customers over over the period of six months and it was just and it was just not enough to sustain it.

Speaker 2:

And like I can't tell you how much time and energy I put into that, thinking it was the best idea, and it just didn't go anywhere. And I think, like the, the lesson from that is you really have to be in tune with the market, not not just what you think is good. I have no experience in real estate, um, in photography, so like, like kind of the two main aspects of that. I was completely clueless, but I did think it was a good idea. I still think it's a good idea. I just think, like the technology isn't there, the market isn't ready for it, the people still aren't ready for it. Not everybody has a virtual device.

Speaker 2:

So it's just like such a tiny market. I think in 10 years, maybe even five years, this will be commonplace, but it was just way too early, so the whole idea flopped. I didn't waste a lot of money, but I certainly wasted a lot of my time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's interesting. I've, we, I've used uh 360 tours on some of my higher end listings that I had. And, um, who was your target market Like? Who would have been your ideal client? Was it the homeowner or would it have been like a photography company for the realtor?

Speaker 2:

I was. I think I was going after the homeowners. That's where most of the marketing and also I did meet with a couple of real estate companies about this. They're like, yeah, this is really cool, but we just have no idea what it is. They just didn't have that technological experience or the desire to actually pick it up and do it. So I kind of brushed off the real estate market and said, all right, maybe I'm going to get some homeowners who are willing to do this as a supplement to the real estate.

Speaker 2:

But again, not knowing the business, I didn't realize that once a homeowner turns their property over to the real estate agent, for all the marketing, they don't want to do all that crap. Right, and that's basically how it went.

Speaker 1:

It seems like it'd be a good fit for a photography company. That's who I used to outsource all my marketing, all my photos to is, you know our partnered companies we worked with, but it is um, like you mentioned, it's probably another five to ten years out. I just don't. I think the barrier to getting the oculuses has gone down right, but there's still so many people that don't have them and if you're, if you're having to use that to use the product, I just don't think it's. It sounds like a great idea. It just I think more people have to have that in their homes. When it becomes more of an everyday item for everybody, you better keep that website because it might start making you a ton of money then.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, maybe, but I mean that's it, you kind of nailed it. It making you a ton of money then, yeah, maybe, but I mean that's it, you kind of nailed it. Like it sounds like a good idea is so much different than it is a good idea, and that's the differentiation between the two. It's very difficult to see and sometimes you can't see it. Sometimes you actually just have to go out there, put it out and experience it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And unfortunately, that's you know where failure comes in. But if you're resilient and you could just say, okay, that didn't work, uh, what's next? Right? And then eventually you know something does work, so just keep doing it.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's the difficult part for a lot of business owners, right, is that they get, uh, you kind of become married to the idea or the service or the product that you're producing, and when it doesn't work, it's very hard to transition away from that and pivot and continue doing something else without being completely discouraged and allowing you to push yourself out. I also you mentioned when you write down. You have good ideas, come to you and you write them down, or you'll just you'll pursue them. For you, what, what constitute what constitutes a good idea? Is it something that you do? You do market research on it prior, or is it just something where, like, you feel excited about something that you want to pursue?

Speaker 2:

That's it. It's just something I feel excited about, something I want to pursue. Honestly, I I'm not very good at that and maybe that's a weakness that I still need to work on, but when it comes to like um, uh, research and seeing like who else is actually doing it um, are they doing it well? And doing like a total uh, like market analysis, and looking at the competitors, seeing what they're doing and really doing a thorough job at it, like I don't like doing that. It's something about. I don't want to know what my competitors are doing. I feel like I want it to be.

Speaker 2:

Whatever I'm doing, I want it to be completely unique, in that I don't want to be influenced by anybody. I can't tell you if this is a good thing or not. There's probably like a good thing about it, but probably more on the not side, it just really bothers me. What I do do sometimes is, if I do have an idea that I think is unique and nobody else is doing it, I will do some quick Googling and find out if indeed anybody else is doing it, then if not, you know, I'll just kind of like forget it. If somebody is doing it, then I'll say, ok, forget about it Right.

Speaker 2:

But that's usually the extent of my research. It really is like oh, this sounds like a good idea, this feels good. But once again I want to stress I could do that. I could do that because I have money to work with and it's not very low risk on my part. If I were risking or if I were going out and trying to get money for a venture like somebody else's money, of course you'd have to do like a thorough market research. You got to put out a really good proposal in order to get somebody else's money. I would demand that if I were putting my money into somebody's project.

