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Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So Chris, welcome to the Visionary Voices podcast.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
Could you give us a top level view about what it is that you're working on right now and
your journey so far?
So yeah, absolutely.
So first of all, thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it.
my name is Chris Allaire.
I am the founder CEO of a technology recruiting firm called Averity.
The company Averity itself has been in business for almost 12 years.
Bootstrapped it from my dining room table 12 years ago with a six month old kind of
crawling around the house and kind of all in, all risk, all award.
So I can share a little bit about that.
But just to give you an idea, so I've been in the recruiting and the staffing business for
30 years, but more importantly is I'm a chronic entrepreneur.
am a, maybe not so much anymore these days, but I am what some people would refer to as a
startup junkie.
I love, you know, I love walking in somewhere and having no boots on the ground.
Like I love.
You know, my career has been, I've done seven, eight or nine or something like that,
startup either companies or offices for companies.
ah So I'm used to being, you know, first boots on the ground and civilization.
the, so all the things that come with it are, you know, I just, love that type of stuff.
it's, it's always a fun, it's always, it's a, it's fun to.
pioneer your own kind of efforts.
know, when there's no preconceived notions on what's kind of going on out there.
So for 30 years, that's kind of what am I doing?
And I kicked open my own business.
I'm kind of the same thing that happened.
You know, I was working for other companies, you know, did one startup, built it to be
very successful.
Didn't really like what was going on anymore.
Sold out my equity position, built the New York City office for another company.
You know, I got to about 15 people over there.
Kind of the same thing.
Didn't like where I was headed.
Just kind of got sick of some stuff.
And that's when I
just put pen to paper and I talked to my wife and I was like, that's it, I gotta go do my
own thing.
I think the only way I'm ever really gonna be happy is just to start my own business.
And she said, well, awesome, let's go and it's about time.
So that's the kind of the quick story of me in a nutshell from an entrepreneurship and a
business and kind of the startup and all that jazz.
Definitely, mean, it sounds to me that you've always had that entrepreneurial itch, let's
say, right?
Where, you the back of your mind, you have that voice going.
And I think, you know, lot of entrepreneurs have that, right?
When they're working a job and they're thinking in the back of their mind, know, maybe I
can do this better, right?
Or things like that.
So, I mean, when you were, I guess, you know, younger, when you were, you know, early 20s,
that type of age, what was going through your mind then?
Were you still thinking of entrepreneurship or were you really just, you know, let me just
get into the corporate side of things and kind of...
know, build my way up through there?
Or what was your mindset there?
Because, you know, a lot of the, you know, the audience, they are kind of in their early
twenties and maybe they're dipping their toe into entrepreneurship or they have that itch
as well.
And it'd good to kind of hear, you know, what you were like during that timeframe and then
what that transition looked like for you.
So I'm actually pretty fortunate because I was raised by an entrepreneur.
So my father was self-employed and I was always, I was always, as far as I can remember, I
was always a business mind.
I really just always understood business.
I understood profit margins.
When I was like 15 years old or 14 years old, my parents laughed at me.
were like, I understood if you buy it for X and I sell it for Y, there's a margin in the
middle.
I get to keep that.
And they're like, yeah, that's the way business works.
I was like, I like this, let's do that.
My father was self-employed in construction.
So I was always like on job sites with him, know, pulling the nails and stuff like that.
But I got to really experience the idea of being self-employed, um know, the work that
came with it.
So being a really good mindset, having a, you know, a family of entrepreneurs.
understanding self-employment really kind of helped out.
So when I started my first job in like the corporate world, I didn't really think about
building my own business or things like that.
I really just understood the business.
So I think that was the key thing is like understanding the business world, understanding
the way fundamental businesses operate.
You're right.
Not just buy goods, sell goods, products and services, stuff like that, but like kind of
an intricacy of like the way the businesses operate.
That's always maybe really good at my job too because I understand the way the business
worked.
But it's very fascinating, right?
