Eric Edmeades ┃The Entrepreneur's Freedom Formula: Build a Business That Doesn't Own You

the, the more successful their business becomes, the busier they get, the less time they have for their family. So rather than it being a sprint during which they may have to sacrifice some of their time with their family and that sort of thing in order to achieve a greater level of freedom, many of them get stuck in that entrepreneurial rut and they work that way until their last day.

What if the real goal of entrepreneurship isn't building a successful business, but creating true freedom? Today I sit down with entrepreneur and educator Eric Ed Meads to explore the mindset, marketing, health, and AI strategies that help entrepreneurs build businesses that thrive without sacrificing their relationships, well-being, or purpose. And I'm really happy to be here with Eric Ed Meads. Welcome, Eric.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, great to have you. I've been really looking forward to having another conversation with you specifically, uh, in the realm of entrepreneurship. So been excited about this. I'm going to share your bio with our audience. And then we'll jump right in. Sound good?

Sounds great.

Okay. So Eric Ed Meads is an internationally recognized business speaker, serial entrepreneur, and pioneer in business education with a career spanning wireless networking, military research, Hollywood film production, and award-winning medical simulations. He has made significant contributions across various industries. Currently, Eric focuses on empowering business owners through his innovative programs, including Inception Marketing and Business Freedom. Traveling globally, he offers workshops, executive coaching, and mentoring to help entrepreneurs achieve financial freedom and a balanced life. His approach emphasizes building businesses that allow owners to focus on what truly matters: family, health, and personal growth. Widely recognized for his engaging speaking style, Eric has developed transformative educational products and shared the stage with notable figures such as Sir Richard Branson, Jack Canfield, and John Gray, Robin Sharma, and President Bill Clinton. His flagship program WildFit is celebrated as one of the most effective health transformation programs available, highlighting his commitment to improving human well-being. So I think people can understand why we're excited to include you in our summit on entrepreneurial mastery. We're going to primarily be focusing on marketing and sales strategies today, but You know, we can really weave anywhere that I'm sure you can add a lot of wisdom and expertise in just about any area of entrepreneurship that we might want to explore. You know, I hate to ask you to encapsulate, you know, your kind of life story, origin story in just a minute or two, but we have a lot of ground to cover today. But I wonder if there's just a highlight you could share that was maybe a pivotal moment that brought you into the career, into the business, into being the successful entrepreneur and teacher that you are today? Was there a moment when things could have gone another way or could have gone awry or an obstacle you had to overcome or something like that? So people kind of get to know who you are before we jump into the conversation.

Well, I mean, there were definitely several moments like that over the years, but I think what you're probably looking for is something rather more formative. And I would say that I— my jump into entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is often, you know, referred to by others as, as a move of bravery. What a brave thing to start a business and what have you. But the truth is what really happened is that I was working for a company that wasn't treating me very well, and I decided to resign that position and found myself in a really tough situation because when I resigned my position, they decided not to pay me the money they owed me. And so I found myself in a foreign country with no money, no wealthy parents to call, and stranded and not legal to work in that country, except in the job that I just quit. So I was really, uh, faced with a significant challenge. And, uh, the answer to that was to start a business. Uh, it was like to take control of my own destiny. And so I, I did that. I started my, my business in a combination of my living room and my garage. I, I still have vivid memories of sitting on the carpet floor, writing out my business plan and designing logos on the, on the coffee table. And, and, uh, if, if, if I had not been placed in that pressure cooker, um, I, I wouldn't be living the life that I am today.

Well, I'm sure a lot of our entrepreneurs out there in our audience, or our aspiring entrepreneurs, can relate with that story. And there may be a few of you who are still stuck in a job like that you're not thrilled about, a career you're not thrilled about, and you've been thinking about making that leap. Or some of you that made a similar leap to Eric and, and can really relate with that story. And, uh, and, and I used an expression, you were, um, You want it. You basically want to put yourself in charge of your own destiny, right? Yeah. And I think that's an inspiration for a lot of us entrepreneurs. We just want— we really, you know, want to be in the driver's seat of our own destiny. We want that freedom. And it doesn't necessarily mean our job's going to get any easier. Sometimes we can— we can be a pretty rough boss when we work for ourselves, but it does mean we're in charge of our own destiny. I think that inspires a lot of entrepreneurs.

Yeah. I, one of the ways that I like to look at that is that, you know, if, if, if somebody starts a business and they only have one client, that's a pretty scary business to be in. You know, I mean, if you lose that client, it's all over. Right. You know, and, and, so many people are like, oh, I'm too scared to go in business. But I would put to you that everybody is in business. Everybody is an entrepreneur. And, and what that means is that if they have a job, they have one client. They are, they are an entrepreneur. They have one client and all their eggs are in that basket. And what I found was that the client I had had a, you, tenuous relationship with honesty and an even worse relationship with ethics. And what a terrible position to be in. My business had one client and that client was bad news. And, really the jump to entrepreneurship is partially a jump to having multiple clients and, and being in a situation where you need to fire a client or you lose a client, it's not that big a blow. Whereas for most people to lose their client, their employer, is pretty significantly challenging.

Absolutely, man. That's a great distinction you made that basically when you're working for someone else, you have one client. And, but we are all, we're all entrepreneurs, we're all investing our time and energy and resources for some kind of return in whatever situation. So that's a great distinction. So I wanna start off with your WildFit program because it, it's been wildly successful, your WildFit program. And it's so important for entrepreneurs. We're gonna talk about a lot about sales and marketing today, but I wanna talk about the importance of the energy it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. And really, you know, one of the messages of this summit is to succeed in business and succeed at life. So do we really want to create a successful startup or successful business at the expense of our marriage, the expense of our kids? And it's not that any of us are ever going to achieve perfect life-work balance, but, but the sense that we do need energy, we have to take care of ourselves. We have, we have to be physically, mentally, emotionally fit if we're gonna succeed as entrepreneurs. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that aspect in your WildFit program.

