The Birth of the "Clear Collar" Worker (Are You One?)

Dan Sullivan [00:00:00]: Really smart people who get things done, who don't have a college degree are going to be the heart of productivity. Mike Koenigs [00:00:06]: I'm sorry, they're not going to come. Dan Sullivan [00:00:09]: They're not going to come from Harvard. Mike Koenigs [00:00:11]: I think you're dead on. There are a whole bunch of people who are going to be displaced as a result of this technology, at least temporarily, because their skill sets no longer matter and no longer have value. Dan Sullivan [00:00:23]: We're repeating something that has happened maybe hundreds of times in human history, where there's a new advantageous technique or capability, and it disrupts things. It disrupts things and there's losers and winners. You know, it's rule number three, life isn't fair. Hi, everybody, it's Dan Sullivan here. This is our next episode. Mike Koenigs and I in capability amplifier. And so you've been really amplifying the capabilities since November 30, 2022. Would you say that this is the greatest, fastest progress you've made with any new technology in your entire history? Mike Koenigs [00:01:26]: And I don't think I understood what exponential thinking was until this last year actually happened. When I watch it happen to myself and how fast humans are adapting with AI and using it and making it, as soon as they learn that it's this way of being augmented and increasing their capabilities, the wonder in their eyes, it feels like we're all excited. Eight year olds or eleven year olds again. I love the innocence that goes along with this new discovery. It just feels fun. Fun. Dan Sullivan [00:02:05]: Yeah. I've had a running conversation with Evan Ryan, who's a free zone colleague of ours, and he's my first strategic coach client who is actually 50 years younger than I am. So we had a podcast. He just started a new, his own first podcast yesterday, and he had me on as the first guest, and we had a really terrific discussion about the fact that he was saying the thing that surprised him most was that older people, generations older than him, are actually seeing more of the significance of this than people in their twenties. Mike Koenigs [00:02:51]: Oh, yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:02:53]: He said, the reason is it's like talking to people in their twenties about technology is like talking to fish about water. Mike Koenigs [00:03:02]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:03:04]: Once fish don't know what water because they've never been anywhere else. Mike Koenigs [00:03:08]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:03:09]: And I told him that I got sort of hooked on technology when I saw a series of articles in 1973 on this new thing called the Microchip. Mike Koenigs [00:03:21]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:03:22]: And I said, this is really good because it was positioned that this might be the greatest invention of all inventions, simply because it's an invention that can be applied to already existing inventions, to make them better and then it can be applied to itself to make more powerful microchips. Yes. And the articles I was reading, this was New York Times, quite a good article, series of articles. They had a great technology writer in those days. And he said this is going to probably disrupt large organizations more than anything that's happened. Of course that has certainly, and he said more new entrepreneurial possibilities are going to happen as a result of that. And this has certainly happened. Mike Koenigs [00:04:12]: Well, there's something that just came out not long ago that I'll play for you right now, and it was Sam Altman. And this is only 40 seconds long and you may or may not have seen it, but is absolutely applicable here and relevant to this conversation. So I'm going to play it for you now and, and just listen to this because this I think is really, it nails it with my tech CEO friends. Dan Sullivan [00:04:47]: There's this betting pool for the first. Mike Koenigs [00:04:48]: Year that there's a one person billion. Dan Sullivan [00:04:51]: Dollar company which would have been unimaginable without AI and now will happen. Mike Koenigs [00:04:57]: There you go. I think that's that. And I do this thing in my new book by the way. There it is, AI accelerator. And thank you for the blurb, but the title is how to tenex your productivity, clone your smartest employees and monetize your ip in the new economy. And one of the conversations which we've talked about before is the million dollar, billion dollar and trillion dollar mindset, which doesn't have anything to do with making money. But it's the fact that there are several trillionaires that are among us right now and we don't even know their names yet. And when you think about a trillion dollars, 1000 billionaires suddenly became more probable and possible because of what has happened in the past year. Mike Koenigs [00:05:49]: And billion dollar valuations are not that difficult. And I totally agree with what they're saying, that it's those folks who expand their mindsets and their capabilities using this. And when you were just talking about how older people get it faster, it's because they've seen how they've seen the curve and witnessed it where if you're a fish, like you say, born in the water, you know, any kid who's born with a smartphone in their hand, which is happening now, you see one and two year olds holding it. That's another conversation in itself. But you're so used to this and a AI is part of your life and it's been for a long time. But now that it's forward facing and you're conversing with it. And we're this far away edges away from not being able to tell the difference between reality and what is AI generated, on one hand, can be scary for many, or you can just say, what a profound time to be able to create remarkable content and stories. That's my. Dan Sullivan [00:07:00]: Yeah. Well, I think the big thing, every time you have a breakthrough like this, it