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383: AI Is Coming For Your Job, Here’s How to Prepare
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Ever feel like the future of your job or business could be snatched away by AI before you’ve had a chance to adapt? I know I do—and in this episode, we’re diving headfirst into exactly what you need to watch out for.
This week on Podcast Junkies, host Harry Duran sits down with Matt Rouse, host of the Digital Marketing Masters podcast, AI futurist, author, and yes—AI Chicken Wrangler. Matt Rouse brings a unique blend of digital marketing expertise and real-world insight into what technology is doing to reshape small businesses and creative careers.
The main theme explores how AI is fragmenting social media, transforming local marketing, and pushing business owners to reevaluate where they invest their time and energy. Matt Rouse shares his track record for predicting tech trends (he got 13 out of 15 AI predictions right years before they happened) and offers practical advice for anyone running a local business, a niche startup, or even starting their own podcast.
But this episode isn’t just about doom-and-gloom predictions or runaway robots. Harry Duran and Matt Rouse get personal about parenting in a tech-driven world, universal basic income, and why understanding how to work with AI (rather than ignore it) is now an essential business skill. They also unpack how real relationships, local connections, and creativity might just be the human edge in a future dominated by algorithms.
Curious where your job, your marketing efforts, or even your family's future sits in this rapidly changing landscape? Hit play and future-proof your thinking—this is a conversation every business owner, marketer, and creative needs to hear.
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Key Takeaways
Reevaluate Your Marketing Channels:
Matt Rouse stresses that social media has become highly fragmented, making it essential for business owners to reassess where they invest their marketing time and resources. Instead of sticking to traditional platforms, focus on niche-specific or local platforms where your target audience actually spends time.
Prioritize Local Marketing for Local Businesses:
If you run a local service business or have a physical location, shift your energy towards local marketing strategies (like optimizing Google Business pages and partnering with local influencers). Generic, broad social media marketing isn’t as effective anymore for localized businesses.
Use Automation Tools to Save Time and Increase Results:
Take advantage of solutions like SMB Autopilot (developed by Matt Rouse), which automates and optimizes local SEO. These kinds of autopilot tools deliver results and monthly reports without manual effort, freeing up business owners to focus on their actual work and families.
Learn to Work with AI (Don’t Ignore It):
The people who know how to leverage AI in their businesses and workflows will have a significant advantage. Matt Rouse advocates treating AI as a partner—explaining tasks to it and learning how to get the best results. Ignoring AI or underestimating its pace of growth can leave you behind.
Focus on Customer Language and Needs, Not Personal Preference:
Understand that you are not your customer. Your preferred platforms and lingo might not match your audience’s. Invest time in audience research, listen to your client base, and adapt your marketing language and channels to where your customers actually spend their time online.
Tweetable Quotes
"You really need to speak the language of your customer and identify where and what they're doing. Remember that you are not your customer—your opinion of the best place to go on social isn't the choice. The choice is where your customer goes."
"There has never been a time in my child's life when she talked to a piece of electronics and it didn't either answer her or understand what she's saying. AI has been a thing that's in daily life since she's been able to remember. That's crazy."
"The more things are fake, the more people are going to want and pay for things that are real."
Connect with Matt
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmrouse/
Resources Mentioned
Podcast Junkies Website: podcastjunkies.com
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Transcript
1
::So, Matt Rouse, host of the Digital Marketing Masters podcast, thank you so much for
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::joining me on podcast Junkies. Hey,
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::thanks, Harry, for having me on. Also, I should have added to your title
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::chicken wrangler extraordinaire. That's right, the
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::AI Chicken wrangler that's been starting to stick for the last
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::couple years. As someone who's relocated from New York, then to
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::LA and now end up in Minnesota and now have seven chickens myself, I
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::can relate to that journey. What kind of chickens do you have? A
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::couple of buff Orpingtons Americanas. They're cold weather gals.
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::We get to minus 20 down here. So they made it to their first winter
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::already. So it's what? Good, good. Yeah, I got a bunch of
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::Orpingtons too. What's your favorite chicken name? I'm assuming they're all named or
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::some of them. They're pretty much all named. I've got a
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::giant lavender Orpington rooster named Big Hero, who's all
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::gray like the Big Hero movie character who's a robot.
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::So I thought that was kind of on the AI track. Yeah. I don't know
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::what the experience has been like for you, but as a former city guy who
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::now we're planting our own garden and we've got the chickens and
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::some light homesteading, it's been a shift, but a much
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::deeper appreciation for where food comes from and growing your own food as well.
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::Absolutely. Yeah. We used to live just outside of Portland, Oregon,
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::and now we live in Nova Scotia. So we went
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::from a town of several million to a town of
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::500. Yeah. And we have more
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::chickens than people. They're fun once you get used to them. Also want to give
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::a shout out to Ben Albert, who made the introduction. I've had a lot of
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::great conversations with people who have come his way and then connected with him
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::previously. Yeah, Ben's great. And I actually met
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::Ben at an event in Las
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::Vegas for digital. It was like the last digital marketer. Okay,
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::Is that the one that was in San Diego? It used to be in San
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::Diego. They moved to Las Vegas after Cvent took it over. Yeah,
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::he's a good guy. Yeah. No, they don't have him anymore, so.
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::Yeah, actually they don't have that. They canceled that conference last year. And
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::then this year the cex, the Content
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::Entrepreneur Expo in Cleveland, was apparently. Was the last one also.
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::So two of my three conferences a year that I go to are gone now.
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::So I don't need another reason what. To do with myself these days. Another reason
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::to get out of the house. So I was digging into a bit of the
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::prolific work you've done. What stood out for me was these
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::15 predictions you made about AI in your first book and the fact that 13
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::of them came true. So that's just either remarkable
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::foresight or you figured something out that most people are missing.
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::And I was really curious. Obviously, AI is
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::on top of everyone's mind. Now, you've talked about the death of social in pure
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::attainment and this real threat of job displacement. So what would
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::you say is the number one trend most business owners
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::are completely blind to right now? And that'll hit them in the next 12 months?
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::Oh, that is a tough one. If it's going to be the next 12 months,
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::I would say the biggest thing is
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::not reevaluating the time you're spending on
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::marketing because, you know, in the pure
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::Tamen book, it wasn't the death of
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::social media, it was the death of everyone being on the
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::same handful of platforms of social media. Right.
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::So the separation there is that social media has
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::completely fragmented, and it's fragmented by
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::things that people don't expect. Right. Like by hobby is one
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::option. Right. So people who are super
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::into, like a specific hobby will gravitate
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::towards a social media platform where other people of that hobby are on.
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::And that's really difficult for you to figure out if you're a business owner.
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::Right. The other thing is there's so many platforms, you
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::can't possibly know them all. Right.
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::And some of them are super confusing, honestly. Right. Like,
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::you go to somebody who has basically no, you know,
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::digital marketing experience, and you tell them you need to build an audience on
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::Discord, they're going to think you're crazy. Right. And
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::they've never even heard of it, let alone open it up. Like, I know
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::how to use Discord. I've been on it for six years. I barely use it,
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::you know, because I can't figure out how to get all the messages and stuff
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::to everyone. It always takes. I have to like, relearn it every time I go
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::in there. Yeah. You know, or you tell somebody to use, you know, use Reddit,
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::who's never used it before, and, you know,
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::the first thing they do is go, I'm Bob and I have a
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::H VAC company. And everybody votes downvotes their stuff and then they.
