We don't have friends... - Episode 088

Dude, the amount of people that listen to this podcast that I did not think of just blew my socks off.

Dude.

It's crazy.

Yeah, I was gonna say we'll start right there. Did you get a bunch of personal messages and emails after last.

Yeah, dude. Everyone's like, yeah, I saw it in the C suite. Unfiltered. I'm like, dude, there's like less than.

A thousand people that watch this.

But somehow like everyone that I know does.

Goodness, loyal fan base or loyal friends, which is better, you know?

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Welcome back. Another episode sees Food Unfiltered with Mike Andes. Big episode last week. This week we're gonna maybe take a different turn. We went kind of more personal last week. You know, wins and losses from 2024 expected. Must wins, can't loses for 2025. Now I want to talk about something completely different and I don't know if this is necessarily something that you were doing intentionally, but I read this very interesting article. This is from a newsletter that I recently subscribed to from Scott Galloway or Prof. Will. And this is actually by his. His producer on his. Or co host. Co host and producer on his podcast, Prof. G Markets. So the gentleman who wrote this, Ed Ellison, 25 year old who works with Scott Galloway and the title of the article is People are the New Brands. So do you want me to just dive right into what, what this article is about?

Let's do it.

All right, perfect. So there's some numbers from this article. The first number that I thought was interesting and basically the premise of the article is that nowadays modern society, and specifically because the writer of this article is technically a Gen Z, er, that Gen Z is trending towards less trust in brands overall compared to their boomer counterparts, if you will, that still have high trust in brands and specifically, you know, very traditional American Western brands. But here's one of the numbers that pops out right at the beginning of the article, and this is part of the reasoning behind this distrust and brand, is that Gen Z's spend an average. And if you want to guess an average blank number of days per year looking at a screen, how many days per year does Gen Z look at a screen? I would say this is like a cute, you know, accumulating all the minutes and hours they're spending looking at screens. What does that equal in days? Not days, because it's every day, right?

Yeah, I'm gonna go with like between 70 and 80 days a year.

Yeah, you're actually low on average, 109 days per year spent looking at a screen on 24 hours.

Like 24 hours times, like times 24 hours. Wow.

Yes. Yeah. 109 days per year looking at a screen. On average in the US people spend between 106 to 125 days asleep. So they are looking at screens in equal amount of time as they are sleeping.

That would mean that everyone has on average like 8 hours of sleep a night. Is that true?

Well, that, this is just, that's a generalization about the sleeping. Like that's what I, I'm generalizing about the sleeping, but I'm just giving like a comparable number. Like typically they say, right, you spend a third of your life asleep. Right. So a third of the year, right. Would be 100 to 150 days somewhere in that range. So I'm just generalizing, but this is, this is a data driven statistic here in this article that Gen Z spends an average of 109 days per year looking at a screen. 80% of our waking hours are spent consuming information. That's up from 40% in 1980. We see 208 ads per hour, 10 times more than our parents ever did. As a result, we are more anxious, distracted and depressed than any other generation in history. And we all know this, but we do not comprehend it. Like frogs and boiling water, we've been slow cooked by screens. So what are your initial reactions to the drastic amount of screen time that future generations are going to have? Just because screens are so easily accessible today?

What are we gonna do about it? Dude? Yeah, you got, you gotta survive. And you know you're gonna make your money now behind a screen. You're not gonna make it out in the field planting potatoes. You're gonna make it behind a screen that make, does a, manufactures and plows the field and makes, you know, a thousand to two thousand times more productivity than you were by yourself. And so unless you want to go back to the old way of doing things, get used to it.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So this is where it gets interesting and where the article takes a little bit of turn, A little bit of a turn here. The most important number here that he wants to share is 12%. That's the share of Americans who say they have zero close friends. 12% of Americans say they have no close friends. That's up from 3% since 1990. So in 35 years we 4x the loneliness in the country, if you will. And it says half the country says in open surveys and polls. This is lots of different data from U.S. bureau of Statistics and a bunch of Other ones. But they say that half of the country is struggling with loneliness. I don't know necessarily what the definition of that is, but that is, is, you know, a statistic that was measured. And we now spend 70% less time with our friends than we did a decade ago. So we are lonely.

