Secrets to Explosive Business Growth Revealed

So, John, I'm so pleased to have you on as a guest for Digital

Marketing Stories in 2025.

Wow. 2025, bro.

Thanks for having me here, for sure. Of course.

So I always kind of try and start off with a little bit of a

backstory as to kind of how I met my guests. Right. So

you and I first met. When did we first meet?

I don't remember the year, but I remember the location. So

there you go. We were at Phil's condo

on the coast and the Gold Coast. Gold coast

or. Yeah, yeah, for the eve.

What? Retail? Global, I think, Because I

think changed its name about 25 times in the

relative. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But

it's really interesting. So. So John and I were both invited by a good friend

of ours, Phil Leahy, to speak at an event. It was in the

Gold Coast in Australia, which is a bit of a ball ache to get to

from, like, Atlanta, where you are, John. Right. And definitely a ball

ache to get to from for me. And I think,

literally, I mean, I think the flight was like, 22 hours. So, like, stopped off

in Dubai, quick sort of shower, change, get on the

plane, fly to the Gold Coast. So actually we flew to Brisbane, then got a

taxi down, and I think I literally, like, got into the condo,

and before I'd even put my bags down, John wanted to kind of start picking

my brains and interview me for. I don't know, was that for your podcast

or. I can't remember the context of what you were recording it for,

but yeah. Yeah, podcast back in the day,

and. We sat on the balcony and I spilled my guts

for, I don't know, maybe 45 minutes or so on. And ever

since then, we've been good friends, traveled, I guess we traveled the world a little

bit, seen each other in various countries, and. And I've seen

John present numerous occasions. He's a fantastic speaker. If you ever

get the opportunity to kind of see present, you really ought to, because

he's such an entertaining and

informative speaker, for sure. There you go.

Entertaining and informative. So,

John, you're one of these guys. I don't know if you've reinvented yourself or

just evolved multiple times, but every time I kind of talk to you, you're kind

of doing something else, something new, you know, for the last, I guess, what,

12, 18 months or so, you've been, like, really deep in the weeds

with AI. So talk to me a little bit about that.

Yeah, I mean, I have a very

short attention span. I get bored very quickly.

Right. And I'M always

interested in technology, and technology constantly

changes. And I got into my

business, which at the, you know, early phases of it

was an E comm business, but it was really an ebay

business. Right, because ebay was ecom

in the. In the early, early days of what we call

now, you know, E commerce. So. But it was

my interest again in technology that brought me

into E commerce. So, you know, from

that, of course, I wrote the book about social media.

Why? Because that was technology. And then here we

are with AI. Why? It's technology. So

it's really a through line for me in terms

of whatever's, you know, coming new

online in tech. It has my attention,

you know, and I think that's one of the reasons why I

like technology is because it constantly changes, and that

way I don't get bored. So to maybe

somebody externally, it looks like John's, you know,

reinventing or moving and, and it's really not. It's just me

following the. The technology trend and the

wave as they come in. I just get so

excited when new tech starts to

take over and there's a lot of opportunity

for small business and

individuals to level the playing field.

And that really excites me. So what did you do? What did.

I'm always curious, what did you do before you got involved with

E commerce? Ah, that's a good question.

Well, so I was a consultant with a

company called Accenture, which used to be. I can't even

remember the old name. Darn. But anyway, it was.

It's Accenture now. You know, so I did

that. And prior to that, I was a

computer operator. So I would sit in the room when they had

these giant, you know, computers that would take over the whole

floor. I would sit in the room and operate that

computer. So I've been into tech all my

life, honestly. I mean, the, you know, I'm sure, you

know, you probably remember back in the day

when we had like the TRS 80 computers

and things like that. I was always into it.

So my, My career definitely has always

been in technology. And you, you

obviously got involved with ebay. What was it attracted you to

ebay at the time? Oh, my

gosh, man. So

here's the origin story, right? You know, so I

was at a job. I was working. I remember I was working with IBM

and I had just moved to

Atlanta and

a rock star.

What's his. What's his name, man? My brain this morning,

I haven't had my coffee enough. Elton

John just got clean. Right.