Yeah. I, I, I wanna approach it from two perspectives. It's interesting. People often talk about that like, oh, I might have to give up my time with my family, maybe sacrifice for my health, my relationship in order to start my business, blah, blah, blah. And yet equally, when people talk about devoting 4, 6, or 8 years to go into university to get their career off the ground, which is a very similar process, people, you know, sort of talk about that like it's a noble pursuit. And whereas if you start a business and you sacrifice a bunch of your time and freedom for the business, that's less noble. And what I wanna suggest is that the reason that one of the reasons that I think that that's looked at incorrectly is that most people who survive in business do it badly. And that is to say, the, the, the, the more successful their business becomes, the busier they get, the less time they have for their family. So rather than it being a sprint during which they may have to sacrifice some of their time with their family and that sort of thing, in order to achieve a greater level of freedom, many of them get stuck in that entrepreneurial rut and they work that way until their last day. What entrepreneurship really should be, in my opinion, is the greatest opportunity, the greatest expression of personal freedom that's really ever existed. The idea that you can elevate yourself to the, to the blue blood class, like it's, it's, you know, I, I, I, you, you're in a position where you really truly can taste what royalty might've been like, only you don't have to wait to be born into that family. And so that's, I think the first thing is recognizing that entrepreneurship is the right to work a little harder and a little smarter than, and, and a little more intensely than other people for a short period of time in order to experience phenomenal economic and temporal freedom. Now to the second part of that issue is you're gonna need energy for that. You know, I'm, I'm amazed that pretty much everybody knows if they're gonna go climb Mount Kilimanjaro or they're gonna run a marathon, they're gonna need to train for it. They're gonna need to eat for it. They're gonna need to hydrate themselves. Yet they go to work every day and treat it like it's a job that they're not training for. That my view is, is that if you're gonna be exceptional in business, then your physiology needs to no less exceptional than that of an athlete. You need to be putting the best food in, you need to be exercising, you need all that stuff to be happening as well. And with that, and here's the irony, is more energy. The joke is that people who, you know, take the convenient food and, and use caffeine as the stimulant all the time, and I'm, I'm not against a little caffeine here or there, but I'm just saying there's a difference between using it occasionally and needing it to live, right? And, and so many people are living that life. And in the end, they're, uh, uh, sacrificing their health for their business success, which is super counterproductive. 'Cause what's the point in developing all this economic freedom and then dying young? So it's, I think it really is important that if you're gonna be a, a top-level entrepreneur, and I don't think there's any point in trying to do it if that's not your intention, the intention should be to be the best version of this that you can be. Then having a healthy metabolism and being well-nourished and taking care of your body is actually maybe the single most important aspect of being really phenomenally successful in business.

Absolutely. So, um, yeah, and there's a lot of things that, that can, um, distract us from that or undermine our efforts to really optimize our physical, mental, emotional conditioning to succeed as an entrepreneur. And part of it may have to do with something you've called the evolution gap, where our biology is really not caught up with the speed of change and You know, I mean, just what we take for granted just to stay legal and have an ordinary life and pay your bills is really daunting compared to the way human beings lived, you know, not that long ago. And then if, you know, if you're really trying to succeed as an entrepreneur or so, and then with things changing so rapidly and especially now with the AI revolution and so forth, that our biology hasn't really caught up. I wonder if you could talk about that and the ways in that that impacts us and then how we can relate with that. So it's not undermining our efforts.

You know, one way to look at it is, you know, if you imagine a car that was built to drive on regular roadways and you decide to take that car and run different kind of fuel through it and run it on gravel roads all the time and so on, that car is going to suffer consequences for being used for a purpose different than it was designed for. Equally, if you leave that car parked in the garage and you never drive it, that car is going to suffer consequences for never being driven. And that car is not an organic and regenerative machine. It's just a machine that actually needs to be used in accordance with the design. If you use it badly, it'll have problems. And if you don't use it at all, it'll have problems. Our bodies are very much like that, only exponentially so in, in the sense that our bodies are regenerative. And that is to say that when you do use it, it, it makes modifications for the use you're applying for it. So if you do a lot more running, you develop longer, you, you develop, uh, better leg muscles and longer endurance. If you, if you do a lot of lifting, you build better muscle density. If you do a lot of cardiovascular exercise, your heart and lungs are a little healthier. So we're better than the car in the sense that our body can adapt to some degree to the way we're living to create, you know, a better result.. But at the same time, we have been removed from the environment that our bodies were designed for. And it's kind of incorrect to say, I suppose, that our bodies were designed for, because that makes it sound like our bodies were designed for something, but our bodies responded to the environment and evolved, um, optimal nutrition, optimal neurotransmitters, optimal emotional response, optimal instincts, uh, and cravings and what have you relative to the environment. And then we got extracted from that environment. And so I would put to you that almost all of the suffering that we endure today, the health suffering, the various different types of suffering that we go through, are a side effect of that evolutionary mismatch, the being removed from our evolved environment and being placed in a very artificial one. And by the way, one really neat way to look at this is to examine what happens to zoo animals when you relocate an animal from you know, its natural environment, and you put it in a zoo, you would be very easily forgiven for assuming that things are gonna be better in the zoo. I mean, after all, you know, we take a, you take a zebra and take it outta the Kruger National Park where it has to deal with lions and hyenas and leopards and cheetahs and poachers and droughts and bushfires and put it, and it has no medical and dental, by the way. And then we put it in the zoo where it does have medical and dental and regular food supply. It would be easy to assume that that zebra's gonna live a better, healthier life. But no, they don't. Animals are often living shorter lives in zoos than they do in nature because they've been so removed from their natural habitat. We are now those animals. We are living in the zoo. We are fed by the zookeepers. We're in our cages. Sure, we can move from one cage to the next, but you're in your house, it's a cage. You go to your car, it's another cage. You go to your office, you're another cage. And so we are so removed from our natural settings at this point that we are, uh, we're living in a time that logically should be the best time ever to be alive. There is greater food security now than there's ever been. There's greater personal safety now than there's ever been. It's truly the best time to be a human ever. Look, I know there are people suffering, don't get me wrong. I'm aware that there are difficulties on the planet at the moment, but on the whole, compared to the rest of history, this has been the best time ever to be alive. And yet there are more people addicted to substances, on psychotropic prescriptions, uh, committing suicide than there's ever been before. Why? Because of this gap, this mismatch.

So what do we do about that?

