Building Sales Mastery: John Barrows on AI, Sales Fundamentals & Futureproofing Success

Shane Mahi

[00.00.02]

 So guys, we are back for a second episode with Mr. John Barrows. Last year I had you as one of my first guests. You actually gave me a lot of what's the word? Like a lot of inspiration and confidence to actually approach this journey. And I told you I was going through a hard time. My hair was all messed up all over the place, wearing some tacky chain. And after a year, like 200 plus interviews now I think I've gone to a place where I'm like, all right, cool, done. We got to go for round two and, um, look, kick this off. So, John, for those that had never met you before, who are you? Write a little bit about who you are? What do you do now? Let's change the question. Why should people stay and watch this for an hour?

John Barrows

[00.00.46]

 Yeah, that's a good question. Um, so for me, I, you know, I've been in the game for a while now, uh, probably been selling for about 30 years at this point, but doing sales training for the past 20, give or take, you know, working with companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, box, Dropbox, all that stuff, uh, you know, training some of the fastest growing companies in the world, but also still selling myself. Right? I think the reason that people should stay is because I'm actually not a trainer. Uh, you know, I'm a practitioner. I'm somebody who, uh, you know, I run my own little business here. It's just me and my co, um, I'm out there every day selling just like everybody else is. And I think today is one of those things where. You know, a lot of people made a lot of money in the past ten, 15 years when money was free, growing at all costs. You know, nobody cared. But we skipped a lot of the fundamentals. We skipped a lot of the, you know, the business acumen stuff that I think, you know, typical real sales reps, um, used to, used to have. And now I see a lot of these, you know, these trainers are influencers out there talking about, oh, you know, I was the first person at XYZ company and we went from 0 to 1 trillion. And here's all the tips that I know, it's okay. It's like yeah, great. Thanks. Um, the question though is are those techniques now working today. Right. And are you selling today because it's it's now it's just different than ever has been before. And to me if you're not in the game right now, if you're not selling right now in this environment, I have a really hard time listening to you tell me how to sell. And, you know, especially sales trainers. I mean, I always joke about, you know, sales training and personal brand building with, you know, my peers in this industry because, I mean, shit, man, we sell crack to crackheads and we're crackheads, you know what I mean? Like, I'm a sales rep who sells sales training to sales people. So it is way fucking easier for me to go out there and sell and talk and build my personal brand than it is for the average kid who's selling, you know, cybersecurity to CISOs like, you know what I mean? It's just not as applicable. So to me, that's why I'm still out there trying to sell, trying to to try to figure out what's working and what's not, and then translate that to people in whatever format I can through podcasts, through, you know, sharing it on social media and everything else. So hopefully in the next hour or so, I can share some insights to people about building businesses, about what to look out for, about, you know, what's working and what's not. And, uh, some tactical things that they can walk away with and do. Uh, so this isn't just an interesting conversation, but it's a tactical one that they can walk away with some shit to, to really actually make a difference.

Shane Mahi

[00.03.23]

 And I think the one of the most important things you're talking about is there are so many people trying to do so many of the same things, and on and online is just a cesspool of confusion. Just like you said, you can wait. You can get I'm on all six different platforms posting on them, and you do get that kind of not even imposter syndrome. But when you look and open the app and you start seeing everything that other people are doing, and maybe there's things that you want to be doing and they're doing it and telling you how to do it, but then they haven't done it for so long. And they and some I know this is bad, but in my case, sometimes I see younger people than me doing certain things and saying, this is how you do it. And I'm like, Holy shit. This is crazy. And this is why I want to have like, curated content on this podcast, because people I trust that and people even the news is so skewed. You want to have people, real people, real lives, real situations, telling real stories. So one thing I want to extract on this call is you were in a time where not to make you sound old, but the 2000 wave of technology and software, the internet wave right there in that time where you rode that wave and you saw how kind of profitable that was for so many people. You talk about scandals like Enron and everything too. But now I see this as someone like, I'm 38 in like two weeks, and I'm seeing this particular moment as my dad got to ride the software wave and set himself up really nicely. I'm at the cusp of this AI wave where a lot of it's skewed. There's kind of all this shit being thrown around, but I'd love to hear from you how you see it. And I believe it's a massive opportunity. I want to ride it. I'm in this kind of opportunity right now playing with a few things, and I do think there's a huge kind of uplifting curve that I can, I can ride. But for you, for those new to this. Taking that bus dip in the water. Knowing what you saw then and how you can compare it to now, what's your view point of this wave that we're going through this hour? Yeah, I

John Barrows

[00.05.25]