You know, because he went through that period where he was in and out, but

this is when he just got clean. And he was coming back on his

concert tour, and he had a concert in Madison Square Garden where

he was going to record his HBO special.

And I happened to get a notification because I was part of a

record company or record company record club, you know, and they were like,

anybody that's in our record club gets first access to these tickets.

So I bought these tickets to Elton John in New York City,

and I was going to go. However, I didn't

get cleared to take that weekend off.

And we were having a computer upgrade that weekend, and

all of us have to be on call because you never know when something was

going to break. So I couldn't get that weekend off.

And a friend of mine said, hey, you might as well just sell those on

ebay. And I'm like, ebay? You think I can sell these? I was

like, okay, fine, I. I'll put them on ebay. Started it off

at, I think, $99, because,

you know, you didn't want to do it too high, but I wanted to get

some of my money back. And this is

mid-90s, so just to kind of put. This is

before, you know, the days of Beyonce and

Taylor Swift charging a million dollars for tickets, you know,

but these were the most expensive tickets I had ever paid for. I think they

were like $250 for the pair, you know, but that seemed

like a lot back then. So any rate, I put these on

ebay and let it run for

a week, and it got up to,

like, $125. Wow. Until

the fir. Until, you know, one hour before, and

nobody had told me one hour before it ends. That's when the action

starts. And I start watching this thing go up and

up and up. And I was like, oh, my God. And I ended up selling

those tickets for, like, $850 for the pair,

right? And I was hooked. I was like, oh,

I just made, you know, 600 bucks just

by buying something and flipping it on ebay. And that

was the catalyst for me. It's like, what else can I

sell on ebay? And that's how I got started. Yeah, it's

funny, like, I think when you look at it, I mean, like, here in the

uk, we have, like, rag and bone men that used to exist in the past

where they would drive around in a sort of cart with a horse in front

of it, going around and basically collecting people's junk, right?

And they would take it away. They would give them a small amount of money

and then go and sell it. Right. So, you know, now it's, it's sort of

like it's evolved and there's, there's still that, I mean, you know, you still have

a huge amount of waste management companies that will kind of come in

and burn all the metal off things and all the copper and break it all

down into the various components. And it's always fascinated me as

to, you know, what you consider to be junk, other people to

be considered to be treasure, so. Absolutely.

And I guess. The business of

arbitrage is always there. It's always

there. It's in so many different, you know, and,

and that same concept, you know,

I took to the next level. So I never did used

stuff, I always did new, you know, but when I

found places to get new

retail, wholesale items

and sell it at retail, I was like, dude, this is great.

And it was, it's something that just drew

me in so immensely. And there's, there's like, again,

there's a, I'm sure it even exists to this day where there's a

marketplace for things like secondhand books where people can kind of go

in, scan the QR code on the back of a book to see how much

they could sell it for on ebay. And if it's in a second hand shop

for like, you know, 50 cents and they can sell it for 10 bucks, then

they're making 950 profit just by buying a book for 50 cents and

flipping it. Right. And as you say, arbitrage is kind of, you

know, it's something that, you know, I built a

reasonably successful business on the back of, you know, buying and selling

traffic. Right. So I'd buy from one source, like one or

two cents, and sell the same traffic to somewhere else for like 10 cents. Right.

And you know, in some cases It'd be multiple 10 cents. So it wouldn't

just be one buyer, I'd sell it to multiple buyers. So quite

interesting that, you know, obviously arbitrage exists in the

digital world as well as in the physical. Yeah,

absolutely. I think everything's arbitrage really at some

level. You know, it all is. Absolutely, yeah. I

mean, you could probably put that same model on virtually everything. Right. So, you

know, if you think of a restaurant, the raw materials cost a certain amount of

money. They then kind of prepare it and mark it up and sell it to

you for a much higher amount. Right. A bottle of wine doesn't cost

the, the restaurant 50 bucks, but they'll charge you 50 bucks

for a $10, bottle of wine. Because, you know, you're there for the experience of

it. Right, so that's right. They got you as a captured

audience. Absolutely. So, John, so

I, I always, I, I always kind of think back to some, some of the

experiences we had. And I mean, you know, you and I have known each other

for quite a while, but we've never done any business together, which I don't.

