Seahawks QB Russell Wilson, Trump's Tax Cuts & How Propaganda Shapes the Public Narrative

This is the show for freelancers that are balancing performing at a high level and delivering a good product while trying to find their next gig and their next client. It's for the entrepreneur that's risked it all and feels like they are sinking and alone, or the future entrepreneur that's working 9 to 5 that has an idea but just doesn't know how to get started.

So have you heard, have you heard the latest propaganda about Russell Wilson that.

He'S going to move to another city or that somebody wants him to see it's going around?

You're not even a Seahawks fan and you've heard this. And so this is, this is part of what I want to want to talk about, about how entrepreneurs get it wrong. So whether you're a Seahawks fan or not is a, is irrelevant to what, what I'm about to teach you and share with you. So the star quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks who has taken the Seahawks to two Super Bowls, his. One of the winningest quarterbacks ever in, you know, in his first seven years, was barely drafted. I think he was drafted in the fourth or the, the fifth round. He was too short. Everybody said that he couldn't be an NFL quarterback. And all the teams passed him over because he's 6ft tall. He's like 5 11, which is too short.

And ends up. He's one of the best quarterbacks in the league. A couple years ago, his jersey was the best selling jersey. He's very marketable.

His press conferences are amazing because he always thanks the offensive line. He thanks every receiver and names them by name. He always says the politically correct thing. He goes to church on Sunday. He's like the model citizen. He doesn't fit into the Seahawks locker room at all. He's way too clean. And he's, he's the perfect quarterback. But.

And then he married like a pop star.

Right? He married Sierra, which is the beginning of the problem. And I don't believe in, in conspiracies or bad luck, but there are a lot of Seattle fans that'll tell you ever since he married Sierra, we haven't been back to the super bowl and there might be a coincidence. In fact, we had a losing season, but I don't believe in that. But it could have happened.

She could be bad luck. She could be distracting him.

You don't have to believe in it for it to be a possibility.

Watch game, film or watch Sierra twerk. Yeah, see, right. Practice or hang around with Sierra. And, and so now because his contract is up, he's got a Year left. Now the propaganda, the propaganda has started. And so in this is the business lesson that his, his side of the negotiation for his new contract has started this narrative that Sierra wants him to move to New York to a bigger market because he's a more marketable name in a bigger market. Seattle's too small of a market for him. And so it's Sierra's fault, which saves him from being the bad guy. It's, it's his wife who wants to move to New York, and that's the propaganda. Now what do the Seahawks do that, you know, he, two years ago, I think we led the league in sacks. So we're going to give him Aaron Rodgers type money and we won't be able to afford an offensive line. And, and here goes the thing. But the propaganda is, is polarizing because, you know, it's a strong narrative. Your wife wants you to move to New York and it's not your fault, but you are a very marketable quarterback. Your jersey sold the most a couple years ago out of any player in the NFL. You're the model citizen. So Seattle's too, too small of a market for you. And that, that is the narrative that we, we're hearing right now. Which.

It'S a narrative. It's a created narrative. It's marketing, if you will. And then that reminds me of the same thing that happens with politicians and with Trump. So I've had two people come up to me in the last week that were middle class, middle class, and they've done their taxes.

Okay.

And they have paid more in taxes, they feel, than they did before this tax cut. So Trump said he's giving a tax cut to the middle class and they feel like they're paying more in taxes. Now there is the, the narrative that.

Maybe.

It is that they got paid more every paycheck and they didn't deduct enough, and so that's why they're getting less of a refund and they feel like they're paying more in taxes. But for the most part, it's, it's pretty minuscule how much they're saving on taxes. But the narrative was that he's gonna cut taxes, but when you move everything around the way he did ends up that it's not much of a tax cut for anybody except for people like myself that make a lot of money. So I actually am paying less in taxes and deservedly, I don't know that I should be. I don't, I don't know.

But now you should.

I do feel like America is stronger with a strong middle class. And I feel like I could figure out how to make more money.

Well, yeah, it's. I mean.

I think, I think a lot of it is. People are confusing, like refunds is money that you're getting. Like, they're not thinking about it as the money you're loaning the government and then they're giving your money back. They're not realizing you're keeping a lot of your own money. But there probably are people who are paying more taxes that are in the middle class because there were other aspects of it that, like, depending on where you live, like, you can't deduct certain things anymore. And that takes a lot away. So, I mean, it's tough, but we do need a strong middle class. 100.

The blood of a chicken.

How does it taste?

It tastes like the blood of a chicken mixed with. With Mezcal.

Have you ever just had the blood of a chicken?

No. Have you?

Salty.

Salty?

No.

I don't know. What was the situation?

I have no idea.