 I think it's similar but different in a lot of ways. I think the similar thing is like the gold rush, right? I mean, it's there's so many people who are thinking that they can just create an app, create a, you know, an AI bot or whatever it is and get rich quick and, and skip all the fundamentals of what it takes to actually build a reputable business and, and those type of things. I mean, I use the example of, you know, TikTok, for example, right? I mean, think about what happens, say, say the US bans TikTok, right? Say the government, for whatever reason, they say, fuck it, TikTok, screw up, you know, China, blah, blah, blah. I mean, you have all these people who, you know, did one stupid bullshit little post that went super viral, right, and got millions of views and then all of a sudden became an influencer and started hawking shit, you know, like selling stuff, whatever. And if TikTok goes away, you're going to have hundreds of thousands of people who literally don't know what to do because they didn't build the business off of any fundamentals, any real business, you know, true business strategy. So they got, you know, quite frankly, lucky and they made a business out of good for you. But if you don't have the stuff that allows you to get there in the foundation there when that stops or when it. When you know, when there's a shift, you're not going to know how to adjust. And I think that's what's happening right now. There's so many people jumping into this because, I mean, the barrier to entry now is almost zero, right? With the internet that happens. Right? It was like, oh my God. Now almost anybody can start a business with the internet. And the people who jumped on it early kind of capitalized in the short term. But then as things leveled out, they started to struggle. Right? So I think, yeah, you're right. I think this is kind of where we're at a moment right now where the people who know what they're doing and can capitalize on this and, and are going, I think they can make some short term money. The question is, are they going to be able to build long term wealth? Are they going to be able to build businesses that stand the test of time? Or is this going to be a blip on the radar where it's, you know, a couple of years after this, I am just going to take over everything. And that's why I think this is different. Right? So it's similar in that regard. But I think it's also different in the sense that the internet didn't learn on top of itself. The internet wasn't compound, um, knowledge, it was the internet, you know what I mean? And yes, there were more internet companies coming out. There were more, you know, things on the internet, but it's not like the internet was getting exponentially better and faster and smarter as it grew. Right? We were just putting more shit into it. This AI is getting better, faster and smarter. And it's almost like we look at it as, you know, are we really a human species? You know, I could go into a really dark place where this is all going, but we're feeding the machine, and the more we feed it, the more it learns about us, as literally as humans. It's learning empathy. It's learning how to manipulate us. I mean, these algorithms already manipulate us on social media, right? I mean, it takes us down a path. You know, you go on TikTok, you go on Instagram and it knows exactly who you are, and it takes you down that path. And whether we know it or not, it's it's it's influencing us and it's manipulating us. It's manipulating our thoughts that are what we believe in. I mean, you talk about politics and all that shit. And so my fear is, is that we feed this machine and we keep feeding this machine, and this thing keeps getting smarter and smarter and smarter, and then eventually turns around and says, what the fuck do I need you as a human for? And so I think that's where, you know, do I think in the next one, two, three, four years, is there going to be a like a real opportunity for the people who get it and are willing to put in the work and learn the, like, how to use this stuff, as opposed to just looking for it as an outcome or looking for it as the easy button. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. But do I also think that that's a small fraction of our population? Yeah, I do, I think we're in the 8020 rule right now where Pareto's rule, right, where 20% of our population is humans, is going to be invaluable and know exactly how to leverage this stuff and make money with it, whereas 80% are just going to get absolutely smoked and replaced. And now, will that create more jobs? Sure. I don't think it's the same. You know, you hear all these people, every technology displaces jobs and creates jobs. And, you know, we evolve as humans. And I think this one's fundamentally different, I really do I mean, I've seen a lot of shit. Like you said, I graduated, uh, college in 1998. Uh, so I saw the internet coming out. I didn't even have, you know, I had to go to a computer lab in college. You know, that type of shit. When I was first in sales, it wasn't, you know, email was barely a thing. So it was really, you know, going to events and cold calling all day long, you know? You know, so I saw the internet come out, but it was a gradual like, okay, like this is kind of interesting. A lot of people didn't even believe the internet was even a thing. Like, this is a joke. It's a fad. Right. And then I saw, you know, cell phones come out like, that was cool, right? Uh, and then the iPhone came out while that was cool and but every one of those was like this gradual, you know, evolution, if you will. But now when I come out, this is just a hockey stick. This is just, you know, every day you're like, holy shit, holy shit. Like if you're paying attention to this, it's like, oh my God. Like it can do that now. Like, what the fuck? And so, you know, you gotta start asking like, where does the human element, you know, reside with this whole thing? And I think as long as, you know, there's humans buying stuff and there's humans on the other end of that communication, I think there's obviously a value that a human brings to it. But I'll, you know, I'll give you an example. Like, I don't see how this doesn't happen. You know, as we talk about sales, I don't see how this doesn't happen. Right. Right now everybody's like, oh, you know, AI is going to replace sales reps. No, not it's not going to replace those. It's going to replace, uh, reps who learn how to use AI are going to replace sales reps. Where sales reps are going to get replaced is when I start to buy shit. Like if you think about it. Right. Because I used to work in the IT services industry. I never thought about that. Yeah, this capability is already there. So, you know, I used to work in the IT services space. Um, there's a product called Kaseya, right? Where Kaseya does is it goes on to your network and it monitors all your software solutions, all your different tools, all the usage, all the metrics, everything else. So think about putting that on your network, right. Doing an analysis of every software that's on your platform right now, usage, adoption, all of it. Then taking that and using an AI bot to say, hey, could you marry this up to my 12 to 24 month business plan about how we want to get to IPO, whatever it is. Wow. Then having the AI go, okay, well, based on your growth projections and what you're trying to accomplish, you need to get rid of these softwares. You need to consolidate these. And here's the new ones that you need. And based on that now we're going to send out an RFP to the three vendors on G2 crowd who are top in that industry to up top in that market. And we're going to send an RFP to those companies. And then when they respond, we're going to analyze it with our AI to figure out which one's the best solution for us, and then maybe, just maybe, get it down to the two that are most relevant and have a human look at that and make some subjective comparisons there, that that capability is already there. So you're telling me that, that within the next two or 3 or 4 years, there aren't going to be operations and finance people internally within companies that push that button and say, I'm not dealing with fucking sales reps anymore. I'm going to know exactly what I need. I know exactly what needs to help me. And we're going to put it this as an RFP, and we're not even going to deal with a fucking sales rep having a conversation. Like when that happens. Like good luck. I don't know where this goes, quite frankly. Well, I'm going to jump in on that. Right. And I think it goes back to I think this is a fundamental piece, and it goes back to what you mentioned to me about business acumen. And I believe the only reason, the only reason I know how to execute and prompt so well to get such great outcomes is because I ran and failed hundreds and hundreds of times working through my business, and I got it to a point where I know what works. I've worked with certain systems that work, and when you couple those things together,

Shane Mahi

[00.13.42]

 you get something and you get something incredible. But just like you mentioned here, I don't think anybody who's like, let's just say they're in their 20s right now.

John Barrows

[00.13.51]

 They don't have that business acumen that you have, just like you've said. Now, this is the process that I see within a big company that is difficult to get through. It creates a massive bottleneck. A 20

Shane Mahi

[00.14.03]

 a year old can't go to GPT and do that right at all. Even a 40, 50 year old who's so far detached from it, they won't be able to do it unless they come back to these fundamentals, which is I think you're hitting the nail on the head. What are those fundamentals, then, that people should be paying attention to and where can they get this

John Barrows

[00.14.22]

 on? So you're asking the question that I am asking right now, my friend. And, you know, and I'm really trying to figure it out because, you know, in the past few weeks I've been to some pretty crazy conferences, right? I went to Dreamforce, Salesforce, Dreamforce, I went to, um, HubSpot inbound and I went to LinkedIn. I'm part of the LinkedIn insider group. And so I saw all these platforms and they, you know, launching all these AI agents and everything else. And they were mind blowing. I'm like, holy shit. Like it can do that. And so the problem though is this is. I, you know, I talk about business acumen, sales fundamentals and, um, and agility. I think those three things are things we need to focus on right now for Gen X. I'm a Gen Xer, right? I'm 48, about to be 49. Um, you know, we're not, we have the business acumen. Hopefully, you know, we have some sales fundamentals because we had to go through the grunt work and the shit. Right. But we're not exactly agile. Right. So like usually when you hit, you know, in your 40s, you got a better shot at seeing God than me change in my process. You know what I mean? Like getting me to change who I