Again, I don't necessarily think that's, that's a bad thing because we kind of

worked in sort of parallel universes in some regards.

But I was always kind of

intrigued with, you know, certainly when we went to the Gold coast, we went more

than once. Right. I mean, I think I went there like three times. I don't

know how many times you've been there, but I always

remember the, the kebab shop, the, the Giro

place where we could kind of get the amazing kebabs in,

in the Gold coast, which, you know, you and I would make a beeline for

them. Right. So it'd be just like.

Right. And just fascinating. Yeah.

Stay Open to like 3am so you can leave the club and go there,

you know. Yes. That was so good,

man. So good. So good times. Yeah, it's kind

of weird. It's like, wow, that's. And it's

funny like, because when, when, when I invited you to come on

and be a guest on the show. Right. I was thinking, I'm thinking, right,

well, we got loads of stories to talk about. Right. And again, some of those

probably we need to keep to ourselves because I don't think they're necessarily

relevant for, for kind of like the public for the podcast.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, I know, I know I kind of put. The

podcast is 18 plus, but there's a kind of probably a whole another level above

that. Right. But yeah, we've certainly shared some,

shared some experiences and had had a lot of fun along the way

in terms of like your, your travel. I mean, you, you know, you

travel extensively. Right. And one of the things that always kind of

amazes me at this sort of time of year, you reset to zero on

the, the kind of the medallion club with sky miles for

Delta. Right. And, and it clearly is. It becomes your quest

to then make sure that you kind of hit status by a certain point

in time. So what's, what's on the travel for this year compared to

previous years? You know, I don't know. I don't

know because for me,

my travel was completely disrupted. Of course, I think

everybody's was of Course, you know, by Covid.

And like, literally I had,

you know, six, seven figures worth of

engagements evaporate in a week, you know,

and, you know, I remember everybody was like, well, we're going to push it off

to fourth quarter. But see, when I was,

when that time was coming, and you might not even remember

this, but I was following the COVID

thing all the way through. I was early in the game and

I remember I was doing this podcast and every

day I was watching the COVID numbers and every day I would go

online live and talk about this virus

that was starting in China, right? And so, and,

and I watched it close down different countries and,

and travel. And then I was like, I

was like, it's going to hit America, y'all. And when it hits, it's going

to shut everything down. And of course it did. It shut down

the world and I didn't know what I was going to

do. I need. I nearly got stranded in the States

when Covid happened because I was there and you know, I was literally,

I think I, I caught the second to last flight out of

Orlando airport back to the uk otherwise I'd have been stuck. There would be

no chance. Yeah, that

was some crazy stuff, right? And so much of my business,

you know, was around travel, so

I didn't know what I was going to do. A friend of mine had

a mastermind and he put out

a little help wanted kind of

thing in his group, saying, hey, we need some new

business coaches. We're looking for coaches. I had never business

coached, I had never one on one coached. I was always a stage

presenter kind of guy and,

but hey, try new things. And

so I took that position and I've

literally been doing that for the last four years

and it, it, it has been

my steady, you know, and I do still,

you know, dibble and dabble with travel

to get on stage and, and things like that for the last

four years. But mostly I haven't done a whole lot of

that, even though I still, you know, kept my

status up. I will get on a plane, but I don't

have to get on a plane, you know, and

so coming into 2025 here, I

think I'm going to revisit

some of the speaking, travel

and stages that I've done over,

you know, my lifetime. And I got a new

book. I think I'm going to be pumping. So. We'll

see. We'll see. Yes. I mean, I always find it's kind of interesting.

