S6E26 - St. John Craner - You have to sell slow to sell fast.

Hey everybody, it is Richard Harris here with the latest episode of the surf and sales podcast and we are just a few months away from heading off to Portugal for the next event. We're super excited about that. We got two or three slots left so if you haven't checked it out, you know it is surfinsales.com I'm here with my good friend and co host and partner, Mr. Scott Lease. It's been a while since I've done the intros. What are you up to, my man?

Yeah, yeah, I kind of. I kind of like making you do the intro. Put you to work.

Thank you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you doing all right?

Yeah, I'm doing fine. I'm. I've got a massive H Vac problem in the last week and a half. So I've had workers in and out of my house for a week and a half straight and if you're not just feel like, yeah, it's either me or the house. So I guess the house is better. Yeah, I'm sort of just like writing checks every day. That's sort of how I feel. I'm supposed to be receiving them but I feel like I'm just writing them.

Are you actually physically writing checks?

No, of course not.

Okay. Just. Well, I'm just making sure because you know, better analogy, I don't know, the young people won't even know how to write a check, I don't think. I don't know what that. Right.

What's a checkbook?

Exactly. Should they agreed. Before we introduce our guest who we're super excited for, want to give a big shout out to our friends Vasco who are sponsoring the show and the event. They help pull the data from your CRM and billing systems to build better revenue forecasts. So if you are looking for that it is super helpful. It also helps with the day to day execution around these things and of course you know, being that single source of truth. So please be sure to check out Vasco V A S C O. We appreciate it and without further ado, we are going to introduce a friend of mine who I've been mispronouncing his name for at least a year now until today. Calling all the way in from New Zealand, Scott's home away from home, Mr. Sinjin Craner. Sinjin, thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. How are you?

Yeah, I'm good. Richard. Hi Scott. Good to be here.

Yeah. Did I butcher your last name? Did I, did I get your last name right?

It's a real, it's a real struggle for people, isn't it, you know, a weird first name and then as funny second name? I mean, we're friends but you know, I get called all kinds of names, but Sinjin Singin works fine.

Yeah, I was, I was, I was gonna, you know, it, it is spelled St John J O, H N. And I was like, maybe this guy's royalty or something.

No, no, not at all. No, no, no blue blood here. I think my old man, he wanted a really distinct name. I think he understand the concept of branding, not physically, metaphorically. And he said whenever I shout the name, I only want one head to turn around. So that toughened me up pretty quick. So, yeah, it's a, it is an unusual name and it does have a few people guessing sometimes.

Well, tell everybody what you do because I will mess that part up. Because you have a very unique sales and training background into the niche that you serve. So just so people have contacts. What, tell them what you do.

Yeah, so I have a unique name so it makes sense that I would go for unique niche or niche. I exclusively train rural sales teams. Anyone that sells to farmers or growers or ranchers and I do that across the world. So I train anyone in the agricultural sector. So that could be agritech, genetics, seed feed, agronomy, veterinary, animal health or machinery steel. I do that in the uk, ungodly hours like this or Canada or the US or Australia or New Zealand. And I do it usually from New Zealand and skip over to Aussie quite a lot. Spend a lot of time in Australia, got a lot of clients there and. But the rest of it I do remote. So yeah, that's what I do.

How did you get into that niche? Like that is a very specific place to end up.