Shane Mahi

[00.15.31]

 am. Good luck. Right. So all this new tech, it's kind of interesting, but most people in this age range are really hard to now adopt something new because they've done it so often the way that they've done it. Right. So we have the two out of the three, but the third one is critical because if we don't use that third one and aren't agile enough to use these tools, then we're going to get run over by the tools themselves. Now, on the flip side, the younger generation, they have the agility. They're, you know, they're tech native. They know how to adopt a lot of this technology, but they don't have the fundamentals and the business acumen. And now that all the grunt work is being taken care of by the AI, you know, I mean, how I learn to be a sales rep. I didn't get great training. I didn't, you know, when I got into but I was out there at events, I was getting my ass handed to me on cold calls. Yeah. Like, you know, doing the admin bullshit of updating my forecasts and CRM and all that. It sucked, but it gave me perspective. It gave me context. It gave me an understanding of how business ran and what I needed to do to be successful. So. So now I look at it and I'm like, okay, cool. Yeah, all these agents can do all that shit work that I don't want to do anymore. But I understand that work and I understand why it's important. And therefore, to your point, like why I should write a prompt, a certain way to do it, a certain way. But now all of that stuff is being taken care of by AI. To your question, I have no idea where the fundamentals are going to come from. I don't know the grind and the shit work. Also, quite frankly, most of the new kids don't want to do the shit work, and I don't necessarily blame them because when I was growing up, I didn't have an option like that. I had to get a degree. If I didn't have a chance to go to college, I wasn't even going to get an opportunity for a job, right? Like a well-paying one in business. And then I had to do the shit work for the first 2 or 3, five, ten years of my fucking life to earn the right to get to the next level. I didn't really have a lot of options. Right. It was kind of like that was the process you had to follow. Now there's a million options of how you make money. There's a million different ways. So I don't blame kids for not wanting to go through the grunt shit work. But the problem is, without going through that, you don't build the character, you don't build the grit, you don't build the understanding so that you can have conversations with executives, people, you know, those types of things. And so I from a sales standpoint, I mean, I by the way, this isn't just sales. I look at every industry. I mean, think of it, think of the legal industry, right. Usually, yeah, you go to law school, right. Then you get your then you become a, you know, you know, you pass the bar and then usually for the first two to, you know, 1 to 5 years of your law career, you are just doing the shit work like you're doing case precedent. You're looking through case files, you're trying to find all this stuff so that you can feed the actual lawyer, like the big boy lawyer, the information so they can go argue the case or whatever. But now the big boy lawyer can just say, hey, a Library of Congress, could you scan the entire every case that has ever come up and it's associated with my client and find me the top three that are most relevant to get my client off here and now all that other shit is gone. So where does that come from? Now, if I look at sales, I think we're where it almost has to go. And where I'm seeing a positive trend is that the education system is right. Is back at the university level and reversing a little bit because every other profession you typically learn the fundamentals in school right. Sales you learn the fundamentals when you realize that your degree is a bag of shit and you can't make enough money, so you jump into sales and you get your ass kicked for a while. So you know, not to learn that. So but I think if we go back to this, it's almost like we're. I think we should move into almost trade school type scenarios with white collar jobs. Right. So it's so, you know, I'm going to go get a sales certificate. I'm going to go learn like go to a sales program earlier in my like before I get into the working world so I can do role plays, get my ass handed to me, kind of make my code calls, use the AI to beat me up a little bit here, whatever it is, so that when I get into sales, I'm not learning about sales. I have those fundamentals set and now it's just me adopting whatever sale I decide to go into. So I think that we're starting to see this right where it's sales is, because now, I mean, when I graduated college there were no degrees in sales like zero. Right now, there's about 200 universities here in the United States that you can actually get your degree in sales. So we're starting to see more and more of that, which I think is really encouraging. Um, and so I quite frankly, I think that's, that's the that is the solution. And uh, you know, but it is a real question about where these fundamentals are going to come from, because it's obvious that the fundamentals aren't there, quite frankly. I mean, when I talk to sales reps, they can't even have a conversation. They can't, they can't go off script. They can't just have a normal business conversation with me about the problems and the challenges that I'm having. They feel like they have to check off every box because that's the way they were trained, and they haven't gotten punched right in the mouth yet. In a real world scenario that teaches them like, oh, I shouldn't do that, you know? And I. I'll give you one more example right quick. And this is, this is, you know, a pet peeve of mine. Before I was number 36,541 on LinkedIn. So I was like one of those first people on LinkedIn because, you know, the first 20,000 were dummy accounts, right? So before LinkedIn came out, I went to almost every networking event I could possibly go to. I joined networking groups. Right. So I knew what it was like, like when you and I, when I met you right at an event and I shook your hand and I immediately started pitching you on my solution and how great we were. Like, I could physically watch your body go, whoa, you know what I mean? And be uncomfortable. And, you know, instead of me looking at me, instead of looking me in the eyes, you would look at me, you know, look over here behind me. And I would watch you try to get out so I could feel what it was like when I jumped in and pitched you immediately without developing rapport and relationship and those types of things. So very quickly I was like, oh, that, that that's not the way you're supposed to do this, right? So I got to develop rapport relationships and, you know, that type of thing. So when LinkedIn came out, I was like, oh, okay, cool. Like I can just now do this digitally. Like I understand the fundamentals here. So now I know I have a technology that I can do at scale. But now kids get into, you know, they jump right into LinkedIn coming out of school. And there's no context of networking, of brand building, of personal relationships. So that's why they all use it as a fucking sales tool. And that's why we get all these goddamn email emails that, hey, buy my shit by my shit, by my shit. It's like, you have no fucking idea who I am, like,

John Barrows

[00.22.23]

 or my favorite, which is like, hey John, I see your one connected to so-and-so. Could you make the connection? Like, who the fuck are you? Like?

Shane Mahi

[00.22.32]

 I

John Barrows

[00.22.32]

 mean, think about it. The likelihood of me knowing, first of all, the person that you want to be connected to, is not high. Right? Because I got 400,000 people following me. All that shit. And the likelihood of me knowing you well enough to put my name on you, I mean, give me a break. The only people that know me well enough for me to make a referral have my cell phone number. Yeah. You know what I mean? They talked to me like this in a conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are the people that I'm going to make. Some random ass kid that I trained five years ago at some, you know, workshop that I did. I Think that they're going to, you know, use my brand and my name that I built, like for years and and really value. You think I'm just going to say. Oh, yeah. Hey, hey, hey, hey, Shane. You should talk to this kid. I have no fucking idea who he is. Like, he could be an axe murderer, but, you know, he asked for a referral, so let me make that referral to you. So that's my point of these fundamentals just getting just destroyed because they're just not there anymore. And and that's I, I don't know the answer to it, man I really don't. And I'm I'm searching for it

Shane Mahi

[00.23.35]