Well, that is the big question. And I think that in a sense, there's a formulaic answer, and then you have to get into customization. You have to look at the circumstance. So I'll use a very, very simple example. You and I are clearly not from equatorial Africa. We can tell that by looking at the melanin levels in our skin, right? So evolution Evolution is wherein, as your ancestors moved away from the equator, children with slightly lighter skin were more likely to survive because with the lower amount of sun exposure, the, the, the lighter skin allowed more sun in, allowed better vitamin D production and so on. The kids with the darker skin couldn't survive in the very extreme northern hemispheres or down in the extreme southern hemispheres. And so lighter skin evolved both at the extreme north and the extreme south.. That's evolution. Lighter hair color, lighter eye color, all that stuff. The evolution gap is where you now relocate to a place that has a level of sun different than your optimal skin. And so as an example, we take somebody from Eritrea and we put them in Estonia. They're not gonna do very well. They're gonna suffer because their skin is so dark that it's gonna block what tiny little bit of sun, because here in Estonia they only get sun for 26 minutes every 4th year on a Thursday. I'm kidding. But it's not like there's a bright, hot Caribbean sun here, right? So somebody with very dark skin is going to suffer in that environment. But equally, if we take somebody from Estonia with their blond hair, blue eyes, and translucent skin and put them in Eritrea, guess what? They're going to have a problem with the sun. And so the idea here is to take a look and say, well, what is the gap? The gap is I'm living in a place that has the wrong level of sun for my skin. How do I close that gap? Well, first I wanna look to the best natural solution I can. In the case of somebody living in the Northern Hemisphere, I would suggest a travel agent would be a good idea, or, or getting a convertible or just making sure you spend the max amount of time in the sun. But if that's not available to you, you know, if for example you're living in England and there just isn't sunlight, then you're gonna have to look at the modern solution to close that evolution gap, which might be red light therapy or taking vitamin D supplementation or what have you. So the idea really is, is to look at a symptom or an area of suffering and then to identify where the juxtaposition between our, say, Paleolithic bodies and our Neolithic realities are. And, and, and then, and then from that, try to determine what the solution might be, naturally speaking first, and to the degree that that's either not available or not successful, to then look at a modern or technological solution.

Yeah. And clearly most of us are not gonna go back to living in the natural world in a natural habitat that our ancestors grew up in.

No.

So we need to adapt. That's right. And part of that is taking really good care of ourselves and thus the importance of programs like your WildFit program. I think the modern biohacking movement can be very helpful as well. I mean, if we're gonna live in environments and live at a speed that is somewhat foreign to the way we evolved, then we're gonna have to kind of work with that and evolve with that. And really, you know, the same way a performance athlete addresses the stress they put on their body, right? If you're gonna put a lot of stress on your body, heart, and mind, then you need your recovery time, you need your rest time, and you need optimal nutrition, optimal exercise, all these things. So that's the importance.

But I wanna touch on something you mentioned about biohacking, and I think that, Um, what, what tends to happen these days, particularly, particularly now in the social media attention economy, is that if something works for somebody and they, uh, magnify that and it suddenly becomes the panacea, it's like everybody runs to that solution. And humans are at our very core energy conservationists. We, we try to do the maximum, we try to create the maximum result with the minimum effort. That's a human instinct to do that.

Mm-hmm.

And the trouble is, is that that also makes us be, that, that also pushes us to an inclination towards shortcuts. So one of the challenges with the, say, you know, longevity and, and, and say biohacking technology space is that many people are going immediately to the shortcut. They're like, yeah, well, you know, I don't really, I don't really, um, you know, get enough sunlight, so I'm just gonna take vitamin D. Well, what I would put to you is that vitamin D is a stopgap if the natural solution is not available. It, it really, we first have to go out, in my opinion, we should be doing the best we can to support our body's natural needs before turning to those. And to, you know, there's more modern solutions. And I'll give you an example. You mentioned performance athletes. One of the things that's quite interesting is to look at the 100-meter dash, you know, from Olympic and, and, and international sport in 100 years with all the advancements in running shoes, technology, running surfaces, nutrition sciences, uh, sports psychology and what have you. We have improved the world record on the 100-meter dash phenomenally, or not. We've improved it by less than a second. In 100 years, that record is improved by less than a second, less than, less than a percent a year. Like, it's, it's, it's a tiny, tiny improvement. And, and, in the meantime, what is driving that incredible speed? Human biology. So step one is really deal with the body the way it needs to be dealt with in natural ways as best possible, and then look to biohacking as an optimization path, but not as a replacement, in my opinion.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think those that really take a very holistic and integrative approach to biohacking being one part of a holistic and integrated approach are the ones that are really getting it right. So a lot of things we're referencing here, people are probably wondering, well, when are you gonna start talking about sales and marketing? Well, a lot of things we're referencing here have to do with the psychology of sales and marketing and our biological imperatives and how that influences our psychology. And so forth. You know, even this tendency to, you know, to look for the shortcut and to always be trying to get the best result for the least effort. All these things that are human instincts and in some way, many ways, the way our brain is set up to work and so forth, they then impact how we respond to sales and marketing. So I want to talk a little bit about what you've learned about what really works maybe some of the key principles that you've found that really works in sales and marketing that have been, you know, brought you the success you've earned and, and, and, you know, how to not just to short, maybe. I mean, we can talk about maybe some of the psychology of getting a sale, whether it's a, you know, a 1-to-1 long, longer sales cycle sale or it's just B2C online or whatever it is. But then also really building a business, creating that customer loyalty, creating, you know, creating that kind of sales marketing in a sense of of the longevity of a really quality business. So I wonder if you could— there's a lot of places you could go with all that, but I'll let you go where you'd like to.

I'll start with a basic idea, and that is that everything is marketing. Everything in your business is a form of marketing. Everything. Nothing isn't. There's a distinction in my opinion between, you know, selling and marketing, of course. And, you know, selling is the transactional process. And you can, you can kind of define selling in two categories. There's selling, which is to say taking the order, that is getting the money and taking the order. And then there's the other version of selling, which is the influencing, the convincing, the manipulating even. And what I would say is that what you really want in any given business is to reduce the, the, the, the necessity for the convincing influence style selling. You wanna reduce that as much as possible. You want the marketing to have handled that so that people You know, like, look, look, Apple's done a great job of this. You don't walk into the, into the Apple Store needing the salesperson to sell you an iPhone. You walk in there to buy an iPhone. You know, you might want some help with which one, but at the end of the day, you know, they've done such a great job that you're walking in to buy. No, no selling is needed. So, so if we start with that premise and then, and then the, the concept that I mentioned, that is everything is selling. My view is that if you regard that everything is marketing, everything is selling, everything is, is, is about, you know, driving that for their business, then it means that you will make a commitment to delivering, uh, far more value than you're asking people to invest in the first place. So I, I would put to you that with something like WildFit, sure, it, it might cost you, uh, $1,500 or $2,000 or $3,000 to, to go through one of our programs depending on how you do it. Um, but at the end of that, you are going to be incredibly happy that you paid that money because you're gonna feel like you got 5 or 10 or $20,000 worth of value. And that, that will be both because of the quality of the product, but also because of our way of doing business with you, the way the customer service is handled and all that sort of stuff. So I think that that's something really important to consider is that every aspect of doing business is part of that marketing process. If, if you, if you are, you know, let, let's say for example, you're having to make some debt collection phone calls, you know, you've got some clients that are late paying their bills or what have you.

You.