certainly happened with steam power, happened with electricity, it certainly happened with fossil fuels. The oil and gas still is happening with oil and gas. A century and a half later, you get a tremendous increase in inequality in society. And we're going through that. We're going through that right now. And my prediction is that the next 30 years in the states, there's a new, what I would say, political establishment that's establishing itself in the United States, which is actually going to be blue collar, working class. Mike Koenigs [00:07:53]: Blue collar, working class. Dan Sullivan [00:07:55]: And we're seeing the end of the highly educated, highly educated being in power, because we've watched the last 40 years, and they're not any more special people. They just have more credentials. And I think what we're seeing is the end of credentialism. Mike Koenigs [00:08:16]: Oh, hell yeah. I think the notion of augmented just in time learning. And, you know, Microsoft's been using this term copilot for a while. And I hated it at first. I really didn't like it until I thought of it through a specific use case. And so we built this platform. I call it digital cafe AI right now. But basically what it's been designed to do is augment a team to make sure a lead, every lead that ever comes into your organization gets followed up with in five minutes or less, in a hyper personalized way, in the voice of the brand, in a way that's relevant to them. Mike Koenigs [00:09:07]: And one of the things we added is as soon as it displays this customized video and audio on a webpage, it asks you for your home address so I can send you. And here I actually have the prop, a physical card in the mail that is handwritten, in this case, by a. It's like a bot or a robot that has a pen in its hand, and then it writes you this custom card, and it's all about you. It'd be just like a real human. But all this happens all at once. But we added a copilot mode. So as soon as someone goes into the system and adds their address, it writes the card for you. But it notifies me so I can approve it. Mike Koenigs [00:09:51]: Because something this personal, if it feels like it was written by a robot, it's gonna totally lose its feel like you can spot something that's AI generated. It's why so much content right now is just turned into crap. And I think the evolution that we're starting to see is just like anything. People adopt it really fast, and a whole bunch of garbage gets generated. And then now we're learning how to coexist with this and just be three to ten times more productive and use it for what it's good at, which is a creative partner, your first draft partner. I've talked about that for a long time, and in this case, it's like, I wish I could say I would write a card to everyone I come in contact with. I wish I had that capability. I know people who do build better businesses faster, that are more intimate, but I don't have the discipline for it. Mike Koenigs [00:10:50]: But what's happened is I have a new discipline because I have a copilot. Dan Sullivan [00:10:55]: Yeah. I think the thing that I'm seeing, you used a couple of words. You used learn learning, and you use productivity. Okay. In what you just. And Evan Ryan, a 50 year younger podcast partner, yesterday, he said that the interesting thing about it is that the separation is not money. Now. The separation is learning. Dan Sullivan [00:11:28]: Are you a learner or a non learner? And he says he's seen tremendous separation going on between learner. It doesn't matter, your social status, your wealth. The only question is, are you a learner and not a learner? Mike Koenigs [00:11:41]: Yes. Dan Sullivan [00:11:42]: And I can see it. I've been working with perplexity for the last month, and I really love perplexity. I just really love perplexity because it does a really good job of getting the context of my question. Mike Koenigs [00:11:58]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:11:58]: And the answers in kind. And I did an interesting thing with perplexity. I asked it the r factor question. Mike Koenigs [00:12:07]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:12:08]: I said perplexity. If we were having this discussion three years from now, and you were looking back over the three years back to now, what has to happen for you to feel happy with your progress? Oh, yeah. About 10 seconds and out comes, you know, we want a much better personal interface with our subscribers. We want to double, triple our subscription subscription rate. Not outlandish. They're not asking for a billion, but they're at 10 million now. And they gave me sort of a progress. It gave five really, really great answers, all measurable, all tangible. Dan Sullivan [00:12:49]: And then I asked this question, what are the ten biggest obstacles to you achieving those five things? And it comes back and gives me ten very, very cogent, very tangible obstacles. And then it says, if we are able to transform all these obstacles and achieve the five things we're very satisfied with our progress three years from now. Mike Koenigs [00:13:14]: Oh, okay. I've got something to show you, Dan. So first of all, I didn't really answer your question before about credentialization. Dan Sullivan [00:13:23]: We will feel very satisfied with our progress. Mike Koenigs [00:13:26]: Oh, wow. So I'm going to show you something in the background, but first I'll answer the first question. You said the difference between credentialization and. Cause I went off on a tangent about being a copilot versus an autopilot, but the whole idea is being an augmented human. And the term that I heard recently is being a creative generalist. Okay. So the beauty of using AI is when you learn to be a creative generalist, what you do is you think about all the possibilities and options, and then this tool lets you narrow down and solve a problem really quickly. And credentialization doesn't matter because for the most part, all of human knowledge is packed inside the large language models right now. Mike