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::Their post gets banned, you know. So anyways,
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::yeah, I think the blind spot is that social media is fragmented. The things they
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::used to do that worked are diminishing returns that take
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::more effort, so they're spending more time to get less results.
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::So what you have to do is reevaluate where you're spending your time and try
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::and figure out where is the audience that you need
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::to talk to. And if, you know, in a lot of cases,
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::kind of generic social media may not
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::be the thing for you to do anymore. Yeah, yeah.
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::It seems like, you know, you talked about this idea that
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::we've left traditional social media behind and
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::as a business owner, you know, or a B2B service company or a local
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::restaurant, what can they actually do differently
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::starting tomorrow given what you just said?
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::So the most difficult part with that
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::is that the easy answer to everything is it depends. Right.
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::It's like a big sticker. You can just slap on there and say it depends.
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::But the problem is it does depend. It depends on what type of business you
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::are. Right. If I am a local service
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::business and I have a service area or a physical
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::location, the best thing you can do for your business
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::is spend as much time and effort on local marketing as you can.
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::Trying to do social media where you've got a following of who knows who from
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::who knows where is very like, it's
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::very difficult to get traction in that way.
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::Partnering with other people who have a local following is a great way
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::to do social media in those cases. But if you're a business who
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::say maybe you have a specific niche
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::product or a direct to consumer direct B2B product that's
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::for a niche, but they're not in a localized area,
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::then you're really going to want to try and drill down on audience
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::research to say, where are the people in my industry and where do they
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::spend time online and that's where you want to spend all of your time.
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::Also using advertising platforms, they are getting more
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::expensive as time goes on, but they are
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::still an excellent way to reach your target audience,
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::especially if you can use the
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::targeting system properly to get them or you have an agency or something who can
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::help you do that. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously a big challenge for
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::local business owners who have to think differently than the traditional
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::magazine ad or newspaper ad. That worked probably 30 or 40 years ago. And
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::they really, it's like business owners now and small business owners have to wear so
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::many different hats. And now it's this idea of like people becoming
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::creators, which you've mentioned as well, and home studios taking over.
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::And I think you even touched on how these are being watched more than just
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::traditional studio, like big studio TV. Shows
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::by a long shot, like it's not even in the same
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::neighborhood anymore. And
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::if you look at, here's a recent
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::example, I don't know how old your kids are. If you have kids. No kids,
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::but I'm 55. All right, well, my daughter's nine
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::and you know, I'm 52.
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::But almost every like
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::preteen to, you know, 12 or 13 year old
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::basically in North America right now is putting the number
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::67 everywhere that they go on everything and they're saying it all the time
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::and nobody knows what it's about. And what it's about is a viral
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::video that was targeted specifically around kids. Because kids like
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::that type of video where they just say like 6,
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::7 in the video. And so like all the kids are repeating it and they're
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::saying it. And I'm seeing like I saw a post on LinkedIn
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::where somebody's like some kid wrote the number 6, 7 on the path in my
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::garden. And I don't know what it means, you know,
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::like, nobody knows what that means. Right. But that's the thing is that
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::it's so hard to keep up with any of the things that are going on
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::in social media. But when it comes to like
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::regular television, that one video has been
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::seen more than every single television show that's on TV
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::right now combined. Wild. It's only been in like a few days.
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::The speed with which the morality is. Tough, the speed with which this stuff takes
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::off, it's crazy. And like you said, it's. It could be the most innocuous thing
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::that someone decided was a trend. Some 12 or 13 year old decided
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::it was a trend and now it's like millions and billions of. And as anyone
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::who's even five years older plus than them, you're
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::completely like in the dark. You have no idea what they're talking about. It's like
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::another language. Well, and people don't even know what the language is. Right. That kids
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::are using. I think one of the things that I find
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::interesting is language that used to be used kind
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::of around Gen X time saying like, oh, that's sick. Yeah.
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::You know, and that kind of stuff has really started to be used again by
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::younger people. Like especially ones who are like 20 and under. Yeah, yeah,
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::right. They're like, oh, that's so sick, it's gross. You
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::know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So there's sometimes there's terminology
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::changes. And I remember my parents when I was a kid, they were like, why
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::would you want something to be sick? That's disgusting. You know,
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::and so I mean, there's also this kind of gap,
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::right, where you have the knowledge of
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::your business and who your business is for, but you don't need to
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::know what 12 year olds are talking about right now. Unless you sell something for
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::12 years. Right. Like that's uncommon, right? For
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::most of us. Yeah. So I think you really need to
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::speak the language of your customer and you
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::need to identify where and what
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::they're doing and remember that you are not your customer.
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::Right. So your opinion of what is a good place to go
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::on social is not the choice. The choice is where my
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::customer goes. What has that journey been like for you as someone who's in
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::marketing and doing your best to have your finger on the pulse? And
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::obviously with AI, you know, it seems like you definitely were ahead of trend there.
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::Do you search different sources? Do you have different people
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::you follow? You can't be following mainstream stuff because obviously
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::they're not. They're usually way behind the curve. So how do you,
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::what do you do to stay ahead for trends like this, to see things that
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::are coming, that are going to be in the zeitgeist, you know, five years from
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::now? It's difficult, right? I mean, you kind of
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::have to do a lot of research and you could get signed up
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::to a lot of different newsletters of different groups. And I also,
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::I do a lot of networking, you know, with other agency owners, but
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::also business owners. And then I have my own clients. Right. Which I have a
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::marketing agency in the US and one in Canada. So I have lots of business
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::owners I can talk to on a regular basis. And,
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::you know, my daughter's young, so I get to see if we do some volunteering
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::with like the. They just did Alice through the Looking Glass at
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::our community theater. And so we got to like, do some promotions for that and
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::we get to talk to all the kids and stuff. And so you kind of,
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::you know, soak it in a little from everywhere. My favorite place
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::is probably the feed on Reddit, just the popular
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::feed. I also, in kind of my spare
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::time, we'll quote spare time, I make
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::Roblox games. Okay. So we made a game my daughter and I
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::worked on called Pug Finder. You just find these little Pug dogs all around
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::the map. And, you know, you go in the Roblox forum and the
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::average age of a person, there's probably 16, you know, and they're all
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::using the language that they use now. And it's not like a live forum,
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::it's just like a posting. Yeah, you Know, developer
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::posting. People are posting, you know, clips of
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::this is the game that I built, or, you know, this is the code I
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::use to make the ball turn red and shiny, you know, and that kind of
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::stuff. Right. But yeah, and then, you know, somebody else is like, that's sick
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::or whatever it is. Right. Whatever the language that they're using around it. Also,
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::the. My daughter likes to watch YouTube and
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::like, I prefer that she watches long form YouTube over any. I don't
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::let her use any other social media or anything. Like, we try to keep her
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::off of YouTube shorts and. Because
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::technically, look up the effective short video on,
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::you know, people's growing brains and you'll find out that it's not a great
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::idea. So anyway, but I like to watch what
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::she's watching and see what it is and, you know, talk to her about it
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::and stuff like that. What's been the biggest shift in
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::your life when you became a dad?
