Danny Walsh on Building a Legacy with AI and Authenticity

G' day legends. And welcome to season two of the Laptop Lifestyle Dad Show. And I'm buzzing like a caffeinated kangaroo on a trampoline. To kick off this new season with something truly epic. Thanks to the incredible LA Tribune Podcast network, we're stepping up. We're bringing conversations with some of the world's best in social selling, AI and business strategy. This show isn't just about cool tech or clever hacks. It's about empowering you moms and dads, the everyday legend trying to build businesses that create freedom time and meaningful impact. Here's a wild stat. 91% of businesses know about AI, but they're not using it. Why overwhelm confusion and the fear of losing that authentic voice? We're here to bridge the gap, show you how to use tools with heart and help you to grow your business. That's authentic and 100% you. To kick off season two, I could not have a better guest than Danny Walsh from the uk. Denny's a global expert in click funnels, AI social selling. He's someone who's been through the grind, he's built his business from the ground up and now he's helping others to do the same. Hey. I met Denny last week on the LA Tribune Marketing forum where him and Steve Ramona, both two key speakers, spoke directly to my heart and they dropped some game changing truth and all we need to do is just ask. And inspired by that, I did exactly that. As soon as Denny finished speaking, I reached out to him straight into his inbox and I asked Danny to join us. And here we are today. So Danny, thank you very much mate for being here to help us to kick off season two in style. So mate, I love to start this interview with getting into your story. I always like to unpack the hero's journey from Sucksville to Awesome Town. So Denny, let's start with your story. What did life look like before you cracked the code? What were some of the biggest struggles? What were some of the biggest lessons that you learned to help you get out of Saxville and help you to get to awesome Town and where you are today?

Hey Jeff, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. And it is early morning in the UK right now, but we will, we will get into this. And I think Sucks Ville kind of sums it up nicely because the area where I sort of grew up as a kid, it is actually in the top 6% of the most deprived in the UK. So, you know, some kids would go to school in a, in a nice Car we would have to dodge. Like the needles and the drugs, paraphernalia that was drawn around the neighborhood from the, you know, the druggies from the night before. And people didn't have a lot of money. And it was an interesting experience and an interesting dynamic. I think it's safe to say that the majority of the kids from that school, that class, did the amount so much. I'm sure, you know, they've got families, they've got kids, but quite a few are in jail, some are no longer with us. There's stories all over the place and all people want to do is live a life, right? And it was, you know, well, I was. I was born in 81, so going to school 4, 5, 6, 7, you can do the maths and figure that out. That was about the time that there was like a boom in like heroin and like the drug taking. So when we got into teens, that was right, you know, that was something that was being offered, that was something that you had to understand the consequences of. And you saw friends from primary school, from, you know, the early years who were no longer with you in high school. You know, this ladder that took an overdose, somebody had been stabbed, you know, people were being. Having the things taken off them and, you know, all of that so sucks Ville is kind of where it was at and you had to adapt to that. But I did have a great family around me and, you know, my. My mum's fantastic, my grandma's. My late grandma, she's no longer with us. But we had caring environment, as a lot of kids did. And you could hear, you know, kids, mums shouting down the street, trying to find where the kid was with this fear in the voices that have the fallen file. It's like a damn vampire, right, this, this heroin thing coming into the. Into the communities and literally sucking the life out of kids. Yeah, there was one lady, she came running out of the house and she shouted like, he stole the rings from my fingers. And her son had literally stole the rings while she was asleep. This stuff makes do crazy stuff. So that was a big issue. And then obviously the deprivation. You know, there's a bookmakers, like a betting shop on every corner, all of that kind of stuff. And that's still true to some degree now. But there was always something in me that wanted to help people. And I was the kid who would do kids homework. As we got older, I was the kid who would start fixing people's computers and, you know, helping people understand, you know, how to do things that they couldn't normally do. And I don't know where those talents and skills came from. I was always a bit of a geek. I would always mess around with technology, what existed. And we always wanted to be radio DJs. And that kind of paved the way for it because we got into music, and I guess that was what served us. And going into year 2000, a bunch of friends. We wanted to be DJs so bad. We needed a website. And we knew that this website would be the key to, you know, fame and would be the way off the streets. And I borrowed a credit card of somebody and we put their credit card in and we bought our very first domain. And that's kind of like what moved us from being in the risky area with the crazies into a place where we could control what was going on and we could make money without trying to get a job. Because not only was it, you know, rife with. With drugs and all of this stuff, employment was terrible. So it's like, you know, you're 18, 19, you don't want to go to college. What do you do? And we stumbled on this. Hey, the Internet would allow us to be DJs. And that was. That was the catalyst. And, you know, fast forward years now we're at a point where the Internet's taking me around the world. Some of these other guys are still DJs, so it depends where you want to go and what you want to do. But from all of that, from nothing, with nothing, with a borrowed credit card and some skills that we learned from whatever was, I don't know, is like Lycos and Yahoo. It wasn't. No, it wasn't Google. It wasn't Facebook Live. There wasn't.