Well, we assume also that having more friends correlates to being less lonely. And I would, I would argue that point. There are plenty of times and instances where there are people with many friends that are still very lonely. And it's actually more debilitating because you are in a crowd of people and still feel that way. And so as, as you age, you usually have less acquaintances and less friends, and you spend more, more and more time with your spouse and maybe a circle of two or three people.

And so, you know, it's not, I'm not, I'm not like, I'm not being, like, against having friends. It's just a matter of, like, I think this is a reality. And, you know, what are we gonna do about it? What are we gonna do? Like, force people to be friends? Yeah, we all have shallow relationships because of social media where we have thousands of friends that we literally have never even met before. So, yes, you know, there's a, a widening of the social kind of graph, but then a, the depth is lost in many, many regards. And so, you know, what do you do about it? Go find. If you really need close friends, go find two or three and like, invest time, energy, and resources into cultivating those relationships. And if you don't need friends, that's fine too. Like, you.

Do you. Yeah, yeah. So this is, this is the kind of. The meat of the article here is kind of setting the stage of, okay, like, people are lonely. Why? Essentially, like, we can see statistics where people have less friends, less human interaction, more screen time, screens are negatively impacting our society. That's kind of just like a general presumption to this article I'm summarizing here. But he says that it ultimately is focused on this word in this new definition called parasocial. So I don't know. Have you heard of this term at all?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So, and, and this is where, you know, maybe it's a little bit more in your wheelhouse as you would technically fall into the definition of a social media influencer. And I'm going to read here a little bit. Feel free to cut me off. But this is kind of the meat of the article. The technical term for this phenomenon is parasocial relationships per tech and science. A social, a relationship a person imagines having with another person who they do not actually know. Parasocial is mostly used in reference to Instagram and tick tock and YouTube. But I believe parasocial relationships affect everything. If I had to describe 2024 in a word, it would be parasocial. This is evident in my industry podcasting. Joe Rogan has become more influential than the world's largest news Network. His podcast gets 3x more downloads than the average primetime viewership of CNN, MSNBC combined. Many have diagnosed this with tectonic shift of left versus right phenomenon. However, in the context of loneliness, this is a red herring. He said the key distinction between CNN and Joe Rogan is that one, one is a brand dealer's.

CNN versus Joe Rogan. One is red letters, one is a face, one is news, one is a conversation. And that's where it's kind of inviting more people in basically to the conversation, to that human interaction with Joe, and that's why he's grown, is because of these kind of parasocial relationships. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, like I think it comes to any form of selling, like you, you got to know like, and trust the person. And so when CNN and these other brands do things that are against someone's trust, you're going to lose brand equity. And so the thing about a brand is it's very difficult to actually apologize when you've made a mistake because you're reporting on news, if you're giving information, if you're creating products and services, you're going to make mistakes. How you handle those is whether or not the brand becomes human. And so someone like Joe, for example, has changed his opinions on things, he gives ideas about things, he says he's wrong about things. Whereas if you're a button down version of a brand that can't say you're wrong, you become dehumanized and therefore the trust factor decreases. And so I actually think that like whether it be a brand or a person, like if you, if you want to ask yourself like your personal relationship, like how do you know to trust someone? It's like, well, when they made a mistake, what did they do about it? And so if your brand, if your personal brand, like when I say personal brand, think more like your personal relationships is when people think about you making a mistake, they just know you'll sweep it under the rug. You'll stand up for yourself, you'll make stuff up. You'll, you know, you cannot, you know, go against your own thoughts. Like your thoughts are the, the epitome and you can't kind of steel man your own arguments, then, then you're going to lose credibility, you're going to lose trust when you say have a pov. And so the reason that someone would trust someone more like Joe or a podcast or someone that has a social media influence, because you usually, usually they will be more honest about their, their, their wins and losses and the track record is much more clear and they don't try to cover things up. So that that trust factor of knowing, liking and trusting someone is in the past. Knowing has been the biggest part. So because you had social media, because you had a mass media, you had a cable news network, you had a big brand like CNN or whatever because you had that, the knowing part, everyone knew you. But the parts that has eroded is the trust and the liking part. And so as those erode, the knowing becomes less and less valuable. And so even though someone like Joe Rogan, less people know him in relation to the number of people who know cnn, however, the liking and the trusting part are increased even though knowing is far below the other brand simply due to the fact that he is willing to admit when he makes a mistake and he's willing to alter and change his perspectives. And that's more of a human thing that we can affiliate with because we all make mistakes. How you handle those will determine whether or not you, you are a corporate quote unquote brand or someone that's personal and that can create a relationship with you and that will create a paranormal, paranormal parasocial relationship with someone because they are now a human. We don't create that same affiliation or connection with a brand like CNN because they don't show when they make mistakes. They don't deal with those in a way that we can trust them on. Mm hmm.