Koenigs [00:14:15]: And you mentioned perplexity, which is a really smart model at this moment. Claude has a new model that came out as of now, a couple weeks ago called Opus three that has an iq of 101. It's come out in tests, and it basically outperforms most humans. And so when you ask that question, you ask the r factor question. I'm going to show you something right now, which is a really good example of how to think about this. And this is with the tool called chat Hub. Now, chat hub has the benefit of, like, I'm going to put in the r factor question right now. So if we were having this, if you and I were sitting and how did you frame it with. Mike Koenigs [00:15:03]: With perplexity. Dan Sullivan [00:15:04]: We were having this discussion three years from today. Mike Koenigs [00:15:07]: Yep. Dan Sullivan [00:15:08]: Okay. And I give the date. So it's the 2 April 2020. And you're looking back over the last three years, back to the present, what has to happen with, as I say, personally and professionally. Mike Koenigs [00:15:26]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:15:27]: For you to feel happy with your progress. Mike Koenigs [00:15:29]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:15:30]: Personally and professionally. Mike Koenigs [00:15:32]: Yep. Mike Koenigs [00:15:32]: There we go. Personally and professionally and professionally. Yep. Dan Sullivan [00:15:40]: Happy with your progress. Mike Koenigs [00:15:41]: Yep. Mike Koenigs [00:15:42]: It's all right here. Now watch what I'm about to do. I'm going to hit the send button. Mike Koenigs [00:15:46]: Boop. Mike Koenigs [00:15:47]: There are now six. AI's working on this problem simultaneously. So perplexity is right down here. This is Bing, which is Microsoft. Up here is OpenAI, the latest version. This is Gemini, which is Google, and this is Claude three. And then Grok is another new model. And now you can see how some of them are still working right. Mike Koenigs [00:16:11]: So Grock responded in less than 2 seconds. And each one of these has a completely different brain perplexity. Came up with a nice thing and wrote something for us here. Look at that. Interesting. Embrace growth, mindset, practice self awareness, set meaningful goals, celebrate progressive. So it wrote all these things. But what's interesting is every one of them has a different answer. Mike Koenigs [00:16:38]: And what I tell people right now, and this is, I think the important takeaway, is if you had a chance to work with six geniuses at the same time and it cost nothing extra versus just one, why wouldn't you? In fact. And then you can tell all these six to combine your responses, analyze them, hybridize them, and give me the best of the six in real time. That is, who will be rewarded right now is those who have the dexterity to even think of this first of all. But soon this will just be the norm because what a developer can do with these tools at this moment, and we're doing it right now. I'll give you a real life example in a second with something we're working on with Reagan Archibald. But you can multiply your effectiveness so fast. And then you meet with the developer and say, I want to build a little version of this that I can use in my business. So that's the first stage is let's try it out, which we can do in real time. Mike Koenigs [00:17:50]: The next stage is I'm going to augment me and make a digital version of me, and that's cloning your smartest employees or you, who's usually the bottleneck. But then I'm going to monetize that into a product and patent it or license it. And this is where you see that huge exponential growth curve. Dan Sullivan [00:18:15]: Okay, I'm going to bring up a possible counter thought to what you're saying. Mike Koenigs [00:18:20]: Sure. Dan Sullivan [00:18:21]: That is, it seems to me that what's exponential about the AI so far is tinkering. Oh, yeah, you just showed me six examples and they're all tinkering. But the definition of productivity is a large number of people doing the same thing over a long period of time and constantly getting smarter with it. And what they're noticing is that there's been no productivity gains as a general, as a general industry in AI over the last two years. There's simply no productivity. There's a constant flux of new things that are competing with all the other new things, but there isn't this concentrated effort. Yeah, I'm just going to suggest that, for example, the productivity in the United States right now has been at its lowest point for the last ten years now. Mike Koenigs [00:19:29]: Ever since the advent of the mobile phone and social media. Dan Sullivan [00:19:34]: Yeah, totally, totally, totally. Plus, you know, I mean, various dopamine hits that technology provides. So my feeling is that this actually works against productivity. Mike Koenigs [00:19:51]: Well, and here's what my counter to your counter would be, which is like, I can get ten times more done with my smartphone and a couple of apps that I use on a regular basis. Like, I wrote this book, a big part of it during in between time when I'd be on walks using my smartphone and some AI tools. Now, none of this content was written with AI, but it was augmented, and it allowed me to get my ideas out faster. And then I came up with a whole bunch of new systems for writing books that I've since shared with other folks. And if you look at most people with smartphones, like, if you look at the service industry now, you've got a whole bunch of people, instead of doing their jobs and paying attention and increasing their capabilities and skill sets, they're digesting stupid content. That's. So I think the phone made dumb people 100 times dumber, and AI will make dumb people 1000 or 10,000 times dumber. Dan Sullivan [00:21:01]: I say that increase in dumbness actually works against productivity in the society. Mike Koenigs [00:21:11]: I would agree. And then when someone says, well, now there's such a discrepancy between the wealthy and the not wealthy, it's like, well, look at where they