It was always, I was like, how do you guys do that?
And then I'd work with startup companies and I'd hear their story and I was like, wow,
this is really super freaking cool.
And I got to a point of my career that all of a sudden, you we were building new offices
and that type of stuff.
And then the idea of like, wow, I would love to be, you know, first boots on the ground.
you know, first one out of the helicopter, just, I would love that opportunity.
And then whenever it was 1999, 2000, something like that, and we kicked open an office in
San Francisco, I was the, or as people would say, I was the first round draft pick.
And it was awesome, and it was a really exciting time, and then I did another office in
San Francisco, and then I just got the bug, and I was like, this is like, you know, the
work.
associated with it is so much fun.
And it is extremely tiring.
And so I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.
It's hard.
And you gotta want the hard.
Anybody who's an entrepreneur who's out there who thinks like, all I'm gonna do is just
create a widget and then it's just gonna go produce money for me and all I gotta do is sit
back and relax and just, know, just, yeah, Benjamins, y'all.
Like that's BS, man.
It doesn't work that way.
Like you've, it's a lot of work.
You know, the first year people talk about that's a lot of work.
I'm like, yeah, wait till the second year.
Because now you wanna grow the business because you need to do more than you did last
year, right?
And then you start getting the new hire people.
And then so, there's so much that goes into all of it.
But right off the bat, don't care.
What tools are out there, you've gotta buckle into the fact that you're gonna work for it.
And if you're open to that and you're one of those workers, you're gonna do really, really
well.
Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree.
And I think for, you know, there's entrepreneurs out there is if they've come from
corporate, right, when they're in corporate, they always say, it was just so boring
compared to entrepreneurship.
And I'm not saying entrepreneurship is always fun, let's say, because there are times
where, as you know, to your point, it's just, it's just difficult and it's just tough,
right.
But then, you know, it's just not boring, right.
And so for me, like, that was a huge thing when I
first left school, I actually went into corporate, did that for a year in a huge business
and I was just bored out of my mind.
And then when I started getting into entrepreneurship, it scratched that itch, right?
And it was just enjoyable, right?
The fact that you can build something and you can see the results of that thing, I think
is the biggest impact that you really get, right?
Is the fact that your work means something if you wanna go deep into the meaning of it.
But for you, like when you were starting out,
Why was it in the staffing industry specifically?
Was it just by chance that, you know, that's what you leaned into or was there a specific
opportunity that came up for you or like how did that all come to come to be?
no, I answered an ad in the newspaper for sale.
And this is going back to 1998, this is when we, it's what we used to do back in the day,
is we answered ads in newspapers.
And it said, if you're interested in sales, call this phone number.
And I said, I wanna be in sales, so I called the phone number.
And then I had a 20 minute interview with some guy, and they're like, great, can you come
into the office?
I was like, sure, get to, so I went into the office in Back Bay, Boston, and I got to wear
a tie.
And I had no idea what I was getting into.
So it was a total accident.
It was one of those, like the second interview, was like, this is a cool, like, what do
you even do here?
I was like, what's this job?
And then I realized, and I really didn't understand what it was until my second week on
the job.
And I was like, I understand what we do.
And at the time, I was 21 years old.
I was just, I was excited to have a job with that I could wear a suit.
like, you know, and I got benefits and made my mom happy and I got to be in Boston.
I got to live with my buddies and I was like, this is fricking great, man.
So it was a really cool, it was just more for me.
was like, get a job, get experience, right?
And then, you know, kind of grew from there.
yeah, staffing recruiting was a total accident for me.
So.
for sure.
For sure.
No, it's definitely interesting.
mean, no, a lot of the friends that I have that are in the staffing and recruitment side
of things.
Again, it was a similar story where the job was there and they just like clicked apply,
didn't really think too much about it.
But then, you know, they've gone on this path of sales.
And I think sales is a really interesting industry to start working in, right?
Because I think sales itself really just teach you a lot about like who you are, because
it's such a...