 I think you raised it. And I think there's two things you said, which was the ability to have conversations and the scenarios. Because number one, people in today's day and age. I don't care if you've gone to school or whatever. You don't know what it's like to be in a business and go through the emotional struggles and actually going through every single experience, every day, ups and downs. That's how you get to know what to say and what to do in those scenarios. And that's how, just like you said, right, with CRM and how this is kind of evolving, these CRM workflows that are now optimized where agents can opt like I'm creating it right now in some of the client businesses that I'm serving. We've got HubSpot as soon as it calls. Take that transcript. Put me a summary in there. Take that summary, put me an email together, put that email in a draft. I want that person to be able to just look at it and push send, right? Anything with any type of workflow, all that stuff does make it a lot easier. And then the question is raised

John Barrows

[00.24.35]

 like,

Shane Mahi

[00.24.36]

 yes, without all that shit in the way where they have a conversation, everything's updated based on the calls, whatever emails. Now it's the ability to have a conversation, right? But then you do take it back again. One step back to fundamentals. How do you have that conversation with an executive? If you're just out of school and you've been employed to be an SDR, then I think it goes back to the Wall Street days where I had somebody who would mentor me. I'd watch them bang the phone. Right. I'd obviously bang the phone with my Rolodex. I was at that time, dude. I was in that time in 2006, 2007, I went for my series seven and series 63, and I watched this, uh, like joke from capital markets, but these dudes were driving around CR 500 Benzes

John Barrows

[00.25.19]

 yeah, they were

Shane Mahi

[00.25.20]

 caked up and I was like, I want to be like that. But only because I've gone through those experiences. I've been able to get to this. So I want to pick your brain on what it was like to be an agent force and inbound by HubSpot. Yeah, because Dharmesh, he's just released, uh, the CEO and founder of X, CEO, the founder of HubSpot, he's built a new thing called agent

John Barrows

[00.25.44]

 I

Shane Mahi

[00.25.46]

 Okay. And this age in AI is the ability to have an agent that is not like a GPT, where you give it a prominent do things, its actions, different tasks. And then now I've seen Salesforce has their agents, their little minions that they're doing all this stuff. I don't know the context of what it is, but it sounds insane. So for those that don't know that, like you, think about it, all right, these little companies, they can go into GPT and build their own little custom GPT and AI little products. But compared to what these fucking powerhouses have built, and when you got money to actually back and drive the initiative, what did you see at HubSpot and Salesforce that you were like, Holy fucking shit, I cannot believe this is this is real. And I can't believe we're in this time today. Yeah. No, I mean, it's exactly that, right? This is why I came out of that. Those, you know, sessions. And I asked like, I don't fundamentally understand how the big boys don't win this game. Right. Because before Salesforce, you know, was notorious for thinking about their app exchange, right? I think that was a brilliant move on their part. Just like Apple has their, you know, the App Store. Um, because what Salesforce could do is kind of like, okay, build off a Salesforce. Right. And then they would just watch the App Store, the App Exchange and see who was adopting what and which ones were hot and the ones that were super hot. They would either acquire rights and then try to plug into their system. But the problem with that was Salesforce again, is notorious for like, okay, we're a platform and we're either going to buy another solution and try to cram it in and it'll never really integrate the way it should, or they're going to create a version of that point solution that's probably 60, 70, 80% is good, but because it's on the platform, you'd rather kind of just use it on the platform and not as much. Right. Versus, you know, buy the point solution. Now with this AI stuff, this stuff is being integrated like that. You know what I mean? Now it's like, yep, that rolls in. That fits perfectly and it works really well. It integrates. Right. So you're just kind of looking at it going okay. I don't understand. You know, even the platforms like the sales, layoffs, the outreaches that have reached a critical mass, I think they're going to survive because they have a critical mass. Mhm. But now Salesforce can do everything that outreach can do. Uh, HubSpot can do everything that, uh, you know, a sales loft can do. And so I just don't understand now where these, you know, these small, tiny solutions because now Salesforce can look around and say, okay, yep, that that I okay, let's just turn our eye and make sure it does that. And so that's you know again my fear for the small I think we're going to have a ton of there's no barrier to entry right now. Like now any fucking idiot can open up a GPT and create something. The question is, how are they going to make money doing it? And that's what I'm searching for. I'm looking for like, okay, you built a little company around this thing and, you know, are people paying for it? Uh, like you got funding. How are you going to cross the section where you're actually going to be making money on this? And what happens when the market shifts or the next AI thing comes out? That's ten times better than that. And what is that? Where are you going? Where is it going to put you? So that's what I saw. I saw these agents who are almost autonomous in a lot of ways, like the Salesforce one scared me the most. It's the one I paid attention to the most. Um, where you are now in my ecosystem, if you're in there and you click on something on my website, you do show some type of intent. You get an automatic email from an agent that says it's John Barrow's agent. So it's not even pretending like it's the it's not even pretending like it's me, but it's my agent and it'll say, hey, Shane, you know, notice that you're just doing some cool stuff there. I didn't. I'm not sure if you're aware, but we have some new solutions that address that. You know, if you'd like to schedule a call with John to talk about this, you know, click on this link here. And then you click on that link. And then you fill out a quick little form. And it extracts all the information about your usage metrics and everything else. And then it, you know, kind of lays it up to hopefully a person having the conversation. But then to your point, it records the whole thing. Update CRM summarizes the conversations, sends the email, schedules the next activity. So again, glorious. If that all works the right way and you have somebody in the middle there that can help coordinate all that stuff can execute,

John Barrows

[00.30.12]