Speaker 2:

That if I were putting my money into somebody's project, um, but I, I have that luxury not having to do that which sometimes, many times, honestly works against me.

Speaker 1:

Maybe it works against you, but I think you seem like an individual that just likes to explore new ideas and so just the uh, it's probably hard to quantify like what that does for you, but I'm sure that just the exploration of ideas and pursuing them and you know, maybe there's, maybe some are failures, maybe some are positives, like they all kind of just keep pushing you forward to the next thing, and you'll learn those experience. You'll take those experiences from those previous things that maybe didn't work so well and apply them to the next project or idea that comes up.

Speaker 2:

Sure, and like some people might build models. I build businesses. That's kind of my hobby and I enjoy doing it. So even if it doesn't work out, it's still something I do for enjoyment.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, you're clearly a very driven person and have achieved success in many of the things you've pursued. Do you have anything specific that you do to optimize your day or keep you energized, like focused? You know a lot of people struggle with or have to have like morning routines and all these things to kind of keep their workflow or their flow state going Like. What do you do for that?

Speaker 2:

Well, the first thing is you need to know if you're a morning person or an evening person and try not to fight it, because that's very difficult to change. I've always been a morning person, so I thrive at like 5 AM, like in the early hours I mean, that's when I think I do my best work. And definitely, like right before dinner time I'm at my worst, where I all I could think about is eating. I'm just ready for dinner, I'm ready to take a shower, relax and uh, and, and then you know, chill out, watch some TV or something. So I, um, yeah, you have to know, like where your strong spot is and work, work on that cycle.

Speaker 2:

Unfortunately, like with this is one of the problems with with the school system is, uh, most teenagers and adolescents thrive at nighttime. At the end of the day, they do not do well in the morning and, of course, when does school start? You know, seven, 30 in the morning. You got a bunch of zombie kids walking around like uh for the first several periods, when, when, uh, when they don't do very well. But the second and probably the most important thing is exercise.

Speaker 1:

You got to get exercise.

Speaker 2:

I mean, you cannot just sit around doing nothing and take this for me from experience, like I've always been exercising my whole life. But one thing that I didn't do that I wish I did. I wish I could go back and tell my younger self is I being in the job that I've been doing, like computer programming and work on the internet?

Speaker 2:

I've been doing a lot of sitting and like sitting for eight hours a day and that completely like destroyed my lower back.

Speaker 2:

Uh, for probably like 10 years. Just in the past six months, I've been doing this whole routine and my back feels like it does like when I was in my twenties, so I feel great now, but I did so much damage by just sitting in that chair. Now I make sure that I get up, like well, I get. I usually get up like once an hour or something to do something, but like three times a day I'll do some kind of physical exercise, uh, like breaking, and not only does that help my body physically but mentally, it basically resets everything and you're you're energized, you got a lot of energy and motivation, um, and it it's great for longevity and staying healthy. And I know, like a lot of younger people don't worry about that, but you need to. You really do need to, because you don't realize how quickly your thirties come, and it was in my thirties when I started falling apart. Um, fortunately now I'm in my 50s and I feel great.

Speaker 2:

I feel much better now than I did in my thirties, and that's why I wish I could go back and tell myself my younger self you gotta take care of yourself. Don't think that you're going to be, you're going to have the teenage body forever, because you're not.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I have a lot of friends that are business owners that you know they they're not disciplined around that. Um, I I definitely am. I go to the gym almost every day, probably five to six days a week, sometimes seven. Um, and then what we've been doing lately, cause we moved to a different state, so we came from Idaho where it was really cold, and we moved down to Arizona. So my wife and I both work from home and we try to. We go to the gym in the morning. Halfway through the the day we'll go and do like a three-mile walk and then I'm up every hour from my desk as well and try to walk around and do work for my phone, if I need to keep like the momentum.

Speaker 1:

Um, and then the other thing too, just to add to what you said it's like I've gone to the gym for years but I never really paid attention to my diet. I, I still ate whatever I wanted, didn't watch you know how many calories, and I, within the last few months, just have really been dialed on like what I'm eating. And that is a night and day difference, because you can't outwork a bad diet, Um, but it is it. There's a massive, massive difference for at least me. When I don't, the days I don't make it to the gym, just in my lack of mental clarity, my focus, my energy is off and I just don't. I'm not as productive and it makes a big difference going to the gym for me in the morning. I'm up early and go to the gym and come back and I'm like ready to work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let's be clear. I mean, exercise is an addiction. Yeah, it's a good one, it's a. It's one, it's a very positive habit but, like any addictions, if you stop doing it you get withdrawal symptoms and that means like, if you feel like you have this fog a little bit, you feel like anxious Um there's like a lot of symptoms that people might have, like if they exercise constantly and then they don't.