It's such a challenging job, right?
You're getting told no all the time, right?
You're getting rejections, death, right?
And you still got to push on and still got to do your best to get these results.
And you really got to work on yourself, right?
In my eyes, like a sales role is a little bit like your own entrepreneurship bubble, let's
say, right?
Where you really do need to work yourself in the personal development that comes with like
the bigger game of entrepreneurship.
So how was it, you know, when you're in your early 20s and you're learning this skill of
sales, like, how did you find it?
Was it more natural to you?
itself or was it something that you really had to work on?
Because I think for some people they, I'm not saying like, you know, they're natural born
seller, but they can definitely converse a lot better and it's more natural for them.
Whereas some people, it is a bit of a struggle.
So for yourself, like which bucket do you think you fell into in those early stages as you
were getting into this game of sales?
I was pretty natural in sales.
think for me, well there's different avenues of sales that people need to understand.
And I think it's the full cycle of sales that a lot of people misinterpret, right?
So a of people say, was like, you know, for me I'm very charismatic, I'm very outgoing,
I'm super extroverted, I have no problem walking into a room and just introducing myself
to everybody in there.
Like I was the guy that was like, you know, see the chick at the bar, ahead on her.
I was like, all right, cool, whatever.
Like, I was never, I'm just kind of fearless in that way.
The part, so introductions, right?
One part, that's a step that a lot of people go through initially with sales that is very
kind of an uncomfortable thing.
You know, taking something that's completely cold out of nowhere and turning it into
something that's warm.
So that's one part.
The second part that a lot of people that I find in sales that are, is tracking follow-up,
follow through lead conversion, right?
So getting someone to say hi to you, hey, really nice to meet you, awesome.
They don't buy from you right there, right?
There's follow-up, there's follow-through, there's lead tracking, there's spreadsheets,
there's writing stuff down, there's, you know, you've got hot leads, you've got cold
leads, you've got warm leads, you've got stuff you've got to follow up on in an hour and a
half, you've got stuff you've got to follow up on in a year and a half, right?
So that's the part of sales that I think a lot of people struggle with.
is the follow up and follow through.
And then after you've done the sales and then understanding the sales cycle, right?
Because honestly, like from sales guy, you just want to show up and be like, hey, I'm
Chris.
And like, I'm by two of them.
And you're like, all right, let's go.
And you're doing high.
And then you ring the bell and you do high fives a little bit room and all the stuff that
you see in the movies and all that stuff, which is all a bunch of BS, right?
So none of it works that way.
So there's a lot of work associated with
Right?
You know, people don't understand that someone who bought from you probably met you a year
ago and they just weren't ready yet or they weren't buying then.
And then you had to follow up with them and you had to get to know them.
So there's know you, like you and trust you.
Those are the three common rules of sales.
Now they don't always happen in that order.
So sometimes they have to trust you before they know you and they like you.
Sometimes they have to like you before they trust you.
So everyone's a little bit different.
So I think that's the part that in sales, people don't understand that
There's all these cycles of it.
You've got initial like, I do a whole presentation on this for people because you have
identification, then engagement, then enrollment, then penetration, and then closure.
so you've got all these, identifying all your lead base is one thing.
You're like, great, I've got a bunch of leads.
Names, phone numbers, et cetera, cool.
You gotta get these people engaged with you.
And then after they engage with you, you've got to enroll them.
What's enrollment mean?
What do they buy?
What's their price point?
What are their pain points?
What are they like?
What are they don't like?
What avenue am I selling to?
Right?
So that's how then you're like, I think I had a really good lead come to find out their
budgets are way different than what I'm dealing with.
The product they look for is completely different than what I sell.
So now you're, but like, how do you take that relationship and then convert that into
another relationship?
Right?
So there's
You know, I think a lot of that comes in practice.
A lot of that comes with, in my opinion, I would call common sense.
