Break the Rules

Business Brain Episode 609 for Casual Friday, December 20th Ugly Christmas Sweater Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we take some of your ideas, some of our ideas, we crunch them, we dissect them, we analyze them so that we can each keep on living or start living those charmed lives that we love. Our sponsor for this episode is vanta.com brain. That's where you can go to get $1,000 savings. Vanta automates your compliance for ISO 27001 SOC 2 GDPR. We'll talk more about those things in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton and I'm out here.

In the Bay Area. I'm Shannon Jean. I see these Vanta billboards and I love their, their. Their tagline says, so compliance doesn't have to sock too. And I thought that was really good. It's something along those lines.

No, that makes sense.

Yeah, it's on the way. On the way to sfo. I've seen all the time like, hey, those guys sponsor us. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome.

I. I was playing with ChatGPT this week, Shannon.

Oh, you were?

Yeah. Well, I'm always. I mean, yes, I say playing with it. I'm using it constantly and same. Most of the time, especially driving home from like gigs or late rehearsals or whatever in the car, I have conversations with ChatGPT.

That's a huge game changer, man. If you're not doing that, it's incredible.

And if I can't think of what to ask, like if I don't have something pressing, I just sort of roll with it. The other day I said to it, I said, hey, I drive a 2018 Subaru Outback Touring Edition. Tell me the top three features that most owners don't even know exists.

Oh, that's pretty cool, right?

That was it. And only. Yeah, only one of them was a hallucination. I'm guessing it was probably something in a later model year, whatever, you know. But the other two were like, oh, holy crap. I didn't know I could do that.

That's pretty cool. I like that.

Yep. I, I was messing. I was doing some tech support for myself stuff with. With Chat gbt and which is an awesome use case of it. It's not always right, of course, but with tech support, that's okay because you try something and you know whether it worked or not. But I was getting these log messages and they weren't. They were Just appearing on my screen in a way that I couldn't really copy paste them as text. And so at first I was typing in with the log message saying I was like, this is stupid. I took a screenshot of it, but. And pasted the screenshot right into Chat GPT and it parsed the screenshot and said, oh yeah, here's what the logs are saying and did its thing. And so like, try this case. Yeah. And screenshots work. It will. It knows how to do the optical character recognition on that stuff. And it's, it's totally. It's great. I. Yeah, yeah.

It is amazing that the voice that. Being able to discuss topics and the, the. A big part of it that I love is as I'm having the conversation, it's saving that conversation for me. The next time I go online, I'm in on. On the. The app or I'm on the web in Chat GPT, it's. Everything we discussed is right there.

One thing that the voice mode can't do, and I'm still trying to figure out why this is a limitation, but it definitely is and it will tell you that it's a limitation. The text mode. Now I can ask it, hey, search online for me and look for X if I want something current. The voice mode can't do that. Its database is Fixed as of October 2023. At the moment. It'll. It'll keep getting updated, but it, it won't, it won't do live searching. And I'm not sure why that is, but I'm sure there's a reason and, and it just is what it is. But that's the only limitation of it. Because we were driving home from a concert and I wanted the other night and my wife and I were talking, I'm like, well, let's just ask Chat GPT. I have it. You know, the, the new iPhones have the action button.

Oh yeah. So I just have the action button.

I have the action button. Actually. I have a. I need to flesh out the script. Right now it is just the action button. But what I want to do is have the. Have it only do that if I'm in carplay mode. So.

Yeah, yeah.

Which you can do with, with scripts and shortcuts.

Because the chat GPT icon is not part of the CarPlay. No.

I don't know why. Well, my guess is Apple asked them not to make it part of CarPlay because otherwise they definitely would have. So.

Yes, I think so. So now with Siri integrating Chat GPT, maybe you'll be able to. I don't know.

It sucks so far. It sucks. The Siri Chat GPT integration. Well, it's fine if you haven't used chat GPT directly. And then it's like, oh, this is. What a disaster. Why do I have to jump through all these hoops?

Yeah, that is amazing. Yeah, that is crazy. Fascinating.

Also on the AI front, Shannon, Grammarly. Yeah, Grammarly acquired coda. If you don't know what coda is, it's one of these all in one sort of. It's like Notion, which has been a sponsor for us for a long time. That's right. It's one of these kind of all in one platforms where you can sort of organize a project or your life and have all kinds of different things. And it's got links or hooks for external stuff and very, very AI leveraged.