If you call them and you're nasty to them in that process, guess what? You're pushing them away. It's less likely they buy from you. If you call them and you're compassionate and understanding and, and supportive and you, and you're creative with them about it, then you've created, you, you, they, they, that affects their entire view of your brand and your business. So I think that's the first aspect of it. And then the next aspect of it is people In English, the word like is really fascinating. Like, you know, sort of speaks of a level of, um, you know, enjoying to be with somebody, or a level of adoration, or a level of appreciation for somebody. But like also means similar. It also means similar. So you can be like something, and you can like something. And the joke is, is that we tend to like people that we're like, you know. So we, we tend, you know, it's a— maybe call it some kind of bizarre ubiquitous human narcissism, but we like people that are similar to us, right? But there's a really powerful clue in that from a sales and marketing perspective, and that is that people are far more likely to buy from people that they like. And so you, you put all that together and what it says is one of the most important components to selling really effectively, whether it's one-on-one or 1 to 5,000 in, in an auditorium, is to be likable. And, and that is to find commonalities with that, with that audience so that they want, so that they like you and they want to buy from you.

So in some ways what you're talking about there, one way to look at it is you're talking about rapport and building rapport.

Yeah.

Your customers, your audience. And so one-on-one sales, there's lots of ways we can learn to create greater rapport in a very genuine way. But there are technologies like neuro-linguistic programming and things like that that can apply. But we're getting rapport with someone. You're speaking from the stage, selling one-to-many from the stage. You can get rapport with the audience. But then there's a lot of B2C and even B2B marketing that happens, you know, through the website, through email, through, through marketing funnels and so forth, where there isn't necessarily the, the direct human interaction to get that rapport. So how does, how does your marketing and branding of your company and product focus on creating that quality of rapport so people, they feel, I want to do business with this company because they feel like me.

I, I think one of the key principles to that is, do what you say you're gonna do. You know, that, that really helps a lot. Even, even at the very earliest level, like if, if, if you're making a sales call and you say to the person, oh yeah, I'll drop you an email and follow up on that, then you better do it. You know, it's a small thing, but you'd better do it. And, you know, the, the more often they see you in resonance with your commitment, the more often they see you following through on your word, The more credibility you're building every single time. Well, the same applies with, you know, internet marketing or your copy or your email, you know, copy or what have you. It's like if they see a consistency of the message and they see a consistency of delivery and you do what you say you're gonna do, that's, that's really helpful. But there's also, there's also some important, you know, sort of thought process into how you actually write to clients, whether you're writing landing page copy or an email or, or what have you. And one of the best examples I saw of this was Bill Harris, the founder of Centerpoint.

Fleet.

He was so good at copy. He, um, had a huge list. He had a huge, huge list of people. And, and, you know, they sold meditation apps and so, and meditation programs and so on. And, um, what would happen is that his, his email would go out pretty much, I think it was every Monday. And if he didn't get it out by Monday, no kidding, people would write into the customer support and say, is Bill okay? You know, this, the, his email didn't feel like spam. It, it felt like he was writing them a personal update. And I think that that's something people lose is they, they tend to write a generic message, uh, that is aimed at a broad market. Whereas if instead they really thought about the avatar they're writing to, I mean, named it like, you know, put a picture on the wall. These days it's super easy. You can go to ChatGPT and say, hey, my avatar is, uh, a woman between the ages of, uh, you know, 40 and 50. And, um, you know, she's recently single. She's got 2 semi-adult kids. And could you draw— and I wanna call her, you know, Susan. Could you create a picture of her? Well, if you do that, the next time you write a message to your list, you should look at Susan and write to her. Write to her like you're writing to her. And everybody who receives that message is gonna feel a deeper personal connection.

What if transformation isn't just about thinking differently, but feeling differently. Science shows us that true change happens when we align not just our minds, but also the neural networks in our hearts and guts. This heart-mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience, and expanded awareness. That's why I created the HeartMind All Access Membership and Community, a space designed to help you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live with greater clarity and purpose. With over 1,000 hours of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs. You'll learn from world-renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists, and experts in neuroplasticity, all sharing powerful tools to help you shift your mindset and heartset, regulate your emotions, and unlock your full potential. You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit and course we've ever produced, a treasure trove of wisdom worth over $10,000 and growing, plus live gatherings and an inspiring global community to support your journey. If you're ready to step into a more heart-centered, connected, and conscious life, I invite you to join us. Click the link to learn more and start your journey today. Oh, that's great. So you mentioned, uh, with Centerpoint and the founder there. And we have Marianne, Marianne Tribby on this summit. We're very happy to have her from Centerpoint on our summit. And maybe in your, in your own career, the importance of a founder getting out in front of his own brand and product. Now I know there are some successful companies where the founder's in the background somewhere, but, but in many cases we have to get out and tell the brand story or in some ways we are the brand story. So I wonder if you could talk about how that's played out in your career, in your business ventures and, and the importance of that.

Yeah. I mean, I've, I've done it in, in, in both directions and there are, there are definitely, pros and cons. I, I would say that you could loosely divide your, you could divide your entrepreneurs into the introverted, extroverted camp and the, the extroverted entrepreneurs that find it easy to be the spokespersons of their companies sometimes aren't the best ones to do that. And that's because they enjoy the attention too much. And, um, it, it, it's very often the more introverted ones that do a great job of it because, um, they, they are doing it for a purpose and they take it seriously and they wanna limit the amount they have to do it. And they also limit their contact with the public after doing it. So it's sort of like they create a, an, like Steve Jobs was like that. I don't, Steve was a phenomenal speaker and what have you, but he certainly didn't strike me as somebody who was like massively extroverted and looking for attention. He was doing it because it was expeditious. It was the right, it was the right thing to do. And, and so I think that's important is what's your motivation for being the head of your company? If the motivation is attention and adulation, probably don't do it. But if your motivation is you are the best face of the company and you are the best person to tell the, the brand story, then you should do it. Um, I, uh, I started my first business in the UK and it was in mobile computing and logistics management, barcode scanning, all that kind of stuff. And I was effectively the, you know, I was the founder, but I never really worked on the, the personal branding aspect of that. I didn't, I didn't put myself out there. I wasn't, I wasn't doing any speaking. I didn't do any of that kind of thing. But what I will tell you is when I sold the company, the, uh, you know, they do the due diligence report and so on. And I happen to be in the car with the buyer, um, when he got the phone back report from the due diligence inspectors. And they, they, he, they didn't know I was in the car. And he said, oh, tell me, what do you think about the company? And, and the guy said, he goes, well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. And I'm like, oh no, I don't wanna hear the bad news. They've just done a full investigation of my company and the bad news might put the price down. But, he says, the bad news is, is that we, you know, we, we asked Eric to send us, a sampling of his top 20 customers. But he sent us all 20 of them. And unfortunately, our ISO regulations are that we're not allowed to choose. So we had to call all of them. We, we were hoping he'd only send us 3, but we had to call all of them. And, uh, and so we did. And the second piece of bad news is that every single one of them that we spoke to mentioned Eric by name. Now I was running a company with, you know, whatever, you at various times between 35 and 50 employees and, uh, many salespeople and many of those clients never even got to know me, never spoke to me, but yet get our top 20 all mention me, my name. And as he said this, I was like, oh, this is the worst thing. I didn't want this at all. And I was like, why would they even do that? Because the truth is I hadn't even worked in the company for 2 years. I'd been traveling and what have you. The company ran without me. Why are these people doing this? And I feel like they're sabotaging my deal. But then he goes, but the good news is, is that inasmuch as they all named Eric, they all acknowledged they hadn't spoken to him in 2 years. And They were all actively seeking ways to do more business with his company. Mm-hmm. And, and so, you know, there, there, I think there is something important about being, uh, a, a, you know, a figurehead of the company if you're prepared to do it. And, um, but it's also a bit of a trap. I've spent quite a lot of time with Richard Branson, uh, over the years, particularly this last year. And of course he has done a phenomenal job of being the face of his brand and putting himself out there. But I'll tell you, he's not an extrovert. It's not natural to him. Like he's actually, in my opinion, he's quite shy, but he knew that it was the right path for his brand and he did it unbelievably well.