You know, I think if you understand business theory, you understand networking, if you
understand sales, and what I would call in general, then you will know how to ask the
right questions to get you what you need.
And then that's the of the keys that I learned really, really early on, which has got me
successful very quickly.
And a lot of people, call it, in sales, they call it the hard question.
You have to ask the tough question.
There's no tough questions in sales, right?
The reason we call them a tough question is because we are scared the answer will be no.
So you don't want to ask the question that someone says no to, right?
Yeah, who would suggest to you?
Right?
So you've got to be cool with getting the no.
And if you're cool with getting the no, then you're going to be fine with it.
Then there's no such thing as a tough question.
So that's what I've seen a lot in salespeople training and stuff like that.
like, did you ask the likeable no?
I'm like, well, we'll just ask.
know, my business is like, great.
If they offer you this much, great.
Do you want the job?
A lot of people are scared to ask that question.
Well, it's very direct.
Yeah, it's because it's a yes or no answer.
You want answers that are yes or no.
It's no gray.
It's black or white.
That makes things easy.
It's a yes, great.
Let's jump on it.
If it's no, cool.
Let's talk about it.
And if it's like, maybe, all right, then let's gather some information on this.
But if you're asking rhetorical situational, hey, let's hypothetically say, you're not
going to get anywhere.
That's not sales.
Yeah, yeah.
I completely agree that, is you just need to make the ask sometimes, right, to figure out
what that answer is gonna be.
Because a lot of times when I first started my business is I'll be so scared to make the
ask, right, and ask those questions or those hard questions, as you mentioned.
But then you get to a point where, you know, once you focus on the relationship, once
you've really built up, you know...
I don't say a bond because it sounds a bit corny, but like some type of bond relationship
with whoever it is that you're dealing with, it doesn't actually feel like selling, you
know, in the end, that's what I found, right?
Is that once you've built up enough rapport, relationship, et cetera, then the selling's
like effortless.
What I found before, when I was really trying to force a sale or, you know, I didn't
really know the person, I was just trying to sell them on the spot, that's where I really
struggled to close and all these different things.
And I actually did a stint in a recruitment agency or staffing agency here in the UK.
where was building out the whole kind go-to-market workflows, AI automations, all these
different things that were coming in.
And it really did open my eyes to how important relationships are in sales.
And again, seems, it is common sense, right?
That you need to able to build these relationships.
But a lot of businesses that I work with now, the problem that they have is that they try
and be very transactional, right?
With everyone that they deal with.
And they don't take the time.
that a lot of staffing agencies do take, where they get to know someone and they
understand that if they have a conversation now, they might not need any hiring done for
like another year, year and a half, but you need to keep building that relationship and
staying in front of them.
And that was a huge lesson I learned from working in the industry as well versus what I
was doing before where I was trying to be super transactional.
Everyone that I was trying to, everyone that I spoke to, I was trying to close them
straight away, not taking the time to figure out, okay, where are they right now in that
buying journey?
What do I actually need to offer them?
to move along that buying journey and get them to that final stage of, obviously,
conversion, which we will want.
But yeah, think relationships.
I can tell people out there is like, from a sales standpoint, a good rule of thumb is
this, is everyone wants to buy something, but nobody wants to be sold to.
Right?
So as long as you remember that, you should be in pretty good shape.
the, you know, it's age old analogy, know, years ago, we had these things called retail
stores, right?
I hope we still have them.
know, we don't, that's why Amazon's so nice.
Cause it's like, don't have to, you know, I don't have to work with a sales person.
I can just shop at my leisure, buy eight of them.
send back seven of them and everything's cool.
But if you walk into a store, you have to deal with, you you have to deal with, you get
the salesperson.
And then it's always like, hey, how's it going today?
No, I'm just looking.
Like I didn't ask what you're buying.
I asked you how you're doing.
now that you're, your immediate response is always like, no, I'm just looking.
So, but I'm in there to buy something.
