The Exchanges

Q become a bigger slice of the pie. Um, so I do think that we continue to be movies. I do think there's going to continue to be a new tube. But also think that there's going to be this emergent behavior of creating content just for your own consumption, such as taking photos for yourself, which is not, it's not so foreign when I tell you in that way, right?

A Yeah. Yeah. I guess what you're saying is look, the, when the iPhone came out, it didn't stop, um, professional photographers from taking those professional photos. It just added more. And most of the photos that we take aren't even shared with anyone. It's just for ourselves. And you're saying the same thing's going to happen with AI. I might just make a story for myself to fall asleep. That is customized to me, and one to motivate me in the morning to wake up that is customized to me, and all of those things are additive. They're not replacing. I think that makes a ton of sense. I think that makes a ton of sense, and I could see that happening in a lot of different media. I have these songs that I've made in Suno that are just for me. They're customized to my little personal experiences, the things that make me happy, the things that make me, like, fired up or, or sentimental. You're saying, look, that's gonna happen for videos. It's gonna happen for movies. It's gonna happen for books. And the reason that you picked children's books from what I understand is you said, what are people willing to pay for? What are they so sentimental about that they want customized right now? It doesn't have to be super long kids books. So that's what you started out with, but your vision is much broader than that. You would like to get into making video stories for a kid so a parent can go an…

AI assessment note: “I think that makes a ton of sense, and I could see that happening”

Q Well, you make that sound easy, like that's an actual premise, but how did you get yourself comfortable with that place, be that, and that place publicly?

A Uh, I hung on to the invitation site for too long, and I lied to myself about how well it was doing for too long, and I said, alright, I'm just going to let go of that. I'm not going to continue this charade. And once I did, it just felt so easy to be more open about everything, and that's what's kept it going. I had to. I felt like I just had to do this video, that video where I said I failed. The other thing was, I started doing interviews before, and I felt like, how can I ask someone to be open if I'm not going to be open? How can I ask someone to reveal their failures and setbacks if I'm not going to do it? I just didn't feel right, and so I just had to go for it. Will you allow me, Olivia, with our time here, before we end, to say thank you to a few people?

AI assessment note: “once I did, it just felt so easy to be more open about everything”

Q And you mentioned, um, identifying the, the true thoughts or the beliefs. So, so you talked about earlier, um, when, when you're thinking about that, so I'm a fraud, you know, when are they going to find that I'm a fraud? And you talked about identifying the beliefs or the, the true, uh, the truth in that. Um, what, what do you mean by that?

A So what I mean is actually that the countermind is often a liar. The countermind will tell me you don't want to go into that networking event because no one wants to talk to you, right? That's a lie. People come to a networking event, they may not want to love me, do business with me, but they want to at least know me or just check in to see if I'm, if I'm anyone that's interesting, at least. So the countermind lies. And we give it all this attention. The problem is there's another voice in our head, another aspect of our personalities, of our being, of our thinking, that I call the true mind, that is telling the truth. Hey, if you, if you go across the street into that networking event, people want to at least meet you. If you at least, um, try to sell and you fail, you're gonna learn something that you can use the next sale. Or you're gonna feel that the more sales that you attempt to make, the more you'll actually, uh, close. That's the truth. But we don't give it enough, ah, attention. So we pay more attention to the liar, not enough attention to the truth teller, and I want us, I want myself, I want you, I want the person who's listening to us to spend more time, ah, thinking about those true mind thoughts, giving those true mind thoughts an expression in our lives. And for that, too, we have to be aware of what they are.

AI assessment note: “So what I mean is actually that the countermind is often a liar.”

Q mean, you must have faced that again and again and again as you, as your business has grown, because your success is truly extraordinary. And, and for someone starting out in your space must feel very unreachable. But how did that, how did that, uh, those limiting beliefs or constraints or countermind, how did that actually register with you and you actually became aware that it was holding you back?

A It didn't register as You aren't worthy of a million dollar check. It didn't register that way. I would have said, of course, everyone can do it. You know, all the rhetoric. It registered in a way that said, one day you can earn a million dollars. One day when you're 40, you can make it big and get it. And an understanding that was, that was behind it, that was never fully articulated in my head. Like, I used to think, I am shy. And so, I wouldn't go and talk to people. It wasn't the sense of, no, wait, you just don't know what to say, or you think that they're not going to find you interesting enough or important enough, and that's why you're not talking to them. That's the problem. The mind messes with us, and I call it the countermind because we want to do important things in life, and then that part of our mind comes and works against us. It counters it. I want to go and meet new people at a networking event because I feel like I've got a new business, things are good. My countermind says, it's not big enough. You're not ready. These people all know each other. They don't want to talk to you. They're busy. It's a countermind. That's what it is. It counters you. And most people, if I bring this up, will not recognize that they have it. And I get it because at the time when I was starting my first company, I didn't recognize that my mind was telling me I couldn't get a millio…

AI assessment note: “It didn't register as You aren't worthy... It registered in a way that said”

Q tools, or, you know, if you have a cafe, you can have software for your own, your own, uh, your own stuff for, uh, let me think for consumers. So it's actually a hard question in the sense that, you know, the, I, in part I'm exploring the best idea I have in this space, right? So what would be the second best idea, I guess, that we can think.