So, and that could be different for different people in different businesses as your point. Yeah. But whether, whether we are part of the brand story or not as founders and entrepreneurs, part of our job is to be storytellers and to create the brand story and tell the brand story. And I wonder if you could talk about that, especially how that's evolving in the age of AI.

Yeah, geez, there's, there's some change coming there. Um, when we think of a visionary, you know, somebody starting their own movement, their own business, and what have you, uh, we, we, we forget that for every visionary, there's about 9 delusionists. And, uh, and, and, and then the question is, what is the difference between, you know, somebody who's delusional and somebody who's visionary. What is the difference? And I would put to you that, um, uh, that at the very edge, the difference is subtle. The difference really is subtle. Um, uh, Richard Branson is an example. Uh, as I understand the story, was, was, you know, as a young man getting ready to sell his, you know, student magazine and that he'd built, and then he, he went to go meet with the people who wanted to buy it and they wanted him to stay on and run it. And he wanted to do that. And so they asked him, well, if you stay on and run it, what are you gonna what are you gonna do with it? And he's like, oh, I'm gonna build that and I'm gonna start this and I'm gonna start that and I'm gonna create this and I'm gonna create that. And they were like, dude's delusional. And they pulled out of the deal. Only he went and did that stuff. And, uh, I think some of those people work for him now. You know, it's like, it's a, it's a, it was a big, you know, change. Well, what, so what is the difference? Well, they believed him to be delusional, but he was visionary. The difference is he made it happen. And that I would put to you is often the distinction. So then, you know, what is the step that makes that possible? And this is really important. We give a huge amount of credit to the founder. We give a huge amount of credit to the visionary, the person who started the whole thing. But what we don't really give enough credit to is the, the first followers of that visionary. Because you see, without followers, the visionary is delusional. It, it's the first people that join on and catch on and get excited. They they become the support for his delusion. They, they, they become the, they become the, the proof that his delusion has merit or her delusion has merit. And it is those early followers that make the difference between delusional and visionary. And I think that's a really important part in this exchange. So yeah, you might be the one, um, uh, you might be the one at the front of it, but it, what you really have to understand is you being able to tell that brand story really well isn't about the clients as much as it is about the team. It's like you You want your team to be so on fire about your brand story that they're gonna, that they're gonna, that they're gonna go out there and they're gonna fall in love with it. They're gonna be passionate about it. They're, when they're sick, they're gonna come into work anyway because they're so in. And you know, that's, that's the, that's the job of the visionary, I think.

Wow. So, you know, I mentioned, I mentioned AI and things have changed very quickly and, You know, there's, there's a danger of it making us a little bit lazy in terms of I can just go to ChatGPT or Claude or one of the other ones and, and, you know, I need a brand, so give me a brand story or something like that. Right. And obviously we're not— if we, if our prompts are that superficial, we're not going to get great results. But nonetheless, there can be a tendency to think AI is now going to create all this stuff for us. And AI is getting pretty damn good at creating a lot of stuff. So I'm wondering how you're seeing this, whether it's impacting what you're doing with your businesses. And just how you see this evolving in terms of how we, how we create value, how we communicate that value creation, how we create the brand, communicate it. And, you know, the marketing, how everything we're doing can be part of marketing. Is AI— can AI amplify that? Can AI make us more efficient at that? Is AI going to get in the way with that? You know, there could be this kind of leveling with AI that suddenly everybody's got this great tool. And the world's getting flooded with more sophisticated marketing than other people were doing who weren't, you know, didn't have the marketing team. But now they, they can't, they're not doing what they have, maybe what a top flight marketing team did, but they're getting a lot closer than they were before, right? So I'm just curious how you see all this evolving.

Well, I, I, I think that almost everybody is woefully behind the AR curve, the AI curve. They are underestimating the rate of change that we're about to go through. They're building their business for what what AI is today rather than what AI is gonna be in 2 or 3 years. And, and it's, it's, I, I mean, listen, I, I hate to be bleak about it, but it's gonna be a bloodbath out there. It's gonna be really, really difficult. And, and you're right. In, in one area, there's the tendency for some people to, you know, to, to become lazy, and, and to rely too heavily upon AI for their ideation. On the other hand, if you use AI idea, AI as a idea engine or as a muse, it can be unbelievably effective. I mean, you know, the idea that you can turn your phone on right now and say, hey, ChatGPT, you are now a creative muse designed specifically for the purpose of helping me develop a brand story. And you and I are now gonna engage in a conversation during which we're gonna do a deep dive and unpack my deepest values and my company vision. And we're gonna, and we're gonna explore that. And then when we feel like we've gotten to the very bottom of it, you're gonna go even deeper with me. You're gonna look up everything you can about me. You're gonna ask me everything you can, and we're gonna get to the bottom of that brand story. You know, you can have a pretty bloody compelling conversation. I mean, you're gonna get somewhere and, and, and, and the, the, the results can be truly amazing. Unfortunately, what most people do is go, my company makes widgets. Would you write a brand story? And you know, it just, you end up with this this, you know, bland vanilla, uh, thing. So I, I think we do have to be, um, aware that, that, um, that, that AI is not a magic bullet unless you really know what you're doing, in which case it is. And, and, but then we also have to recognize that, um, even if we look at how much it's changed since it first came out, uh, you know, the, the, its intelligence has gone from being a fairly dumb ADD high school student when it launched to PhD-level thinking and reasoning at this point. And it's, it's, it's, and, and that, that curve is not stopping. I mean, I would say that within the next 6 months or so, um, AI will be smarter than every collective human on the planet. And at that point, it is tough to know what the next step is. It is tough to know, uh, um, you know, uh, are we going to be slammed with so much high-level marketing stuff that we can't see through the noise. It's really, that's the big mystery. What is next?