That's interesting. You do you feel like, I guess the way you're explaining it, it's almost like the desire for more human connection has made us less connected to other humans because we view seeing humans through a screen now, through our phones, through podcasts, instead of the actual human interaction in person. Now what's the balance between like we desire the knowledge from, you know, influencers from a Joe Rogan, from whoever. Maybe you and I like to listen to the all in podcast. Right? Very successful entreprene. We desire that information. Do I feel like they're my friends personally? No, I feel like they are entertaining and they're educational. But what is the line between well those guys are so cool and I want to be like Them and I want to connect with them. They're, they're my online friends versus, like, I just have friends in real life. Is it the fact that because they have so much more knowledge, they're more entertaining? I would rather isolate myself to be involved in that relationship versus seeking out in person relationships. Like, what's the balance that needs to be struck there?

I think people will just gravitate to whichever one serves them the most. If having someone in person and having a physical connection with someone, you know, belly to belly, eyeball to eyeball, is going to be more beneficial to you, you'll do that. If talking to someone that like, you and I would never be able to talk to billionaires in the past or hear from them and, you know, pick their brain, et cetera. So like, in my opinion, this is not a matter of good and bad. This is a matter of you have options. And so it so happens that talking, hearing from billionaires is a lot more fascinating to me than like going talking to my high school friends. And so now I have the option. So if someone's going to judge me based upon the fact that like, oh, we're not having more in person connection because of screens, yeah, I'm thrilled because I'd rather talk to these people and hear from them than this other people that I really have no connection with whatsoever. But simply because they're, you know, a physical human body that I can go talk to, does that really make the connection any better? Does it make my information that I gained from them or the knowledge I gained from them any better? I don't believe so. And so there will always be people crying how horrible this is. But like, then they don't strip back the fact that like, we have access to information with the freedom and movement of information, news, as well as the access to be able to move up inside of a socioeconomic ladder because of access to relationships you would never have the ability to have in the past, I think that's underrated. I would know there's no way in the world I'd be able to done what I've done without having the ability to be able to connect to people that in the 30, 40 years ago would have been completely inaccessible or would have been filtered through a social media or through a news network. And so to be able to have connection with those people now is the thing that is a huge unlock. And so to say that all relationships now are somehow discredited or less than because they are not belly to belly, I think is very much a head in the sand situation. And yes, there are downstream effects of people that use these, these relationships digitally in a way that's not productive or not beneficial, building them up. And there's a lot of negative things around, whether it be only fans and other situations that, where people get involved in. And I certainly see that argument, but I cannot fully discredit these relationships because it's what's made it possible for me to go from the bottom to higher up. And I think it is the, is the freedom of information using social media that allows the person that wants to get ahead. And that's what makes America great. And this technology, in my opinion, is a huge medium for success.

Yeah, yeah. And this is where like I don't want, you know, I don't want our podcast, podcasts to get like fully like Socratic. But like, do we agree on the premise that in person friends are important? Like, do we agree on that premise.