 but that is such a small fraction of the people that can do that. It's ridiculous. So, you know, that's where it's just like, okay. I mean, my vision of the future is you ever see, um, uh, the movie Minority Report. Yeah. right. So remember when he had those gloves on? He was in those screens and he was kind of like dragging stuff back and forth and. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually how I think sales is going to look in the future. It's not going to be. I think the BDR and SDR function is, is, is dead. Like it's just if you're a BDR and SDR listening to this right now, fucking level up and learn how to sell full cycle sales, because all that outbound shit is, is you're you're done. Okay. It's going to roll up on marketing and operations and it's just going to be ABM and it's going to feed a full cycle sales rep. So now when I log into my screens here, it's not going to be okay. John. You know who you know. Like okay who should I talk to today? It's like, no, no, no, no John, you need to call Shane because his company just did this. He just posted about that. He googled this. And by the way, you need to call him, not email him because he actually likes phones better based on his personality. Crystal knows that type of shit. Yeah. Um, and here's three talking points. So you can say, here's a couple of questions you can ask, and here's some relevant content. You might be able to share with him. And then it's going to make the call for you. It's going to record the conversation, update it and I'm on to the next one. So that's I mean you're going to be an assassin if you can, if you can learn how to manage all that. Um, but it's but it's everybody else who can't do that, who's already doing those admin sort of things that I think are going to lose out quickly. And, and I'll just make, you know, one more point on the value versus the efficiencies of I. It is a very specific use case. I use a product called Otter. Right. Otter. I absolutely love it. It records the call, transcribes it like on at an instant, like as we're talking. It's recording at all. Then even extracts like key insights from a sales standpoint like pain points budget. And it puts it into this beautiful format. Right. So it summarizes the call with key elements. My favorite nugget literally if you Google J barrel's favorite nugget out of all my training is the summary email. And the summary email is exactly that. So you and I have a conversation today. I say, Hey Shane, thank you so much for your time. Some next steps and action items here. Before I go do that, I'm going to summarize what I was able to gain from our conversation today. Could you do me a favor and just email me back to let me know if it's all accurate and if I missed anything? Right. So I do that. And then what I used to do is I would summer I would, I would take my notes on the call. I would then reflect on those notes after the call and consume and combine them into this format. Right. So I'd be like, all right, that's not important. That's not okay. Here we go. Great. And what that process did for me helped me because in the call, you know, I'm taking notes. I'm doing my thing. But I might miss some stuff. I might, you know, and we're on the, you know, it's live. So I like I, you know, sometimes I want to slow down whatever. But right after I got off that call, looking through my notes and then extracting what the important pieces were out of that and then summarizing, that helped me reflect immediately on that call. So I could then be like, ah, you know what? I forgot to ask this. I didn't, you know what? Shit. Actually, that was something I missed. I gotta, I gotta go back on this. So again, that learning was actually a valuable part of me writing that email. But now I don't even have to take notes, and I don't even have to summarize the conversation. I can just have this conversation with you. Which sounds

Shane Mahi

[00.33.45]

 exactly. No, that's

John Barrows

[00.33.47]

 the best, right? I love it, but. Am I really paying attention when that happens again? Am I? That's so. I'm sorry about that. But I think that's where these frameworks and fundamentals come in, like active listening. So I had a thing where what, five years ago just before like I've got enough confidence to say I'm done with this, I've got enough and I've got enough knowhow to go build my own business. I would have my cold calls were all right. I've got to get through my script right,

Shane Mahi

[00.34.22]

 which is the first thing. And when people are saying they're speaking to you, you're just waiting to say, I just need to say this point, right? Instead of listening to them and having the conversation. And

John Barrows

[00.34.34]

 then when you jump onto that piece again, though, it's the framework. So before you have these good calls that create these great summaries, what people don't know how to do is to have that great call with the structure, which is what is going to be missed. Because yes, as I'm the same when people are like, oh, what's this Fireflies that you have. I said look, well, I love technology. This is so that I can actually listen to you. And I don't have to take notes and lose my thought and say, say that again. Or can you slow down and repeat that? Now, at the end of this call, I've got all my information and

Shane Mahi

[00.35.07]

 then I use certain technology. Now where you got like Zapier or Macomb, and you can move that flow through, structure it in a way. And there's new technology. I want to send it to you after this, but it's called a napkin. I Have you had a napkin

John Barrows

[00.35.19]

 yet? No.

Shane Mahi

[00.35.21]

 Oh. Make you this tool. Right. Again, I had a new client yesterday. $156,000 deal. Okay. And you know what was selling? So this guy, this guy, he has questions. He wants to know what's onboarding? How the hell is this expensive? Okay, let me do this for you. Right? We just had this call. These are the things that we're going to go through. I'm going to put it in a visual for you. So you write all that stuff down and you click a little blue button and it creates your 50 different charts, visuals, diagrams.

John Barrows

[00.35.53]

 That is created off the text itself, and you go through the whole thing and you send that now and now, where that narrative of words only gives you so much acoustically, right? And linguistically. Now you have that visual element and that just ten X is everything about it. But started

Shane Mahi

[00.36.11]

 on your point, right? You don't think of Otter AI and it takes you through and you've got these beautiful summaries.

John Barrows

[00.36.18]

 But here's the other thing that's being lost. And I know this sounds super fucking old school, but the act of physically taking notes and I don't mean typing and I'm even going back before fucking computers here, like literally pen in hand, writing down the what that does to the brain as far as learning and remembering is tenfold what it does. Like this. And a hundredfold what it does when it just records it. And I'm not even writing anything down. So that's when we go back to fundamentals. I still actually take handwritten notes, even though I use Otter. I have it record all the things I have it to. I still have my notebook right here, and every time somebody says something important, I literally tell them, oh, could you hold on a second? Um, pause here, because I want to dig into that because I'm writing that down, I am listening. I just want to make sure that I really got that right. Yeah. Whereas if you and I are just in a conversation, I'm like, ah, cool. Yeah. Sounds good, you know? All right. Next next next next next. Right. Again. If I don't have the fundamentals to slow down, you know, because I know that's a point that I need to stop. I'm just going to the next to the next to the next to the next to the next, because that's what I was taught to do. Whereas if I've, if I've had conversations with people before where I'm physically writing down notes and I'm slowing down the conversation now when I translate to, you know, transition to an automatic note tool or a conversation like this, I can, oh, wait a minute, Shane, could you could you stop? Could you tell me that again? Because that sounded actually pretty important, right? Whereas if you don't have the fundamentals of old school writing shit down and it, you know, sticking in your brain that way, you can't translate that into a conversation of when you know, to actively listen. This actually means writing things down with your pen forces active listening. Actually, it forces it

Shane Mahi

[00.38.09]

 because you're writing it down. And it's that connection, that brain connection that happens. So then I challenge you on that. Okay. So I,

John Barrows

[00.38.17]

 I,

Shane Mahi

[00.38.18]

 I use Otter for journaling throughout my entire business. I used for Journal first it was Evernote and then Evernote got a little bit shit. So then I got to Otter AI and the way I did it was obviously through coaching and mentoring and they said, they said, Journal, write things down. We want you to write things down. And yes, I do still write things. I've got a notepad that's full, full, full and full and full of shit. But the ability to sit at night.