I think a lot of people aspirationally want to Stand on stage

and speak, right? Because they think it'll be good for their personal brand and

everything else. And you know, generally speaking, there are a

small, small number of people that break through

into headlining. Keynoting people like yourself,

right? Like, you know, but most people stand on stage, present,

that's it. They kind of tend not to do it again. And the amount of

preparation that goes into their presentation is disproportionate to the

amount of, you know, like, goodwill that comes from it. Right. I mean,

they certainly don't make any money, right. I think there's always been

this challenge that show event

organizers, you know, people say, oh, you know, they should pay the speakers. And the

problem they have is that, you know, if they say they should pay the speakers,

then, you know, the challenge becomes that the

ticket prices become quite prohibitive, right. So the number of

attendees becomes small. Right. So, you know, know, it's

really kind of like finally balancing the difference

between, you know, pay. I mean, you know, certainly if you have a

keynote speaker that can put bums on seats, right, Then,

you know, by all means pay those people to kind of be there, cover their

travel costs and all that sort of stuff. Right? But just most, most

people are, you know, are on stage because they're subject matter

experts and not again, not necessarily

experienced speakers. And I think, I think a lot of people are

still trying to kind of get on stage because they think it's going to be

a good lift up for them. I don't necessarily think, you know,

certainly, you know, it didn't, it didn't add a lot of value to my career.

For me, it was more about going to an event

and, you know, and, and helping share some of my

knowledge with the people that were in the audience. I certainly didn't go

there with the view that I'm going to make a ton of money from this

and everything else. Yeah, I, you know, I think

that's one of the biggest misnomers out there. It's

like, I'm going to become this speaker, you know, which is, here's what's, what's

funny to me, right? Because just thinking about the speaking

game and you'll appreciate this is because now everybody

wants to be a TEDx speaker. And I'm like, y'all

know, they don't pay shit. You all understand

nobody's making anything, but this is like all

of a sudden everybody wants to be a TED for what? I don't get it.

I really, I never understand that. But I, you know,

it has some cachet that you get

to be, you know, the center of attention for

an hour, 90 minutes. Whatever you come off stage,

people shake your hand. Oh, that was good. You might sell a few books, you

might, you might book a couple of clients from

it. But this idea of being

a 20,000, 50,000,

$100,000 speaker, I mean, you've got to have,

you've got to be Gary Vaynerchuk kind of

thing where you've done the

bestselling book kind of vibe and put in the work

for many years to even get to that kind of level where like

you said, people will

come just because you're on the bill, you know,

and that's, that's very rare. So people like Gary, I mean, I know

that Gary does. Or historically he's done a lot of

keynoting at events. Right. And you know,

my understanding, and again, people can correct me if they think I'm wrong,

but my understanding is he's in the sort of six figure range in terms of

the fees that he charges. And I think, you know, that that's great.

Right. And were it that he did like three or four of those a year,

fantastic. It's great for, you know, for the people that get to attend.

But because he spoke at so many events historically. Right. Became

to the point where people go, I had my picture taken with Gary and everyone's

like, well, everyone's had that picture taken with Gary because he's, he's been out pimping

himself so wide and you know.

Yeah. And again, I love watching him present. Right.

So there's definitely no harm in kind of him going up on

stage. But I don't necessarily think he's coming up with brand new

stuff that nobody has ever heard of before. Right. That justify

that kind of fee for an event kind of that frequently as it used

to be. Yeah. I don't, I mean, at this point you

need to be on TV and you know, to get those

kind of numbers. I, I get it. If you're a, you know, on the

dragon tank or whatever, what do they call it where you are?

Dragons. I know we got the shark. Dragon's dead. Shark tank.

Dragon's dead. Okay. So, I mean, those guys, I get

it. You know, but still, I don't understand

the, the, the, the balance of,

like you said, the ticket prices and how much you're spending on the

speaker and do they actually put butts in seats? There's very

few people. I mean, that I will. And

okay, maybe I'm not the best example, but that I will pay

money just to see on a road show, you

know, it's like. And plus everything they

say you can see on a YouTube video these days.

So it's just weird where we are in the speaking

game. And that's why I think,

you know, for me, I got saved for

myself in 2020 by it

having to evaporate. I had to make a quick

change. And I don't know if I probably maybe would have died

a slow death as events kind of

transition from having paid speakers to, you

know, everybody now everybody wants to speak on stage for

free. So how are they going to pay you? You know,

obviously, pre. Pre pandemic. I mean, I think, you know, I was

carrying a lot more weight than I am now. I put a

bit on over Christmas, but that's. That's going to come off, but, you know, but

I was definitely carrying a lot more weight. I had some real health issues that

kind of made travel so, so tiring

on me. I mean, it was just like, horrible. I hated going to the point

where I think the last event that Phil invited me to speak

at, I just, like, I was physically just so unwell. I

just couldn't, kind of. I couldn't think. I couldn't bear the thought of getting

on a plane for 22 hours to go to the Gold Coast. And I just

said, look, you know, I'm gonna have to. To kind of to bail and.