Yeah, I mean I've come a farm in uk, so my parents are farmers and my old man's always been involved, my late father's always involved in farming and I went and did corporate. I worked for some fancy pants ad agencies, came out of a nice university in uk, went for an IPA clearinghouse. That's not, that's not the beer, that's the institute. Practitioners of advertising and they put you into internships like Low Howard Spink or McCann Erickson or Colenso Group and I came full circle back to farming because I really like, like those people. I think I'm not going to do the town and country thing, but I think people from the land, there's something about them and they're very much my tribe and I've been surrounded by them. I've lived up, I grow them. I still live in. You know, New Zealand is very much an agrarian economy. It's an agricultural based export, very heavy export. We export 93% or 97% of what we grow over to the world because there's only about 5 million of us. Scott will know as soon as he went north of Auckland. There's actually bloody no one around and Auckland has about probably a third of the population of, of New Zealand. And then pretty much it's quiet. But yeah, I got, I got through it because farming's sort of in my blood and I really like the people in the land. It's an honest, it's a very necessary profession and yeah, it just made sense. I gravitate and come back around. I mean I think my father's quite amazed that. So it went full circle. I've done the corporate marketing manager roles, I've done ad agency roles. And then I ended up running my own sales training company and thought well I specialize in a sector to help and serve the people that, that I enjoy hanging with, having a beer with, eating a steak with and the good people. So yeah, that's, that's what I do. What I do.

Do you feel like when you're working with folks they're sort of starting from ground zero and you know you're trying to take them from zero to wherever they are or are people. Yeah, these people are pretty good actually already and I'm just trying to get them to the kind of next level. What do you see there as the baseline?

Yeah, it's good question. I mean there's. It as always it is. I'm going to be like a politician. It kind of depends and conceptually but the reality is there's some people that. Richard, we talked about this when you're on my show as well is like some people have a deafening self awareness either ignorantly blissful or ignorantly ignorant and they think they're good at sales, but they're terrible at sales probably just because someone hasn't trained them on, you know, basic psychological principles, you know, reactance theory and all those things. But mainly people. How I'd answer it is people just they, some, they fall into sales. You know, we talk about the accidental salesperson that you know, sales chose them, they didn't choose sales. As a result they kind of suffer and struggle unnecessary. And I think it's why all the great work that you guys do, Scott with your 100 Club and Richard and, and your surf to sales podcasts and your E conferences and all the resources you put out there, you just don't want to see people suffer and struggle in a profession they shouldn't. So yeah, I mean that, that's kind of a garbled answer. Like it's just their, their whole mixed bag. Like some of them actually are natural. Some of them, you know, can talk to a farmer, signal bar safety, which is really important. They're very non assumptive in the way they sell. They've got, they've got that insider language. So they go very, very well. They're very natural. They're very good on their EQ and reading the room or reading the Prospect, but some of them are just goddamn awful. But I would say the level of sophistication generally, and I love them to pieces, the level of sophistication in a rural seller is probably a long way away from the worlds that you work in in terms of the SaaS and the tech. There's a lot we could learn.

Yeah, that was kind of what I was wondering and I'm wondering if that still is exciting or you get to a place where you're like, oh my gosh, I got to start from the beginning again, you know, which I think if any of us, any of, any of us, all of us have done this enough that you're bound to feel that way at least some point in time, you're like, oh my God, do I have to have this same conversation all over?

Yeah, I, I, that's such a good question. I have it all the time. I mean, I'm not all Zen, like Buddhist monk here, but far from it. But like that whole beginner's mind, like everyone's got to start somewhere. And I think it's like anything, it's like a house of sand or house of brick, you know, you've got to build it on something foundational. And the basics for me are psychology and understanding human behavior and understanding how people receive and perceive cells, people and how burnt and bruised they've been from really, really bad experiences. So as long as you recognize that in the buyer's brain because, you know, we teach rural cells, but we do go. And I know Scott, you've got a psychology background, but like it's really important to understand human behavior and human decision making and biases, heuristics and, and I think if you can get your head around that, and it's a key word that me and Richard talked about, is that curiosity, like getting really, you know, the best advice I've ever come up with and I don't know How I came out, maybe someone else gave it to me, but I'll bumble it again is you've got to be more interested in the person in front of you than the product that you sell. And I think that is incredibly important because we're such product feature creatures. My tractor guys with their creatures green and gold or they're blue or they're black or they're, they're, they're red. You know, the different brands, they just show up and throw up. It's what I call a verbal vomit or feature creature. And Richard, you know, this too is like in the SAS world like that technical knowledge is like a crutch and they sort of lean on it and they default to it. Their technical pious or superiority. I see this with veterinary because they go to school for seven years to study, you know, God knows how number of species. But large animal vets in my world, or agronomists, you know, CCAs like crop advisors, they're so technical they forget the, the emotional and they forget there's actually a person there and they completely miss it. And as a result they suffer and struggle and they wonder why. But you know why? It's because cells as a concept arrest their sense of self worth.