For some people, but what about for you?

Like, do you think that it. Okay, holistically, do you think on the average it is important for people to have real life friendships? Great, yes. Then the question, okay, I just want to make sure we agree on the premise, which I figured. But I want people to understand like this, like, let's get down to, you know, first principles thinking about social interaction, like, do we agree that having in person friendships is valuable? Okay, great, we do. Now what's the tipping point? Is it, do I need one friend that I see once a year, but then all the rest of my friends are online through parasocial relationships? Or is it like everyone must self regulate that? But what this article is kind of arguing is like, we are becoming more lonely. We come, we're becoming more isolated and that is not a good thing. That's kind of what this article is arguing at the beginning. And I want to get into the second half of the article. But what are your thoughts on that? Like, is there a proverbial tipping point or does everybody have to check themselves? Are there communities that you would recommend? Like, what, what does that look like?

I think if people find that they have a lack in this area and this sort of thing enrages them, then they can probably take action steps in their personal life to ensure that they have more in person interaction. You join a church, go to a gym.

Eat out more often, talk to people, put yourself through courses around communicating with strangers, put yourself in communities like Toastmasters, et cetera, go to conferences, go to get inside of communities, this is not difficult. And so for someone to cry about how bad it Is I just think is there's more opportunity to have in person connection than ever before because of the digital space. Because now you can go on to meetups, you can find communities online and then that many times will go in person. And so I think this is many times a choice that people make and they will blame technology when reality, they do not have the skills to go out and get the in person connections required for them to be quote, happy. So I take a very pro technology stance because, like, over the course of history, it has proven to continue in that direction. So if you want to, if you want to cry about it and try to go opposite, like, you know, having social media cleanses, great. Why not just like unfollow everyone? Like, why not just cleanse? Like, like, like focus on the root source here. Like, I'm not opposed to social media cleanses, et cetera. Like, I think it is healthy, but if someone's addicted to it or like you feel like it's taking away from you, clean it up. Like, instead of just being like, I'm just not cap everything. Do you think that social media is going away? Do you think you're going to be able to build a business without it? Do you think you're able to get away from screens, like, go the opposite direction, like news, newsflash. No, you aren't. And so instead of trying to just band aid everything by saying we should take away screens, we should take away social media, why not fix the root of the problem, which is like, okay, can I redo my news feeds where I only follow one or two people or three or four people, my close quote unquote friends? Like, put a cap on how many people you can follow on social media and then see how your friendships do. You'll probably have way more connection because you'll see what they're doing every day. Instead of your 5,000 friends that Facebook has to figure out in their algorithm of which ones they're gonna present to you and then you feel overwhelmed by all these very surface relationships. So, like people that cry on this, like, I just usually just like, hey, look, there's so many opportunities for in person connection. You know, you're like, why? I just don't know what to do on the weekend. Go, then go. Go join a chore, go join a church, go to a mission, go donate your time and help someone else in need. That's just many times my kind of comeback on this.

Yeah, yeah. And this, this article is not necessarily arguing against screens, if you will. It's just saying it's highlighting trends that it sees. And ultimately, like, what we're working towards here, we're kind of getting in the weeds, which I love, but it's moving towards, like, why are people, the new brands versus, you know, branding, having this trust that it used to have in the. In the Western marketplaces? So one thing kind of moving back to the article here. This section of the article is great. It's called Geo Person. And basically, he's using the case to which Trump got elected as like, the perfect example of branding versus a person. And the brand that Kamala Harris put out there was the traditional Democrat brand, if you will. But everything was scripted, everything was staged. Everything was exactly the way it should have been, in theory, for the Democrat brand. Whereas Trump literally hired multiple people to tweet his exact thoughts in every single moment of watching a Kamala Harris speech, watching a CNN news anchor talk negatively about him. Right. He had multiple people that followed him 24, 7 to get his thoughts out there. And there are these, like, I don't know if they intentionally released them or leaked videos, but he references one where he was watching Kamala do a. A big speech at a rally, and he's like, oh, this is good. Tweet that. Oh, you should say this. Right? And it's just like, it is him. And this article is basically arguing that whatever. Whatever you want to call it, call it Trump's narcissism, call it his genius. Like, wherever you stand doesn't matter. Like, he built a brand that people could identify with and that the American people who were kind of actively disassociating with the Republican brand have now become parasocial or attached to their friendship with Trump. And I think that that's an interesting kind of take. There are so many layers to an election, but basically he's arguing that the person won the election, not the brand of the Democratic Party. What do you. Do you think that that's kind of what you've seen? Or post election, what. What is a reality?