Way back.

Back in the day, trying to figure out how do we put our message on the Internet so people will give us money? That was. That was it.

I love that story. Oh, thanks for sharing, Danny. Like, I just love hear the. The grassroots type stories, you know, and the school of hard knocks, like, what it takes to get started. And, you know, like, a lot of us have a Sucksville story, and a lot of us could stay there and become a statistic, but there's a rare few, and I think you're one of them, Danny Olsh. I know you're one of them that you've. You're paving the way, like, you're pioneering the way to. For others to follow. And I love that. And, you know, you started from nothing and look at where you are now.

Yeah, I think. I think it comes down To a choice. I was fortunate enough to interview Les Brown recently and we was on the show with Les and I'm normal as I spent some time in Jamaica with him. We spoke on same stage. It was a lot of fun. We were talking and Les made the point that you've got to have the will to do it. And he emphasized it so well. In Les's is where you'd have to. You'd have to check out the episode. But the will to do something is like you could have had the will to take heroin. Right. But you had the will to start a business. And every day we get these choices. Every day we get the opportunity. And I guess if you don't have the will and you don't take the opportunity, it will get past and move to somebody else. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, I totally relate to that. So a little bit about my story was I had a horse jump in my neck in my twenties and the doctors pretty much rode me off and they put me on a disability pension. And so I could still be stuck on the pension getting the Centrelink payouts, you know, from the government and all that sort of thing, like most people do and give up on and buy into that story. But I chose to go in on online marketing and you know, I've been at the 16 years now. It's been a roller coaster ride. I've made a lot of money, I lost a lot of money. But, you know, here today and now helping others to do the same thing and, and I think that's the magic there is when we get to help others and we focus on the impact and the purpose. Right?

Yeah, that's. That's a big thing. The DJ work that we did, you know, we were not the best. We didn't tour the world on music. But what happened is we got picked up by a local community center who wanted us to come and teach kids how to dj. And we went into this community with, you know, skepticism. You know, is this, you know, we're going into a place where, you know, the police have meetings and, and things like that. And we were kids from the street, a little bit worried about, you know, where is this going to lead? Are they trying to trick us? But they had funding and they nurtured us a little bit and I ended up going from there. It was so successful that we ran one of the biggest youth charities in the town and was able to go and give back to that deprived community. We engaged with, I think, three and a half thousand young people over a period of Five years. And then from there went on to actually write policy for the local authority about all the stuff that we've learned and gleaned. That was like wearing the suit and tie. That wasn't me. We soon went back to the music, but all through that process, through, you know, probably seven, eight years of my life, maybe longer, the Internet again, was such an important part of that because we needed to get the message out there. We needed also other technology to be able to create posters, leaflets, flyers.

Yeah.

You know, actually put events on, attendance management. All of this stuff was always tech driven.

Yeah.

Little videos to explain things. And I was the guy that just enjoyed doing this stuff, but I didn't go to college to learn it. It was like just the. The will to do it.

It's that will to do it and. And to figure it out. Right. To be a solution creator.

Yeah.

Sorry.

I think people just think that they're going to break the Internet and therefore they won't touch anything.

Yeah, yeah.

You got to press it.

Yeah. You just got to push that button. I'm like that. I. I get a little bit ADHD on overdrive, and I figure out and click things and figure out whatever.

Yeah.

Well, Brett, I reckon we're all somebody's guide. You know, the only difference between any one of us is, is how far down the path we are. You know, how many hours we've had experience in that thing now, listening, speaking to our audience. Right now, our audience is full of, you know, people at the beginner level, the intermediate level, a lot of network and affiliate marketers. And as a coach in this space, the. The biggest challenge that I. I face is that mindset issue to get over the overwhelm, to get over that imposter syndrome. You know, I'm sure that you've been through that and got the other side of that as well. So for our audience, what are some tips that you can give them to help them to get over that and get in and show up and shine?