give away their time. Dan Sullivan [00:21:23]: Right? Mike Koenigs [00:21:23]: Your attention, your property is one of your last books. I think that is very much. Even when you're opening convo. Dan Sullivan [00:21:36]: Yeah, I think you can. With a real fixed purpose and willing to stay with it over a period of time, you can create productivity. Mike Koenigs will become more productive, but you can't generalize it to people. Mike Koenigs [00:21:51]: Explain, what do you. Dan Sullivan [00:21:52]: Let me, I use you as a case of one person that you get a fix on it, and I've watched you since November 30, 2022, and you're maximizing marketing skills that you've had for 30 years. You're maximizing and you're cutting down the time period of creating a new product. Yes. Question I have will you be tempted to move away from that because something new appears on the seeing that actually works against you monetizing what you're doing? That's my question. Mike Koenigs [00:22:35]: Oh, that's interesting. Dan Sullivan [00:22:36]: And I'm not zeroing in on you particularly. I'm just saying I think certain individuals will become incredibly productive, but I'm not sure society in general will become more productive. And all wealth creation. Is society in general becoming more productive? Mike Koenigs [00:22:52]: Well, let's go back to this notion of credentialization. I don't think credentialization is necessarily important anymore. In other words, if I'm an employer and I'm going to buy talent, what I'm going to look at is someone who's effective. Now. In the past, someone who got credentialed meant they had the discipline to go through something and conform to a process and are probably coachable and teachable and can get to a deadline. It's sort of like my friend Kiko Donchev was director of launch at SpaceX. I asked him, I said, how do you determine if someone's going to be an amazing talent at SpaceX? And he says, it's easy. They are people who played college football or basketball. Mike Koenigs [00:23:46]: In other words, they played team sports and they're engineers. He says, give me one of those. And they don't quit. They play along well with others and they know how to solve problems. I thought that was pretty interesting. So I think it comes back to the beauty of professional sports, which you and I have talked about before. You don't care what anyone is as long as they're the best in the world at what they do. That's what the team is. Mike Koenigs [00:24:13]: This is not about sex, color, sexual preference, gender, anything like that. You're the best. You're just the best. And it's a pure meritocracy. And someone could come in with a political agenda and say, well, we have to insert, we have to hollywoodize professional sports. It won't work and you'll lose your paying audience just like that. And I think in the world of business, the same can be true with talent and credentialization, which is right now, if you give me a young person with incredible AI skills who's effective, I don't care at all. You know, I do care about mindsets. Dan Sullivan [00:24:56]: I agree with this. But here's the thing. The US for the last 150 years has been the most productive country in the world. Mike Koenigs [00:25:10]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:25:11]: Yeah. And that's measured by the fact that it's the only country 15 decades in a row that has a higher GDP at the end of the decade than the beginning of the decade. That was true even in the Great Depression. That was true in the world war and everything else. At the end of every ten years, the US has a higher GDP. My sense is because of the widespread skill level of everybody that's producing it, but they're conforming to particular goals. They're conforming to particular objectives over a long period of time. And I know Peter Diamondis talks about we're entering into a period of enormous abundance around the world. Dan Sullivan [00:26:02]: And I said, no, the opposite is going to happen. There's going to be one country that's going to be incredibly abundant, and everybody else is going to be way behind and falling further behind. And part of it is because the US puts all of its emphasis on individual self development and individual success. So the technology they'll use, whatever technology is necessary. For example, you say I can become ten times more productive because of my cell phone. And I can show you that I became ten times more productive by not using my cell phone at all. Hey, we're good. Mike Koenigs [00:26:45]: We're good. Dan Sullivan [00:26:45]: Two sides, right? Mike Koenigs [00:26:48]: But you have really capable humans around you and a mindset and a behavior. Right. So are you asserting then that the. I'm trying to articulate. Re articulate what you've been saying. Dan Sullivan [00:27:05]: Yeah. What I'm saying is that productivity is not a function of technology. Mike Koenigs [00:27:10]: Welcome to the world of three second attention spans and fewer than 20 seconds to get a prospect's attention. Engage them. Get to know, like and trust you, and say, I want and need what you have. Let's make a deal. Introducing digital cafe AI, a relationship building AI that will take your hard earned leads and make them feel like you're sitting down with them for a cup of coffee, listening to their needs and responding to them with a personalized, useful, resourceful solution. It's the perfect AI team. A digital cafe AI does hours or days of work that normally requires an expensive team of specialists in minutes. It's the fastest, easiest, automated way to get attention, engagement, and trust to close bigger deals faster. Mike Koenigs [00:27:59]: A digital cafe AI is a done for you service that can be adapted to any b, two B, or B two C business. A money loves speed, and time kills deals. So visit digital cafe AI to see how it will work for you. Uh huh. Dan Sullivan [00:28:20]: Technology gets created for certain productive objectives. Mike Koenigs [00:28:25]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:28:26]: I