Now you just touched on something that, that's important is. When I read about the Trump tax cut, I was in a panic because the thing that I heard is you can no longer deduct state income tax. I live in a state, California, that has a 9 plus percent state income tax. So now I was thinking, okay, now I'm going to pay at the highest rate federally, and then we're going to add on another 9%. And I literally was like, okay, am I mo. To. To Nevada, Florida, Texas or Washington? Like I was figuring out. I, I called a meeting with my accountant, my lawyer, my financial guy. They, they were all on a, you know, a zoom call. And I'm like, what are we going to do? Should I open an office in Washington? What should I do? And then my accountant comes on and he goes, you actually are paying less in taxes than you were last year.

So we're not moving.

And so the narrative was something different than what actually ended up happening. He said, you're. When it all washes out, you're gonna pay 3% less, is what he said. Okay, when it all washes out. So I'm paying 3% less and I can stay in California and I don't need to open an office in, in Washington. But listen to all that propaganda. Like, you read the news or you listen to the news, you think one thing, and then what actually ends up happening is something different. Where I actually thought I was gonna pay more, I paid less. And where people in the middle class thought they were going to save a lot. They ended up paying the same or a little bit more. And the thing that is important for you to understand is the propaganda outweighs the truth in most situations. Then you think about politicians, like politicians.

Is it easier for a politician to scare you and get you wound up on things that you think matter but don't or go to work and actually fix things? Is it easier for them to take lobby money so they're guaranteed getting elected so they can outspend their competition? Or is it better for them to show up without any, you know, without owing anybody any favors and actually put laws in place for you that benefit you?

Yeah. I mean, the point of their job as a politician is to literally pass the most amount or pass policies that, that benefit the most amount of Americans possible and to fix all the problems. But they, they campaign on the same problems over and over and over they have for decades.

Yeah. And, and so if you go back a hundred years in American politics, the same narrative is it's the worst it's ever been. Everything is at stake. Time is running out. If you go back 10 years, everything is at stake. They're going to take your guns. The economy is terrible. You know, whatever it is.

Immigration is a huge problem.

Build a wall. They're coming across in droves, are going to, you know, they're going to rape you and kill you. Like the narrative is fear, fear, fear. It has been forever because it's easier to sell the American population on fear. And fear actually will get them out to vote more than.

Common sense. And, and I, I would, I would, I would beg to say that if everybody went out and voted, we would have a much different political system. But people don't get out and vote. So actually selling the fear actually gets people off their lazy ass and makes them go vote in the people. If you divide the audience and then you get your half to go vote, you're, you're going to win. But if everybody went and voted, most people have common sense, most people in the middle, and you wouldn't have politicians that were in debt to lobbyists that have to, you know, return the favor by not fixing things that need to be fixed. And so you've been hearing, I don't know, since I was a little kid, I've been hearing Social Security is going to go, you know, is going to blow up.

Yeah. That it's bankrupt and that we'll never see the money. And like, I've heard, nobody's fixed it. I've heard that forever, too.

The Republicans don't fix it.

The Democrats, because they take money from all these obvious.

And what would they say when it comes time for election? They wouldn't have anything to talk about. Right? It's the same narrative every time. It's the same five things every time. That gets people scared and gets them out to vote. And those things really haven't changed.

Right. If you play on the emotions of people who think they're about to lose a Social Security check every month or they're gonna, you know, whatever it is, of course they're gonna go vote. And if you play on the emotions of these people over and over and over, you would think they would start to pick up on the fact that nothing's ever actually been solved, but somehow that doesn't work. And then you have politicians who are literally just beholden to the donor class and not to individuals.

And so politicians have intention. They have intention. It's a very clear intention to divide the audience, take a side, sell fear, get everybody riled up. Get your audience riled up so they go vote and they. And they support you. And then to rile up the people with money, so they give you money so they don't lose the thing that they want. So big companies will lobby. They'll spend a lot of money to protect their. Their little set of rules or, or how they're doing things. And so back to. To what I was saying. I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who, over the last week, and the thing that keeps coming up over and over again is what separates me from my competition is that I offer great customer service and I really care about customers. I heard this over and over again. I really care about customers. And then they go into some diatribe about their product, features and benefit. So what. What separates me from my competition is that I care about customers more than anybody else and that my product has these features and benefits that everybody wants. Then we get to the punchline. But my sales are down and I'm barely surviving.

And I need you to fix my business because I'm struggling.

And so take a lesson from Russell Wilson, take a lesson from American politicians that the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make is they think they're in the business of making widgets. And the truth of the matter is, is you are in the business of marketing. Marketing is the most important part of your business. If you're not selling fear, if you're not selling lifestyle, if you don't know how to market, you're not selling anything. You're selling features and benefits and you don't. Apple's a great example. This, and I've said it before, you don't hear Apple talking about hard drive space and ram. You hear Microsoft talking about that stuff, but you don't hear Apple talking about that. Apple's talking about memories and preserving your kids pictures forever. And, well, Tim Cook, mountain biking, he.