And, you know, sort sort my health out, right? So I did. I mean, I

kind of took took some steps to kind of fix that. And it was. It

was probably, you know, the right thing to do. And I. In some respects,

absolutely. When covert happened, right, it was the best thing

that happened because at that point in time I started to go and exercise because

I hadn't exercised for years and years. In years, right? So, you know,

our prime minister at the time, Boris Johnson, said, you can go out and exercise

for an hour a day. And I'm like, well, I'm going to do that, right?

Because otherwise I'm just going to be 247 in the house all

day every day. I had two small grandchildren staying with us at the time. Time,

right? So it was kind of like driving. I mean, I love them to pieces,

but they would drive me a bit mad, right, because it was just. It was

24 7. And I just thought get a bit of

head space and, you know, clear the air a bit. And it was

really, really beneficial for me to be able to go and do that walking. And

I just, you know, I started walking again this year. I hadn't done it for

a while. I skipped it in 2023 and I realized,

first few days of doing this, this year, I realized just how much you enjoyed

it. So I'll be back. Awesome. On the

trail, man. On the trail. So, John,

John, I, I, I, it would be remiss of me to kind of have you

on and not talk about AI. So you, as you mentioned,

like, you've kind of reinvented yourself many times to, to get to where you are

now. What, what do you see the kind of, the big things in AI in

terms of what are you, what are you most excited about with it?

The, the scope of it? You know,

I, I, I don't know, maybe

this is new to somebody, so I'll say it,

but I think AI is a platform.

It's a shift in a platform. The last major platform

shift we had was this thing. Right, right. And if you

remember, the iPhone comes

out because we had phones before that, but the iPhone comes out

and it became a shift as a platform

where everybody started developing for

the iPhone. If you remember the first one, maybe

two years, it was the hot topic. You would get on

your, you go to event or on stages and, and people would

talk about being a mobile first company or we

have a new mobile version of this.

Everything was mobile, mobile, mobile. But here we are

today and nobody talks about being mobile because

that's the baseline. I mean, if you're not mobile, you're

missing 60% of all consumer

activity. I mean, you know, in terms of E

commerce. So you have to be mobile.

I think right now that's where we are with AI. We're in this first,

you know, the honeymoon phase. Everything, oh, this is an AI

and we use AI. Oh, this is, you know, that's cute and all

that kind of shit. But I mean, ultimately it's going

to be the baseline. It's the platform that everything is going

to have inside of it. So

what does that mean? Well, what that means is we

have intelligence, it's

artificial intelligence. And we're on the, on the,

on the path to finding super

intelligence. That's what we're funding right now is super

intelligence. Intelligence that's beyond anything that human

intelligence can produce. And, and what does

that mean? How does that change everything?

I don't know yet. I don't think we all know,

but we're talking about it, we're

making predictions about it, but I don't think the

implication of how it's going to fundamentally

change everything similar to the way the cell

phone changed everything. AI is going to do that,

but it's going to do that way more, way

faster and we're going to have

intelligence over top of everything.

And what does that mean for us in

humanity? I think this idea of, you know,

it taking all of our jobs. Yeah, I'm not

feeling that. I feel like that's a little science fiction kind

of vibe. Yeah, go ahead. Absolutely, go. It's

yours, have it. I'm just going to go, yeah, you can have mine.

Right. I'm going to go chill, you know,

but I think there will be some elements of that.

But if you go back to like we say, like I was a kid of

the 80s, we would think that or we

thought when we saw the personal computer come that it was going

to transform our lives in such a manner

that we won't have to do as much and that we worked maybe

a 10 or 20 hour workweek when in reality it made

us work a 60 hour workweek. I mean, so I don't,

I don't see AI necessarily doing that. It

will free up our human time to

maybe focus in on more of the

revenue generating portions of our businesses and we

don't have to do all the, you know, I don't have to

manage my calendar, I don't have to write

blog post all day, all those kinds of things.