mean, everybody uses the moonshot, you know? Mike Koenigs [00:28:30]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:28:31]: That's why I always laugh about the moonshots. You know that Peter uses the word moonshot, and I said, oh, there hasn't been really one since 1974. Now, why do you think it? Because they achieved what they wanted to achieve, and that was to beat the Russians to the moon. Mike Koenigs [00:28:52]: Yes. Dan Sullivan [00:28:53]: And they achieved that. So what I'm saying is that humans move their objectives around, and it's the ability to muster an enormous amount of concentrated talent on a particular objective that produces productivity that makes things more productive. But I don't think AI in itself will improve productivity. It'll be individuals with particular objectives where they can galvanize a large number of other human beings to discipline themselves to. Let's stay with this project until it's finished. And I think SpaceX is a good example of a company that does that. Mike Koenigs [00:29:30]: Well, let's. Dan Sullivan [00:29:31]: I don't think Tesla is an example of a company that does that. I think SpaceX is. I think Tesla is there only to finance SpaceX because he wants to walk on Mars. Mike Koenigs [00:29:48]: Okay, slightly different perspective. Only because I've spent so much time with Kiko. Now, SpaceX is a vehicle to distribute Starlink and provide Internet worldwide that unfairly competes with every carrier. And all of the old bureaucratic crapball. Companies that have been stealing money and not creating innovation for many years. Like the wireless cellular, like cable companies, for example. No innovation. Their whole business model is all about figuring out how to rope you into contracts you can't get out of. Mike Koenigs [00:30:33]: And lying and stealing. They're just evil, in my opinion. And when's the last time they innovated? It's been forever. They're slow. And now Starlink is going to obliterate them. And I say justifiably so the sooner the better. Destroy them all because they offered crap service and they're bad. So I like AI to do things like that. Mike Koenigs [00:30:56]: A little creative destruction is useful and disruptive. But I have a happy example. I was going to give you a use case, but anyway, I get what you're saying. I don't disagree. Dan Sullivan [00:31:07]: Is destroying other things productive? Mike Koenigs [00:31:10]: Is destroying things productive? Dan Sullivan [00:31:11]: Don't think. Disruption. Don't disruption. Talk about transformation. Mike Koenigs [00:31:17]: Yes, I much prefer that. Dan Sullivan [00:31:20]: I much prefer that you're increasing the value proposition. Yeah, but my feeling is that people who try to disrupt get disrupted. Yeah, it's karma. Mike Koenigs [00:31:34]: Yeah, we've talked about that before. I agree with you. I think at the end of the day, and maybe my angry outburst doesn't get us anywhere, I'm just looking at what the disruption. I think what's good is Newton's third law. Dan Sullivan [00:31:55]: Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Yeah. I believe Newton's laws still control the local gravitational system. Mike Koenigs [00:32:05]: Right. Dan Sullivan [00:32:06]: You know, maybe once we get, you know, 50 million light years away, maybe there's a different gravitational system. So the whole thing I'm saying here is that you're probably more focused and excited about this than anyone else I know who's really involved with it. Especially from a marketing standpoint, what you can do with the packaging and marketing. Okay. But I still think that a large amount of what you're doing is tinkering, yet you haven't really zeroed in on the business model that you could stay with. So I created a new tool. I created a new tool. I tested it out with free zoners this morning, and it's called your best ten times habit builder. Dan Sullivan [00:33:00]: Okay. So, okay, so what I do is I divide it in two. You're Mike Koenig's best ten times habits. And then the company, whatever the company is that you have right now, it's got habits, too. Dan Sultan has certain ten times habits, and strategic coach has certain ten times habits. Okay. And in then down at the bottom, you work this all through and you come up with a top three personal top three company. Then down, I wrote down my three insights from doing the exercise. Dan Sullivan [00:33:39]: And the insight was that we're 80% the same company and 2024 that we were in 1989, same business model, same structure, same process, same target market. Except they write bigger checks now and we got more of them. So the big thing is that at the center of this, and you're going to do a great exercise next Tuesday when you come to free zone and the exercise, the tool is called your life as a single project. If your life was a single project, what would the activity be? Mike Koenigs [00:34:17]: Tinker and innovate. Mike Koenigs [00:34:20]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:34:22]: Although, again, there's a definite growth path. There's a definite growth path. But I think that a lot of what you're doing is non productive tinkering in order to make a breakthrough into really activity. Mike Koenigs [00:34:39]: Well, let me give you a use case, because it'll bring, I think it'll bring all these together. And I'm going to look for your interpretation of what you see. All right. As someone we both know, we both worked with. So here's the setup. Regan Archibald has been a client now for a couple years. We've worked together and we've helped him with his packaging, positioning, messaging. And his goal was how do we extend our brand to be more in the longevity space. Mike Koenigs [00:35:10]: So what we did, and I'm going to show you this part of it, is we built a new product for him, a new brand, and produced content in two days. And the day after, he was at Genius network presenting and produced an enormous amount of new business as a result of it. And I'm going to show you an example what it looked like, because we created this new