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::Wow. I mean, that's. It was. It's tough because
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::I used to live in basically an all adult world. Yeah,
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::right. Like, I played like a billiard pool league
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::where we play at bars on, like Wednesday night. You know,
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::we would stay out late at night and not get up early
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::in the morning. And, you know, because also I worked on the west coast, so
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::most of my clients were ahead, you know, time wise. Yeah. And it's
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::just, you know, it was going from that completely
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::adult world to a world that has to include children,
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::which wasn't something I like. I knew people who had kids, but we
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::didn't hang around with them with their kids, you know, and then,
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::yeah, we started to like, you know, meet other families in our neighborhood and stuff
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::who had children. And, you know, you meet the parents of other kids from school
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::and stuff like that. And so it's really a pretty
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::big change of the people you're interacting with on a regular
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::basis. Yeah. And also understanding what
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::it's like to be a kid again, but also
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::trying to make decisions around what you think
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::is gonna be good for a child in the near future with very
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::little control over what the future's gonna bring. The world we live in right now
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::is so different from ours growing up and, you know, just
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::the idea of having Facebook on all the time. When I was like a teenager
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::in my early 20s, it's just like a horror show to even think of what.
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::How that would have turned out. So I feel like the challenges of
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::being a kid now, and I grew up in the club culture, I would go
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::to see DJs and you see old pictures of people in the club.
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::They're just listening to the DJ now. It's just everyone's got their phone up and
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::it's like. And no one's answering. It's like we just live in a completely different
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::world. That's always. I feel like it's always online all the time.
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::Well, I mentioned in the AI Take My Job that
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::there has never been a time in my child's life
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::when she talked to a piece of electronics and it didn't either answer her
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::or understand what she's saying. Never. Right.
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::You get. Since she's been able to remember,
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::AI has been a thing that's in daily life.
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::That's crazy. I remember when you didn't even have
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::graphics on computers. DOS prompt. You're like using
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::your. Yeah, your DOS prompt is just like a flashing
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::green sea. And your monitor was 17 inch monitor weighed
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::like 200 pounds and, you know, took up your whole desk.
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::And I was typing in software from the back of compute
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::magazines when I was 10. You know. What was
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::your earliest computer, your first computer? I had an Atari
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::800. Okay. Which is eight bit. Yeah.
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::Had 16 kilobytes of RAM and that
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::ballot modem. I had a tape recorder as a hard drive. I think my first
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::one was like a tape drive. Texas Instruments,
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::right? Oh, yeah, the ti. Like the TRS 80. Yes, it was one of
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::those. And then a Tandy 1000, I think short shortly after. Oh, yeah,
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::nice. Tandy's a good one. Yeah. I have, you know what?
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::I. We're talking about my shirt, my Dungeons and Dragons shirt, right. And I
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::said I collected old Dungeons and Dragons stuff. I have the
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::original Dungeons and Dragons game from Intellivision if you're.
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::Oh, yeah, television. That's right. It had like the giant console and it had
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::the paddles on it. Like the little turn paddles on them was
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::Intelliv. Plastic cards you'd slide into the buttons. Oh, that's
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::right. Was Intellivision the one with Night Driver? Night
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::Driver with the little. Yeah, yeah, I had that.
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::So, yeah. I mean, if you think about it, the
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::Moore's Law is that computing power basically
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::doubles every 18 months. And that's been around, you know,
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::forever, right? Since like it's been happening,
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::arguably. I mean, maybe not exactly 18 months,
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::but arguably since the first kind of computers that were
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::using like vacuum tubes and stuff, like way, way back before
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::I was born. Right. And the amount of
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::computing power that has kind of come out since
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::then is. I forget the exact
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::number. It's like A. It's a number so ridiculous that you don't even remember how
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::it is. It's like somebody saying a bazillion Z billion, you know? Yeah.
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::It's something like a hundred thousand trillion more
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::computing power than was around then. Right. It's just some ridiculous number
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::that I can't remember. And AI doubles
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::in power, arguably, because nobody has
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::a metric to say if an AI is
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::more productive than a previous one. You can argue around how many
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::parameters it has, how much memory it has, what tests it can do.
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::They have to keep coming up with new tests because it keeps passing all the
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::old tests. So you can't use the same test to measure it as the last
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::one. Right. But arguably it
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::improves doubles in ability every seven months. Wow.
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::So that means it's Moore's Law, but more than
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::twice as fast. And then you also
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::have another kind of odd thing, and that's that
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::our kind of human brains are linear, Right.
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::They're not exponential, because you would never see, like,
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::you know, a cheetah on the savannah or whatever,
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::running and increasing in speed, getting halfway across the horizon and then
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::disappearing because it was exponentially fast. Right.
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::So your brain doesn't understand how exponential
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::progress works. You kind of have to force yourself to understand it.
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::But when two exponential technologies are
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::combined, you get what's called hyper
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::exponential, right? So it doesn't double,
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::it quadruples. So, and
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::then if you had a technology that doubles, it would be double
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::the first seven months, quadruple the next seven months.
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::But this would be four times the first seven months, and then eight times
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::the next, and then 16 times. Right. And so you look at
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::that with something like autonomous robots,
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::robotics and the speed of research and automation and
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::robotics is doubling at a rate that I don't know if anyone has a
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::measurement for it at this point, but you combine that with the doubling
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::of computer power 18 months and the doubling of AI
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::every seven months, and let's say robotics is 18
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::months, just like computers. That means every year and a half,
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::your robot is somewhere between 4 and 12 times better than it
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::was the previous year and a half. Right. And that's why
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::now there's household robots that can sort of do your
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::laundry and dishes, you know, under certain circumstances, and
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::maybe they can help out a little bit in the warehouse, but 18
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::months ago, the thing couldn't walk up a stair, Right?
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::So, yeah, you get this kind of hyper exponential thing. Those Boston
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::Robotics videos are a bit scary and creepy. Every time I see one,
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::it's just like, especially the humans Pushing them down. I'm like, why are you
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::pushing? Why are you antagonizing the robot, knocking them over
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::and then running through the field? It's pretty wild. At least wear a mask
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::or something so the future robots can go back and look at it. That's
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::how I always say please in my chat prompts. For some reason, I can't stop
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::doing that because I'm like, they take over. At least they'll recognize that I was
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::one of the polite ones, one of the polite humans. And also,
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::arguably, it works better if you do that, I think. I
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::don't have any. There's no scientific evidence behind this, but I think
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::if you give it a Persona and a name and you use it like you
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::would with a regular person, that it kind of gives this.
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::It's the idea of instead of AI being used as a tool,
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::that AI is a partner in the work you're trying to do. Yeah.
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::And maybe you're just better at explaining it if you kind of
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::anthropomorphize it a bit, Right? Maybe. I don't
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::know. But I find it works. And I think that,
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::like, there's an argument that everybody says that,
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::you know, AI is not going to take your job.