Yeah. This is why, if you go back, maybe you can clip this out where the pod. Right after the assassination attempt, I said, he's one. And then once he stood up and he did the whole, like, this thing, I was like, okay, like, now it's going to be so clear in terms of who's stronger. This is probably going to swing the election. And so if it doesn't do that, I would be amazed. And so, from a political standpoint, that was probably the best thing that could ever happen to him because, like, it Just humanized him. And so, you know, politicians have always tried to humanize it, but usually it's using words. Something like that is unscripted. And people like unscripted things. And this is why actually like I will always make sure there's some level of Q A at a conference because you can, you could, someone could have wrote my script, someone could have wrote my slides, someone could put up all of that together. But you ask a Q A and like you actually get to see how someone operates when they ask a hard question or they say something negative about you. Like those are actually the telling factors as to whether or not someone has the goods. And so like in that moment, you know, for millions of people to see, that's what was exemplified, the personality and the brand. And that's unscripted and you can't manufacture it.

Yeah, exactly. And that's where this article then turns. He's highlighting the election as an example. It's obviously forefront of our mind. But he also went to the comparison of advertising dollars spent per car sold across all brands. If you look at General Motors, if you look at Ford, if you look at Volkswagen, it averages between 100 $450 to $600 per car sold. This is a 2023 data to Tesla's 4. And he's arguing about how Elon is the marketing campaign for Tesla. Right. He puts himself out there. Tesla has a 10x greater value than its peers. In this article highlights those in just the EV space specifically. And he said it's primarily because of Elon Musk that he has just driven the results of the company because people trust him, they like him. Tweets, they don't care what Tesla's marketing company is doing. They just want to know is this guy crazy or is he a genius or is he both?

Yeah, like I said before, like Tesla is the biggest creator led business in the world.

Yeah.

And it used to be that way. Like the vast majority of this, the, the stock is owned by individual investors. It's the number one traded stock by private investors and it is the brand of Elon Musk. So you know, whether, like that there's, there's pros and cons to that. Right. So like for example, when he takes a stance politically, it is going to, you know, half the country will be against that. But again, traditionally, even if someone goes against your core values, if they are authentic to who they are most of the time, in the long run we intend to identify with that more because we just want to see people be authentic and so when they're buttoned down and they say what the corporate speak is, we just don't like it. And I think that's becoming more and more evident as social media has become a bigger part of our life, because we get to see the behind the scenes. We get to see Trump say that sort of stuff inside of a back office that we would never have seen 10, 15 years ago. And so as that becomes more and more evident.

What used to be the skeletons in the closet are now just being displayed for everyone to see. And some of the skeletons are great. You actually see how someone's brain works. You see their ingenuity, their smarts.

We would never have seen in the past is now becoming out in the front. And so I think it's really positive. I just think it's really good. So yeah, yeah.