John Barrows

[00.38.43]

 And

Shane Mahi

[00.38.44]

 speak to Otter and have it fully translate everything and then create what I needed to, and then fully understand how my day is. And then seeing because of the consistency is was key right

John Barrows

[00.38.55]

 over the course to interrupt you, though, you're talking about a totally different use case, man. Like it's a totally different use case apps a fucking lutely do I want ordered where I'm just brain dumping like, okay, this is what I'm thinking about. This is what I'm trying to do, that's not active listening. That's not journaling. I'm

Shane Mahi

[00.39.12]

 talking about journaling. I'm talking about, in this case, journaling. Journaling is fine, but journaling is about you getting your ideas onto a piece of paper. It's not about listening to the information and digesting it. Yeah, that's the difference. It's a 1,000% different use case that you're talking about right there. I think I think that's yes I mean holy shit. To be able to just put an earbud in and just start rambling and have this shit done, document all of it and then summarize it and put it into a meaningful format. Holy. I will talk about efficiency. It's insane. Now, do I still think that, you know, I do. I still write out all my content because I want my voice to it. Yeah, I do, because it just still isn't there yet to, you know, I haven't trained in I bought to be John Barrows. So it's still the, you know, the open AI shit that's just pulling everybody's. And I'm like, nope, nope, nope. I mean, just last night I'm trying to put together this presentation. So I haven't fucked around with copilot yet, and I'm a Microsoft user, so I got copilot on my laptop on my desktop here. So I was like, you know what? I got to create this presentation. I've never created a presentation on this topic before, so I googled a bunch of stuff. I researched the topic for me, and I say, hey, put this into a format that I can, you know, no more than five slides and each slide, I want five bullet points. And this is kind of what I thought it was. Dog shit. I'm gonna be straight up. Like, I looked at it and I was like, nope, that was a fucking waste of time. Like, that is not what I want to try to get across, because it was pulling at what everybody else's ideas were of the topic. So I sat down, and I opened up PowerPoint. I thought through my process, I kind of did this right. And yeah, did I ask it a couple of questions to say, well, what about this? What about that? Sure. But to write it for me? No. Like again, maybe I'm just way too old school, right? But I think authenticity is going to be the superpower moving forward here. But what we were talking about was active listening. We were talking about you and I having a conversation and I knew when something was important, because previously I was able to write that shit down and slow down the conversation to really focus on what you were saying as opposed to being super confident about this. I mean, you also just think human nature, right? Yes. The theory is I'm now all engaged in this conversation. I don't even have to worry about taking notes, because later on, this magical thing is going to take these notes for me and summarize it in a way that makes sense. That's the theory. So now after our conversation, I go look at that summary. I read through it, I extract the information, I figure out how to use it. But let's be real, that ain't happening. I just recorded this fucking call it updated CRM. I'm on to my next fucking call. And then I'm like,

John Barrows

[00.41.59]

 yes,

Shane Mahi

[00.42.00]

 yes for those motorists people. Yes

John Barrows

[00.42.03]

 and and please motorists like that's 80% of our fucking population. Like it's very true. This is the thing to get through to the next thing and. Yeah. Okay. My next call with you Shane, I'm going to jump in order and be like, hey, what do I need to know about this conversation? Like, I forgot anything about it, right. And then I'm just going to kind of pull all the data points, I think. Oh yeah. Yeah okay. Shane, what's up? Right. And then I'm just going through that hamster wheel. Yeah. So you know again blessing and a curse here man I think that it's taking away. That's why I actually question. What the fundamentals are even going to be in the future. And I and I don't necessarily and I and as old school as I, as I am, I don't think that a lot of the fundamentals that got me to where I am today are even relevant anymore. To get the new 22 year old John Barrows to the 48 year old John Barrows, I think the fundamentals are there, there are some that are the same, no question about it. But I think I don't know which ones are still relevant anymore. I think it is. I think if I was to put my finger on it, I'd say, yeah, the things like learning how to take notes, learning how a business works from people that actually run businesses, the actual learning how to read a balance sheet, knowing how to work your finances like creativity. Personally I think it looks great for me. Dude, I

Shane Mahi

[00.43.30]

 I'm 38. I still don't know how to do my fucking finances properly,

John Barrows

[00.43.34]

 so. And but see, those are the type of things like I look at finance and those types like that's where it's like, okay, whatever, let I fucking handle my fucking bookkeeping and my, you know, and my profit loss and just, you know, tell me what I need, where I'm fucked. Right? So like, I don't even, I don't know, like. I look at that and I'm like, yeah, I think it's important to kind of understand that. But, you know, it's the human part. It's the, it's the part where we're still interacting with humans. That's whatever that is. I think that's the part we need to look at all the other stuff that is behind the doors of like, me doing my shit behind closed doors and like, doing updating my spreadsheets and, you know, and understanding trend analysis and those types of things. I don't necessarily know if, if, if we need to learn that very much anymore. Right. Um, learning how to learn is really important, but learning what? But learning what to learn like this is why I think you know my daughter right now, she's 14 years old, right. Just getting into high school, I, she's in a private high school right now and I am willing to and there's a ridiculous amount of money and and I'd rather spend money on her in high school to get exposed to as much as she possibly can, because I, I, I fundamentally don't know what education is going to look like in four years, you know, like going to a college, going to a university and spending, you know, being two, three, $400,000 in debt to to go into a major that in all likelihood is going to be irrelevant by the time they Me graduate is fucking insane to me. I think higher education is just ridiculous now. But in the future. Like what? Like go get a I mean, and actually going back to liberal arts education is actually better than going to get an engineering major, right? Because engineers who fucking cares like ChatGPT like just code that for me. But liberal arts and understanding human, you know, human interaction and psychology, maybe those types of things are as laughable as those professions were, you know, and in the past, now they're actually coming back in vogue. And so, you know, but do I think that my daughter is gonna do it? Let's put it this way. As a parent, am I going to drop two, three, $400,000 for my daughter to go to college when she doesn't know what she wants to be, when she grows up to, you know, to figure it out? Like, fuck no. Would I rather let her take a, you know, travel across the, you know, take a year off, travel the world, meet people, understand what the world is, and then come back and I'll give her two, 300, 400 GS and have her start five businesses. And in four years she could fail all five of them. And I could waste all, quote unquote, waste all two, $304. She will still be in a better position than any kid who's going to go for a degree out of four years and say, okay, I'm going to try to get a job now.

Shane Mahi

[00.46.36]

 100%, 100, 100, 100% because my daughter is going on three and I'm nowhere near at that point yet. But it is something I have considered. And I actually also said, GPT, help me paint the next 20 years of my daughter's life, I guess. Right, exactly. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know what it's going to be.

John Barrows

[00.47.00]

 I'll tell you right now, the best thing that you can teach your kid is confidence.

Shane Mahi

[00.47.04]

 Exactly. Right.