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::Somebody else using AI is going to take your job. And I don't think that's
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::true, really. I mean, it's sort of true, but not really. What's actually going to
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::happen is a group of people are going to get together
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::who are partnering with the AI systems as if they are other workers.
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::Right. And they're going to either build a business or
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::revolutionize a business that is related to your work or the
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::business or industry you're in, and they're going to disrupt that
356
::industry, and that's how you're going to lose your job. I see that a lot,
357
::especially at the pace of truth stuff is being developed. Even this little.
358
::This new browser war. We have AI browser wars. I think I've seen like six
359
::or seven AI browsers show up in, like, the past two weeks, and they're all,
360
::like, exponentially better than the previous one. And Atlas just came out.
361
::It's only on iOS right now is. A new one called Strawberry Browser. I don't
362
::know if you've seen that one. They're doing some pretty interesting work. Strawberry
363
::Perplexity's got one. So you mentioned this term
364
::cascade failure in job markets. Can you define what that
365
::means? Sure. I'm curious, as one sector gets automated,
366
::how that domino effect actually works. So
367
::cascade job failure is the idea that
368
::Once AI systems get to a point
369
::where they can replicate the majority of
370
::work for a certain industry, what happens is
371
::most of the people in that industry get laid off. Not everyone, but most
372
::of them do. So you get a few companies that come out and they say,
373
::wow, we're AI first now, or whatever, and they start laying off some people.
374
::Those people go out and they try and find a job, but they can't get
375
::a job in their industry because no one else is hiring for that now. Because
376
::they're also already planning to lay off everybody, right?
377
::Or at least some of that staff. And so those people start to
378
::go to related industries. But because
379
::the AI is already good at this, somebody helps make the AI better for
380
::the related industry. And now that industry is starting to lay off people, too.
381
::And so all these industries start laying off people. And everybody with the similar skill
382
::set is now looking for a job and can't find one. Because nobody's hiring for
383
::that skill set because the AI could do it for pennies on the dollar, right?
384
::And then what happens is those
385
::people aren't spending, they're not going to work, they're not going to the office. So
386
::now I don't need HR people, right? Because I don't have any human staff in
387
::that department. So I don't need the HR for that department. I don't need legal
388
::for that department either because I don't have those people to worry about anymore. Now
389
::I don't need as many janitors, I don't need as much floor space, I don't
390
::need as much office space. The, you know, the hairdresser and
391
::the cafe downstairs and the coffee shop and the magazine store, they
392
::all close down because there's nobody in the office building anymore, right? And then
393
::I don't need as many parking attendants, I don't need as many gas station
394
::attendants. I don't know, whatever, right? All those services that are
395
::built around these people start to fall as well. And as those
396
::all start to fall, these people, you can't just get
397
::retrained to do
398
::something complex enough that it will be
399
::something that an AI system won't be able to already do at that point. Yeah.
400
::And the problem with that is, like back in the day,
401
::everybody used to have a piano. If you wanted to entertain people with music in
402
::your house, you got to have a piano. Because they didn't have CD players, they
403
::didn't have streaming. You know, like that stuff didn't exist till the
404
::gramophone comes along. All the factory workers
405
::from the piano factory could just pack up, go across the street, get a
406
::job at the, you know, the factory making the gram phone, because you could
407
::retrain them in a day. Off to the races, right? You're
408
::not retraining people who are, you
409
::know, middle management at information or
410
::knowledge work companies to become roboticists, you
411
::know, overnight. Right. It could take four
412
::to six years to train somebody. And in that time the AI
413
::is already going to be better at that than you're going to be by the
414
::time you get trained. So this is the failure side. And
415
::now I know it sounds alarming, but this
416
::is like a worst case scenario, right? So
417
::the other thing that I think could happen is similar
418
::to kind of what happened with the rise of the Internet, is
419
::when the Internet was just bulletin board systems and Usenet
420
::and it wasn't that useful for people. There was no World Wide
421
::Web yet. No one could have looked at that and
422
::said, you know what, you should go start training as a web
423
::developer. Right. Or a Python programmer or something. Right.
424
::Like it just didn't exist as a thing. And so all these jobs
425
::that came out from the rise of the Internet, nobody
426
::knew that that was going to be a thing because nobody had even
427
::invented the web browser yet. Right.
428
::And the application layer that lays on top of the Internet
429
::is where all the job creation came from. Yeah.
430
::So that's your, you know, your Airbnbs and your Uber
431
::and you know, Salesforce and Microsoft
432
::and all of these companies, everybody that does all these things that all
433
::came from the application layer of the Internet. And if the Internet didn't exist, they
434
::couldn't have got all the training data to train the AI we have now. That's
435
::true. And so you don't know what the next thing's going to be, but you
436
::can sort of have some idea because you can see some
437
::trending to where some things are going.
438
::And I think for sure it's
439
::easy to see where things are going to go badly for some industries.
440
::If you want an example, go look at the language
441
::translation industry. Right. Three years ago I
442
::had a lady tell me that no computer system
443
::can translate like a human because they don't understand the nuance of
444
::language. And her business is bankrupt now.
445
::And I don't mean to be light on that, I feel bad for her. And
446
::the translation industry in general is down somewhere in the neighborhood of
447
::90%. So that's almost an
448
::entire industry being wiped out. That's more than the amount of taxis
449
::that were wiped out by ride sharing. And that's
450
::in an industry. And in like two years Gone.
451
::Right. How do you, given everything you just
452
::said, how do you have a conversation with your child about where
453
::to plan for the future or plan for what they want to do?
454
::I think you need to make a decision of if
455
::you're going to kind of train or teach
456
::your children about how to use current AI
457
::systems. And I am on the side
458
::of. I think she needs exposure to it and needs to know what it does
459
::and how it works, but also
460
::have a foot in the real world kind of thing. And, you know,
461
::my kid goes to dance and theater and she gardens and
462
::she takes care of chickens and takes care of the cats and the dog and,
463
::you know, that kind of stuff. She plays outside all the time,
464
::you know, So I think you need a kind of a balance, right? Yeah.
465
::But I also think if you're not training kids now
466
::on how to at least be aware of and how to
467
::talk to and how to work with basic AI systems,
468
::that there is going to be essentially no
469
::way for them to be in what the future economy is going to be
470
::now. There's also another positive thing that could come out
471
::of all this is one thing which I am. I'm a huge fan of. I
472
::don't want people to get the idea that it's all doom and gloom, but I
473
::also don't want people to get the idea that. That because I use
474
::AI and I personally, I like a bunch of AI systems that I
475
::use, doesn't mean that I like everything about AI. Right.
476
::There is. The pendulum always kind of swings both ways. So the
477
::more things are fake, the more people are going to want and
478
::pay for things that are real. Right. And
479
::I think if we can come out with some sort of universal basic
480
::income, sometimes called big basic income guarantee,
481
::pilot programs of UBI all over the world that have happened for the last
482
::decades have all had positive results.
483
::And it saves countries and companies or whoever it is
484
::that's running the pilot program, it always saves them money.