Yeah. I think the first thing is don't be afraid of what you look like, sound like, feel like, because you've got a message that somebody else needs and they need to hear it. And just like I said a minute ago, if you don't take that opportunity, that it's another day gone, it's another day passed, and that opportunity tends to go and land with somebody else. You find that you have a great idea and you sleep on it, and then two days later, somebody else has got it and you're like, oh, man. So don't be afraid of what you look like and what you sound like. Try your best to present yourself. There was a time when I got asked to go and I do some videos for the, for the local council and I had no money. I had. It was like, man, it was, it was horrible. I'd like, recently split up with a partner and I was trying to figure myself out on my own and it was, it was hard work and I had literally 20 pounds. So what's that, like, 30 bucks, right? So I have this 20. And I knew that I had this opportunity to go to the council to pitch this idea for the videos and I didn't have much around me. I was a fisherman, right, So I was into fishing. So I had all the fishing claws and, and all the rest of it, but I didn't own a suit. So I was like, oh, man, I need to get out there and I need to go and present myself. And being a bit of an introvert back then, I was like, ah, man, I've got to go into the, into the public domain, you know, into town. This is, this is horrible. And this is a. Like, fears that people face long before they touch anything on the computer is they've got to show up. So I'm like, right, what do I do now? Make this plan. And I borrow some shoes and I borrow this belt and I've got these, like, trousers from a while ago and I hope they fit me. I fathom this, this shirt and whatnot. But I couldn't iron. The trousers were like creased up to like. They were the worst trousers ever, right? They were horrible. So I've used this 20 sparingly and I've got to purchase this, this iron so I could iron the pants. And what do I know about ironing, right? I'm from a council estate, I'm a. I'm a dj. So I'm like, right, I get this iron, I've got this thing, I lay a towel on the floor, plug this thing in, I get my pants, lay them down and I go and get a bath and such and such, thinking, right, today's the day. Because I knew this was potentially going to be a five grand deal. So if we get five grand, this is like, this is everything I need, right? It's the, it's the rent pad, it's the, you know, the businesses started, we're on. And all I had was this like, crappy affiliate product that made these little animation videos. That was it. And I'd showed it to this guy and he was super excited about this. And he's like, you need to come to the office. We need these things. I'm like, oh. So I'm going to the town hall to this meeting. I get out and I've got my. My pants there, and I get this iron and I touch the cloth with the. The iron and it sets the, like, the pants, like, burns the biggest hole in the pants. It's like this thing inferno of, like, the worst material, right? You know, it's like the. The nylon. I don't even know what it is, right? So these pants have incinerated. There's a big hole in them. It's all, like, crispy and, like, brown around the edges. And you're like, the pants. So what do you do now? So the only thing I own to my name is, like, fishing clothes. And at that point, I had a choice. Go and die in my bed and never show my face ever again. And you feel like crying, right? It's like this is like the wind is. Has left your sale. I had to make a decision. And because it's me, I'd left it to, like, 30 minutes before. And these guys are on. On the time. So I'm like, right, yeah, time to move. And I need the money. I need to launch this thing, and I've got to do it. So I've. I've put the fishing things on. And I was horrified. I'm like, this is the worst attire ever. So I'm going to, like, the. The corridor of power in town, as it were, where the. The Mary's and such and such. I go down there and I'm like, here. I'm here to see Mr. Smith. And she's like, just take a number and sit down over there. She thought I was coming to collect the welfare check, right? The. The benefits. I'm like, no, lady, I'm here to see. She said, you're not here to see Mr. Smith. I said, I am. And I said, look, ring him. Tell him it's Mr. Walsh. And she's looking at me with, like, disgust. And she rings. The next thing, this happy guy comes bursting out these doors, and he's like, danny. And she puts her face down on. On the table, and he's just like, come on. Come on through. Do you want a coffee? And all of this. He didn't give a crap what I look like or, you know, what I probably smelled like from the fishing, you know. I was like, man, this is the most embarrassing thing ever. He. All he wanted was the video. Yeah, he wanted these videos because he knew he was currently spending like five grand a pop. He's going to give this kid five grand, he's going to make him 20 of these things. That's the deal. And that was the skill. The pants didn't matter. I guess if I'd have gone in there in anything less, then it might have been an issue, right? But I did what I did and I made the decision to go and do it in face of probably the most embarrassing situation ever, right? And we face that every single day online. Because you believe that the whole world is looking. You know, there's someone who you would perceive as being nicer looking than you, sounds better than you, is more confident than you, who presents better than you. You know, somebody turns up on a stage, you know, oh, they've got a bigger audience than me, they've got more money than me, they've got the Lamborghini and the jets and all of that business. And it's like, look, I know a lot of people who've got Lamborghinis and jets. They're very nice. They want to help you. I know a lot of people who are just starting out who would trot on you, right? So there's people out there that you need to align yourself with. The chances are somebody who's interested in you, they're interested for good reasons. Don't be afraid of showing up. Don't be afraid of going and being your authentic self. You know, if. If you can't afford something right now, you will in the future, but you'll never get there if you don't start. So the big thing for me is get started, do your best. But if it comes to a point where you think, man, this is the end and I've ruined it, or it's been a mistake, or, you know, you've burned a hole in your pants, whatever it is, push through that. Because that pushing through is the bit that will elevate you to the next level and will unlock the future doors. This, this happens to have, you know, you. You said that you've had this injury, you could have gone and let down, right? And chosen a different path. You've chosen this. Now we're talking, hopefully we're impacting the lives of many, many people, giving them that hope and that, you know, guidance or whatever you want to call it, that mention that coaching, turn up, show up, do the thing. Don't be afraid of what people think of you or, or think you look like or think you sound like. We could do it with a silly beard in this voice, accent, you know, anybody's good, right? That's the, that's the plan.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I've got a pretty strong accent myself, so I totally agree to that.