So the, um,
It's an interesting, I don't know, I just found it to be an interesting thing with the way
the human psyche works is everyone wants to buy something but nobody wants to be sold to.
So you gotta be, if you're coming in there, like I was like, you if you're just going in
there with a big S on your forehead, so, you know, you're probably not gonna get far.
um You need to be just, you know, again, build a relationship, get to know them, you know.
Again, they're kind of the three rules I always say is like, know you like, you trust you.
and everyone works a little bit different.
So sometimes it's about delivery, sometimes it's about do we have something in common,
sometimes it's something a little bit different.
you've got to, there's a lot of different things you can do but for like learning how to
read your audience, I'd say that's always the number one rule of sales I always say is
know your audience.
Now first and foremost know your audience is this, are you talking to a decision maker?
Pretty common rule right there.
If you're not talking to decision maker, everything you're selling is gonna go upon, I'm
not gonna say deaf ears, but you're not gonna go anywhere.
If you're selling to a middle person who's gonna relay information, don't kill the
messenger, is know that you're talking to the messenger.
So what do you wanna do?
Well, you wanna butter up the messenger, because you want the messenger to like you.
So they deliver the message.
And when they deliver the message, it's either gonna be like, yeah, by the way, talk to
this guy, Chris, he's over at whatever gives a shit company he is.
Anyway, so he's gonna follow up next week versus like, hey, I just had a really
interesting phone call with this guy, Chris.
He works at this company called Averity.
I don't know if you've ever heard of them before, but they're this national award-winning
staffing firm.
Man, like really good dude.
I think you could really help us out.
You should take a call.
Big, two big different like, so you have to understand who you're talking to.
And if you understand who you're talking to, then you understand how to handle that
situation.
But if you don't know your audience, you're up against a, you might as well just be
talking to a dog.
For sure, for sure.
And I think something that I think about when it comes down to this is, I'm very much a
technical person.
I love knowing all the ins and outs, the details, et cetera.
And when I first jumped on sales, I think I was always trying to sell people in that way.
But I would show you like the full document of all the spec and all the things that we're
gonna do going into all these details.
But what I really learned was, it's similar to what you were saying, where when you know
your audience, you know how they like to be sold to as well.
Some people they like that detail, some people they don't need that detail.
Sometimes they need those stories or just different ways you can phrase things.
But I think knowing your audience is definitely a huge uh lesson for sure, for me at
least, and I'm sure for other people listening, is when you are trying to sell, is you
really need to understand who is in front of you right now, what are their needs, desires,
et cetera, to your point about decision makers as well, is are they gonna be a champion in
your corner?
or are they, you said, just gonna pass on that message and actually not try to push it as
well.
So I think it's a really cool uh lesson there.
I'd love to move forward a little bit into the current day-to-day of what you're building
right now.
Obviously with AI technology changing a lot of industries, know, staffing industry as
well, it is of course evolving.
So what are you seeing right now when it comes down to like these new technologies and
implementing these into your current business and your current day-to-day?
operation and how these affecting uh the way you're running things.
So the interesting thing about technology is people understand is so uh there's a new
technology all the time.
Right.
And there's a new shiny object in the room all the time.
So the differences with these shiny objects is pretty simple.
um If you if you're going to be an early adapter you have to understand that they're going
to fail the majority of the time.
Right.
If you're going to turn around and rely
on the technology to do your job for you, you're going to fail the majority of the time.
If you're going to look at the technology as like, hey, let's test this out, let's see if
we can implement it while I'm doing my job, you're going to do okay majority of the time.
So technology is a, um it's a great tool that can make your life a little bit easier.
But if you think it's gonna do your work for you and you wanna rely on it,
I wish you the best and I will see you in the end.
I will not see you but you will be in the unemployment line and that's not you know, so if
you're relying on you know AI is this really neat thing right now, but it's been 95 % fail
rate.
The reason why it's 95 % fail rate is because it's two years old right now.
It's gonna wrap a little longer than that.