485
::And it never has the effect that the naysayers say is going to
486
::happen. Right. They're like, I don't want to pay somebody else to work, you know,
487
::but it turns out that, like, if you give homeless people money,
488
::instead of like you selecting what they should have the money for, everybody
489
::says they're going to go spend it on drugs. Well, it turns out they don't.
490
::Right. Yeah, some of them might. But overall,
491
::it becomes cheaper for them to get a better result. And if
492
::you give money to new mothers, it reduces childhood
493
::poverty. Right. It reduces ER visits.
494
::So here's what happens? Let's say bad stuff
495
::happens, everybody starts to lose their job, and you've got no
496
::universal basic income. Then we saw what happens in
497
::Covid. Right. The economy goes into the toilet, it
498
::crashes, companies start going broke, and then the government steps in and
499
::starts writing checks. Writing checks is universal basic
500
::income. Right. If they'd have just done that from the
501
::start. Right? Yeah. Then it wouldn't have been a problem and the
502
::economy wouldn't have crashed. And it costs way
503
::more to fix a crashed economy than it does to let one putter
504
::along while you hand out money. Right. Because all
505
::these bailouts and everything cost billions and billions of dollars. And they
506
::could have just given people the money in the first place and saved the bailout.
507
::Right. It's shocking how inefficient government is and
508
::just some of the basic necessities in life and even things like universal basic
509
::income, like you said, if they just started there, they would have spent less
510
::rather than trying to fix everything after the fact. And you could also
511
::like universal basic income. The idea of it being
512
::universal is just that it's universal. So
513
::you don't have to give universal basic income to people who make over a
514
::certain amount, but it's cheaper to just give it to
515
::everyone. Right. And then if somebody makes over
516
::a certain amount a year, you tax them that amount and so you get the
517
::money back anyway. So who cares? Right. You know, but there's ways to do it.
518
::I'm not an expert in that neighborhood, but I think that there
519
::is going to be a gap between when people start
520
::to get laid off from jobs, especially ones that people don't expect
521
::layoffs to come from because of
522
::combined technologies like robotics. There's
523
::going to be a gap between that and when either basic
524
::income starts to become available to everyone or when sort of
525
::a new economy comes out. And I think that dip could be
526
::severe. Yeah, I think it could be six to 12 months
527
::of, you know, 40% unemployment, could be
528
::50, 60, 70% youth unemployment. Those are
529
::serious numbers. And, you know, I'm
530
::not even on the most serious end. If you listen to,
531
::you know, some of the AI security folks, they
532
::talk about things like 96% unemployment. Well, you
533
::know, which is basically everyone. But I don't think that
534
::there's a lot of people are like, well, what if we just give people money
535
::and then they don't work? Well, do we need them to work?
536
::Like, how many jobs are non jobs right now, for
537
::one thing? Right. But anybody could do. They're just like, make work
538
::projects you know, it's like the law in Oregon where we used to live, where
539
::you're not allowed to pump your own gas. Sure, unemployment's down,
540
::but you got all these people whose job is just to walk out and pump
541
::gas and walk back in and stare at their phone all day. Right. We don't
542
::need it. A robot could pump my gas. I'm okay with it. You know,
543
::and if you're an artist or something, why can't we just pay people to be
544
::artists? What's so bad about that? Right. Does an artist
545
::have to work part time at a coffee shop to be able to pay their
546
::rent? Or can they just be really good at, you know, singing and playing
547
::piano or something? Right. Or being a painter. Go ahead, be an
548
::artist. I think it's a great idea. I would love for us to pay. Artists
549
::and that money gets. Makes its way back into the economy anyway. I mean, because
550
::they have to spend it all. Yeah. It's like, I think that's what people lose
551
::sight of. And then if you want to work, go work. Yeah.
552
::You know, and that's the way I think about it. Anyway,
553
::I think there's an option here of
554
::we could use AI systems and the productivity gains and things
555
::we get from it to basically
556
::release like the average person
557
::from the struggle of having to work to survive. Yeah. To the
558
::point of working because they're trying to make something. They're
559
::an entrepreneur, they want to make the world better, whatever it is,
560
::or doing the things that they want to do, or spending, you know, through
561
::the first three or four years of their kid's life with their kid instead of
562
::having to go and, you know, slug it out at two or three jobs
563
::to make ends meet. Yeah, for sure. And
564
::it's difficult because that would take a very big shift
565
::in how kind of government and economic systems work.
566
::But it could be, you know, a golden age of humanity. It also could be
567
::very serious. There could be serious problems where there's
568
::autonomous robots and, you know,
569
::forces like military or police, autonomous robots that
570
::are controlled by whoever the person running that government
571
::or that system are. And there could be serious problems with
572
::oppression and, you know, freedoms and things like that. So
573
::that's also a danger. We don't want that to happen either. Yeah, but
574
::that could happen without AI. Right. We don't need that. We don't need AI for
575
::that to be bad. Yeah. It feels like we're in a sliding
576
::doors moment, shifting timelines, whatever the phrase you want to use. Like we're
577
::either going to take one of two directions. And one's going to be like this
578
::golden age of humanity where we realize, like, we, you know, we don't have
579
::to succumb to this, you know, Rockefeller age,
580
::Carnegie age, you know, stick everyone in a factory, sticking everyone in
581
::school, you know, to produce more factory workers, and just like everyone has to have
582
::a 9 to 5 job instead of the desk. And to your point, we're almost
583
::out of that now. Right. Like, how many factory workers do you know? Not many.
584
::You know, none. Amazon workers, I guess. I know a
585
::few. Well, Amazon just came out with
586
::a new robotic system for their plants. And there
587
::was an article, actually, just before my book came out, I had to go back
588
::and edit one of the chapters of my book, two days before the book came
589
::out, because Amazon announced that they had a million robots in factories
590
::in the United States. A million robots, right?
591
::And people are like, robots are going to take our jobs. And I'm like, there's
592
::already a million, and that's only one company, right?
593
::So if you can imagine all the other kinds of manufacturing and all the other
594
::plants and all the other systems and all the delivery companies and everything who have
595
::robots, there's gotta be at least 3 million robots
596
::working in the United States. That's 1% of the entire country.
597
::And that doesn't even count the amount of people who can't work. Right?
598
::Because you got people who are retired, people are disability, Medicaid,
599
::whatever, people who are children, right? All those people can't work.
600
::So you probably got 2 or 3% of all the jobs
601
::are already being done by robots.
602
::And this is a common question that I have with people. And I wouldn't
603
::even say it's a question. It's so much. It's more like a statement. They like
604
::to come up to me and say, well, hey, I can't do my job. And
605
::I go, oh, really? What's your job? Right? And they explain it. And I say,
606
::well, you know what? You're right. AI can't do that job. But what about
607
::an AI on the computer and a robot at the office,
608
::you know, or the warehouse? And they're like, oh,
609
::right, because it's still cheaper to have an AI and a
610
::robot than it is to hire a person. And
611
::the other thing about robots, and this is something. And I don't mean to talk
612
::the whole time about robots, because I know my book is about AI, but it
613
::is also about robots. Yeah, the thing about
614
::robots is you have reinforcement learning, right?