Yeah. It's interesting too, particularly with, particularly with who they're selling to. Right. Like to your point, like these people have to be passionate about working the land. You know what I mean? Like to some degree, right. It could be generations and generations and maybe, you know, someone's, you know, tired of it. But like, at least here in the States, like farming is not an industry where you can make a lot of money. Right. It is, you know, as, as you used to, so to, to not recognize that part of the buyer that they're talking to, you know, which we've seen everywhere. It's, you know, I, I like the idea. I've had a couple of clients in the, in the farm tech industry. Right. In the ag tech industry. And it's talking to those, to their prospects is, it's almost way more human than anything else we sell. So you know what I mean? Like it can just be a, you know, they just want to sit down and have a cup of coffee or a beer and like have that kind of a style conversation, not hear anything else. Right. So I really appreciate that.

No, I love where you're going with that because I always say to my students, you got to sell slow to sell fast. And you know, that means, excuse me, croaky. It means taking your time and the worst thing you can do is actually sell to a farmer because they are very, very asset rich, but they're cash poor, the margins are low. They have all these things like, you know, weather, climate, tariff supply chains, interest rates, foreign exchange. And they're price takers, which makes them price bars. So they can be really, really tricky to deal with in that regard if you can't actually have clear value. So we have to work really, really hard. And you know, I've been on several really, really great podcasts like this and it goes well, what a question that often people ask is what's different about selling to farmers? What's different about selling the farmers is as exactly as you said, Richard, they buy into you before they buy into anyone else. They will test you. They will test you and your knowledge. And it's called what we call the sniff test. It's like they, or the iometer, they will go, what are you made of? You know, and they will test you on your knowledge and test you if you're going to be persistent and you're going to show up. And it's kind of, there's a high barrier to entry because if you're selling to a CTO or a CMO in, in SAS world or tech world, the turnover of a CTO is what, how, how long is it? You guys know, it's what, two years cto?

I have no idea.

Like it's, it's a turnover like a couple of years maybe, I don't know, something like that.

Be surprised if it's longer than that.

Yeah, exactly. But you know, when you go to a farmer and I drive up your driveway, that farm has been in your family for generations. Maybe if I bugger it up, we're not going back for another, you know, you ask a bank that foreclosed on.

A Friday going back ever, probably.

And of course, if you piss the wife off, who's the CEO and c. CEO, that farming household, you, you're. Excuse my French, you're. Because they're not going to give you another go. And so you, there's very high stakes and you know, sometimes, you know, some of my guys are selling headers or choppers or machinery that's worth, you know, over a million bucks, you know, a million and a half. And probably not the big deals that you guys do, but relative to a farmer, they, they are shit scared of making a bad decision. And the reason being is they have to live with that decision and see that decision every single day when they walk out of their house because their work and their lives are Intertwined and they, so there's, you see the sort of, there's a difference there and that's sort of what I get into is like they are shit scared about making really, really bad decisions because they have to live with those. And those consequences are far reaching because they've got massive loss aversion if they, if they lose the farm.

Yeah.