A You know, the thing that comes to mind for me is, you're thinking consumer. I wonder if there's any kind of guidance that could happen in the business space. For example, we talked about Zapier being the sponsor. Wade, the founder, likes the, what is it, the five dysfunctions of an organization, of a team. I forget the name of the book. Anyway, he likes it so much that that, at the end of each internal meeting, Everyone's individual contribution to the meeting gets analyzed based on that book using a zap and then DM to them as a coach. He's doing that manually for people using Zapier. I know that a lot of leaders have their own philosophies and books that they study that I think that they would want to somehow impart to their team. This is our approach. I want to, I want to guide you this way. I want to support you that way. And that kind of customization is not a hard thing to create, right? And so right now it might be something like a zap that you sell individual team members. It says, look, I'm going to spend some time with the CEO. I'm going to spend some time, right? Assembling all this and everyone in the company is going to be do, we're going to find a way to give you coaching based on your meeting transcripts, which are shared within an organization and can be zapped in based on maybe your email based on also the, the founder's vision or the leader's vision. Right? The…

AI assessment note: “I wonder if there's any kind of guidance that could happen in the business space.”

Q handle, and it's core to what you do, fine. But if you're selling stuff like me, and, you know, I think we complicate stuff too much. People come to you with an idea. It's proprietary, and it's this and that. I said, child, I did your thing in 2002. Just get started. Put up a PayPal link, and see if you're gonna make money. What, what are you complicating for?

A I say that too. I got a phone call just the other day from someone who's, uh, uh, I guess not a member, but somehow got, I got my phone number. And she told me about the software she's building and how she has a developer actually build it for her. And basically she needs a WordPress website, which she has, and she needs, ah, some kind of membership thing. And PayPal will do that for you when you're getting started. But for some reason, people don't want that. They want something more sophisticated. She wasn't happy with WordPress's page layout. She needed the two column, ah, design for, for PayPal so that she can have, I mean, excuse me, for, for WordPress page so that she could have her list Be not in one long line, but on two nice table, why do you think people, why do you think people reject your worldview and my worldview, which is just frickin' launch it, and you can improve it later if it works, or kill it if it doesn't.

AI assessment note: “I say that too. I got a phone call just the other day”

Q So what do you think? That was great. Did you memorize that? Is that just you or?

A I was just, uh, I, I was just riffing as I went through this. And to be honest, I was second guessing the way that I said it because I realized I got Jermaine here. Jermaine is probably looking for social proof that I have the social proof ready. No, I didn't pull up the social proof. Uh, Jermaine's probably aware of, uh, what was it? Anchoring. Did I price anchor? No, I should have. Here, let me try this. Guys, look, if you get one good idea from this, I guarantee it's going to be worth at least a thousand dollars for your business. Just one good idea, and these courses are packed with dozens of ideas, each of them, and if you don't get one, come back to me, and I'll give you your money back, but if you don't get 1000 dollars worth of value out of this, then I will give you your money back. How's that? That's not the best way to anchor. It's not so easy when you're just kind of riffing, is it?

AI assessment note: “I was just riffing as I went through this.”

Q And the question is, is it rebuilding the landing page software or is it doing something else? And it's going to depend on the customer and the context and what it's worth and all the rest of it. And you're managing your own resources to oversee those agents. All right.

A So Ryan Carson, he goes, Andrew, I'm not using any standard ERP. My email software is something that I've created. It sends out custom messages at each phase of the drip campaign to the person. And I'm having, I forget what his chat bot's name is. I'm having Rosie. I think it is right. All these, and it's incredibly effective in the future. Everyone's going to do it. You're thinking that, you know what, maybe in the future, everyone's going to do it, but they're not going to be like Ryan, who's like vibe coding this thing, or somehow he's coding it. You're, you're saying There will be a software provider that does it. It'll be the new MailChimp. If you're, if you have that idea, don't give up on it and say it's going to be eaten away by vibe coding software and people will create it themselves. Create that software. There's a future in that. Am I understanding you right?

AI assessment note: “So Ryan Carson, he goes, Andrew, I'm not using any standard ERP.”

Q What does this mean to you? I'm, I'm here, and I'm gonna ask you, um, and I hope that others will be as equally curious and benefit from your response, but just take a moment and talk to us about what does 1000 interviews mean to you? What's your, if you want, what's your, what's your upcoming vision?