And then this is. So the article is talking about, you know, our advertising dollars per car sold in the automotive industry. And then it pivots here. And I want to read this section. That's probably the last I read verbatim from the article, but it's very funny. He said Meta was one of the worst rebrands. That happened in three years ago when the company tried to wash away the sins of Facebook to Meta. It didn't work. The brand trust tanked. Its best rebrand, however, came earlier this year. This article was written right before the end of 2024 when Mark Zuckerberg himself went from awkward coat and tie wearing senate hearing prop to gold chain dawning t pain loving jiu jitsu fighter. In addition to leaning into his personality, Zuckerberg has made himself more public. He posted 71 times on Instagram this year, from everything to Taylor Swift concerts to UFC fights. Whereas in 2021 he posted 29 times and the only overwhelming majority of his posts were product announcements. So he's even saying like Facebook tried to do a reband over to Meta. It tanked. If you look at the data, if you look at consumer response to that brand transition, it was horrible. And that's why Meta isn't even really even talked about much anymore. But Mark Zuckerberg's personal rebrand has been massive, not only for his following, but engagement and like customer satisfaction with Facebook and Meta products. So I thought that was very interesting too to see just a very clear kind of line in the sand, like the brand transition work. But the personal transition did work for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.

Well, yeah, even, even like to this day we still think of Steve Jobs as like the founder of Apple and Even though he's been dead for years, it's just like it's still inbred as the personal brand of Apple and the legacy continues on. And so I think the idea of having a personal brand being an Achilles heel of a. Of a larger company has been kind of ingrained from private equity and, you know, can you sell your business, et cetera. But we're seeing on, like, the greatest stages of corporate America. And that is like, your personal brand can become worth billions and billions of dollars vicariously through a product. And so whether you look at someone like Elon and Mark Zuckerberg or you look at like, someone like acquisition.com with Alex, like, these are brands that will become massive, and the companies that they build underneath those personal brands will become the leading companies in the future. And they will be able to do so because they get negative customer acquisition cost where they're able to run media, they're able to tweet for the. And be able to make money on those tweets and that media and the attention while also driving attention to their products. And that's why Toyota can't. Because when you think about Toyota, who.

Do you think about?

You don't think about the founder. There is no, There is no origin story that everyone thinks about unless you're like, deep into, you know, business philosophy. You think about, like, you know, the Toyota production system, etc. But, like, it doesn't really do a Honda. Like, who even knows what Honda stands for? But we all know what Tesla stands for, and some people don't like it, but it's because we. Because we know, again, if you know, like, and trust someone, I know what they stand for. I know what the philosophies are. And so it's easiest for a person to be able to be true to their identity because there's only one person. So if you had a conglomerate of 10 people that started Facebook, it'd be very difficult to actually have a brand association because we don't know what they all think they don't know. The direction is unclear. And so by having a personal brand, you open yourself up for. You're susceptible to that one individual going in some sort of a direction. So when Mark Zuckerberg is considered as like a cyborg in front of Senate and becomes a meme, that is negative for the Facebook brand, although the engineers and the thousands of people working behind it have nothing to do with it. And the same thing is true when Elon goes a certain direction politically or spends money on certain attention on different business Et cetera, there's going to be negative downstream effects of that. And so for example, with myself, when we're building Augusta or building Copilot, we're building the media team, the objective of gaining negative customer acquisition cost is the goal. Because if you achieve that you can infinitely scale, not infinitely, but you can scale very quickly. Because when you can pay $4 to get someone in your door versus your competition is spending 600, you have won the game. That's when you go raise a ton of money from private, from, from public markets and then you just throw cash at it. And that's what these companies are doing. And so I think it's always been looked at down on but like if you actually tear back what Tesla and SpaceX and XAI and all these other companies that Elon is doing, he's simply a content creator.

That's all he is. Yeah.