You know, the guilt, the loss, the, the, the grief of, you know, pop and dad and then, and I lost the farm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you, what do you see as similar? Right? Do you see, I mean, you mentioned a little bit about, you know, you got to get to know the person in front of you. Right. All that sounds very familiar. Maybe a better question is how often do you work with a client that is ag tech, like a SaaS solution for sales versus someone who's maybe hardware. Right. Whether it's the tractor or the equipment or something like that, and you see a difference in how the rep approaches it. Are they still making the same mistakes? To some extent. You know, I'm just curious as to like, we don't, we don't talk to a lot of people who sell actual hard goods. Right. And I have, I've sold, I've sold physical goods and I'm just curious as to, here's my question. Are the farmers tech savvy enough to understand the technology, which I think they are. But where does that really fit in? Because I'm just curious about it.

Yeah, great question, great curiosity. I think the answer is it's the same. So what happens is sometimes I do a lot in Agritech, I train. So the top guys in, in Australia and a few of them go to the States and metaphorically take me with their training and train their US teams. And what happens is the, the farmer, they are, what are mobile coverage is pretty, pretty damn good. You know, we've got gps, we've got satellite John, all those sort of things and Starlink. So they're pretty clued up. They're, they're using the apps, they can measure, you know, to 2cm on their rows and their headlands when they're cropping and planting. So they're technically savvy, but they're also incredibly practical. Like they're not going to buy something that doesn't work. They're incredibly cautious on tech adoption. They're going to be slow on it. They will want to see someone else to be the guinea pig. That will be the icebreaker. You know, it's your classic, classic Rogers diffusion of innovation, which actually was Based on Iowa, Iowa farmers in the 1960s buying hybrid corn that basically, basically more bushels. And it took 13 years for those farmers to actually adopt that new higher corn bushel.

That's a hell of, that's a hell of a sales cycle.

That is the thing is, that's the big thing. It's so much longer in a farming sense because you know, you know, when we're not that single, the bro sales like, you know, like, is it, is it MasterCard, is it MX? It, you know, farmer's going to tell you piss off with that. Like you, you've got to take the time to know them, know their community, know their influences, who's worked on that farm because they're, they're close, but they're not closed off like you. So you've got to understand that psyche. So back to your question around is it different between hardware and software? I don't think it is because. I see but because having trained both sides, whether they're selling Agritech or they're selling hardware or machines or feed or fertilizer, commodities, whatever else, they all make the same mistake and the same pattern I see is they solely rely on their product as an extension of their self worth. And it's like, no, actually your self worth is you as a salesperson. The biggest thing I do is I actually work on people's self worth and self awareness. So that's the first place we start is actually with them because we know in farming they are the most important part of the sales process because a farmer hates dealing with different people. There's high stakes, there's needs to be high trust. And it takes a long time, excuse the metaphor, to cultivate that relationship. So when I buy into Scotty or I buy into Richard, I really buy into you because you know, my. And I don't want to then start with another guy or another girl, two years or like we don't do that because you understand, like we will, we will be slow to buy, we're cautious to buy, but when we buy, we're then very sticky. Like you've got to do something pretty awful for a farmer to then go, I'm not buying from you anymore. You know, in terms of browning out and nuking their crop with the wrong brew of, you know, chemical or agrochemical, whatever else. So long answer. But I think it's the same and I think there's this very high dependence on. And this will, this will make you guys laugh. You guys must had it as well. You, you get invited, you get Invited to a company and they go, hey, we want you to run some sales. And you go to the conference agenda. And I always turn up and I look and I get side on it and, and it's dominated by product, product training, product. And I go, God, like, where's. Excuse me, I hope it's okay to swear on here because I'm afraid like, like, where's the sales?

You're amongst friends.

I know, I know because your mother told you for swearing in your book. But like, you know, where, where is the sales component? Like, because if products are so good, they'd sell themselves.

Yeah.

And then.

And they never do. There's only three products that really sell themselves. Sex, drugs and rock and roll. That's it.

That is Scott's new line. He day. And I never.

Two days. That's two days in a row. I filtered that in. Yes, I like that. You have, you have.

Bingo.