Speaker 2:

But that's good, because this is your body telling you that it really likes the exercise. And this is one of those cases where you could say listen to it and go ahead and give it what it wants. You'll feel a lot better. And even if, like you're at a hotel or something, just you know, bang out 50 pushups or something, do some jumping jacks, run up and down the stairs, I mean you could always do something, Always, even if you have an injury, compensate if, if your arms and a cast do stuff with your legs, if you're walking on crutches, then do stuff with your arms. I mean you could always find something. Don't make excuses.

Speaker 1:

What if you have no arms or legs? Then you're screwed Doing neck exercises. So I want to shift gears slightly and focus on you and your experience with selling your business. What were some things that you needed to have done in your business before deciding to sell?

Speaker 2:

What were some things that you needed to have done in your business before deciding to sell? Basically, you have to kind of get all your ducks in a row, metaphorically speaking. Of course. I needed to clean everything up in a way that I could hand over this package this nice, neat, little tidy package to new people who could then take it and do well with it. So when, when I run like my businesses, it's, it's, I know, it's pretty much just me running things. So I know where everything is, I kind of know the secrets behind everything and I don't need any kind of key because I have all of the knowledge on how to run things.

Speaker 2:

However, that's a big problem if you really want to grow something or if you want to turn it over and sell it to somebody. People don't want that. There are companies that look at your business and they're going to say, okay, what can we do with this? Is this like a mom and pop, where it's really dependent on the mom and pop, or is this kind of like a turnkey situation where we could take it, learn a few things and then we could succeed at it as well? So I had to change the nature of the business from that like mom and popsy type of business to a turnkey type of business that anybody could just kind of jump into and do extremely well with it. So there's a lot of like cleaning up to do for that and that's probably the most important thing that had to be done.

Speaker 2:

And then there's also the marketing of the business, and I never had to worry about that before, because if you're not selling your business or getting rid of it, you don't have to like sell it in the sense like you're trying to sell it to somebody like, oh this is the best business, look at my revenues, look at how much I'm making. You don't have to do that, and I never did. I just knew that I was doing well and that's all that mattered. To make it more marketable, you have to think like a salesperson and you have to start selling your business Again, not literally selling it, but getting it to the point where it's very marketable and you're making it attractive for potential buyers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and the finances are probably a huge piece of that right, because a potential buyer is going to want to walk in and know what the profit and loss looks like, what your cash flow is. Was there anything that came up during the sale of your business that caught you off guard, or something that maybe you just didn't expect to come up during that process?

Speaker 2:

Actually, the sale that I did was a very smooth transaction, relatively speaking, especially for a company that size. I think the reason for that was the company that bought us was a very large telecom. That was just like scooping up businesses left and right. They were doing this kind of like mass market in a way. They didn't care. They just said, okay, show me the financials Looks good. Left and right they were doing this kind of like mass market in a way. They didn't care. They just said, okay, show me the, show me the financials looks good, let's get this deal closed. And there were so many times like during this deal I'm like, really you don't want to know about that, like I think you should know about. They just didn't care, it was just about getting the deal done. And that made it like for me it made it just like a dream scenario, like a very easy transaction where nothing came up with a good payout.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, yeah so, but there were also some businesses that that I was involved in, that I was trying to sell, where people were the complete opposite. I mean, these were people who were pretty much investing every penny that they had into this business and they wanted to know like everything and it was a nightmare process, so it depends on fearful of their risk yeah with the, with the telecom company you guys sold to.

Speaker 1:

Well, and just to clarify, what type of business was this that you sold?

Speaker 2:

it was a web hosting business. Okay, so we hosted websites for other businesses it was a B2B and we sold to a telecom that was primarily providing internet service for users back when there were a lot of different internet service providers and they were branching out into web hosting.