story. And so the new brand is ageless medicine, which he owns now. And your blood doesn't lie is the performance, the presentation. And this was a ten minute talk that he made, which also became a whole series of content that we produced. And it's just filled with transformational stories. But ultimately it's a story of how he does really extensive blood work and panels that have 94 markers versus the usual medical world of 14 to 20. Mike Koenigs [00:36:13]: And how they use peptides and stem cells to create transformations. And then like, here's an example. One of the guys, he had knee regeneration as a result of some of their work with x rays, regrown cartilage in about six months. So at the end of this ten minute talk, we had a couple stories. He made his presentation and like I said, generated a bunch of interest. And I will tell you that, like we used a bunch of AI to help us produce this content ahead of time. And what came out of this is, I had one of the conversations with Cade and him were okay, what do you need more than anything right now to scale and grow the business? And he said, well, one of our biggest challenges is we get these blood results. But it takes Reagan or his team anywhere from 2 hours to four and a half hours to evaluate them and then build a plan on a six month plan for like what? Supplements and peptides and everything that are personalized that they're going to send out. Mike Koenigs [00:37:29]: And we started digging into how they're doing it right now, a lot of spreadsheets and manual stuff. And we realized we could automate that and create like a copilot. That would use Reagan's logic, evaluate the blood results and build these things. But it'd be co pilot mode. So it could probably be brought from two to 4 hours down to 15 minutes. And so that's in process right now. But the opportunity is. And I said, well, what kind of an increase in business would that create? And he says, well, we could triple the volume we do without adding more people. Mike Koenigs [00:38:09]: Well that's not a triple in revenue. That's probably a ten x in revenue because the profit margin increases dramatically. And that's a great way to take his unique ip. But then I was like, well, how many other integrative doctors could benefit from that thing? So now this becomes a SaaS service. And my math has always been 100 customers times $10,000 a month is a million in MRR. The valuation of that business is ten to 20 times revenues, not EBITDA. And that's the billionaire mindset. Go ahead. Dan Sullivan [00:38:48]: Once Reagan gets that in place, will he stick with it for ten years? Or will it be replaced by another hot shot focus six months from now? Mike Koenigs [00:39:01]: I think he will evolve his product offering. Just like if you look at strategic coach. Dan Sullivan [00:39:10]: This is no commentary about Reagan. I'm just. Mike Koenigs [00:39:13]: No, no, I understand exactly what you're saying, which is innovators innovate and creators create. And, you know, you've got operators operate. So what I would say is, you know, my best answer, which I'd say for me as well, is hopefully we replace, we augment ourselves, we clone our smartest employees, we leverage our ip and put that in the hands of an operator so that we can innovate and create more valuable products. So what I would say is we went from a $20,000 offering to a 50. Dan Sullivan [00:39:54]: And I'm saying that the crucial step there is putting it in the hands of an operator. Mike Koenigs [00:39:58]: Yes. Dan Sullivan [00:40:01]: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you were talking about. We were talking beforehand about pre show. Yeah, pre show. About things that would bore us to death, make a lot of money. Year after year after year, they make a lot of money. So I think you will always be the cutting edge innovator. But is there a second thing that you could add to that where you get an operator who just takes it and then systematizes and becomes boringly productive and boringly profitable? Mike Koenigs [00:40:43]: I'd be 100 times more wealthy if I had great operators over the course of my 35 years. For sure. Dan Sullivan [00:40:50]: This year we'll be in the low forties, 40 million. And I was looking in this exercise. And if you're available on Friday afternoon, we have repeat of this morning, this. Mike Koenigs [00:41:05]: I will be. Dan Sullivan [00:41:06]: I will be there 02:00 eastern. So it'll be. It'll be 11:00 here. Mike Koenigs [00:41:11]: I'm already scheduled for it, so I will be here. And. Dan Sullivan [00:41:15]: Yeah, yeah, it's really good because what I notice is, and I. I'm getting a lot of good feedback from the book that I released at the summit. You know, the great meltdown and the great meltdown is basically my thesis that at all times, progress is constrained by four things. The cost of money, cost of labor, cost of transformation. I don't see AI making a noticeable impact so far on any of those four costs in the general sense. In a general sense, I'm saying specifically. Mike Koenigs [00:41:58]: For everyone who's listening, go through the four things again so we can. Dan Sullivan [00:42:02]: Yeah, so, Mel, I'm saying that the cost in the world right now, starting around with COVID in 2020, there's been an increase of cost of four things. Cost of money, cost of energy, cost of labor and cost of transportation. Okay. For example, the Baltimore bridge that just got knocked out by the freighter controls 40% of east coast traffic transportation, and that could be down for five or ten years. So right now, all the trucking traffic is being moved into really crowded highways in the east coast of the United States. That's one accident that happened on a day, and it raised the cost of transportation everywhere. So the big thing is that individuals, I have no argument that the exponentials you're going to talk about, and it's funny, I think Sam Altman wants to be the first one person trillion dollar. Mike Koenigs [00:43:07]: It's going to be a race between him and Elon unless one of them