That's it. Does that mean when you're building out a sales org and a structure that you don't really separate the salesperson from the service person or the account manager type because that relationship is so critical? Right. There are some big enterprise orgs here in North America that operate that way still. But most orgs for I don't even know, let's call 10 years at least separate that out. Like there's the sales guy, you close the deal. Deal gets passed over to somebody in account management or service and they're in charge of keeping that person happy, onboarding them, upselling them, all that kind of thing. I'm wondering if that model breaks down in agriculture sales where you are, you know, because of, of how, like, just like how things operate in that, in that field and how much they care about those relationships.

Right. That's such a good question. Organ structures. I'll do my best to answer it. The way I'd say is the, the salesperson should be the continual freight. And I think it's very. We kind of show a duty of care or what we call pastoral care. So if I sell Richard something, Richard is a farmer. He actually doesn't care about when you've sold me. It's actually the follow up. It's the first follow up. Now how's that machine going, Richard? Is it working for you? Is it doing the job it's supposed to? Like, I've run hundreds of farming panels, so to answer your question, Scott, I'm going to do my best. The org structure is probably not as delineated as, and I know evidence of where you're coming from. On that question, because you're very good at that. What normally happens is salesperson does it and then it's handed over to customer success or customer service. But the salesperson should still be a presence and they shouldn't just disappear once they made a sale. Because if I sell Richard a header, that's 1.3 million and then I just bugger off.

He.

He's not. Yeah, gone.

Yeah.

Well, that's great. Syon you, you did for the chase, but you don't really care about me. So when, when I come to sell you a tedder or raker or whatever it is, another piece of machine or another piece of steel for your bar, he's like, well, where were you last time? And where's your follow up? And where was your care? You know, it's that whole Mayor Angelou quote, like they don't know. They don't care how much you know. Do they know how much you care? Right, so that's back to our earlier conversation. But what I would say is I think ultimately it's all about service rather than selling. You know, I always talk to my students and press this concept of you must serve to sell. And so everyone is in the service of that client, supporting that client. So the salesperson's got to keep on top. Then yes, of course they go to the service person or the customer service person. I wouldn't say those org charts are beautifully defined in terms of experience maybe like you guys do in your assassin tech world.

But.

But ultimately everyone's got to be looking after the customer and the salesperson doesn't disappear. And they're very committed to it.

And that's one of the reasons why maybe you have stickier clients like you're talking about. Also, flip side, this is a hypothesis. Maybe one of the reasons that growth is a little slower, because if I'm a salesperson and I'm having to quote service this account so much, that's time that I'm not spending chasing down new accounts. So stickiness up growth, perhaps slower because there's only so much time in the day. And so I wonder if that's like a conundrum that if I'm building a sales org in your field right now and I'm, I'm in New Zealand and whatnot. And I'm trying to sort this out, like how do people balance that or do they just look at it quite, quite differently? Like I have more realistic growth expectations than.

Yeah, I'll give you an example. Like say, say your machinery guy and then you've got field service technician, the guys that turn up with the truck and the, the deck and the flat deck with the toolbox on everything else, the farmer wants to see the field service technician. They don't want to see a sales guy, but the sales guy is really important to stay aligned with the buyer and you know, you know, making sure they are being looked after. So speak to the service person, speak to the customer success. But they don't actually have to do the servicing. They're not out there on the wrench and, and the tools. But they are making sure they're staying very, very close to that customer and.

They'Re in the periphery. They're aware.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they're going to hand over and of course there's going to be, you know, we're not all hasty this year. Just sort of, you know, leaning on a fence, sort of seeing Kumbaya. We're a bit more smarter than that. But we do pass it over to customer success. There is onboarding and that's documented as a customer experience and what kind of things. But the salesperson's got to keep in touch. They don't need to actually provide the service, but they got to make sure the service happens and the success happens. And they are a continual thread and they're always close by like you say, on the periphery. They don't be the primary service person but they want to make sure and follow up. So you know, say the, the auto steer is not going right, Richard. I will make sure. Richard, did Bill sort that out for you? I just want to check it's doing what it's doing. Is it behaving itself? He's going, this guy gives a. As opposed to me just letting, letting the relationship disappear because it's a long term relationship.