In, in terms of what Koda said, Grammarly acquired them.

No, Grammarly acquired them. And Grammarly is also AI leveraged.

I mean, I love it.

Yeah, we use the term AI, really. We're talking about machine learning, which is something Grammarly has been doing for a very long time.

So, yeah, it all, I reckon, I recommend, you know, Grammarly freed me to focus on my writing, not. Not my grammar and not my spelling and that, you know, and that kind of stuff. And it, it's not, you know, 100% like most machine learning AI stuff, but it's, you know, it's probably close to 80% sure where I get to decide, but I, I have and I've used it for, I think since 2019. It's, it's scanned over 10 million words that I've written. I just, I get the email every week. It says how they, they rate you against other Grammarly users, which I really like. Y and it's like you wrote more than 98% of other grant and I write so much. I'm always like, great. And then if I see it dropping like 92%, I'm like, man, I gotta create some more content and stuff. But I also use it a lot to go back over my old stuff I've written and to go through and clean. It's like, oh, wow, that's horrible. But it's a game changer and I have the paid version and it's probably one of the best things I pay for. Yes, it has annoying things like everything else.

Sure.

And people often point that out to me when I mention Grammarly, but it's definitely changed my life.

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Hey.

Let's talk about breaking some rules.

Yeah, I really want to. I talked to a lot of people and I often hear this. I don't want to say they're excuses, but they're guardrails, let's say. And I don't believe in rules are guardrails. They want to keep a certain section of people in, you know, within the parameters of this is what you can do and this is what you can't do, or this is not. Is what's acceptable and this is not.

Right. Right.

Right now. Right. And so I often remind people about this concept of it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Yes.

I don't want you to do anything that's illegal. Of course, that would. Or hurt anyone. Of course.

Right.

But so many rules, most, maybe all rules are created by people that have never created something from nothing. Okay. And that concept or rules are created.

By people who have created something from nothing and want to stop others from doing it.

Yes, yes, yes. That's a good take on it as well. Because they want to create a moat around to protect what they've done. And if you look at big companies, they do this right, all this, I don't know, I'll beat up on the car dealership lobby now. Right. You can't buy a car direct because that's illegal in this state. Tesla can't sell direct in this state because it's illegal. Well, it's only illegal because the car dealership lobby got together and got their, you know, congressmen or an assembly members or whatever to vote to protect their business from other people. And that's not right. But mainly what I'm talking about is things that in your head keep you from, you know, getting going and stop you from, you know, whether it's, well, I couldn't get the resale permit because I don't have this thing, or I don't have this form or that. And it's like, well, what do you mean? You don't have a company name? Just make one up.

Go get one.

Yes, just make it up. They don't care. Nobody cares. Just call it whatever you want. Shannon's business. Okay, Whatever. If you're not creative, doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter, right?

It doesn't matter. Most of this stuff doesn't matter. And it's the same like with accountants. I always ask my accountant, okay, can we, can we do this? And well, and the accountants often, first answer is no.

They're supposed to be that way. You pay. I always say, I want a lawyer and an accountant that are slightly more risk averse than I am.

Yeah.

I don't want somebody that's so far over the line that I can't work with them.

Yeah, because you have to pay the price for that. Right. They screw up, they're not coming for them. Typically it's you.

Right.

Especially, especially accountants. So. But when they, when say no, I always ask, well, what's the risk? Is it, hey, if this gets, if this write off or expense or depreciation gets disqualified, you may pay. You're gonna have to pay some backup interest and maybe a small fine. Okay, well, maybe that's worth taking the risk or. But if they say, well, if you do this, you go to prison. I'm not taking that one. Great.

Thanks for letting me know.

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. That's why I pay you. But think of rules. You know, I, I often say that reality is flexible. Right. You get to make your own reality.

So I have to ask a question about that because in a recent episode, I put this on our list to talk about this quote. Reality is flexible. You attributed it to your mom. Is that.

Yeah.

Is that, Is that where you got it from?

She. She taught me that when I was a little kid.

Love that, love that.

Yeah, yeah. And it was little things. Like I can remember being in the backseat of my parents car. They took me to see the first Star wars movie.

Okay.