Speaker 1:

And do you think they were just buying up competition to remove, to remove the competition, or do you think where they buying up your business to also have your customer base and and everything else that went along with that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they were trying to. They were a public company, so they were trying to become more attractive. They were trying to just build their base and by doing that, by acquiring different companies I don't think they were worried about a little company like me with my measly revenues compared to theirs. I think that they really just wanted to build a huge hosting empire, which they didn't end up doing. They went bankrupt six months after we closed.

Speaker 1:

Do you think because they're being reckless with how they were buying businesses?

Speaker 2:

Partially, but also because this was 2001. And if you recall 2001, this was the bust, the big dot-com, boom yeah, where the bubble burst, and they were just way overextended.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I was pretty young at the time to remember any of the details of that, but I do know that point in time. Do you think everybody should structure and operate a business with the intention to sell it at some point?

Speaker 2:

Not everybody, but I think it's a good idea to keep that in the back of your mind and I don't think it's necessary to go into the business with that mindset and create the business so it's easily turned over to somebody else or ready to sell. I think it's okay to do what I did and just run it the way you want to run it. But when it's time to bring in investors or when it's time to actually sell, then you got to clean things up and I think that's okay to do it that way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what are some common mistakes you've seen others make when trying to sell a business, or maybe mistakes you feel like you've made?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think well, personally, some mistakes I made is just not being in tune with the financials. That part never really concerned me. Now, when, what I'm doing, I'm extremely concerned about it because I understand how important it is, but before it was just like hey, money's coming in, there's, there's always the more money at the end of the month than there are expenses, there's more revenue. So that's good, you know, and that's pretty much it. But now what I do is like pretty much to the penny. I track every promotion, every, every ad I do for Google. I make sure I've got all the tracking and I follow the, the, the registrations, the signups and I see what pays off, and not only like in a binary sense, like is this ad worth it or not, but which ad is most worth it?

Speaker 2:

Like which is paying off the most, and then how much money could I put into that and is there a point of diminishing returns? So, like, those financial decisions are extremely important, something I neglected early on and I'm not making that same mistake again.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, my wife and I own a bookkeeping firm and she she's the brains behind that. I do more of the backend, business development and marketing, but for us it's been crucial. I think the biggest thing when it comes to tracking your financials is it gives you the confidence to make better decisions within your business. When you I mean you know if for you you just made the example with the Google ads it's like you know what, which one's making a better result for you, and so you can go deeper into it. But if you weren't tracking anything, how do you know what's truly working and what's not? But if you weren't tracking anything, how do you know what's truly working and what's not? Sometimes, I think we go off of feeling or intuition, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that's what's actually happening in the business. I believe a lot of times us as business owners become a little bit blind to. We enjoy the product or the service we're doing so much that we may not realize what things are working better than others. Yeah, and just gives you a lot of clarity.

Speaker 2:

Right, and as an entrepreneur, you have to wear like every hat, including I. Take out the garbage in my office. Uh, because, no cause I'm not going to make my wife do it.

Speaker 2:

So I mean you've got to do like everything and, let's face it, we don't enjoy doing everything. So we tend to focus on the things we do enjoy doing and the other things kind of go by the wayside. So that's that becomes problematic. As an entrepreneur, you've got to train yourself and kind of push yourself to do the things that you really don't like doing until you get to the point where you could hire people that it's like okay, my business is large enough now where I can hire an accountant like a full-time bookkeeper or something or use a firm or whatever, and that makes things a lot easier.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I got a couple of questions before we wrap up. This one may feel a little redundant because we were talking about AI at the beginning, but I've been asking every guest this question, and so I want to get your thoughts on AI and how do you think it's affected business owners and entrepreneurs currently, and how do you think it will affect them in the future.

Speaker 2:

It depends on which business owner and which entrepreneur. Some people, obviously, are embracing it and doing well with it, myself included. I think a lot of people are understanding how impactful it is and how important it is right now and is going to be in the future, and they're learning about it and they're using it and they're integrating it into their business and they're replacing a lot of the mundane things that they used to do with with AI.

Speaker 2:

They're allowing AI to take that and it's for me, it's made like a night and day difference. I mean, it's incredibly. It made me incredibly productive because I could focus on the things that I could uniquely do and the things that I really want to do, and not a lot of the mundane things. A perfect example is with one of the services I used to offer is writing book descriptions. So I would literally have to. I didn't read the whole book, but I would have to skim the book and and then I'd have to kind of put this whole description together based on what I knew about the book, and it was never very good because I didn't read the whole book, you know. So I had to do like the best job and it took me hours to do it. But now, like with AI, you just boom, upload the PDF, write me a description, use sales techniques and be persuasive, and, man, it does an amazing job, and all of this like within 60 seconds. How could you go wrong? You know so.