Yeah. I got, I've got a. Interesting question. I think it's an interesting question because I think it's interesting farmers. It's gonna, I bet it's terrible. I bet I can't wait. Having worked with a couple of ag tech companies, what surprised me, and it goes back to my first question is farmers are used to looking forward in the future, right. All the way back in the beginning, like you know, the, the farmers Almanac to tell them what the season was going to look like and all that stuff. So in some ways I, I wonder are farmers more advanced and willing to try things? It may take them longer. And my question behind that though is are they exploring AI yet? Because I could see that. I mean that's kind of like if you think about it, the Farmer's Almanac, which, you know, came out in the 20s and 30s and 40s, I think it still comes out, would try to predict the seasons. So now there's a tool that can do that. Are they even that much more interested in learning this?

Yeah, I love the question. I'm really glad you asked it. I'm working with a client who basically use AI to detect lameness in dairy cows and then the body condition score, which is all to do with their repro and making sure they're producing milk and carving all those things. And literally they would have to usually manually rely on a farm consultant or a vet to do that. So literally the dairy cows go through the race in the dairy shed. And we got a ton of dairy cows here and there's a lot of dairy cows in California, a lot of dairy cows all over the world, and they're obviously especially important in India. But basically you can't, you know, the AI is detecting it and they are, they are actually getting it and they're. That the AI is incredibly more accurate than the human eye. So this is just one example. You know, they're, they're using AI and precision ag, so they're using hyperspectral cameras that can get down to, you know, close to a meter or two, and they can see the biomass of their fields or their paddocks and they can see where it's dry, where it's wet, where the soil is good, where it's not, where they've got weed infestation. If they're an orchard or an apple or kiwifruit, they can see which plants are suffering in terms of plant health. So these guys are on it, they're starting to use it. And I think, you know, sometimes people think farmers are super dumb. I mean, they run multimillion dollar operations with very high risk profiles of a lot of things that they can't control. So, yeah, if the tool works and they've got proof of it, and that's just why it takes a little bit longer, because the stakes are so high, they will then climb in, but someone else has got to do the brave job of adopting it first. You know, again, we, we had herringbone. You know, we had rotary sheds after herringbones and we had automatic cut removes in dairy. And then we got auto steer. But, you know, there's a lot happening in the satellite space, in the telemetry space. You know, we've got, we've got fenceless farms now, so we have cow collars and they literally can Move the cows.

Are these, are the, is the adoption being driven by sort of the next generation of owners? Like, like my parents have now seceded running the farm to me and I'm in my 40s and I'm like, okay, yeah, it's time to implement some of this tech. Is, are you seeing that generational?

Yeah, very much. You know, the average age of a farmer over here is around 59. But that there's still time for you, Richard, this. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. There's, you know, we put the cups on but like they said 59 for like 10 years. So like I think the farmer, he or she is a lot older now. But where you're going is really, really good because when the son or daughter or the share milk, you know, wherever it's taking over that farm. And succession planning is a big problem because the younger generation have got the money to buy these kind of, you know, multi million dollar assets or they.

Don'T want to run it.

Or they don't want to run it because they've seen all the blood, sweat and tears and pain and yeah, emotional hardship that their folk, their, their parents have been through. To answer the question, what they do is they're going, we need to find an edge here. We need to find where we can get efficiencies. I've got an absolute, you know, hell of a loan from the bank and the farm consultant. You know, good farmers I think work with really good coaches or trainers like farm consultants and they go, right, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? And the other thing is they haven't. We've got, whether you're in New Zealand, you're Australia, Canada, us, uk, we've all got labor issues. Getting labor on farm is really, really hard. So the, the agritech, the tools are really, really helping to reduce that and reduce and help them as a decision support tool. So you know, the big thing about the technology is there's so much going on in terms of the emotional, the financial and the environmental. Because what's happening is our planet is being ravaged by lots of different things going on and we still got a big, big burgeoning world population. It's got to be fed and the technology is going to help us catch up because, you know, we've got to, we've got to increase our food production by about, I think 300% in the next 40 years to basically sustain the world's population. I've hashed that, but it's a big number in a very short period of time.