And they asked Me. What do you think the force is? And I'll never forget. I was like. I go, you know, it seemed to me like the force is confidence, and just having confidence in yourself that you could do anything like that. And instead of saying, no, no, it's some magical thing or whatever, they were like, you're right. And that was one of the first times I realized as I got older, I look back on that, and it's like they were teaching me that reality is flexible. That confidence that I had that you could, you know, your parents, great parents, tell their kids, you can do anything, right? And. And it's all up to you. And this kind of stuff and that. That's. It's rules. I've been a rule breaker my. My entire life. Yes. Has it got me in trouble? Yes. Has it cost me money sometimes? Yes, absolutely.

Oh, my gosh, absolutely.

But it's.

Will it cost me money again? Unfortunately, yes. But let me knock on wood just in case. I can avoid that.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. I don't have any wood around me. I'm in tech center. But it's. Don't let the rules stop you. Those rules, you know, I don't want to say that the rules don't apply to you, because they do apply to all of us, but so many of them. There's ways to overcome those rules or meander by quietly, let's say, well.

Or I. I always say, when I talk about the tax code is a great opportunity to. To illustrate this. I always say, not my rules. Right. But what I mean by that. Or usually what leads to the com. The. The conversation that leads to me saying, that is someone. I'll tell somebody how I'm doing something with Texas, and they're like, oh, that doesn't seem right. I'm like, hey, not my rules. I didn't make these rules up. It's up to me to find my path through them. So leveraging the rules to your advantage. No one says that the rules have to be used for the reasons that the creators put them in place. You can use. Look at the rule for what it is, not what it was intended to be.

Yeah.

What it is. And okay, great. That there is. There is a hurdle or even just a brick wall there. Fine. Can we tunnel under it? Can we go around it? What. What is. What. What does this look like? It's. I get that it's to stop me from doing the one thing I want to do, but that's not how it's written. It's Written to stop this one version of this. What's the second version of this? I don't know.

That's right. I'm often amazed at the tax stuff when you talk like, oh, you just did this. Well, you can do this and do it. I'm like, what? You know, really? Is that real? Yeah. Look at this. It says it this way. So one of the reason why very wealthy people, you know, keep their wealth and find ways around paying massive amounts of taxes is they hire people that help them. Experts get through these things. Yeah. And you know what? We're all able to take advantage of those situations at various levels. And just if, especially if your gut instinct telling you it's some BS rule, I'm telling you, man, you got to challenge it at least and do a little research and ask other people. How do you do this? How do you get around it? I see it all the time. There's a vast economy in social media platforms. Like if you go in the entrepreneurial sections or business sections, like on X, it's like the wild west. I'm doing this. We're going this. We're doing this. Okay, that's, that's great.

Sure.

If you go on Reddit, it's very different and it's very. People are very quick to point out you can't do that.

I think that's also true on X. I, I don't, I think it's every. I think it's wherever you find yourself, like, what's the community? The community on X tends to. The entrepreneur community on X tends to be very cavalier.

Yes. Where. That's what I mean. That's what I mean.

Yeah. But that's not necessarily like, I don't think it's. I don't.

It's not platform based.

Yeah.

People. Yeah, I got that.

Whatever.

That I just notice it, that it seems like, yeah. Like I want to get. When I'm looking at those platforms, both are really valuable. I learn a lot from them. You know, every time I dig in there, we're talking about you keeping your laptop on your together when you're watching TV late at night. Definitely looking at stuff. What's going on? Oh, I didn't know that size side Hustle even existed. I love it. And I often just want to shake my laptop to all the commenters that are like, that won't work. This doesn't that it's like, hey, you're doing yourself a disservice. Try it. Experiment. Take the Dave Hamilton two week experiment. Maybe it needs to be two months, but get out there and try it and see what happens. And don't let rules define yourself. Don't let anything stop in the way of being successful and creating the life you want to. Yeah, that's my rah rah pitch for Friday.

I. I like it, man. It's a good path to going to the weekend. Yep.

Yeah.

You know, the weekend doesn't have to be what everybody says it has to be. Do whatever the heck.

It's another day.

It's another day. Two more days ending in. Yep.

Got it.

Thanks for hanging out with us, everybody. We, we love that we get to be able to do this. I certainly do. And I think I can for you for that. Yep. And it's wonderful. Thank you for hanging out with us. Send us a note. It's the end of the year. What have you learned from this show? I know everybody. Our schedules are crazy and I know you're out there listening. We'd like to hear from you every now and then. So take some of this time and send us a note. Feedbackusbrain show. We would love to know what you learned from us this year and what your story struggling with, what you want to learn about for next year. Let us know. We'll see you next week.

Have a good weekend.

Keep living that charm. Life.