Yes.

There's a lot of value in that story you just shared with us. I thank you for that. And the big thing that I take away from it is, yeah, just show up and do the thing. But you made the thing, the need, bigger than you. Like, the need became bigger than you. It became do or die, really.

And it's gotta be. Yeah, he's gotta be.

Yeah. And like I'm just sitting here reflecting, like, you know, 12 months ago I probably would never have asked you for this interview. But like listening to the marketing forum and, and getting off the back of that, and I was pretty jazzed up and I thought, right, what have I got to lose? What have I got to lose?

You know, that's the big, the big thing. And did I get into this on the marketing forum? I can go on a slightly different way a lot of the time. For example, the music business, right. So the first run of it, then we did the community stuff, then the council, then I went back to music because I hated wearing the suit. And we set up an Internet radio station effectively in an old industrial unit with a website that was terrible. We had to figure out how to broadcast. This was before Streamyard and all of these riversides and all of this business and YouTube live and such and such. There was no short form media. It was just Facebook existed. Facebook groups were emerging. Yes, there was a bit of YouTube, but it wasn't live do lives. We had to set up this server, which is figured out. And we begged borrowed equipment and we had this studio set up. By the time we'd finished, seven and a half thousand individual DJs have visited this studio. Right?

Yeah.

And we had all of the big names in probably 20, 25, different genres of music, all different, all different DJs. And people said to me, how have you wangled that? That's the, that's the word, right? How did you wangle it? How did you blag it? How did you.

Yeah, how'd you make it happen?

It's a simple thing. It's like you pick up the phone, you dial the number and you say, hey buddy, I've got this radio station, do you want to come? And DJ. And the 99% of the people would say yes. And that was it. And then we realized that we almost had this magical power.

Yeah.

Being able to just summon, like leading industry DJs. But again, it comes to the perception, you know, what will they think of me? People, people are sat there thinking of these crazy schemes. What are you going to do? You're going to send like, smart signal. You're going to send, you know, gifts in the post. You're going to be weird. You start these people. I think you've got to be a lot more direct in this. Like, hey, I want this thing. Ask for it.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, Chris, Record says, you know, when we get into, you know, the direct messaging and all that sort of thing, we've got to come across, you know, posture, confidence, but also like, we don't want to come across as a creep. You know, I think this too many people like trying to fake it till they make it and whatever, and it's actually making come across as that big bit of a creepy sort of mode. And I'm guilty of doing that. When I first started, you know, very much got into the link spamming and direct patching mode, but I found by just leading with some posture, leading with framing it up and, and, and then, yeah, like just making the ask. Simple ask. Yeah, just get to the point. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. So, mate, we're, we're here to talk about a bit about AI as well. Everybody wants to talk about AI. It's, you know, it is the new revolution. It's a bit like the, the tractor versus the horsepower. It is, you know, it's here. It's well and truly here. AI has helped, helped me to, you know, basically jump forward leaps and bounds and, and just loving helping others to do the same thing. So, you know, most of our audience are a little bit overwhelmed by AI and I can understand it. There's a lot out there. There's a lot of misinformation out there as well. But, you know, I'm here to help empower and equip them and demystify it in a space where they won't lose their authentic voice. You know, our mantra is AI plus our heart equals our superpower. So, Danny, what's some advice that you could give to someone who's just starting to begin their journey in the AI and social selling arena? What are some of the tips you have?

Don't overthink it. Kind of set out with what you want to do. And if you talk to your AI as though if somebody sat next to you in the office, that kind of helps. It's like literally could say, you know, hey, man, can you have a look at this?

Yeah.