John Barrows

[00.47.05]

 Period. And you do that by values. I introduced core values to my daughter early, you know, seven, eight years old. We had the core value conversation with her, and I told her these, if you stay true to your core values, right, um, you're going to make mistakes. You're going to say dumb stuff. People are going to pick on you. But if you know that it's coming from a good spot and you have confidence in yourself, then you're going to be able to survive. Other than that, who fucking knows? You know what I mean? Like what technology, what tools, what education, what, who I don't know, but if I can give you confidence, and if you can give your kid good values, they'll be adaptable. Right. You know, teach them to adjust as you know and teach them how to learn. Those are the only things that I think that we can do. Because think about society here for a second, right. It is impossible to keep your kid off of social. Yeah. It's impossible. There's going to be a point where I guarantee you're going to be like, no, we're not going to give her an iPhone. We're not going to give her an iPhone. And, you know, until she's 15, 16 and at 13 years old, every other fucking kid's going to get an iPhone and your kid's going to be like, dad, what the fuck? Why don't I get it? And you're going to eventually cave like I did, right? So and then you're going to say, and then you can say, well, you can have an iPhone, but you can't have these apps, right? And then they're going to be like, okay. And then they're going to find some way of hacking the system so that they get the app downloaded like my daughter did. You know what I mean? And then you're going to find out you're not going to keep them off of social media. So how can you protect a daughter specifically on social from all the fucked up shit that's going to happen to them? The, you know, the bullying, the predators and all that other stuff. You can't protect them from that. The only way you can protect them from that is by giving them the confidence, the values and the critical thinking ability to understand how to deal with that shit when it comes up. I

Shane Mahi

[00.48.55]

 i think that is the most important thing you've said on this whole thing. So it's like how to prepare for a world of AI and more importantly, if you've got siblings, kids, how to prepare them for a world of it. And the only thing through again, like, I'm not, I'm I'm 38 and for the first time in my life, I've said to myself, oh my God, time is running

John Barrows

[00.49.17]

 out. Yeah, I never said

Shane Mahi

[00.49.19]

 that in my entire life until this year. And it was, oh my God, I only got two years till I'm 40 and then ten years on, I'm 50, I'm halfway dead. I'm like, this shit is real. And it wasn't until again going, not until what is it, 32, 32 years old. Like is when I first read seven habits and understood what values are. I met a 50 year old woman that even she needed. She works for one of the companies that I'm working with and she needs external gratification. She's like, am I doing okay? I'm gonna do all that. And I'm like, hey, man, just as long as you got some good values, you're right. Like, I spoke about my story and my past and, and one of the other co-founders in his past, and she was like, Holy shit. Like, how are you guys like this? And it's because you go through those moments to get to that place where you're okay. Right? So look, we didn't cover any of that shit on the insides, but it doesn't matter. Let's wrap up. We've got another ten minutes left. I want to talk to you about two things. So I don't know if you've seen it, but one of the major things that's caught my eye in the future, where you could pick which one you want to talk about. I don't know if you saw the Wii Robot Conference

John Barrows

[00.50.27]

 by Elon Musk. Oh the fucking Teslas and how. Yeah, like and how those things are like autonomous cars and all that you like. I'm sorry. I'm gonna say it right. Oh. Which one? A different one.

Shane Mahi

[00.50.38]

 Then there's Apple. Then there's Apple 16 intelligence. Apple intelligence the phone obviously the brand new phone that has AI built in.

John Barrows

[00.50.45]

 Yeah. That scares the shit out of me. Yeah. You

Shane Mahi

[00.50.47]

 can just say, hey, find me the picture when I was on the boat with John and it will go find it. And it planned your whole day so you could pick which one, which one you want to touch on first. Elon at we robot or iPhones new.

John Barrows

[00.50.59]

 I, uh, we can talk about both. I think Elon I've I've I've lost it on Elon. I think Elon's a fucking scam artist quite frankly, I really do I honestly do, and by the way, I was a Tesla owner. If you know, the whole thing I was, I was a huge proponent of Elon, um, don't get me started about what he did with X and what he's trying to do politically. Shit like that bothers me, but I honestly have now that I've looked into Elon. He's a fucking scam artist, man. He's never created anything. He's just stolen other companies from other people, kicked them out and then gotten the government to fund most of his shit and really hasn't achieved much like he's pushed the envelope. Don't get me wrong, he's he's he's made, you know, electric like the Tesla was unbelievable. Right. And the fact that it made electric vehicles cool. Right. Because the fucking, you know, the Prius was just dog shit and no, you know, no, nobody would, you know, with the right mind be like, yeah, okay, let me drive around on that bag of shit. So, the Tesla was like, holy. So he, like, leapfrogged. But if you really look at his success, uh, he's gotten a lot of money from the government and NASA. And has never really himself created anything. So I've got I've actually really crossed the like with him. I used to be the biggest Elon pusher. Now I think he's just a fucking scam artist, quite frankly.

Shane Mahi

[00.52.19]

 Okay, so let's ask this when it's ready. It's 20,000 bucks, I think. I think you know what I'm going to talk about?

John Barrows

[00.52.26]

 Oh, you mean the robot that he had people managing behind it.

Shane Mahi

[00.52.31]

 But that is coming. So all right. Question are you going to have a robot in

John Barrows

[00.52.34]

 your house? I mean, of course clothes of course. Eventually of course I became a robot. So whether it's Elon or not, I don't fucking care about Elon. China's way ahead of Elon on those autonomous robots. Way ahead of reality. So they're more nimble. They're faster. They actually work, um, autonomous cars. Same thing in China. They're, you know, they're embarrassing Elon compared to what he's doing right now. I mean, how long has he promised us autonomous cars? It's been like eight years since he's been promising these autonomous taxis that you're just going to pick your fucking up and do your thing in China. They actually have them, right? Actually, we have them here in the States. And it's not it's not Tesla. It's it's other it's other companies that are, you know right. I mean we should all be driving in Tesla autonomous taxis at this point based on what Elon told us five years ago. Um, but I got picked up in one in Phoenix and it sure wasn't a Tesla. So but will, you know, so you're talking about iRobot, right? The movie iRobot with Will Smith. Yeah. That's going to happen. There's no question about it. Now, will I personally. I'm a little leery. Let's, you know, cross to the other conversation about the iPhone. I'm a little bit nervous about giving that much power. Not that I don't know that it already has access to everything. So I'm not I'm not fooling myself here. It's kind of like when everybody, you know, cracked me up, you know, when, uh, remember when Snowden, Edward Snowden, you know, told us all that the government was spying on us and everybody was all up in arms, and I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Like you really? Oh, woe is me. And so everybody who was all pissed off about that, I'd be like, okay, you're all up in arms about this. Have you changed your passwords yet?