Mm-hmm. So, you know, in our audience, I think we have quite a diverse audience and anywhere from aspiring entrepreneurs to people with maybe 7, 8-figure businesses that they're trying to really scale further and they're running in various levels of challenges. Or we may have solopreneurs that are just thinking about getting a team or, or maybe, you know, a solopreneur with some helpers that thinking about getting a real team and actually growing beyond themselves and, and, and or hitting that wall at $3 or $4 million a year and really having to deal with all the complexities of scale. So I'm sure people are all over the place with that. But for a lot of especially early stage entrepreneurs, marketing can just seem so, so challenging and so complicated and so mysterious. And there's a million shiny balls out there now and there's everybody offering this and everything. There's all kinds of SaaSes you can use and, and then there's marketing agencies. You don't know what you're gonna get, you know? So it just can be something like a lot of, some, some, some founders may be marketers instinctually or maybe they're, they've started a marketing business, but a lot of 'em have a product or a service that they're building and then marketing can almost seem like, oh, I gotta learn this marketing stuff or I gotta hire a marketer. I can't afford one, right? So, and, and again, we, we don't know where things are going. But I wonder if there are some like key principles that you've learned that have, that have, that have, you know, kept you kind of a North Star for you and in terms of marketing and which may, you know, hopefully will stand the test of time even with the AI revolution. That's just some principles that people can—

Yeah, I'll come back to something I mentioned earlier and that is, but I'll phrase it differently and that is is, you know, under-promise and over-deliver. What you want is that every single time somebody transacts with you, and transact with you might simply be watching a video of yours on the, on, that is a transaction. You're, you're, they're giving you, they're giving you their time and attention and you're getting to speak to them. So it's a transaction. If you make sure that at every step of any transaction with a prospect or client that you are delivering, beyond the promise, then you, that, that's amazing. You should be doing that every step of the way. I, I can tell you, my clients, they know that if I'm offering them something, they know automatically it's gonna be, it's gonna be more valuable than what I'm asking them to pay. They know that because they've bought things from me and it's paid them back far more than I asked them to pay in the first place. So if you, if you can overpromise, or sorry, underpromise and overdeliver, that is one of the most valuable things you can do, particularly in the AI age. Because, you know, these days, because marketing, like, look, look, let's say you're a, you know, let's say you're a, a sales trainer and you're, you've got a great business as a sales trainer. Well, yeah, but I can just go and grab, I can sign up to your newsletter. I can grab your website. I can grab some of your training materials. I can throw it into the backend of ChatGPT and I can launch a website and I can compete directly against you. I mean, I can take your material and just go straight at you. Like I said, it, it, I, I can figure out what SEO terms you're using. I can end up on the same page with you within a week. Like, it's, it's, unless of course your clients love you so much that that doesn't matter.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and, and I would say that that has been a principle that has stood the test of time. At the end of the day, if your clients trust you and they know that you always overdeliver, then it's gonna be much harder for a competitor to come along no matter how powerful their AI is, no matter what strategy they— it's gonna be much harder for them to, to prize the client away from you because you've created that loyalty. So I think So that's, that's a very key principle. Another key principle is stop talking about yourself and your product and your service. Everybody, everybody wants to talk about the features and benefits of their product or service, which immediately communicates that this is a sales message. Well, you know, we are all very practiced at this point at ignoring, deleting, blocking sales messages. So the minute something sounds like a sales message, we're inclined to turn it off or turn our attention off. We're not, we're not paying attention to it. To it. So the minute you start going, oh well, my product or service does this, this, and this and this for you, the minute you're having that sales conversation, you are activating their defenses and, and they're deleting. On the other hand, the principle I really enjoy about this is give them what they want better than they expected, and you will earn the right to give them what they need, you know. And, and so I'll give you a really great example. In, in, in the case of WildFit, We definitely underpromise and overdeliver. The truth is, if we told people in our marketing what really is deliverable out of WildFit, they wouldn't believe us. There's no point putting it in the marketing cuz they would just call it hyperbole. They're like, there's no way. I'll give you an example. People will come through WildFit with a major, say, chocolate addiction. I happen to know some of those people personally, and they might come out with a, they might have a strong, yeah. And they might be in the room with me, but they might have a strong chocolate addiction. Then they'll go through the program and then they'll, afterward they'll go, I don't even want it anymore. Or I want it occasionally during the holiday and that's it. Like it's— now when you tell somebody who's been going through the diet industry all these years that they don't believe that, they can't believe that they'd ever not want it. What they need to hear is I'm gonna help them resist it because they can't believe that they can stop wanting it. Right? So, so I don't, I don't want to try and sell with features and benefits. I wanna understand what they want. Here's what they want. What do people want? The vast majority, they wanna lose weight, right? Like, you know, that's the biggest diet ask. It's the, it's searched for on Google all day long. Everybody's talking to ChatGPT about how to do it. I wanna lose weight. Great. So I'll give you that and I will overdeliver on an underpromise about that. You, people will come into our programs and they will lose weight. They do phenomenally well. And what happens in that moment is is I've overdelivered and I've earned their credit. I've earned the credibility and I've earned the respect. And at that point I can give them the rest of what they need. They, I, I, I, I've now earned the right to talk to them about all the other things that I can help them with because I've given them the thing they wanted. And so you really, maybe I can say this in a, with a little more brevity. What happens for most people when they're given an opportunity to sell or market something is their inclination is to immediately start talking about the thing that they're wanting to sell or market. And what I'm saying is you should be asking questions instead. You should be learning everything you can about the prospect and you should be finding out what it is that they really want. You should be giving them that thing and you should be giving it to them so well that they will then buy whatever else you're, you're selling.

That's a really important distinction. I think a lot of this, and I, and I imagine there's a lot of folks in our audience, a lot of entrepreneurs in our audience who are in some form of the knowledge industry, uh, and probably a lot of personal evolution folks, uh, uh, there are also probably people marketing services and so forth. But, um, you know, a lot of times we create online offerings or courses or programs based on what we think the client needs.

Yeah.