And it would respond In a natural tone. And when you're looking at things like Claude or chat GPT or you know, insert name of crazy thing, most of it's built on one or two models. Right. But to be able to go in there and have a conversation and be very, very clear of what you want to do in the simplest of language will yield the better results. Whether that's image generation, video creation, text code you can call apps. You know, we use it all the time for creating custom code for funnels, building apps just by saying this is the problem and talking through the solution. And you could do, you could do things like say, hey, you are now going to assume the Persona of, you know, industry leader, leading coder.

Yeah.

And talk to it in a way that it will react and will respond. Feed it information. Don't be afraid of going into that deeper level than what you understand. That's super important. But try and keep it simple and don't over prompt. So some people, you know, give it 25 prompts in one. The ability to prompt is going to replace the ability or indeed has replaced the, you know, the other abilities that you would normally rely on. So, you know, to sit there and prompt AI will yield you faster results sooner than you trying to go to college and figure out some topic that's actually just an enabler. Right? Nobody wants to go to college. They want the skills so they can get the job. Well, if AI can help you get like be the owner of the company, you can skip that phase. You don't have to work your way up because it will map out your strategy, it will give you your plan, but you've still got to understand what it's talking about. So you say, can you break down what you mean that the very, very basic foundation level can unlock the doors for lots and lots of different things.

I love that. Like I've actually been teaching that myself and it's basically teaching people to have two way conversation with AI. And I just did a training on how to use Zig Ziglar and Gary Vanderjuk and say Brian Tracy to do your business planning for you. So you act as these Personas of these great legends and get them to ask you questions as they would be if they're in the room and let's do our business plan together or let's do our customer avatar together. I did, I did a masterclass 24 hours ago and I got it to act like Donald Miller from storybrand and I said, okay, now act like this guy. Let's do our customer avatar And I want you to ask me back, you know, some graphics, some neuroscience in, some emotional questions to get the best out of me, to be able to help define this avatar. It came up with a list of 29 questions and now we've got the voiceover. It's, I love it. It's game on. So what are some of the, what are some of the quirky ways and interesting ways that you've used AI to help you today? Like, you know, in just recent times?

I think just the other day I was showing somebody, for example, Chat GPT will now understand an image. So you could, you could take a snap of, you know, snap or a photograph of a handwritten note and just paste it into Chat GPT and said, decipher this right? And it'll, it'll read it back to you or read your handwriting. It can understand diagrams and such and such. So a cool way to get ahead of advertising in a space, say you want to sell some stuff, you can go out there and see who's already selling the thing, right? So you can go to the Meta Ads Library. So if you go to Facebook, you go on Meta, you go on Google, type in Meta Ads library and it will show you all of the ads that people are running on Facebook right now to sell whatever product you type it in. We do Fishing tackle, right? So I will go on Meta Ads Library, I type in Fishing tackle and it will show me all of the ads that are active right now. What I can do is grab like a photograph or a screenshot of one of those ads that I know is performing well. Check it out, paste that into Chat GPT and say, recreate this.

Wow. Really?

That's it.

That's cool.

That's cool. It will, it will. It will then give you an analysis if you wanted, but it'll just make you an image.

So you're sort of reverse engineering it. It's, it's taken Russell Brunson's redevelopment mode. The whole next level.

Yeah. So we basically say recreate this in Chat GPT and it'll give you a, your version, which is often better than one that's outperforming or, you know, doing really crazy. And it's a two second job. So if you think, man, I can't sell anything. Well, you can. You mentioned Russell, you know, you can, you can funnel hack your way by modeling what works, right?

Yeah.

They'll say go and find the thing that works and then copy it. Well, not copy it word for word. Yeah.

Remodel it, redevelop It, I, I call it, I call it R and rip it off and redevelop it.

Yeah, of course everybody's been doing that stuff for years. Right. You only need to look at how big corporations function.

That's it.

You know, look at, I don't look at burger King and McDonald's. Right. There's always answer between, you know, the core products is still a burger. One of them is always going to be. So there's is this, you know, as long as you don't get yourself into some, you know, this is not legal advice. Danny does not provide legal advice or business advice. And you're going to get yourself out there and you're going to model what works. Yeah, right.

Back in 2017 with the whole drop shipping model was big. I jumped onto the whole print on demand products and I started creating these Warner Brothers type sort of memes and, and in Disney ones and little old me didn't really know what I was doing. And then all of a sudden I get this cease and desist letter Cecil. So I learned the hard way with.

That, yeah, these guys are militants and they protect the brands. There's a message in that, right? It's go and protect your brand. So don't do anything that's going to infringe on like Walt Disney's like birthright or anything like that. You'll be good.

So that's it.