Shane Mahi

[00.54.09]

 Uh,

John Barrows

[00.54.11]

 no. Then shut the fuck up about your privacy. We all get it. We would trade convenience for privacy in a heartbeat. Like, literally in a heartbeat. So we're all moving in that direction. There's no question about it. I am. I see the benefits. And like, even that use case that you just talked about there, I've been waiting for you because you know how many pictures I have on my phone, on Dropbox, on box, on like at Shutterfly. I want a fucking I bought to go look at every photo I've ever taken and coordinate them, put them into categories and buckets and so I can actually go experience them again and see which ones I like and that I like. That's one of my biggest dreams, for crying out loud. But I am very leery of of making it so that this is my own AI assistant, not because I don't see the benefit of the value of the convenience of it is just, I fear the direction that we're headed in, and giving up so much control to something that can be turned against us, can be used against us and, and and my, my, you know, as dark as I am about the future of, you know, Terminator and Matrix and shit like that, my and I'll, you know, we'll leave coming up here soon. I know we're ending up, but I'll leave on a positive note, which is. I fundamentally believe that there are more good humans than bad humans on this planet. Okay, I do, I have to or else I'd be in a hole, you know what I mean? So with that belief and the fact that we created this AI thing effectively in our likeness, in a lot of ways it's learning from us. It's learning about us as humans. My hope is that because there are more good humans than bad humans, there will be more good AI than bad AI. So that's what gives me hope for the future, that it won't turn into this Terminator scenario where Skynet wakes up and fucking puts us all into a matrix and uses us as power, right? Because that is. I mean, dude, we can get into a whole stoner conversation about how I, I genuinely believe that we're in the matrix now. I have crossed that chasm, too. You know, everybody talks about God and those types of things. I talk about the Matrix like, what's the difference, right? You can't explain God to me. So I and so why wouldn't it just be a digital representation of what we're doing right now? Um, it's harder. It's harder and harder to argue that. Um, but my my hope is, is that humanity and I, you know, and this election is going to be a good example of that good versus evil, in my opinion. You know, and for people listening to me, you know, they're probably saying, oh, fuck you and you're a lefty. No, I'm not, I'm an independent. But let's go back to values. Right there. There. I don't care about policy. I care about values. And I'm just hoping that coming up here that there's going to be more good people than bad people. And if that happens, then I will stay, you know, committed to the optimism in the human race. If it doesn't, I'm going to go find my little house in Costa Rica and unplug from all this shit and say, see you later. So to answer your original question about, uh, you know, the AI bot, um, if I stay connected to this society, yes, I will most likely have a robot in my house in the next ten years. Whatever it is, if I decide to unplug from this society because I don't enjoy or really appreciate where it's going, and I'm too scared of of what this, this direction that we're headed in, then apps of fucking lutely not. You will find me down in Costa Rica at the house that I already own in Playa Potrero, chilling out down there, hanging out on the beach and doing some maybe or some podcasts like this. But just enjoying my life, man unplugged from everything. Because I have to then find some way of having some sanity in this world that's going pretty fucking crazy if you ask me. I

Shane Mahi

[00.58.10]

 had, uh, wrap it up on this. I had a conversation with my wife last night that got quite deep. I said, uh, Elon said it could babysit your kids.

John Barrows

[00.58.19]

 Yeah.

Shane Mahi

[00.58.20]

 No way would you allow that. Would you allow that? I said yes, she said no, no,

John Barrows

[00.58.26]

 no, no. Because well I guess babysit versus raise. So there's another whole conversation, right? Yeah. Babysit for a couple of hours while I go down the street and have a drink at the bar. Okay. I could see that. Yeah, but raise your kids. No, it's a different story. And and and again. But again, just like everything, man, if you use the right way, it's fantastic. Think of the cadence tools, sales, loft outreach. Those times, when used correctly, those tools are great. But what 95% of sales reps do with those tools? They put fucking templates in and they hammer it out. A million I or these robots, if I can use it to make sure that nobody breaks into my house, that my daughter doesn't touch a hot stove, so that for an hour I can go out and do the, you know, run some groceries or, you know, go, you know, whatever it is. And then I come home. But then I'm the one who teaches my kid. I'm the one who actually, you know, engages with my child and teaches them, you know, how to be a good human. Fucking a robots are going to be awesome. Yeah, but what do you think 95% of parents are going to do?

Shane Mahi

[00.59.35]

 Oh, that's. That's a good question to wrap it up. That's that for episode three.

John Barrows

[00.59.43]

 I mean, shit, man, I, I grew up, I was a loud ski kid. Just, you know, the Gen Xers, we were the first generation where we came home from school, our parents weren't there. Right. And so we were raised by the television. Now, thankfully, the television only got you so far and you could only do so many things. So you got fucking bored and you went outside and you broke some shit, and you did some things and you figured some stuff out, right? Um, but our parents were lazy as shit. They just let us do our thing, right? We were raised by ourselves in a lot of ways. Um, most parents are going to be, you know, too busy with a job. No. Oh. Now, it's a different question, though, when it comes to the economy in general, because I don't know how we're not headed for, um, universal income, mass, mass unemployment. Right. So maybe the benefit here is that it makes the economy almost irrelevant in a lot of ways, because we're so abundant with so much, and humans can actually get back to doing stuff they do not have to do right. And so they spend more time. So, because the AI is taking care of basically the entire economy and producing and understanding GDP and all this other stuff and making sure that everybody has abundance here. Um, and then humans can actually get back to being humans and being art, you know, arts and, you know, engagement and all that other stuff. Well then fucking hey, man. Utopia, please. I hope that happens. But on the flip side, mass unemployment, the rich get much richer, the poor get much poorer. And, uh, yeah, you won't even need a robot because you won't have a job. You'll ask you to just be hanging out with your fucking family the entire day, doing nothing. Right. So again, it's this balance that we're headed towards, man. And again, my optimism is that there's just more good than bad. And so therefore there's going to be more good than bad moving forward. And uh, that's what I hang my hat on. Wow.

Shane Mahi

[01.01.42]

 Dude, I think that's a great way to wrap it up. That's the pod. Any last words?

John Barrows

[01.01.47]

 Nah, man. Just level up. Just pay attention. I think that's I think the biggest thing is, is just fucking. Don't, you know, don't be going through the motions anymore. Don't be going through the motions anymore. Pay attention. You know, educate yourself. Put yourself in a position where you have flexibility. Uh, here's one. Stay nimble as shit, you know, don't do what I did. Which is, you know, a lot of ways I built a consulting practice with a bunch of people, and I had, you know, a huge burn that I had to cover on a monthly basis. Because when you're when, you know, when you're, you know, I had about a half a million burn on a monthly basis. And when the market shifted early 2023, I was sitting there holding this fucking boat anchor. And I didn't know what to do, you know, and I couldn't do anything with it. But now that I'm back on my own, me and just my exact, you know, my, uh, SEO, I'm a lot more nimble. I can adjust as needed. So as things shift, I can shift. Um, so I would just say stay nimble and level up. Dude,

Shane Mahi

[01.02.44]

 appreciate you and the time. That's a wrap.