But really it's just it's an infant.
So if you're willing to hand over your business to a infant.
You know you're going to get what an infant is going to give you.
which are bad results, terrible understanding, and then you're looking at it and being
like, why, you're supposed to do all this for me?
It's like, dude, that's because you didn't, don't blame the infant because you decided to
leave the room for five minutes.
It's like, I have an eight-year-old daughter and it's like, if I turn around and look at
my eight-year-old daughter, it's like, hey, I'll cook dinner for the whole family tonight
and I'm gonna take off.
And then if I got mad at her for burning it, whose fault is that?
It's not the eight-year-old, it's mine.
Like dude, you still gotta supervise this shit.
Don't get mad at the kid for doing something that you thought she was gonna be able to do.
So that's the way a lot of people treat new technologies.
And I see it all these days.
This is why larger organizations that have been around for hundreds of years are slowly
adapting to things.
But they've been successful for years.
Big, stodgy, boring, calm when you will, stand the test of time.
you know, the flash in the pan that burnt through a hundred million or a couple hundred
million in funding or burned through a billion and went out of business, well, that's
because you were reliant on the get rich quick thing and that doesn't really work.
So if you want to rely on technology to do job for you, go ahead and do it.
Good luck.
I wish you the best.
If you want to use it as a really cool tool to figure out as you go on what you can really
do with it, that's a better idea.
But I'm going to say this is you'll spend
probably 50 % of your time just figuring out how to use it.
So, you know, if you're looking for problems for it to solve, have fun with that.
If you have a list of things that like, this would be really cool if I could automate
these back office operations, then you're starting at the right position.
The other thing with that is this, is again, do you know your audience?
Do you know what else is out there?
Do you know what your competition is doing, right?
If you're gonna grab AI and you're just gonna spit out a bunch of spam automated emails, I
hate to tell you this, not only is that not gonna work, but you haven't done your
research, right?
So if that's your big game plan, I'll see you in unemployment.
ah But this idea is like, it is an interesting thing.
So technology is a tool to help you make your job easier, a little bit better.
is to help make all your hard work more, hopefully get better results out of it.
But if you think, you know, you're just gonna turn around and hit the ease button and let
tech do all the work for you.
Let me know how that goes.
Yeah.
No, I completely agree.
you know, a lot of the things that we're seeing now from, from like the marketing side of
things, like business operations and automations is you do need to have those human touch
points throughout the workflows, right?
Where it is generating pieces of content, for example, right?
Is that you still need the human intervention to check, the quality, you know, QA, all
these different things as well.
And so, you know, a lot of the challenges that we had is
when AI started to really come out and become accessible to everyone is we tried to
automate a lot of things too quickly.
And what we found was that the quality and the amount of issues that that brought with it
was quite a lot.
And so now we've settled in this middle ground where, yeah, we're looking at things that
we can automate, things that we can build workflows for, et cetera.
And because of that, we have quite a lean team where we don't have to hire loads more
people.
We're getting a lot of efficiency, let's say.
But that being said, we still have those human touch points about the workflows because
you can't trust it going from zero to a hundred.
You do need to have those, this kind of breaks throughout it to make sure it's on the
right track.
And it will be interesting to see what happens over time with a lot of the AI companies
that are coming out because to a point about a cold emails and, know, if you will spam out
emails, it's so interesting.
A lot of the companies.
that I speak to, they're always asking, you what tool should we use to create AI generated
emails and blah, blah, blah.
And like, we always tell them like, just don't do it because like how many emails can we
see on our inbox right now where you can clearly see it was written by AI and it's just so
obvious nowadays.
And when you do that, not only are you like burning that lead and that person is just
going to send you to spam straight away.
But also it's just not giving you a good impression, right?
In terms of the business, cause you've not done your research, you're doing your audience
to a point.
And so when you really have more, let's say intention behind your communication, you just
get way better results, right?
Because you're focusing on the right things.
uh So yeah, I completely agree with you in terms of where you need to start and what you
need to work on when it comes down to it.