615
::So we can simulate an environment inside the
616
::computer brain of the robot, where it thinks it's in
617
::a real world environment, but it's in a simulated environment. And
618
::we make it do the dishes 100 million times. And each
619
::time, there's different variations. Different colors, different sinks, different water
620
::temperatures. You know, you name it. You change every variable you can a bunch of
621
::times. And once it's got it figured out, it's like, I know how to do
622
::dishes. Then all you do is you upload that program to all the other robots.
623
::So now all the robots know how to do dishes. Right.
624
::So if you're like, my company has specific things that we do at my
625
::company that are very, very specific, and only we know how to do it. Okay.
626
::While you show somebody like you would show a new employee. Right.
627
::I think the chapter in my book's called Robot See Robot Do.
628
::So you physically move the hands of the robot, or you have it watch you
629
::while you do it, right? And it starts to learn, and you go through some
630
::training time. And once it's got it down, it transfers that program to all
631
::the other robots. And now every robot in your company can do that task.
632
::Whereas if you're training people, even if you're doing, like, train the
633
::trainer or you're doing training seminars or training videos or whatever, it
634
::takes time. You got to pay them. You got to do all that stuff. Right.
635
::But a robot, you just upload the program to the new robot.
636
::Off you go. Right? So, and I'm
637
::not saying robots are better than people, but at some things, they
638
::are. Right. And imagine robots doing very
639
::dangerous tasks, of course, which is great, Right? Because we
640
::don't want to die putting out a fire. Right. I'm not saying you shouldn't have
641
::firefighters, but I'd rather have a. You know, I'd rather have a robot run
642
::into a burning building than a live human. Yeah. You know,
643
::so the other thing is considering things like helper robots
644
::for, like, tradespeople. I saw a video a
645
::couple months back of a roofing robot, and
646
::it only takes one person to run the roofing robot, and it can roof the
647
::entire roof. It's basically set up like a 3D printer. Yeah. And it's
648
::got a big cartridge full of shingles, and it looks at where the last
649
::shingle was on the roof. It kind of looks down with a camera, and it
650
::sees where to put the shingle, and it perfectly aligns the shingle, and a little
651
::dial gun goes in and goes, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk. And then little gears
652
::grind, and it moves down to the next one, and it can
653
::roof a large house in. A single day and doesn't care
654
::what the weather is. And then, right, and the roofer, right,
655
::the person who's the tradesperson, they just, you know, the edging
656
::around the chimney or, you know, putting the very pinpoint on and moving the
657
::robot and stuff like that, that's what his job is. And now he can
658
::get a roof done. He doesn't have to have a team of roofers. And the
659
::question is, does that business owner now lay off their team
660
::of five other roofers that they were going to have to do that job, or
661
::do they go out and do six roofs? Yeah, right. And
662
::I would say you should go out and do six roofs because all you get
663
::to keep your job. You just have six roofing robots,
664
::right? You all learn how to use the robot, you finish your task, it does
665
::its tasks, you make six times as much money. Yeah. The
666
::downfall is somebody else doesn't have a roofing
667
::robot, right? And their company goes broke because they
668
::can't compete, because they can't compete on price and they can't compete on speed.
669
::There's so many innovations like that happening in hundreds if
670
::not thousands of industries. You know, if you just stop and think about it, and
671
::I'm sure a lot of them, you cover yourself and I think, you know, it
672
::does sound like doom and gloom for people, especially people in business who can see
673
::the writing on the wall, see where this is headed. But I think having your
674
::head in the ground and thinking that it's not coming for you or
675
::it's not going to impact you and it's, you know, or you're going
676
::to, you know, just retire. Maybe you're going to retire before it's impacting you,
677
::but to think that it's not going to affect you and not look at this
678
::in a way that's with some sort of intelligence and foresight, I think
679
::is just really harmful, especially if, you know,
680
::your business is your livelihood. And I guess, you know, we. You're not going to
681
::be able to wait for universal basic income, and that could be part of the
682
::solution. But I think it's really just. I remember when ChatGPT that
683
::I guess the 3 or 3.5 came out, which is the big one that everyone
684
::was talking about, and I immediately thought the best skill to have is going to
685
::be able to talk to robots and just how to figure out and whatever
686
::variation of that, whether it's robots or AI or something like that, like you have
687
::to learn how to communicate and get what you need out of them. And I
688
::think, and what we've seen is that the people who understand how to use these
689
::tools are starting to have a leg up on this, on folks like this.
690
::But what I'm noticing in your conversation, in your tone is you do have
691
::like, you know, I know that you're rooting for Team Human here
692
::and you do have this, I feel like this sense of like, wanting to do
693
::good for people and ensuring that people have, you know, I'm sure it's, you know,
694
::the tone in your books is also to kind of give people a picture to
695
::what's possible and what they should be looking out for. Who
696
::influences or has influenced you in terms of like this philosophy
697
::of life and how to think about and care for other people?
698
::Well, that's kind of a difficult question because,
699
::I mean, I don't have the insight of,
700
::you know, specifically around AI, like who's building the
701
::models and things like that. I don't have any access to those people. I personally
702
::think my book, the first. Well, AI take
703
::My Job the first one. The reason that I wrote the book
704
::was because I started doing research from my own company. And I looked at it
705
::and I said, oh my God, we got a serious problem.
706
::Five years, my company's out of business, right? Maybe not
707
::completely, but basically. And I was like,
708
::if we don't shift now, then by the time
709
::we figure out what to do later, it's going to be too late. So we
710
::have to begin the process of shifting. And even if we got to redirect the
711
::car kind of thing, you know, we gotta start driving the car
712
::while we're building it now. And by the time we get
713
::there, we'll figure it out. Right? I didn't want
714
::somebody to bury their head in the sand and say, oh, that's cool,
715
::or underestimate it and say, well, chat, GPT
716
::3.5. Couldn't write, you know, a good blog
717
::article. So AI is stupid and I'm not going to use it. You know,
718
::not realizing that, you know, we're probably
719
::six months away from GPT 5.5 or 6 or whatever
720
::the next generation is, which is probably going to be 16 times smarter
721
::than 3.5 was. And
722
::if you look at industries, there is no industry that's going to
723
::be untouched, of course, right? There
724
::is industries where you are more likely
725
::to not have to have any kind of, I don't know, issue, I
726
::guess, because there's a combination of
727
::what are the people who make the AIs good at, for
728
::starters. That's why all your AI systems are really good at math,
729
::really good at kind of science problems and programming. Because the people who
730
::work there are engineers, mathematicians, programmers, and they
731
::also have verifiable results. So if I have a program, I
732
::need it to do X, it doesn't do X, I can test it. If it
733
::doesn't do it, I know it didn't do it right. Same with the math problem.
734
::If it gets the math problem wrong, I know I didn't do the right thing.
735
::But if you look at other industries, like
736
::let's say hairdresser is a good example.
737
::I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being a hairdresser. I'm not saying that
738
::there's not enough money in hairdressing. I'm saying for the average
739
::company to take the liability of sticking a pair of scissors in the hands of
740
::a robot and putting it by somebody's eyes or their ears is not
741
::worth the response. Like it's not worth the return on investment.