self destructs first. Right? So that's. Dan Sullivan [00:43:14]: Yeah, well, it could be. I mean, it could be because there's a lot of other, you know, there's a lot of countervailing forces in the world that are unpredictable. But I think it will happen in the United States. Mike Koenigs [00:43:28]: Totally agree. Dan Sullivan [00:43:31]: It's going to be the innovative use of new technology that allows it to happen. That drops the cost of money, energy, labor and transportation. So the big thing I'm saying is that the average growth and productivity going through steam power, going through electricity, going through the entire microchip age is roughly about 3% per year. The increase of productivity doesn't matter. What the technology is doesn't matter because you have to move right now, 340 million people to be more productive, to get a 3% increase. A single industry won't do it. A single technology won't do it. There's got to be a general improvement. Dan Sullivan [00:44:21]: Everything. And the uncredentialed skilled people are going to be forced for the next 30 or 40 years. In other words, really smart people who get things done, who don't have a college degree, are going to be the heart of productivity. Mike Koenigs [00:44:40]: I'm so on the same page. Dan Sullivan [00:44:43]: They're not going to come from Harvard. Mike Koenigs [00:44:45]: I think you're dead on. Again, it's that creative generalist. There's a better way to put it. So let's think about this for a second. Let's think about what that is called, that movement. And that should be the title of this episode, which is the decade, the era of the uncredentialed something but the unconditional, productive workforce. Mike Koenigs [00:45:17]: Yeah. Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:45:18]: I like it. I like it. So based on that, Dan, as an employer looking for that kind of talent, how would you describe them? So you'd say, I want uncredentialed, productive people to apply here. Dan Sullivan [00:45:36]: I don't think you're necessarily looking for people who are uncredentialed. It's just that you're looking for people who are very, very productive, regardless of whether they're credentialed or not, you know? I mean, most of our team members have college degrees. I mean, we have 130, and most of them have college degrees. But there's nothing about their college degree that makes them necessarily effective at what we're doing. They like teamwork. You know, they like being in teamwork. They like knowing what they're good at. So we. Dan Sullivan [00:46:10]: I mean, we're credentialed in the sense that we use Colby and we use print, and we use Clifton strengths, and we use the genius. Mike Koenigs [00:46:19]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:46:19]: Working genius. You know, that's a new one that we're using. But all that does is simplify who they think they are and what they're at on a daily basis. Where do you put this person on a daily basis? Okay. And my sense is that the. The function. The credentialization was a function of the way the world got organized after the second world war. Basically, a two power standoff for 50 years. Dan Sullivan [00:46:54]: And more and more international organizations and big bureaucracies became important. International Monetary Fund, the World bank, the United nations. And these were all basically academic based skill sets, is what you learned at major universities and everything else. But when the Soviets collapsed in 1992, then the war was over, the standoff was over, but an entire momentum towards higher education had been in place now for 50 years. There's no question that a college degree doesn't mean anything, you know? It just doesn't mean anything, you know? I mean, the fact that you played college football and you're an engineer, that probably proves something, you know? Mike Koenigs [00:47:49]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:47:49]: I bet not all people who qualify under those characteristics works at SpaceX. Mike Koenigs [00:47:55]: No, not at all. Dan Sullivan [00:47:56]: Yeah. So I just think, you know, I mean, we're. We're taking a long time to get around to our topic today, but my sense is there isn't a unification of understanding what we're talking about in society right now. Mike Koenigs [00:48:14]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:48:15]: Because there's a lot of shouting going on right now. And they're creating odd meanings for gender. They're creating odd, you know, some fairly basic realities. They're creating odd. They're creating some odd definitions which actually don't clarify things. They make things really kind of, you know. Mike Koenigs [00:48:42]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:48:43]: Weird. So my sense is that I think we're a long way away from AI being a unifying force in society. Mike Koenigs [00:48:52]: That's a great distinction. And I think for a future episode, I'd like to explore if we examined historical unification, when and why that happened. After a technological breakthrough, I'd be very curious to have to go down that rabbit hole and get your historical mindset. Dan Sullivan [00:49:20]: Can I, can I please? Mike Koenigs [00:49:23]: War. War. And do you think that war is very unified? Dan Sullivan [00:49:29]: War is very unified. Mike Koenigs [00:49:31]: So, I mean, the first place I go, and I've thought about this a lot, is there are a whole bunch of people who are going to be displaced as a result of this technology, at least temporarily, because their skill sets no longer matter and no longer have value. Dan Sullivan [00:49:49]: They're not learners. Mike Koenigs [00:49:50]: Yeah, yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:49:52]: And they're consumers. It's the idiots staring into their phones instead of actually creating value. And they're going to wonder why they're not getting free money for standing around and existing. Boy, that sounded angry and cold. But it's, I think, you know, it's like the chinese revolution or, you know, like