Getting AI to give you a heads up or a move forward very quick on something that would normally take a designer. You got to, you've got to pluck up the courage to ask the designer, you've got to not burn your trousers to go to the meeting. You sit down in the room, then they want money that you don't have and then you end up with a crappy design on a, a usb. Yeah. Really is worth very little to you because you need all the other components. Going into something like mid journey and saying, hey, create me a, a vector logo in a professional style on a white background with these words in inverted commas will produce that logo. And the majority of funnels and sites that I put out there, I just do that now. It's like why do I need to spend eternity trying to brand something?

Yeah. You know, or go pay someone thousands of dollars to do it for you.

When was the last time you looked at a website and you was kind of like hey everybody come and look at this logo. I found the most amazing logo. Come look like no one cares.

I started the laptop lifestyle dads two years ago and I'm only Just getting my website developed now. I've been using funnels and Facebook group and everything else to get where I am.

And yeah, the funnel is, the funnel is the future anyway. And I'm, you know, that's, that's another big important part in all of this. And understanding how do you move people from A to B fast is a skill in itself. Yeah. And again, the AI can help you to understand that and decipher that and be able to start getting eyes on your products and start getting people interested in you. But AI is here to stay. And if you're not using it, don't be the guy who comes to us now going, oh, do you think I need a website? He's like, dude, the dot com thing was like years ago. So, yeah, you don't be somebody who misses the AI.

Boom, that's it. Yeah, totally agree with that. So let's dive into some of the ethical conversation around AI. I always find this is an interesting conversation and you're either for it or you're against it. For me, like diving into AI plus automation in engagement, I think there's, you know, we're starting to see some ethical areas starting to really creep in here. We've also got, you know, deep fake AI with people faking like Taylor Swift and Donald Trump and, and all of that sort of thing. Like, we are in that pendulum swing mode where it goes from one extreme to the next and we'll find that middle ground. What do you think will happen in this space, in the, in the coming?

It's down to your ethics, isn't it? And if you want to go and, you know, use some stuff to, you know, go and steal some money and do some dodgy stuff, that's your will at the beginning. It's like the will to do it. There's easier ways to actually make money. I always thought like, the kids who were selling the crack and stuff, they were like, come and sell the crack, you know, in the neighborhood. I think you do that. I make more money not selling crack and I do less. You know, the Internet and AI enables you to make even more money there. There's a guy made $3 million selling adult coloring books and all of the designs they put together in an AI document. So if you, if you've got some, you know, crazy calls where you believe that your actions are going to do good in your roundabout way, good for you. A lot of people are misguided, I guess, in the. What it is they want to achieve when it comes to things like deep fakes. And a lot of people, you know, this stuff starts out somebody having a laugh. That same skill could turn into something, you know, so much more beneficial for humans at large. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's, that's the unfortunate thing that you've just got people who are wasting time, effort, money, you know, oxygen, all the rest of it doing crazy stuff that's detrimental. You know, the technology will only do what you tell it to do.

That's it. Yeah. 100 agree with you. AI is just a tool. Right. And it's a, you know, it's a bit like the, the gun, you put the gun in a soldier's hand and he's going to defend the country, but you can put it into a murderer's hand, he's going to kill someone.

Yeah, we could all go target shooting on, you know, have a great competition and somebody could win a prize and the guns could be put away safely at the end of the day and, you know, bring them out next summer when we do the, the field event again. Right. So the, the whole how we operate as human beings thing is going to be forever moving and obviously, yes, it's manipulated as well by people who are, you've got the will to do it that way. So you've got to say to what's true. And I would imagine an audience listening to this, their intentions are good. They want to help people. You've got to be that force in the world that pushes back on the.

Crazies, be the light, the love in the world.

Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure a deep fake of Donald Trump or, you know, anybody's gonna, gonna do you much benefit other than perhaps rack up a bunch of social media views. But what are you gonna do with.

What are you gonna do with those views? Yeah, are we playing the game of business? Are we playing the game of vanity metrics?

Yeah, it's foolishness because you, you're gonna fill up a Facebook or a, you know, whatever TikTok site with a lot of views that were viewing based on the thing that you showed. So when you then what do you do? Hey, surprise, I'm now selling something. They're like, dude, we didn't, we didn't come for this.

Talking about views. I saw in China there one of their major influences and I can't think of the name of me, top of my head, but they did $1.7 billion in 24 hours in sales through influencer marketing.

Yep, totally possible.