And he has great people because he is and he has attracted those people because of his content and because of his stances and because of his personal brand. And so I think the same is going to happen over and over and over and it's gonna become more and more common. Where you know, whether you look at Jensen Huang from Infinity, he owns 4% of the company but we all look to him as the head of an of 3 trillion dollar company. And then same thing with like Jeff Bezos. The guy doesn't even, he's not a CEO anymore. He spends most of his time vacationing and then working at Amazon, you know, doing board related things and then obviously Blue Origin. But like these, these are the brands that we actually identify with. When you talk about Amazon you're like, yeah, I gotta make sure that Jeff Bezos gets the fuel for his yacht. Like we still identify as him, as the brand, him as Amazon. And so it's amazing to me, even with when someone like Steve Jobs I think was actually the first one that was kind of like this where like there was so much legacy and like brand associated with him and it carried an Apple. And what's cool is somehow that, that, that has stayed inside the culture of the company. Whether or not the innovation, you can argue all that sort of thing but like it's there, like it's tangible. You talk about it, it's when you think of Apple you think about Steve Jobs. And I think it's a really cool brand association and something I look at because like as we grow the companies I've always been like ah, maybe I shouldn't be the front facing, I should be less. It's like, look, if Elon can build a trillions of dollars of value and do all these crazy things and he is literally running a personal brand, I think we, we're okay. So.

Yeah, what do you think that does? Kind of zooming out, I guess, to more of the, the macro of the situation. What does that do to the overall view or sentiment towards capitalism? Because I think now we're at an interesting crux, right? People joke or dig like, oh, gotta, gotta buy this water bottle on Amazon, right? Gotta, gotta put the fuel in Jeff Bezos's yacht. Well, that's kind of an anti capitalistic nature. But maybe for someone like yourself, as you're growing and scaling, it actually has some pros where people do want to support you. Maybe they're more willing to pay you a subscription fee or whatever it is. Maybe they, they're going to cheer a little bit louder when you have a success because in the grand scheme of, you know, capitalism, you're still a very small fish. And. But then where's the tipping point for you to be now? Well, now Mike's a big fish and I don't like him and that's not cool. And he makes too much money. Like, do you see what I'm getting at there? Like, what is the, what is the sentiment towards capitalism? When there's like a brand, it's like, okay, there's Ford. Like Ford, they make trucks and hopefully they're profitable because they give thousands of Americans jobs. Good. I'm okay with that. But like Mike Andes, he makes too much money and I don't like that.

Yeah, so I've watched this actually last several years. As, you know, obviously we're trying to grow my personal brands. Like, what's the perception around this? So how do you guard this from happening is you don't change your stance. And so the reason that people change their mindset on someone like Jeff Bezos is because he's changed his lifestyle. And so, and he's much more public about the yacht and the girlfriend and the divorce and all these things have, have come out from his personal life. Elon, for example, the guy's the richest person in the world and for some reason people are standing out trying to get him $50 billion more of a pay package.

Why? Because he stayed true to what he actually believes in and he hasn't changed the narrative. And so this is why, like, you know, whether it be, you know, work, like, for example, I'll just use this example. I'll use myself, actually, I use someone else. I'll Use myself. I'll see if this works. So like my, my brand is very associated with like work hard, you know, and if you, if you hate being poor, you work your way out of it for 10 years. If I ever change this, this would be like, hey, chill out, you know, just do what you love, do your passion, do your side project. You can get rich. Very quickly I started talking about bitcoin and if that became my narrative, everyone would immediately start to do what you just said. Mike's made the money and now I don't want to support these things. But if you stay true to the brand that you've created, I think that's the consistency is what we're looking for in a person. So the reason you have a friend and the reason that we would consider that person high value in our network is because the consistency of that relationship. And so if that changes for the negative, because you have changes like to your point about Mark, that like Mark Zuckerberg, that like are positive changes. But if that's a negative change, for example, they start to become disassociated. They start doing things that are salacious. They start doing getting in the news for the wrong reasons. If they start to change what their message has always been, it start can become a very negative thing and then we, we flip flop on them. So for example, if Elon stopped working as many hours as he did, I think he'd have a lot of less.