742
::It's a complicated task for a robot, right? People are moving
743
::their heads around and stuff, right? They gotta. There's a social
744
::component, there's all this stuff to it, right? It's actually
745
::very complicated task to get a haircut, right?
746
::But doing legal research is not as
747
::complicated of a task and pays about three to six times as much.
748
::So the AI companies are going to go after those tasks before they go after
749
::hairdresser, right? That makes a lot of sense. So you kind of need to look
750
::at that for your industry. Is it worth it for them to come for your
751
::industry, for one thing, because of a number of factors.
752
::But another thing is that like I said, where, you know, like
753
::Uber and Lyft came to town, but there's still taxis, right?
754
::You don't always get rid of everyone in an industry.
755
::So even if you are a customer service agent, if
756
::you're the customer surgeon, customer service agent who knows how to work with
757
::the AI system, knows how to input the data that it uses
758
::to, you know, come up with the answers. And also you handle the
759
::weird edge cases, like if you're the guy in the call center where they're
760
::like, no one knows how to fix this. And you're like, I'll do it. You're
761
::still going to have a job, but everybody else is going to get laid off,
762
::right? Because the AI system can answer a
763
::million simultaneous calls, you know, however many
764
::it is that are coming in at the same time with a 5
765
::second or less wait time, and it knows where their order is,
766
::it knows when it was shipped. It knows what happened. It can suggest
767
::new products to them. It can do all those things. And,
768
::you know, if somebody wants to talk to a human, you know,
769
::press zero to talk to a human is going to be the five people left
770
::in the call center out of the 800 who used to work there.
771
::There's so many topics related to this that are just avenues that I
772
::just want to deep dive on. But I definitely want to be respectful of your
773
::time. I do want to touch on the show. What made you
774
::or what inspired you to start a podcast? I started
775
::my podcast seven years ago now, so it's been
776
::on for a while. Originally,
777
::I think the idea was going to be, let's get some of our clients,
778
::we'll get them on. We'll kind of have a local show. You know, we'll talk
779
::about local business and stuff. And since we're a digital marketing company, we're
780
::going to call it Digital Marketing Masters. And then we're going to do that thing.
781
::We even used to. We used to record in a music studio for a music
782
::school because music schools have all this unused
783
::recording studio time because all of their students are at high school
784
::or whatever, right? Or middle school. So they all come in at night. So during
785
::the day, during the week, there's nobody there. So you can rent it out super
786
::cheap. It's. Good tip. Good, good tip. So, yeah,
787
::we had a professional studio. We could sit everybody around the table live and
788
::microphones and everything. And what I found out was all the guests that I have
789
::on the show, you know, we make, you know, introductions
790
::and we talk and we laugh and whatever, right? And then when they had somebody
791
::who had a problem that our company could fix, they would refer them to us.
792
::And I was like, well, and also I got to talk to them
793
::and ask some questions and learn stuff. So the
794
::idea was, I'm not going to use this to try and find clients
795
::in the audience anymore. I'm going to have people on the show who I find
796
::interesting that I want to learn from. And as
797
::soon as that happens, those people, then some of them will
798
::refer other people to our business so we can make money doing it. So now
799
::I don't need sponsors. I don't need to have commercials. You know, I can just
800
::do my podcast whenever I want. And when Covid
801
::came, we started doing it remotely, and we've done it remote ever since.
802
::What's been the biggest aha for you? Hosting the
803
::show? And have you noticed anything in terms of, like, your ability
804
::to have these conversations with people Your ability to engage with people as a
805
::host. Did that skill set develop over time? Oh yeah.
806
::I don't even think I'm that good at it now. But I was terrible at
807
::it before. It's
808
::like anything, right? If you spend the time to do something on a regular
809
::basis and you get incrementally better at it,
810
::you keep at it and you are so much better at it than you were
811
::before. Right. It took two years to write and edit my first book.
812
::It took about 150 days to write. Will AI
813
::take my job to including research, but
814
::also research. Thanks, AI. So a lot of
815
::research was done with AI and then I would go look at the articles and
816
::stuff and of course fact check everything. Yeah, but that's not something
817
::that was before you used to be like, okay, well if I want to find
818
::a study about XYZ, I got my list of 20 places
819
::that I go to that, you know, like Pew Research and you know, Stats
820
::Canada or whatever. And. And then also I'm searching
821
::Google and I gotta go look at all the articles and I gotta read everything.
822
::And half the articles in Google are trash. Right. Half of them are just
823
::somebody made up bs. Right? I mean, people complain about
824
::AI hallucinations. Have you read the Internet?
825
::Like it's full of garbage. Everywhere you go is trash. Right. So
826
::it's very hard to trust stuff. And now I can say
827
::I only want my AI to go and look at
828
::actual, you know, academic paper research, and it
829
::will return it to me with all the links and everything that I want so
830
::I can go look at each one and I can go read it and make
831
::sure that the summary that it gave me matches what the article says. And
832
::then I can also double fact check it. I can take the list, I say,
833
::summarize this into a list of article names and links. It gives it to me
834
::and I put it in the other AI and I say go check all these
835
::without getting too deep into it. But I think
836
::that a lot of people are limiting themselves to thinking like AI
837
::is chatgpt. Yeah. Or maybe it's, you know, Grok
838
::or Gemini kind of thing. We, at our agency,
839
::we use dozens of AI tools on a regular basis.
840
::I've probably used a dozen today so far. Right.
841
::It reminds me of when people used to think AOL was the Internet.
842
::That's right. You know, they just turned off AOL dial up like a
843
::couple months ago. I did see that they also shut down. Isn't that crazy? Mtv.
844
::Did you see that? Ah, the old mtv. There's no more
845
::mtv. So all these things that people, a younger generation
846
::would have no idea what we're talking about. Who knew that if you took all
847
::the music off the music channel that nobody would watch it anymore? How
848
::weird. Yeah, a lot of fond memories. Talk to me about SMB
849
::Autopilot. SMB Autopilot is a SaaS
850
::product that we've soft launched right now. What it does
851
::is it determines if a business has a physical presence or
852
::they have a local service area. You know, it could be both. Right.
853
::Say you're a clinic and people will only drive a certain distance to go to
854
::your clinic. And that's technically a service area.
855
::What it does is it optimizes for
856
::Google's local search, which is like the map box search.
857
::So when somebody has an intent to get a service local to them,
858
::there are literally hundreds of signals that Google uses
859
::to determine who should come up in ranking. Everybody thinks
860
::that it's the business, how close I am to it and how many
861
::reviews it has. But just type in any business
862
::and you'll see someone who's not ranked number one who has more reviews.
863
::So we can just look at it and see that's not true. Right.
864
::So my first book was called Crush SEO
865
::Learn to market your local business online. And I wrote it in
866
::2015. So we've been doing
867
::local SEO for about 20 years. What's the URL? Since it wasn't
868
::even. I think what's the URL for that one? Is that. Don't go read that
869
::book. No, sorry. SMB autopilot.
870
::It's SMBAutopilot AI. Okay, I'll put that
871
::SMB like small and medium sized businesses. Yeah. So it's
872
::SMB autopilot AI and it's. Primarily for local businesses.
873
::It is specifically for local businesses
874
::and it is Autopilot, as you would imagine.