Freezing.

Now I'm. Now I'm. Now I'm pausing for existential dread.

Yeah, I mean.

I mean, just get your. Get your.

Not that he's wrong. He's not wrong. I know.

I'm just sort of like, get your vegetable patch going. But I mean, the seriousness of this is that we're losing so much productive land all over the world to turn on.

Turn my. Turn my backyard in my front yard into a farmland.

Yeah, man, like I own the land.

What do I. What other land?

Yeah, grass.

Or I could turn it into a crop.

Get it. Get. Get a couple of stock units, Scott. And you know.

God, I thought grass was a crop for you.

Well, it is. That's definitely true. And it's also probably a pretty lucrative. More. More than dairy cows? Potentially.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you are from northern California, Chico area, so.

Yeah, that's right.

You are sort of an innate farmer into a door.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Almond orchards everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Stingen. We gotta. We gotta move to wrapping this up. We'll let you. You know, as you know, we always sort of let you ask us a question or two. Gotta get another quick shout out to our friends Vasco, who stepped into rev ops and leadership to really just help you figure out all that stuff on a Monday morning. Scott, I know you walk into Monday mornings and you're like, oh my God, my billing, my this, my that, you know, and getting on top of it. And granted you're still using Excel, not a CRM. But if you are using a CRM, Vasco will actually help you figure that out. Get your data clean. So please check out our good friends over at Vasco Sinjin. Awesome as always. But what question do you have for us?

I'm so glad. Yeah, the question is we're all in the sort of coaching training business. I'm assuming we all are. When's AI going to be able to read emotional sentiment and read a room?

2030, I think at the latest. 2030 at the latest.

That's my. I think it's.

That's my call. Probably 2027, 2030 at the latest.

Yeah, I think that the answer to that question is going to be better answered by jury selection committees, people who you hire.

The jury selection committee.

Yeah. So when you're in. Because I've worked with a woman. Right. And there is, you know, when you go into a big case, you hire a consultant to help you with your jury selection. Right. Do we think this person should be on the jury or not? Why? What do we like? What don't we like. And they're looking at body language and they're looking at facial features and whether your eyebrows are curved or straight or, or horizontal, the size of your ear, where they're located on the top or the bottom. There's this whole theory around this body recognition which is, I wouldn't necessarily call it scientific, but there's enough data around it to tell you that it's it, it, there's a correlation, there's not a causation. And so I think getting those people to share those things with AI and then if you have the video, like if you're allowed to, you know, videotape the jury, the AI could probably spit it out even faster than the human. Therefore that data will start to get into the AI much faster if it's not already. So I think I could see it in 18 to 24 months based on that theory. But again, it's a hypothesis.

Yeah, I think, I think everything that I read is 2027, earliest, 2030, latest.

Yeah.

So how are you? How will you position your businesses as peers?

This is the absolute existential question for everyone in coaching, consulting, training, all of this kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Because knowledge workers like us are the first ones to go, one of the first ones to go, at least if you're to believe all of this kind of thing. So there's a couple ways to look at it. Number one, we're all old enough where perhaps we should be sprinting as hard as possible right now while we can still earn. And then when that moment happens, we either retire right off into the sunset or pivot entirely and just do something else. That's one way. Alternatively. Alternatively, this is where diversification of income comes in. I own real estate, Richard owns real estate, he owns commercial properties. You know, we have an in person events business. So when everything is AI and automated, I think at some point there'll be an even stronger desire for in person, human to human connection and interaction. And, and I think oddly, that surf and sales business of ours is well positioned, survives, survive this type of thing. Then I think there's an angle of, you know, how do I GPT myself and you know, clone myself so all of my knowledge is readily available and perhaps, you know, downloadable, licensed, leased out, whatever you want to want to call it. But that is the existential question that, that I worry about a lot right now. I, I don't have the right answer, but it is the right question. What did I miss, Richard?