Less people willing to support, support a billionaire. Most of the time when you see a billionaire, everyone wants to shoot them down, but it's because of the way they live. And so when we see them being very frivolous with their spending, it's very easy to start pointing guns at them. And so there's several people I know that have made a lot of money and they will not share with anyone. And the reason for that is because they want to protect their brand from guns start being turned towards them. And so there's this fine balance. And it's funny as you're going up, going up the tree. So for example, you're trying to build your personal brand. Many times you're actually using for proof, you're using numbers, you're using how much money you're making, how many, I talk about how many locations, how many, how much revenue Augusta Nation does. People talk about their buyouts. When they got merged, they sold an X amount of business. We do that on the way up. And then once you get there, you go the opposite. It's just like when you start a business when you're first getting started, you're trying to appear big, you're trying to like, hey, we can take care of you, we're professional. And then you get big. You're like, we're personable and we're going to take, you know, your call if very important to us and we're a very local company and you share pictures of your family on your website. So like, it's the same thing in personal brand because most of the time, to your point, when someone gets big, they do, everyone kind of points guns towards them and now we don't want to support them. But if you look at Elon, the opposite, shoot, they're the richest person in the world and people will still are fighting, are fighting for him to make $50 billion as a pay package and a bonus.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So either way, the sentiment to capitalism is negative if it's used in a way to flaunt or show that you have more than the consumer, the person that is viewing the content. It's the message behind really your, your personal brand right now, kind of blurring the line like the personal brand. To summarize what you're saying, can't change personal brand mistake and system at the core values more than the consumer, the person that is viewing the content. It's the message behind.

Really your, your personal brand right now kind of blurring the line like the personal brand. To summarize what you're saying, can't change personal brand mistake and says that the core values, if you will, needs to be what you've always advertised in order for people to be supportive when you're either making little money to making lots of money. So I think that's an interesting concept and I like how you said like, even in business it's almost like flipped. Like you want to be seen as the big professional. Like we've been doing this for a long time and then when you are big, you almost want to be seen as the opposite. Hey, we're still local. Hey, we still answer our phone. Hey, we're still, you know, happy to be part of this, if you will, needs to be what you've always advertised in order for people to be sub, community, whatever it is, it's very interesting Switch. So, yeah, I don't know, I don't have many more thoughts on that. All that's to say from this article from Prof. G. Professor Scott Galloway and his co host Ed, that we are becoming a much more lonely society and it's all thanks to social media influencers. Supportive when you're either making little money to making lots of money. So I think it's an interesting concept and I like how you said like, even in business it's almost like flipped. Like you want to be seen as the big professional. Like we've been doing this for a long time and then when you are big, you almost want to be seen as the opposite. Hey, we're like yourself and like myself now, Mike. So let's give ourselves a round of applause.

I think, I think the, I think the article would be better serving the audience if it tell us how to deal with these things and cope with these things and reverse it if you saw this as a problem instead of just identifying the problem, which is never going to be reversed. We're not having less screens, we're not going to be less on social media. More and more of our time and attention will go towards these things. So if you have a problem with it or if you see this as a negative, how do I deal with it? And that's, I feel like it would serve the audience better. It won't give them any clicks, but like you know, telling someone to join a church or you know, maybe don't work virtually and remotely get inside of an office, do it in an area where there's an open workspace so you can meet more people. You know, go local.

Hey, we still answer our phone. Hey, we're still, you know, happy to be part of this out to events.

That you can donate your time and volunteer for community stuff. So there are plenty of options.

Yeah, yeah, so that, that, that's, that's it. I mean, yeah, I know Scott Galloway does talk about that. Simon Sinek talks about it. But I know Scott has really pushed, you know, one of his things that he's community, whatever it is, it's very interesting switch. So yeah, I don't know, I don't have many very outspoken about as like the rise in loneliness in young men. And he does address this in podcasts and seminars and things of that nature. So if you are interested in learning more about that, I definitely recommend looking up Scott Galloway. I would say for most of our audience, he probably doesn't align with you politically, but he is on a, he is on a mission to support young men and people that are feeling lost or, or lonely in the world. And I think that's good. That's a virtuous thing to do. Whether you have more thoughts on that. All that's to say from this article from Prof. G. Professor Scott Galloway and his co host ed that, Ruth, is political ideologies or not, if he's saying, like, young men are not okay and they're hurting themselves and they need support, that is a good mission to try and fix and to try and solve. So look up that for more information. I just thought it was interesting.