Speaker 2:

But the on the other end, you said how is it going to affect everybody? Well, guaranteed, it's going to put a lot of people out of business. It's going to put description writers out of business, book description writers, copywriters, I mean, is it going to put everybody out of business or could they use it to their advantage? That's still kind of. We'll see how that works. But I think it's going to replace a lot of mundane jobs, just like technology and advancements have been doing for the past 200 years. The only difference is this is going to be happening at an increasing pace, whereas, like the industrial revolution, even the introduction of computers, pcs, the internet, there was kind of like a gradual climb, but with AI we're going to be seeing this exponential growth. So I just think like if you are concerned about your job with AI, you should be and start looking to branch out what else can you do that you could uniquely do at this point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I'm a firm believer in integrating it into your business. I think I know a lot of people who are just nervous and don't want to use it and they want to put their head in the sand. I'm not usually the optimistic person, but I am optimistic with this in the sense that I think that people still want to do business with people. I don't think it'll replace everybody Right now. I currently use it. We use it for a lot of mundane tasks, things that need to be done. I'm not great at writing podcast descriptions and summaries and stuff, so it's quick, right, like you just said, you can pop that stuff in there.

Speaker 1:

I think the most critical piece I use ChatGPT for on a daily basis is brainstorming with myself. I struggle when it comes to a blank piece of paper, but I know I have a concept or framework that I'm working on and I want to build off of it, and so I'll use it as a back and forth, and I've talked about this on other shows. I've recorded where, if I were to do that with Google, it's going to come up with a million different results that are irrelevant and I won't be able to use them. I'll be searching forever when, with this. I can go back and forth with it and kind of tweak things and I may not use what it's spitting out, but it just helps me build off of it, build from the ideas.

Speaker 1:

The other thing, too, is we've been talking earlier in the podcast about how the barrier to entry with businesses are very low to start a business. I've been seeing a lot of people jumping into the AI space and trying to coach people on AI and all this stuff. Do you think that it'll eventually push a lot of those Like? My feeling is it'll push a lot of those people out. There's gonna be a lot of businesses that start and drop off very quickly over the next, you know, 10, 20 years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, the the timeframe is kind of surprising, I would think like over the next like year. I mean it's it's really fast, where people are going to be coming up with these ideas for businesses. That may be great now, but with AI it's it's going to be useless within you know, who knows six months a year. So you do have to be flexible and and realize that this is the game that you're playing, because it's really easy to get in. You got to understand it's going to be really easy to get pushed out.

Speaker 1:

Right. So one last question for you. If you could leave listeners with one actionable item that would have a positive impact on them today, what would it be and why?

Speaker 2:

I would say make one good change to your diet. Why? Because, like the analogy of the ship that changes one degree over time, it's halfway across the world in a different direction. That's the way it is with uh. With anything you do health wise, and it doesn't have to be just nutrition. You could also look at this as uh getting out and doing a walk or boosting your cardio for 10 minutes a day. It'll have like a huge effect over time. And I like to use nutrition because one of the best things that I did when I was 20, I think I was like 21 years old as a kid all I drank was soda.

Speaker 2:

I mean constantly like a liter of Coke a day.

Speaker 2:

I was a kid of the seventies and the eighties that's how my parents fed me. That was perfectly okay with them, and I have, like you know, eight cavities that with fillings as a kid. All of this before I was like 10 or like after my baby teeth fell out. My adult teeth came in. But anyway, the first thing I did is, like, when I was starting to think about this, I gave up soda and it was very difficult at first, extremely difficult, but only for like a month, uh, but then you know, that was 21,. I'm 52 now, so we're looking at over 30 years of drinking water like water with every meal and like everything tastes delicious. I taste food more. That, like I would. It was the best thing I ever did and it was that one stupid little change and I can imagine what I would look like, feel like, if I would still be around today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so just one little thing, just just pick something pick something and do it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I like it Well. Thank you very much for being on the show. I appreciate you spend the time to come on here and just talk about your experiences with everything you're doing, so thank you it's been a lot of fun. I appreciate absolutely and for everybody listening. I just want to thank you. If you've enjoyed the show and felt like it provided you value, I'd love to hear from you in the comments what stuck out the most to you from today's episode. We'll see you on the next one.