But just don't fully automate something unless you have some those human touch points
throughout that workflow to some degree.
uh I think that's my biggest piece of advice for people looking to automate right now.
I, yeah, I think it's pretty good, man.
I like it.
Yeah, because I've seen too many people learn all, they're like, it just, I know.
I have my own brother's in AI.
I use it all day long, I use it every day.
I use it for all certain things.
It's all operational stuff, I'll tell you that.
I don't do, I don't interview people with it.
I don't use it for outreach.
Everything I do is very human.
I have no problem with spelling mistakes.
I have no problem punctuation.
I have no problem with grammar.
I have no problem if I spell the word you're wrong.
I'm okay with that.
You know what, and sometimes I just don't even, I don't even give a hoot anymore because
I'm like, you know what, like it's just, it's authentic.
You know, it's like great, I fat fingered a word and it spell checked it and it's like,
then I read it I was like, man, my bad.
And it's okay, no one cares.
you know, which is the funny thing is nowadays people are almost like, you know what, keep
it genuine, keep it authentic.
And it is hysterical though, because if you read social media and you read this stuff, so
many people have turned, I think it cracks me up because they don't, you know, if you, so
I'll say this out loud and I don't want to listen.
If you throw an idea into AI and AI writes it for you and you cut and paste it, you're not
a thought leader.
Okay?
You are nobody.
You're basically nothing.
Cause everybody has ideas.
And if AI did it all for you and you just cut and paste it and you put it in there, you're
not a thought leader.
Because I would not engage with your services.
You want to know why?
Because I also have the same AI.
I have the same when you do.
I'm not gonna get engaged with you.
I'm gonna engage with your AI.
So,
unless you show me your expertise, right?
That I can trust.
Until then, all you are is just someone typing a bunch of crap in a chat GPT and having it
spit back out with all the fun emojis and the formats and everything else that's out there
these days.
I'm like, you didn't write one bit of that.
Well, I edited it.
I did that also.
But I'm like, you know what, I realized this a while ago, months ago, that I was like,
this is bullshit and people can see right through it.
And so the lack of authenticity, the lack of trust, that's the one thing I've realized out
there with AI these days is it's eroding trust because of all the crap emails, right?
The 75 to 80 I get.
I don't even bother to unsubscribe anymore.
It all goes right to spam.
I wrote an app script in my email.
So now in...
95 to almost a 95 % level, it doesn't even hit my inbox anymore.
It goes right into spam.
So I won't even see it.
So which is great though.
So now, which means your AI generated email is already in spam, which means if you
actually have something that's good for offer me, doesn't matter.
It's never gonna get through my spam filter anyways, you're in spam forever.
So if that's what you want, congratulations, you've done it.
Or you've got to get more.
and you gotta start realizing again that you're like, you know what, it takes a lot of
work to build a business.
It takes a lot of work to get in front of clients.
It takes more than one touch points.
It takes like 12 touch points over a 90 day period of time.
And if you're not willing to do those 12 touch points from all these different various
angles between a video, phone calls, voicemails, a letter, LinkedIn messages, other social
media content, shit man, you've gotta get creative with this stuff.
And if you're not willing to do it, accept the fact that you will be putting someone's
spam on it.
That's it, that's all you are.
So trust is a massive commodity right now.
You trust your network, who you know, and honestly, even people that I know that have been
doing what they've been doing for a long time, they've turned their business over to AI.
And then I always say this, I'm like, well, great, if you've turned your business over to
AI, why would I pay you?
Mmm.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna pay you.
I'm not gonna pay you for that.
So you've now officially rendered yourself useless.
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree.
I agree.
And it's gonna be interesting to see how this, this plays out over time, because I think
the way I'm looking at it is if, for example, LinkedIn is a really good example of this
right now, is a lot of the influencers or people that are posting on LinkedIn, etc.
It all sounds the same.