Like, like just crazy now what's happening? I, I, I reckon go far as saying that influencer marketing's here to stay as well, and it's the future of marketing. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, without a doubt. And if you've got people who have built an audience in an ethical way and they are commanding attention and they've got the ability to sell, that's where the ask thing really comes in. Because you're like, hey, let's get onto this awesome influencer and say, would you give me, would you build a partnership? I think the shout out thing is a little bit overrated. It's like, give me a shout out for five grand. You know, that's going to give you a spike in traffic. Is it going to give you a consistent brand association? I'd be very careful who I work with, who I spoke to. Lots of companies right now are just branching out into this and it's kind of uncharted territory. Yeah. And, you know, you're stepping out into this world of, you know, how much do I pay? Do I have to pay? You know, what do I get for $500? What do we get for $10,000? Are they worth it? All of these questions start to materialize as you start thinking, I'm going to be going out there and ultimately buying traffic from somebody who's commanded a large audience. You got to do your diligence in that. But if you get that right, you can, you know, for the use of the AI term, skyrocket. Yeah, whatever that means. You can, you can, you can, you can pop off. Right. So I think again, it's the, it's the will to do it and the ability to ask for it. And I always say that you, you know, you're a conversation away from whatever you want. You say, having more conversations. We're not running traffic, we're having conversations. So if you go out there and you have 20 conversations with influencers, there's a good chance that your business is going to grow.

I love that.

Very simple, very simple.

Love that. Well, one of the things I'm advocating for is to get out of direct pitching and link spamming. You know, get rid of the spammy temmies and the direct pitch peters and all of that. So do you have one practical strategy that our audience can use to connect authentically and attract leads?

I think the, the art of the funnel and understanding funnels and utilizing AI in your funnels to be able to create a pathway that moves people from A to B quite quickly. And it's like ads to bank. Right. That's what A to B stands, stands for.

Adds to bank like that.

Yeah. Being able to use that in a way that presents you first. I see so many funnels and you know, people come to me all the time. It's like, what's wrong with this funnel? It's like, I don't know what you're selling. We, we once wrote a policy, this strategy that we were doing and we wanted government funded and we spent ages on this thing. It was like 150 pages. This was the, effectively the sales page, right. But it was a, it was a printed thing. Big, big old document. We spent ages. We put all these pictures and diagrams and all of this crap in there and we sent this off to get the funding and we got the letter and we're like super excited. Everyone sat around, somebody had brought a cake, you know, so when the, the news came, we've got this funding. We opened the letter, we didn't have the funding. And there was like, really sorry, it's, you know, highly pressured. And we're like, what do you mean we didn't get the funding? This is, we're the best thing in, in town. We're working with all these kids, we're doing all this stuff. And we read the letter and you know, the lady with the cakes like banged around on the table and she's like, oh, they don't like us. She's made this view and she, she's kind of stormed off home and all the rest of it. Now I think, well, what, what reason would they actually give to reject this? So I got on the phone and I ring the guy and I'm like, right, tell me why it's my ask. Tell me why it wasn't successful. And he said, we can't really go into individual applications, the usual stuff. And I'm like, so I had some consultants and this is like, well, what do you do? If they were answering me, I've only find somebody who understands this stuff because I'm clearly out of my depth here. I was like 22 or something, writing these million dollar funding. It's hoping for the best. That was a big ask, right? Give us, give us money. The guy comes in and he takes this book away and we have a meeting, spend six hours in there. And he's like, right, I get it. I'm, I'm going. And he comes back after a week and he sits me down and said, Danny, it's boy, you with a fish. And I said, what does that mean? And he said, you've given me a hundred pages of stuff. And the only thing that Stands out is a boy with a fish. We took kids fishing, and we had a picture of a kid in there with a big fish. And I was like, well, I don't know. I don't know what that means. And he said, look, the. The boy with the fish is not going to get you the funding. No one cares. They want numbers, they want a plan. They want to know when they put this much money in, this much money is going to come out, right? So when I look at funnels and I see a lot of boy with a fish. We was on a call yesterday, and I was, you know, going through a funnel, and we had a couple of other great minds on that call as well, going through. And one of the. One of the guys was like, what exactly is this? I can't even read it. What is it? And the guy on the phone's like, I don't know. I just thought I'd put it in there. And that's not even boy with a Fish. That's like, you've taken something that you didn't understand what benefit that was going to do for your marketing for your business. It was just something that looked nice and plotted on there for absolutely no reason other than you could. That's not the way to run your marketing campaigns. And you have to think about what's in it for the people then, right? What's in it for the person reading it? If this. If it's not conveying a marketing message or a sales message, why is it going in there? And quite often people will come on there and they will talk too much about themselves. They'll go on there and they'll go totally off topic. The crazy colors and backgrounds and all of this stuff, it just has to be simple. And it is effectively the same thing. As we've mentioned four or five times, you funnel your landing page, your video, your sales video, your influencer, all of that stuff. What is it? It's an ask. It's all asking. You're asking somebody to take. Yeah, you're asking somebody to take action. And if they're very clear of what you want them to do, they will possibly be able to make a decision. And that's probably one of the biggest things, is ask a very clear question, like a call to action, what you want people to do, and make it easy for them to understand what happens when they do it, and your business will move forward. Does that make sense?