A You know, the first, the, the thing about a thousand interviews is that it doesn't feel like it's enough, but I'm also very proud of having done it. There's so many times where I just wanted to give up on it, where I said, it's too tough to find questions, where I would ask a question in a very convoluted way and think, alright, I'm not a natural questioner. I'm not a natural, um, uh, presenter. I should just stop this and give room to someone else to do it. But I just kept going even when I had those doubts, even when I had those, um, those bad days, and that's what I'm always proud of, that I just stick with it. With anything that I do, if I really feel that it's important to me, I'm going to stick with it till I, till I make it. And sometimes that's good, because frankly, that first company, I remember going into, my brother was my co-founder, I remember going into his bedroom, we did it out, we started it out of our parents' house, saying, I'm so frustrated. We are working night and day, and we're not even earning minimum wage. I calculated all the profits we made, and divided it by the hours we worked, and it was like two bucks an hour, and I said, I'm so frustrated. And I could have gone and gotten a job. I worked for really good people, who thankfully valued my work, and they would have taken me back. Um, after I graduated from college, but I stuck with it. And then I re…

AI assessment note: “the thing about a thousand interviews is that it doesn't feel like it's enough”

Q Shopify stats, people take, like, oh, 18 months, I think, to, uh, to turn a profit, I think, on Shopify. I think someone told me that's that, right? And only, like, less than 10% of business Shopify make money. So it's, like, I think that, like, you know, people expecting, like, AI to magically make businesses just work, Is, uh, is a fantasy and something I'm trying to sell, right?

A I just checked with Gemini. I just did a quick search on Google to see how long does it take a Shopify store to, uh, to turn a profit. They say six to 12 months to achieve net profitability while your first sale might happen in the first two to four weeks. Breaking even takes four to eight months. Um, and I, I, I agree. It does take a while. And I also understand that there are a lot of people who spend months just setting up their sites and never even launch them. What about a showcase? Would you be willing to put a showcase up where people can, if they like their site, can show it to show off what the Pulsia sites look like? Because right now, what I do like about you, and I, I'm always shocked by how you do this, you're very open. I can go into the AI and I could, I could see what companies it launched recently. I can ask it, hey, give me a URL of a company, which, which I just did, and it gave me a few URLs of companies, but I feel like I'm not getting Like the curated collection of what's possible, you know, to look at and go, ah, now I can elevate my view. I could, I could see what I could build on this platform.

AI assessment note: “I agree. It does take a while... What about a showcase?”

Q And, and then we decided to try this and it turns out it actually works really well to increase the quality. Um, so essentially use the AI generated image to generate other images, right?

A You know, I, I, to, to my taste, I understand it. Why your co-founder has a photo of him Phil does on some article somewhere that I saw and I go, this looks really good. I could see how he would want this to be his avatar, you know, and I get that. That's how people feel like you just made the best version of them. The person that they are when they're on the moon, the hair looks right. I don't know what you've done, but you add some kind of light to them, you know, like to make them radiate a little bit. And so I could see that they say, this is the best picture of my kid. I want you to just use that. That's what I'm seeing. You're saying it's also helping you train your model better. How?

AI assessment note: “You're saying it's also helping you train your model better. How?”

Q So it would have to be a team of extremely AI-native, AI-appealed people that, like, really want to trust AI in production to just do things the same way you would hire humans and trust them in production, right?

A This is super exciting. I mean, really, this is the beginning of something really big. Already, I'm seeing the AI builders that I interview are turning over. Obviously, they're turning over their, their development to Claude. At this point, it seems like it's, it's opus four, six. Some of them are starting to turn over marketing, but there's still a lot of human involvement. To be able to turn it all over is the future, and the thing that's left is This taste, this sense of what my customer wants, this random opinion. I'm of two minds. I don't know if that's going to survive or not, because sometimes I feel like we know what beauty is. Like you could go to, to, uh, uh, so many different models and say, give me a beautiful woman. Give me a beautiful man. It would know exactly what it is. It knows how to design them. It could even dress them well, so we know it has taste. Then again, on the other side, I sometimes, I play chess.com all the time. I sometimes play against the machine. It sucks all the time. There's something about the human that makes mistakes, that comes up with random things that I just have not been able to find in any kind of AI or any kind of machine-based competitor. So maybe, I don't know. What do you think?

AI assessment note: “Already, I'm seeing the AI builders that I interview are turning over.”

Q really value education, while maybe people who are in finance in New York are exposed to and have art as something that they focus on more. And so there's also been a shift of... Well, it's like a shift in societal, um, outcomes, and, uh, the background interests of those cultures relative to each other are different, right? Tech people are different from finance people in all sorts of ways.

A Um, okay. How would, if, if you were looking at all these amazing tools that are created right now to create other, other tools and businesses, and you were starting out today, I know you hate these types. I don't know that you hate these types of questions. I hate these types of questions, and I especially hate them to impose it on you. Because you're somebody who's such a big thinker, right? Rocket ships. How do you get people to live longer? But at the same time, I'm curious about how you see the world. And I want to see that understanding by seeing this little example. If you had all this, what, what would you start? What would you build? How would you think about the fresh new idea to get into?

AI assessment note: “If you had all this, what, what would you start? What would you build?”