And so it's really hard to differentiate who is to your point, who is a thought leader,
who can actually trust who would I go to if I needed a service to be done, because
honestly, it just all sounds
It's all written in like the same format, maybe it's slightly different here and there,
but overall it's all the same.
And that comes through.
And so it is gonna be interesting to see how this plays out over time because obviously it
means that more and people are posting content, but the content sounds the same.
How do you actually stand out?
And something that we've really internalized with the clients that we work with and
everything like that is things like building relationships, right?
Is taking it back to the basics of, you wanna grow your business,
it just comes back to, okay, how can we get in front of uh our ideal clients and just
optimize to have more conversations with them, like genuine, authentic conversations.
And if you can optimize for that, then naturally the business will take care of itself.
It will grow and it will be okay.
But when you try and force it too much, when it comes down to like AI generated content
all the time and everything, then you just sound and you kind of oh blend into all this
stuff that's out there right now.
So.
Yeah, I think to your point is definitely definitely correct in terms of what I'm seeing
right now as well And also what I can't sing that's why you know a lot of them come to us
to start building these authentic conversations and relationships Let's say as well
Definitely.
Awesome.
Well, one of the final questions we always ask on this show is if you can go back to your
18 year old self and only take three lessons with you, whether it's some philosophical
knowledge, some business knowledge, some just general advice, what would those three
lessons be and why would it be those things?
I can go back to 18 and three lessons other than by Tesla, Nvidia and other than that
advice.
um So advice that I'll give myself.
Number one.
um
Well, I actually know what's interesting, because it's the same things I tell myself all
the time.
Life is ever-changing.
Adapt.
Adaptation, growth, never be comfortable.
I say never be comfortable, but enjoy comfort.
Don't play life like a, you know, enjoy life like it's a game, right?
If you look at life like a flowing river,
you know, ups and downs, rocks and twigs and waterfalls and all sorts of stuff, you're
gonna do, you're gonna, you're gonna be fine.
You're gonna go through love and loss.
You're gonna have breakups.
You're gonna have bad things happen to you.
You're gonna have great things happen to you.
um Live, play the game and just, love every minute of it.
You know, it goes all the way in there, like grow, learn.
um I'm a big journaler.
I love the journal.
my thoughts and reflections on things and I go back and I read them.
And I like to read them because I think it's important to understand kind of where you've
been and where you are.
So it's not so much like, you know, those three things in general, but I've learned over
time that that is the most um thankful thing in my life that I have remembered and I have
learned that I would say like, dude, you know what?
in the next 30 years of your life, you're gonna go through some shit.
And it's gonna be awesome, and some of it's gonna be devastating.
And sometimes you're gonna wake up and you feel like your feet are never gonna be on the
floor, and other days you're gonna wake up and you're gonna wish your feet never hit the
floor because you're walking on air.
And some nights you're gonna be sleepless, and some nights, you know, sleepless because
you're haunted by...
ah by demons and other nights you're gonna be sleepless because you're...
you just can't wait to get to work.
That's the game though.
And understanding that all these trials and tribulations and the successes and the
failures are gonna go through, all they are are just all the dots that you're gonna
connect that are gonna make your...
Life what it is.
experiences are going to...
Knowledge becomes wisdom through experience.
So the older you get, the wiser you get, not because of what you've read, because of what
you've experienced.
And embrace your experiences.
And the love of God, man, have fun.
Understand this, you can't control the future and the past is all done.
You have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow.
The future is your imagination.
So live out there, don't live in the past.
Love where you are and just wake up every day with curiosity, trust, gratitude, and an
open heart.
Yeah, think that's probably one of the one of the best answers we've had to that question.
So thank you very much for that.
And, you know, thank you for taking the time today to jump on the show.
I really enjoyed the conversation.
So many golden nuggets in there for everyone listening.
So yeah, thank you so much.
It has been my pleasure, Thank you for, thanks for the opportunity.
I really appreciate it.