That's brilliant. I love it. Make it easy to understand what's in it for the audience and just ask the Question and frame it away. It's brilliant. Keep it simple.

We say keep it simple, but people don't understand what that means. It's kind of like we're gonna launch. Nobody understands what launch means. Do you see what I mean? It's like you've, you've not asked enough around that topic to be able to make your own judgment of it, but you just know you need to do it. We need it. We need a website, we need a funnel. We need to launch. And that is a dangerous place to be because you've gathered three of a hundred facts and you've used those three to form your judgment. You need all the facts before you make the decision, before you move with it. And that's a skill that will only come from experience.

Yes.

So you've got to start, you've got to get into it, you've got to ask the right questions. We've also got to ask enough questions so that you understand what it is that you're actually doing and how that affects the mind of the person. You're asking to look at a page or watch a video or read a script or whatever it is, like, you know, vertically say, hey, we've got this thing and we want to give it you, and we're not quite sure what it is we sell. How are we going to get people to buy it or, you know, buy into it? Your ability to convey that marketing message, to get people to ask for more information and then switch to a sales message is what you need to be focusing on in your business. Use AI, but don't over complicate it. Keep things simple. Don't do. Boy with a fish showing lots of irrelevant things. Be very much to the point. This is what it is, this is what it does. This is how it's going to help you. This is how you get it. And if you apply that in anything, you'll move, you'll move forward through social media. It's like, hey, I see this thing looks good. This is what it does. This is why I need it. This is how I get it.

It's like, yeah, that's a brilliant framework. Now I'm going to go back for all of my funnels. I'm going to apply that framework and make sure that I'm on point. Yeah, love that. Thank you. I appreciate you.

If you're just pulling stuff out of the, you know, the, the Google Drive and slapping it onto a page, hoping that that's going to swear people to buy, just pause on that for a minute and look at what exactly?

What's the intention out there?

Yeah, what, what, what are you asking people to do?

What's the intent?

I don't know. Yeah, the people, they're not going to know. It's like, oh, if you don't know, how do I know? Right. So, yeah, keeping it simple is like a framework that you've got written down that you rinse and repeat every single time.

Yeah, love that. Very generous. Thank you very much for your time. Look, mate, I could talk all day with you and. But I know that you're a busy man and you've got things to do. So for our listeners, you know, how can they contact you? What. How can they get in touch with you? Where can they find you?

I'm sure that there'll be a link around here somewhere. You can find me on, on Facebook. Message me, reach out, ask me something. It's simple, it's like, you don't need to.

I reached out, wasn't it? Just got onto your, your profile and sent you a message and, and you're straight back to me. And I really appreciate you. Thank you very much.

Super responsive. You will get a reply if it goes into the spam box. Don't be afraid of following up or, you know, send a smart signal, do the thing. If you want something bad enough, you want to speak to somebody bad enough, you'll be able to find them. Not here to push a marketing message or a funnel because there's lots and lots of different things for different people that do lots of cool stuff. Reach out, find, let me know what you need and then if I can't do it, know somebody who can.

Yeah. And the simple question, you know, the simple prompt I should say is just ask. So, mate, I really appreciate you. Thank you, Danny. This has been incredible, mate, thank you for sharing your journey and your sucks builds awesome town story. Those insights with us. There's been some amazing gold I'm going to have to go back through and watch this replay myself so I can take notes myself. But to our audience and the journey of watching this unfold, the journey of mastering social selling and AI audience, doesn't have to be overwhelming. Just start small as Danny said, start taking action and just ask those questions, you know, start messy even and get out there and fail forward and learn from your experience. Become a solution creator. You know, you've heard some amazing stories here from Danny on how he's going to be able to do that. And he started from, you know, the streets where he could have been caught up in, in, you know, the. Essentially the. The heroin pandemic and all of that sort of thing, but chose a different path. And I love your story. So, Danny, thank you very much for sharing that with us and our listeners.

You're welcome.

Really appreciate you.

Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much. I'll see you in the next one.

Before we go, I just want to wrap up and close with a dad joke for you. And so I'm. I've been known as the king of dad jokes. I love my dad jokes. So, Danny, how much does a polar bear weigh?

How much does a polar bear weight?

I've got no idea, but I'm sure it's enough to break the ice.

Dude, there's a podcast in that.

I love it. Podcast and dad joke. Icebreakers.

Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Jeff, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to doing more in the future.

Yeah, no, I'm sure we'll have you back for around two. Thank you for your time.