And, and they're really looking for what they want, right? And so that there can be a real disconnect there. I love that distinction you made— give them what they want, and then you, then you'll have permission to give them what they need as well. Yeah. So one of the challenges with building programs that are going to improve people's health and well-being, improve their entrepreneurial skills, whatever, improve the quality of their relationships, any of the life optimization kind of personal evolution programming and services and courses, all the rest of that. The sad truth is people purchase things and then they don't engage or they don't make use of it. You know, the actual statistics can be a little depressing when you look at it across. Now, I'm sure there's programs that do a better job with engagement and some that do less. But it can be really tough even after people invest in a program to get them to show up and really engage and use it. So I wonder what your experience has been there, because for most of us, it's not just if we get higher engagement, we're going to get repeat sales. It's our business is going to work much better. But most of us are not just— we're not in this for the money. We're in this to make the impact. We got inspired to do whatever we're doing because we want to have an impact on the world. And if people buy our products but don't use them, we're not going to have that impact that we're longing to make in the the world. So I wonder what, what you've seen, uh, of how you address that in your businesses to really get that customer engagement.

When I, uh, made the decision to get involved in training, mentoring, coaching, and then the development of digital programming, I, um, I came from a business background, so I approached it like a business. And frankly, many of the people that decide to go into this journey don't do that. They, they were a coach that decided to try to professionalize their coaching business and and then they build from there. So they didn't have a business background sometimes. I did. So I did a bunch of market research and I, and I learned some things and some of those things I found disconcerting. And one of the things I found is that when people go to live education programs, retreat seminars, and so forth, there's a 3 to 6% continuity rate. 3 to 6% of those people will report that they took that information and put it into action in lives. And I was like, my God, that's a complete waste of my time. I'm not gonna go and spend, you know, months designing a workshop so that 3% of the people can— I like that. I, I, I'm not interested. And then I found that the same was true with digital programming that, you know, that, that digital programming has a, a 3 or 4% completion rate. Like, it's, it's incredible. In fact, I remember hearing this story and it really annoyed me. It was in one of the famous internet marketers of the time. They had launched this, you know, uh, zero to $10 million real estate investing program or whatever it was, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the gimmick of the time. But, um, what was interesting is they sold thousands of these, and then one day they got a call from a client, and the client's like, hey, I just, um, I was just watching the 10th DVD. This is back in the days of DVD delivery, right? I was just watching the 10th DVD and it's blank. And they're like, oh, okay, no problem, we'll just send you another one. So they, you know, they opened one of their packs, grabbed the 10th DVD, but they thought they'd check it before they send it just to make sure it's okay, and they found it was blank. So then they went and opened up another one, and it was blank. And they realized that somehow the 10th DVD had never been printed properly in any of them. And they started laughing their butts off. This is— I was there in the room with— they're laughing. And they're laughing because they're like, we sold thousands of these, and this is the first person that got to the 10th DVD to find out it was blank. And they thought that was funny. I didn't. I thought, I, I thought it was horrifying. I was like, you guys should be, you guys should be like really introspective about that. It means you failed them if they, if they didn't get there. And so because I'd done that research and I developed that opinion, I really made the decision to figure out how to, um, how, how to develop super sticky, engaging content. And so when I created my WildFit program, I, I was really like going after a daunting topic, helping people change their relationship with food. I mean, just about everybody on on earth has at some point in time tried to go on some kind of a diet and failed at it. I mean, it, it is one of the toughest areas to change. The food industry's manipulative. Um, we are confused about nutrition. We just, it, it's just a really, and, and, and frankly, the yummiest stuff is the most unhealthy stuff. I mean, it's a tough world out there. But what I did is I, I, I developed a, um, a mechanism or, or call it a methodology called Behavioral Change Dynamics. And it's a series of filters and rules and logical progressions for the way an education experience should be designed, whether it's a retreat or a digital program. And we put this to effect with WildFit, and it worked. We have an 85% completion rate on a 90-day health program. And I mean, it's, it's an order of magnitude more effective than anything else. And, and, and by the way, we even tell our people as they're coming to the program, please don't go tell your friends about this. Don't go hara— we don't want you harassing people. If your friends ask, that's fine, but don't— we don't want that, you know, don't do that. Well, you know what's funny? We then poll our clients. Our clients within a month of completing the program after us telling them not to go out and spread the word, speak to an average of 35 people in that first month afterward. And that's after we told them not to do that, you know, but guess what? It's because they stuck with it and they got the results. And, and that's the key to this whole thing. If you again can overdeliver upon the promise, you earn their respect, their credibility, you become an authority.

Hmm. That behavioral science that you researched and developed to understand how to create really sticky content, do you teach that?

Yeah. I mean, I, I, I don't, I don't have any courses that teach that at the moment, but I do have a program that I run about once every 2 years called Product Creation Bootcamp, where I teach people how I created WildFit and the other programs that we've really well with. Mostly though, I do it on a more consulting basis. Um, I, I'll, you know, I'll have an, uh, an author wanting to develop a high-level program for, you know, that's getting published on some platform, and then I'll help them with the course design and the, and, and the direction of the videos and that sort of stuff, or, or large corporates. So I'm, I, I, I'm, I'm currently engaged to, um, I'm currently engaged to do that for, for Mindvalley, my own publisher, helping them figure out how to, um, design even stickier content And I do that kind of thing with other corporates as well.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so, and I'm gonna ask you in a little, just a little bit, we're getting near the end of our interview and our time here, and I'm gonna ask you about where people can find out more about your work and so forth and at whatever level they might wanna engage with you and your companies. So maybe just, we've been kind of talking about this with AI and everything, but, and as you acknowledge, we kind kind of don't know because, you know, we're approaching that point of what they call singularity, where the machines will be smarter than we are. And who knows where that's going to go. But I just wonder, you know, in terms of entrepreneurship and, you know, the ability to, to take charge of your own destiny as an entrepreneur and, and, and really create, create an extraordinary life. Where you're adding value and you're receiving value and you learn to build, you know, you get all the information. Like, I hope people are really absorbing this summit because the people on this summit have all learned how to do this without destroying your relationships, your health, and so forth to really get the freedom we all started out looking for. So what's next in terms of that journey and that possibility being there for people?