I see that really taking over a lot of those menial

tasks and they'll. Free us up pathway of some of

the things that you have to do. Kind of like you, you know, again, like,

like as an example, you know, if you take a photo and you go,

oh, there's some, there's some person in the background. I really don't want

them. It's much easier to just go, right, just remove that person. You know, Magic

eraser. Yeah. Adobe, get rid of it. Done. Simple,

straightforward, you know, incredibly easy to do. You know,

like again, I know that meta are trying to introduce technology

to make it that, you know, if you have product images on your website, right.

They can do things like, you know, put a, a better background on than

the one that's on it. You know, remove the background if you've got a kind

of janky one that you don't like. So many different things you can kind of

do to showcase your products in a better way to make it better for the

end user. Right. I mean ultimately that's what it's about. It's not to make your

life easier, it's to make their life easier so that they can make

a better informed decision to buy a product in a Quicker

way, which adds money to their bottom line. Adds money to your bottom

line and helps somebody end up with a product that they may or may not

have bought otherwise. Yeah, absolutely,

man. But also, I mean, for small business, just think about the

workflows that we will be able to automate like, like, like

this show. I mean, you're a podcaster and if

you have a podcast after this, first thing you have

to do is schedule time between you and the

interviewer so that our schedules are together. We're going to come together

on this show that can be automated. You know, my

AI talk to your AI, find our calendar dates and

schedule. The next phase is we do this show, me and

you. But then after the show, all the post production, you

gotta, you know, you gotta make graphics for the show, you gotta do

show notes, you gotta do the postings on

multiple platforms. You might take some of this video and chop it

up and, and put it on another platform. It's something. So all of

that part will be automated and can be done by

AI, not by a human. And, and that's, and what that's

going to be focusing. I mean, you know, so the podcast is a

comparatively new initiative for me. I mean, it's just over a year now that I've

been doing it and, and really it's been sort of like again, more of a

passion project than anything else. You know, I'd like, I like it to kind of

evolve and become better because I think the topic, you know,

is a kind of broad brush topic that I think a lot of people would

benefit from learning from guys like yourself and me and

other guests that I've had on. But, you know, but, but as you, as you

mentioned there, like, you know, I, I spent a ton of time

researching some of the AI tools that would make my life easier,

right? Because I don't want to get to the point where I'm having to spend

12 hours editing an episode. Right. So, you know, I'll use like a tool

like Description. Descript enables me to cut out all the filler words,

all the kind of like mistakes and everything else. I can do

a ton of stuff with that. I use a tool called Opus Clips which

as you say, like, it gives a sort of like a long form, you

know, say 30, 40 minute episode and I can turn it into

short clips that I can then post onto TikTok or Instagram or

YouTube shorts to again help increase the exposure

of the main kind of content, which is the podcast

episode itself. Right. So, you know, and I think that's where you know,

tools like, like those will be a

benefit. Right. And again I spent a ton of time on

the, the sort of production, the promotion, right.

Made sure that everything was kind of like so meticulous. Right. And I

keep thinking like I've got probably got like a, a seven figure, you

know, podcast process for

a podcast that is like got. Got a comparatively small audience

at the moment. Right. But I'm sure I, it's one of those things I know

I can kind of grow into it and it'll be something that will evolve as

I kind of get there. So, so here's the future of

AI. Okay, so right now, yes, we

can go out and look at these different tools and then we can use the

tool to help us save time. The future of AI

is, is where we have AgentIC AI, where

the agent, which is an AI, will

pick its tools. So it would go out and use Opus

Clip as the tool to clip to make the clips and then

it would use a calendar tool to schedule

those on your different, you know,

platforms. And that is the next

thing phase. So it's not just about us taking action.

It's going to be where the AI can take action

on our behalf. And that is coming

up this year, give it the. Near the

third fourth quarter, you're going to see the agency world

really take off and that's going to change

everything all over again. So we it be safe

to say that you're excited about 2025 in terms of what's in store.

