Secrets to Explosive Business Growth Revealed

Jim Banks [00:00:03]:
So, John, I'm so pleased to have you on as a guest for Digital Marketing Stories in 2025.

John Lawson [00:00:09]:
Wow. 2025, bro. Thanks for having me here, for sure. Of course.

Jim Banks [00:00:17]:
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?

John Lawson [00:00:28]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:00:39]:
Gold coast or.

John Lawson [00:00:40]:
Yeah, yeah, for the eve. What? Retail?

Jim Banks [00:00:44]:
Global, I think, Because I think changed its name about 25 times in the relative.

John Lawson [00:00:50]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim Banks [00:00:53]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:01:20]:
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.

John Lawson [00:01:39]:
Yeah, podcast back in the day, and.

Jim Banks [00:01:42]:
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.

John Lawson [00:02:09]:
There you go. Entertaining and informative.

Jim Banks [00:02:13]:
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.

John Lawson [00:02:32]:
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.

John Lawson [00:03:09]:
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.

John Lawson [00:03:57]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:04:22]:
So what did you do? What did. I'm always curious, what did you do before you got involved with E commerce?

John Lawson [00:04:29]:
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.

John Lawson [00:04:50]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:05:25]:
And you, you obviously got involved with ebay. What was it attracted you to ebay at the time?

John Lawson [00:05:32]:
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.

John Lawson [00:06:08]:
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.

John Lawson [00:07:01]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:07:51]:
Wow.

John Lawson [00:07:51]:
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.

John Lawson [00:08:25]:
It's like, what else can I sell on ebay? And that's how I got started.

Jim Banks [00:08:29]:
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.

John Lawson [00:09:09]:
Absolutely.

Jim Banks [00:09:10]:
And I guess.

John Lawson [00:09:13]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:09:51]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:10:35]:
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.

John Lawson [00:10:47]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think everything's arbitrage really at some level. You know, it all is. Absolutely, yeah.

Jim Banks [00:10:54]:
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.

John Lawson [00:11:17]:
Right, so that's right. They got you as a captured audience.

Jim Banks [00:11:21]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:12:06]:
Right. So it'd be just like. Right. And just fascinating.

John Lawson [00:12:12]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:12:27]:
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.

John Lawson [00:12:46]:
Yeah. Right.

Jim Banks [00:12:47]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:13:18]:
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?

John Lawson [00:13:30]:
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.

John Lawson [00:14:41]:
And of course it did. It shut down the world and I didn't know what I was going to do. I need.

Jim Banks [00:14:49]:
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.

John Lawson [00:15:04]:
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.

John Lawson [00:16:35]:
And I got a new book. I think I'm going to be pumping. So. We'll see. We'll see.

Jim Banks [00:16:42]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:17:17]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:18:10]:
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.

John Lawson [00:18:38]:
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.

John Lawson [00:19:27]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:20:10]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:20:37]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:21:04]:
Right. That justify that kind of fee for an event kind of that frequently as it used to be.

John Lawson [00:21:11]:
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?

Jim Banks [00:21:26]:
Dragons.

John Lawson [00:21:26]:
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.

John Lawson [00:21:51]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:22:45]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:23:13]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:23:31]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:24:02]:
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.

John Lawson [00:24:26]:
Awesome. On the trail, man.

Jim Banks [00:24:29]:
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?

John Lawson [00:24:52]:
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.

John Lawson [00:25:50]:
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.

John Lawson [00:26:22]:
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.

John Lawson [00:27:22]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:27:52]:
Absolutely, go. It's yours, have it. I'm just going to go, yeah, you can have mine. Right.

John Lawson [00:27:58]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:29:02]:
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.

John Lawson [00:29:19]:
Yeah.

Jim Banks [00:29:19]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:29:47]:
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.

John Lawson [00:30:06]:
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.

John Lawson [00:30:59]:
It's something. So all of that part will be automated and can be done by AI, not by a human.

Jim Banks [00:31:06]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:31:55]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:32:36]:
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.

John Lawson [00:32:54]:
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.

John Lawson [00:33:48]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:33:59]:
So we it be safe to say that you're excited about 2025 in terms of what's in store.

John Lawson [00:34:05]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:34:49]:
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?

John Lawson [00:35:07]:
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.

John Lawson [00:36:32]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:36:43]:
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?

John Lawson [00:36:57]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:37:13]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:38:18]:
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.

John Lawson [00:38:27]:
Focus.

Jim Banks [00:38:28]:
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.

John Lawson [00:38:34]:
Bro, you, you. You nail on the head right there. I'm so right there with you. Exactly in that same kind of vibe.

Jim Banks [00:38:43]:
Yeah.

John Lawson [00:38:44]:
There's so much opportunity that's about to come up, and, you know, you got to be aware and awake.

Jim Banks [00:38:52]:
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.

John Lawson [00:38:57]:
Yeah. That's the key.

Jim Banks [00:39:00]:
Right. So I can just go and hang out with people.

John Lawson [00:39:02]:
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.

Jim Banks [00:39:09]:
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.

John Lawson [00:39:31]:
Peace.