Well, yeah, I, I think that AI, you know, so many people are afraid of losing their jobs to AI, and I think that's a very legitimate concern. In fact, I think it's a bigger concern that people realize. And I see these days the, the current fad is to say, you don't have to worry about losing your job to AI. You need to worry about losing your job to somebody who's using AI. I think you need to be worried about both. But in the meantime, what I would suggest is that that, um, somebody with a dream or a passion at this point has at their fingertips a PhD-level assistant available 24/7 for free. They have a high-level copywriter available for free. They have a legal consultant that can help them draft agreements and evaluate legal, you know, situations and help them figure out tax laws in their country for free. They, they, they have everything at their fingertips. The ability to build a very lean, mean team exists in a way today that it really never has before. I mean, I, I, at this stage, if I had a choice, say in hiring a, uh, in-house lawyer or a super sharp kid who understood how to communicate with AI, I would take that. Because that super sharp kid can get the AI to be my lawyer. And, and I'm, I, I'm not saying that I wouldn't, you know, maybe still have a lawyer that would review things at the end, but I can, I can do the, the drafting can be done. The opinions can be done. The research can be done. It's, it's there. So there, the opportunity to create a life of freedom is stronger now than it's ever been. But the runway is shorter than it's ever been. And this is what I mean is that, we are, we are in a place where, the, the level of job and business replacement that's going to happen over the next 2 years is, it's actually frightening. None of us have any busy business sleeping at night if we really understood how quickly it's gonna happen. It's gonna be fascinating. And if you are not familiar with AI, if you're not using it effectively, if you've not figured out the strategic prompting and really communicating with effectively, you are definitely gonna be behind. And so I think that that is a very, very important message at this point is like, look, I mean, look, you and I are old enough to remember when we went from typewriters to word processors and there were some people like, I'm just gonna stay with a typewriter. Yeah, that didn't work. That didn't, that didn't work out very well. And, and, and a word processor is say a 10x of a, of a, of a, of a typewriter and an AI is a million x of that word processor. And, and so, yeah, the opportunity is unbelievable and amazing right now. And it's also short-lived because very soon as AI continues to exponentially get smarter and smarter, there's gonna be less need for our creativity and less need for us. So it's better that we achieve the success that we can now and the identity that we can now. Because if you've created an attractive identity, at the end of the day, people are still gonna want face-to-face. They're still gonna want human interaction.

Yeah, absolutely. People are going to want that human interaction. And, you know, there are some things— I mean, it may be that you can have your AI companion help you lose weight, but, you know, still that, you know, the diet industry is built on that desire we all have to manage our weight or to lose weight. And AI may or may not be able to do that for you. But also even I'm just thinking, you know, with this huge displacement that is likely coming, you know, it's going to create all kinds of economic displacement, all kinds of personal pain and so forth. That could create, you know, one way that may in part be that society and governments may try to address that with a kind of social services approach or something. But if somebody has an entrepreneur— more of an entrepreneurial approach, to coming up with solutions now for that displacement that's coming our way, that could be hugely advantageous.

Yeah, there's no question. I mean, one area that I see as, you know, you can go to ChatGPT today and say, can you tell me what are some of the jobs you think are safe from AI? And, you know, on the top of the list, I was just talking with a friend about this and he's like, plumbing. And I go, I don't know. Well, I don't know how safe it is. I mean, let's say I've got a bit of a leak over there. I can go over and take a photograph of the leak. I can upload it to GPT and say, hey, can you tell me what might be going on here? And GPT is gonna say, well, it's probably this washer that needs to be tightened, or you need it like it, it, that doesn't mean that I won't need a plumber, but it might mean that there's a percentage of things that I will figure out on my own and don't need to call the plumber for. And I think everything is like that. I had to do some editing of a video the other day, and it's been a long time since I've had done doing my own editing. So I, I couldn't remember quite how to do some of it. I was doing a multicam edit, so 3 camera angles. And, and I'm like, and it just wouldn't do it. Final Cut wasn't, and I couldn't remember. And so what I did is I didn't write to ChatGPT and say, how do you do a multicam edit? I just took a screenshot and I put it in there and said, I, it's not doing multicam edit, what's wrong? And it told me, it just told me. They said, well, the settings over there is wrong. It looked at it and told me. So I, I, I, I would say that again, we're, we, we, we are in this golden sweet spot that if you learn to think like that, like, nobody told me I could do that. I just decided to try it. And, and as a consequence, I've been able to get AI to, you know, improve my productivity. I, I had to do something recently. I had to rerecord one of our WildFit programs. So this is a 3-month program. I had to rerecord the whole thing. I'd recorded it 8 years previously. It was time to refresh it and update it. Can you imagine the content curation that would go into that? Daily videos, all the document paperwork. If I had done that 3 years ago, it would have been a 90-day project minimum. But today what I was able to do is upload the transcripts from the previous program, upload the modifications that I want, and then ask it to rejig that curriculum and modernize it and integrate the changes I wanna make. And boom, it spit the strips out like that.

That.

Now, they weren't perfect, but they were very good. And that would have taken a team, a creative team and me, 3 months to do previously. Now it took me 2 weeks on my own.

And you filmed it with you delivering?

Yep.

Were you tempted?

Yeah, and I could have replaced me there if I wanted to.

You tempted to have an avatar do that?

No, no. I, I, I— there are areas where I will do that. I've just, um, you know, I've just agreed a licensing deal where some, where, where my publisher gets to clone me. And, and so that the, so that the clients going through my digital programs can interact with me. And, you know, I, I don't mind that type of thing, but in terms of the program delivery, I, I, I, I, first of all, I enjoy it. And, and secondly, I, I believe it's too important at this point to, to hand over to a machine. If people are asking questions and they want further clarifications, I I think having an AI bot to do customer service and, you know, and Q&A type stuff, totally okay. But I'm not yet prepared to actually create programs with an AI clone.

Well, this has been an illuminating window into both what works and what's coming. And so this has been incredibly enjoyable and I think tremendous value for our audience. Thank you so much for this. Where can people learn more about your work and your programs and so forth? And I also think you have a free offer for our audience.

So, yeah. So, uh, I'm at www.eric.ee. Um, that's my primary website, you know, for general information about me. If people are interested in, uh, the course creation stuff that we were talking about and, and even public speaking, that sort of stuff, they can go to speakernation.com. Uh, WildFit that we've talked about a few times is at getwildfit.com. And yeah, I, I would like to make an offer to everybody that they can go and do what's called our Gapfinder test, which is an evolutionary mismatch assessment that helps you to identify where the gaps are between you and nature that you can, that you, that you can use to sort of optimize your health, nutrition, psychology, home environment situation, and so forth. And they can do that at gapfinder.com.

And that link is right below here. So I encourage people to take action on that right away. 'Cause that's just fascinating. We all like to have that kind of information, right? You know, Yeah. So I encourage people to really jump on that. I'm gonna do it myself. So Eric Edmies, thank you so much for this. This really has been illuminating and I appreciate all the work you do.

Thanks very much for having me. Keep up the good work.

You too. Be well. Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Until next time, stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to yourself. Take care.