875
::Autopilot on a plane in the movies is you sign up,
876
::you search for. Well, you don't even have to sign up actually. You go in,
877
::you type your business name and it finds your business. Your Google business
878
::page. You say, yeah, that's me. And then there's
879
::a little bit of sign up because we need some contact information and you got
880
::to pay us. And then it automatically does everything
881
::and you don't have to do it. And it
882
::will send you a report every month that has a geographical report where
883
::it shows you a 13 by 13 grid
884
::of what ranking you are for a certain type of service,
885
::if the person was standing searching from that location.
886
::And that's also based on Google's own data that's not hard data, that's
887
::straight from Google. So Google says if you're
888
::standing, you know, three miles from your business and your business
889
::is physical therapy clinic and you type in physical therapy
890
::in your city and you rank 20th, you got a problem.
891
::Right? Yeah. But if you search it while you're in your office, you're probably
892
::first because you're closest. So of course you're first.
893
::Right. You're sitting in the place and Google's like, oh, you're already in a physical
894
::therapy office. So here's the one you're standing in right now. Right.
895
::But if you go more than a mile away from your business, that may not
896
::be the case. And that's the problem that we solve. And so it gives them
897
::actionable advice on what to do and how to update their website or
898
::how to figure. It will do that if it's a problem. But
899
::otherwise everything it does is automated and you don't have
900
::to do it, you don't have to see it, you don't have to do anything.
901
::It goes through, does its checks and then it does some content related
902
::stuff, some backlinking and signal creation stuff
903
::and then it analyzes the report automatically and
904
::does it again the next month. And
905
::it's. I wouldn't say that it's going to work 100% for everyone,
906
::but so far it has never not worked.
907
::So it's a service. Basically we took the service we used to do by hand
908
::and like manually. Right. That we used to charge
909
::1250amonth for and now we have an automated
910
::system that does it for 395amonth. That's amazing. I already have a couple of
911
::folks in mind. I'm going to send that link to. Sure. Well send them to
912
::me. I'll run a report for you and you can see what it looks like.
913
::I appreciate that. And yeah, and the cool part is that
914
::we wanted to make it like, you know
915
::the idea of the autopilot, you push the autopilot button like you're in a
916
::movie. Right. They're like I don't know how to fly a plane and you push
917
::autopilot. You know like the original airplane movie where the
918
::guy inflates and he flies the plane. Right. Dating yourself with that
919
::one too. I know so. And I don't want to go too long. I
920
::know we're a bit overtime already but I talk to small business owners constantly.
921
::For the last 20 years, right. I've been talking to small business owners, you know
922
::what they want, they don't want to enter their information. They don't want to type
923
::in all their customers. They don't want to put in a bunch of crap into
924
::a system. They don't want to do any of that stuff. What they want to
925
::do is, is have more people call them and spend more time with their kids
926
::there. That's it. Or their hobbies or whatever it is they want to do. Right.
927
::Joe the mechanic wants to work on his 1940 Mustang.
928
::He doesn't want to figure out how to use Google Ads. Right?
929
::Sure. So all they got to do is sign up. It does the thing.
930
::They don't have to do anything. And this is what
931
::AI software is going to look like in the future. It's going to get the
932
::result that you want without you having to do the thing.
933
::Well, I'm so appreciative that there's folks like you,
934
::Matt, who just want to do the right thing by people
935
::and do the right thing by business owners. And obviously you're one yourself. But
936
::you also understand at the end of the day, especially entrepreneurs, not running, like, mega
937
::global companies, like, we're all
938
::trying to put food on table, spend time with our families, not having to
939
::work, you know, 80 hours a week, you know, not having to wake
940
::up on Saturday afternoon and thinking about the three clients you've got to
941
::write proposals for. And I think it's clear and, you know, just from this conversation
942
::and the books you've written and the services you're creating, like SMB autopilot,
943
::that you care. And I don't know that you
944
::can say that a lot in this day and age about people who are just
945
::out to just get the next quick buck. And so I really, you know, want
946
::to thank you for, like, the work you're doing to help business owners, because I
947
::think we need a lot more of that. I appreciate it. And you know what?
948
::I think there's a lot more, especially on the business owner
949
::side, for small businesses of people who started their business because they
950
::wanted to help people. They knew a skill, they knew something,
951
::they wanted to help people, they were helping people do it, and somebody started paying
952
::them for it. And they were like, I can make a business out of this.
953
::Or they went to school to be a dentist or a physical therapist or whatever
954
::it is. Just a couple questions as we wrap up.
955
::What's something you've changed your mind about recently?
956
::I think that the level of
957
::complexity that is in modern and
958
::upcoming artificial intelligence systems
959
::is way deeper than I think
960
::that it is. And I've Immersed myself in it
961
::for, you know, over five years. Right. I mean, we were doing. Working on deep
962
::learning stuff before this, so. And I think that the
963
::average person, the gap is widening
964
::at a rate so fast that people are not even going to
965
::understand what an AI system is in a year or two
966
::compared to, you know, what they use now.
967
::Yeah. And I don't know if that's so much changing my mind
968
::as much as even myself thinking
969
::about how are things going to exponentially grow. It's
970
::growing exponentially faster than I expected. And
971
::for you to say that I'm. The one thinking about it. Yeah. If you're saying
972
::that, then that's something to keep people pause about. I think
973
::also people underestimate it because they get all this stuff about the AI
974
::hype bubble and all this kind of stuff, and that has
975
::nothing to do with the capabilities of the
976
::systems. That's about finance. Yeah.
977
::What is the most misunderstood thing about you?
978
::About me? Yeah. Oh, that's a tough question.
979
::I think the most misunderstood thing about me is that
980
::I guess that people don't expect that somebody just wants to help them.
981
::Right. And, you know, if they lived in our
982
::community and they saw us, you know, my wife and I
983
::volunteer and my wife's on the school board and Home and
984
::school, it's called. They're raising money to build a new playground for the school
985
::because apparently the school board in Nova Scotia does not provide playground equipment,
986
::which is a surprise to me. We work in the local community hall,
987
::we support local charities for arts and things like that.
988
::And we don't have to. Yeah. You know, and
989
::people ask me, you know, favors and questions and things all the time and I'm
990
::happy to help if I can. Yeah. Well, really,
991
::again, shout out to Ben for making the connection. Really thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.
992
::Probably could have gone on for another hour or two just on a lot of
993
::topics that are near and dear to my heart as a creative and as a
994
::business owner. But I'm going to have all the links to all the books in
995
::the show notes. Anywhere else you want to send people. To connect with you, then
996
::go to matthewrouse.com it's Matthew with two T's and
997
::Rouse is R O U S E. Okay. And that's got books and, you know,
998
::interviews and things like that on there. And if you follow me on LinkedIn, you
999
::can see pictures of chickens. I'll
1000
::be sure to sign up. Just. And AI stuff. Yeah. AI and chickens. That's what
1001
::you're going to get on my LinkedIn. Hence the AI Chicken Wrangler.
1002
::That's right. Well, thanks again, Matt. I really enjoyed this conversation. Appreciate your time.
1003
::Thanks, Harry. I appreciate you having me on.