Well, you missed the part that this is the one place where me Being older than you is to my benefit.

That's true. That's true. Yes, yes, yes.

I'm a whole lot closer to that brass ring, theoretically. I agree. It's the diversification of income. It is this. And I've already GPT stuff like Scott knows this. Like, I'm leaning in hard to getting my stuff in there and I'm seeing results and Scott's doing some stuff, you know, in. In a tech world that, you know, social media ways that are different. And I think that's going to be the one way we stay relevant. I think the question is, and we've done a pretty good job of branding around it, is no matter what happens, how do we stay relevant and therefore through that relevance, are we able to find an income path from it, which is what we've all done. But I think maybe that's the part where Scott saying, I'm leaning in, or we're sprinting to that as fast as possible, to those things. So I think that's the first thing. I'll tell you what my biggest concern is, my ultimate concern, and Scott's going to have a heart attack when I say this is if everybody, and it feels like everybody's being replaced by AI, who's going to be able to afford to buy anything? Because there's no kid, there's no income. Right. Like that. Like, who's. Who's going to be able to buy the tool? Well, not a lot of people. Right. Because there's no income. Right. Who's going to travel to the event? I don't know. How are they going to be able to afford it? Like, that's the part that scares me, is societal.

That's where all the Bill Gates, Sam Altman, Elon Musk of the world, they're all talking about universal basic income.

Right.

Becoming an inevitability.

Yeah, yeah. So scary, you know, so that. That's what scares me.

Yeah, yeah. It's a great question. And even though it's terrifying, I applaud you for asking the question because you're thinking about it and you're forcing conversation around it, which I think we all need to do. I think the wrong move is to stick your head in the sand like an ostrich and pretend it's not happening or, you know, dig your heels in and just be like, nah, those guys are all wrong, and then be caught completely unprepared whenever this happens.

Yeah.

And by the way, just in case anybody is wondering, this does not benefit any of the three of us in any way. Shape or form like, this is bad for us. You could argue we have to somehow reinvent ourselves as 50 year old.

Ish.

Plus, you know, men who've had 20 and 30 year careers. It's like, I don't want to be right about this.

Yeah.

I just think that this is. This is where it's going. So I don't have an agenda, is my point. None of us here have an agenda around this. So that's a tired argument that I hear sometimes, like, oh, what are you selling, Scott? You must have an agenda. Like, no, I don't. I don't even want this to happen. What are you talking about? But it is the right question. And when I was in New Zealand and Australia in where the hell was it?

May.

I was there. Yeah, May. I was trying to have this conversation with people and most people were looking at me like I was absolutely insane. Like this was so far off their radar. And so anyway, my point is I. I like that you're asking that question. I hope you keep asking it at home with the people that you run into, because I think it's super important for all of us. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think we're all going to have to go try and sell the farmers because they're going to be having the food. Right. And all of a sudden, all of.

A sudden, there's one thing they're not inventing is land, you know, so, yes, there's no more. This is why you sent Altman's and Bill Gates are buying vast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's why some of the largest companies in America now own like half of residential properties in major cities, which is like a whole other terrifying thing.

Totally, totally.

Anyways, Richard, get us out of here.

All right. Well, Sinjin, thank you, my man. So good to see you. Thank you for getting up at this hour in your part of the world. We are grateful for you and grateful to have a conversation we don't normally have around an industry we don't normally talk about. So, yeah, it's been great. Learned a lot. It's been really, really fun. So thank you so much for joining us and we will see everybody next time on the surf and sales podcast or in Portugal at the surf and sales event.

See y'.

All.

See? Yes.