Was like, I believe in that one interview that we played like a month ago, he was like, this phone is a lifesaver. It'll save your life. Yep, okay, I need that phone.

They're in the business of saving lives, but they're not talking about, you know, the new iPhone processes, you know, whatever. The camera, camera has this many pixels or whatever. No, it's, they're not talking about that.

It's all lifestyle stuff. It's like, I need this so I, one, I don't die because it's going to save my life, and two, I need it because I want to go brag about it.

So the lesson in this is that marketing and propaganda is what you need to get good at. That's the most important skill you need as an entrepreneur. And features and benefits. Being good and customer service. Being good is assumed. It's like when I interview somebody and they're like, well, I work really hard and I show up on time. I. That's assumed. It's assumed that you're going to work hard and show up on time. At this level, that's not an asset. If you, if you can't figure out how to show up on time and work hard, you don't belong here in the first place. What I want to know is your magic. How do you create magic above that? Customer service is assumed. That's not special. It's not.

No, no, no. I, I just think it's funny because that's, that's like a basic thing. Like you're saying. It's assumed. It's a basic skill that, that comes with everything else you're going to do. But explain to me why you're going to do this job better than anyone else.

Yeah. The reason why you care about your customers and you spend so much time with your customers because you only have three of them. That's it. You need more customers and figure out how to offer them great customer service. There's a value to that, but that's assumed. Good customer service is assumed. Right. Apple has great customer service. They killed Microsoft with the genius bar and not calling a 1, 800 number in India and getting transferred back and forth from HP to Microsoft, back and forth. They Just had somebody you could go to. They controlled their, their software. So there weren't a lot of outside, you know, plugins and things. It was all through their App store and it was all controlled by them. And it all worked with them. Where Microsoft did let anybody plug in anything and download any driver that they didn't know anything about. Apple doesn't, doesn't do it that way. And so they controlled the customer experience and they had great customer service. But they don't talk about that. They're not running commercials with somebody at the Genius bar kissing an old lady. That's learning how to do something on the computer.

Right. When my Windows 95 broke, I just threw the computer away because I couldn't get it fixed. And then I went to Apple and I bought a Mac.

Before Apple, I used to get a new computer every year.

Well, 100%, because they're almost thrown away. They really are almost throwaway at this point. Because even now you go buy, you can go buy a Windows laptop for like a hundred bucks.

Think about this too. Windows, that was Microsoft's business. They sold you Windows because they didn't sell you the hardware. IBM or HP sold you the hardware. So every time new Windows, me or whatever piece of crap came out, you had to spend 350 to get it. What, what did, what did Apple do? They gave it to you for free.

Constant updates for free. I'm a little tired.

Have the latest, greatest stuff.

I'm a little tired of the itunes updates every other day. I don't need that. But the software for free updating is amazing. And if I can go see a nerd in a store, I can fix that for you. Oh, okay.

Well, title.

Okay. Oh, no.

Pay $25 to Jay Z.

You know, I have a Sonos system. I can't do that.

Oh my God, the Sonos. I got a Sonos if anybody wants to buy one. I still haven't.

It's a great paperweight.

Haven't spent enough time on that. I've been gone. I was in Dallas. But I need to. Yeah, I need to figure that out. I just had a stylist come in on Sunday and go through all my clothes.

Yeah.

And so I have a ton of clothes that are pretty, you know, name brand, fancy stuff. And I'm trying to figure out what, what to do with it. And the idea was I would have somebody put it on ebay. But the. I think there's a store here in Hollywood where you just take it and.

Sell it to them.

Yeah, it's called like, you have, like, a garage sale. Max name.

Let's go down to the parking garage and have a sale. People roll by to buy some stuff.

I don't think the building.

You want this shirt?

That's funny. This is what I'm gonna do as soon as we're done with the show here is I'm gonna call Future because, you know, Future used to be married to Sierra.

Okay.

And I'm gonna talk to Future about putting out a press release that he won't allow them to move to New York because they have a kid together, little Future Junior or whatever. And isn't there something he can do in family court that would make it impossible for Russell Wilson to move to New York because then Future wouldn't get to visit his kid. I don't know. I need to. I need to talk to Future about this. He could be. He could be. He could get a discount on Russell in this, and then we could afford an offensive line.

No, that's actually. That's really smart, because it's not like Russell's going to go and leave her if she's the one who wants to go, right?

So we could just take the air out of that. You could be sure to say something.

You could be the guy that stops this whole thing.

Pete Carroll's gonna thank me, and they.

Won'T win a Super bowl, so he's.

Not gonna give you a. Yeah, it won't matter. Who knows if they even make the playoff.