Yeah, I'm definitely excited. I'm totally excited.

You know, it's always nice to flip the calendar and put

things in the past. You know, I can't wait to.

Well, I've already said goodbye to 2024. Yay.

You know, so yes, absolutely business

wise, I think it's going to be exciting. I, I think we're going to see

one of the first one person unicorns

come out of this probably sometime in

2025, maybe 26, you know, have a billion

dollar company that's being generated from nothing

but one person, it's going to be insane to even

think about, but it's going to happen. So

my, my, I guess my concern is that with all that's kind of coming

down the pike in terms of, you know, change of president in the

States, potential ban of tick tock. I mean, are those things going to have an

impact in terms of, you know, what should we be worried about them

or excited? No, you know what, I

had a friend of mine, you know, and we were Talking

about especially, you know, politics in the

change that's coming up. And it's going to be

somewhat of a change, although it's not really. We've been here, you

know, four years ago, we were there, you know,

but I don't think that

the personality of, of these

leaders in all of our countries are really are.

I think that's something that gets us

off track because no matter

who's been the leader over all these years,

we as a society continue to move forward. You know,

I've never seen, I've never really been, and of course I'm not that

old, but I've never been in a time where we like

really went backwards or got entrenched. And

even during COVID out of that was probably the

worst of times in terms of what you would think would be forward

moving. But we moved very fast, very rapidly, especially the

E Commerce space. So I

think that the human spirit will always

meet and overcome all challenges and obstacles in

our path. I just don't get

caught up in the hype. And I've gotten really good

about not watching a whole lot of news, so. So that helps

me. Ever since the day you, you had the

election results, I haven't watched the same American news.

I used to sort of subscribe to a bunch of podcasts completely unsubscribed

from those. Just not. I'm not interested at all, right?

I'm not interested. I. I feel, I feel, I feel like

I was kind of. I feel like I was manipulated

by, by all of that. And I'm like, you know what? That will never

happen to me again. And I did the same thing. I'm kind of a

bit concerned about is it seems like if you pick any of the

major sort of G7 countries in the world,

they're all in turmoil at the moment. Like every single one. I mean,

you know, it used to be that Germany was solid, France was solid,

the States would be solid, Canada would be solid, the UK like

they're all a mess at the moment, right? I mean, it's just, you know, but

at the same time, I, in the same way that I talked at the beginning

about the, you know, the waste management and the opportunities that

there was of turning scrap metal into money,

right? Thing. The same thing kind of applies now, right? There's,

there's going to be opportunities for those people that are prepared to

kind of roll up the streets and sleeves and get on with it and spot

the opportunities and seize on them, right? So for me, I kind of work on

the basis of Adopt and adapt. Right. So I'm going to adopt some of the

things that I think will work well, and I'm going to adapt some of the

things that I've been doing historically that there's a better way to do it, and

I think that will put me in decent sort of shape for 20, 25.

And one of the things I'm doing is I'm definitely traveling a lot less.

Right. I'll miss my friends if. If I don't sort of go to

events. But, you know, I'm. I'm trying to. To be mindful about the

number of times I'm away from home and. And everything else. Focus. Just. It's.

Yeah, I just think it's important to. To kind of try and get some focus

for the next year or so and see how we go from there. Bro, you,

you. You nail on the head right there. I'm so right there

with you. Exactly in that same kind of vibe.

Yeah. There's so much opportunity that's about to come up,

and, you know, you got to be aware and

awake. Yeah. And if, you know, if I miss my friend so much, I'll just

get on a plane and I'll go and have a vacation. Go and hang out.

Yeah. That's the key. Right. So I can just

go and hang out with people. So. Right. It's like, I don't want to

have to be on a plane. I just get on a plane when I want

to be on a plane. So, John, I would love to have you on as

a. As a guest in future episodes when we can kind of talk a little

bit about some of the things you talked about and how they became a reality.

But for now, I'm going to thank you for being such a phenomenal guest on

today's episode of Digital Marketing Stories. And we'll speak to

every one of you on the next episode of this particular show. Take

care. Bye for now. Peace.