in the. This is something that I heard Kurzweil mention is the gin, the cotton gin. And so the workers believe that this thing is taking away jobs. So at night they'd go in and break them, where in effect, the amount of fabric and the amount of wealth and the amount of, basically that it stopped a certain amount of slave labor. Mike Koenigs [00:50:42]: But humans historically don't seem to mind doing slave like behavior if they have stability in the illusion of, first of. Dan Sullivan [00:50:53]: All, people think individually, they don't think in terms of abstractions. That's why the green movement is not making any headway on the planet. And the reason is because I've never experienced climate, I've only experienced weather. It's like Joe Biden says, the economy is great. If you look at certain statistics, it's great. But people don't experience the economy. They experience the grocery store, they experience the gas station. And the price of gas is going up. Dan Sullivan [00:51:25]: The price of groceries is going up. Cost of housing, cost of housing is going up. So who's right? Joe Biden, with his statistics or people's lying eyes, when they go to the grocery store and they say, things haven't gotten better for me. Yeah, well, if you lose your job to technology, you don't see the big picture. And I don't think you solve it through education. See, I'm a great fan of what Trump is doing because he's understood how you move a country, and that's through a movement. And he's created the MAGA movement. I mean, he just created, it's got red hats and it credentialed. Dan Sullivan [00:52:08]: Liberal people go crazy. Their heads explode when they see omega. That's a movement. Mike Koenigs [00:52:14]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:52:14]: Uh huh. Mike Koenigs [00:52:15]: Oh, hell yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:52:17]: He can get credentialed. Wealthy liberal people's heads to explode simply by putting on a red cap. That's a movement. Mike Koenigs [00:52:27]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:52:27]: To create an emotional reaction with that kind of fury is they're trying to. Dan Sullivan [00:52:34]: Combat a movement with political strategies. You know, you can't fight a movement. You can't fight a movement. And I'll say enough about that. I think he's sort of a political genius, what he's done, because he's turned both parties on their heads. Mike Koenigs [00:52:50]: Yeah, yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:52:51]: In some ways, my feeling is that. Dan Sullivan [00:52:54]: The thing that I spoke about earlier in the program, that we're entering a period of uncredentialed, skilled, productive people, is going to be the movement. And he's got a, he's got a feel for this. I think he's got to. It's whether you like him or not. I mean, if the election were held in Canada, Biden would get 95% of the vote. And as they, they just find Trump nauseating, you know, and, you know, they said, I don't understand how you can be a Trump supporter. And I said, well, I said, I read the US Constitution every year, and nowhere in the US Constitution does it say that us political affairs have to be pleasing to Canadians. Mike Koenigs [00:53:46]: Oh, that's a witty retort. That's fantastic. Dan Sullivan [00:53:50]: So what have you learned? Because I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot. One is I think that you're going to be a total winner with artificial intelligence. And I think that you're going to gradually integrate all your skills that you've mastered over the last 2035 years into a new form of productivity for yourself. I'm not sure it goes society wide. Mike Koenigs [00:54:18]: I think you're absolutely right, because the resistance, there's a lot of crazy psychological resistance and what I have. So I'm still tweaking this. This is the. I haven't mastered the story that inspires people to understand the potential impact yet. That is something I practice on stage. I practice with my books, I practice with webinars all the time. And there is something magic that happens when someone sees a use case and they're like, that will work for me. And the Mary Kay principle of, is it easy? Does it work? Can it work for me? In my business, the lights go off and someone says, yes. Mike Koenigs [00:55:04]: It's still like the early days. It's just like when people knew they needed computers, but they didn't know why. And some people resisted it because there was something intrusive about it and the same thing about the Internet. And it was complicated for a while when it was a modem. So I think we're in that messy middle why does it matter to me? Phase. And that is, and I don't think anyone nailed it yet. It's like when Amazon came to be and everyone finally got Amazon in the one click. Dan Sullivan [00:55:40]: None of the spokesmen that I've seen so far, not at all. Mike Koenigs [00:55:44]: So I think that's where I got a lot of clarity today. And I also think this notion of the uncredentialed, productive workforce, there will be a movement of multipliers that matter. Dan Sullivan [00:56:01]: Yeah, there is a movement. I mean. Mike Koenigs [00:56:04]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:56:04]: I mean, the thing is that you go to university for four years, you probably don't work during the summer. You don't work after hours. You are forking over anywhere from sixty thousand dollars to four hundred thousand dollars over four years. And meanwhile, somebody who didn't go to college takes a six to ten week welding course, and at the end of the first year they're making 60,000. And by the time that you graduate, possibly with no income or a big quarter million in debt, they're making 250,000 a year. They're buying a house and everything like that. And I see total signs of this happening right now. As long as the welder is not taking drugs. Mike Koenigs [00:56:55]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:56:56]: So how about this? This is the thing to test out. What if we created a new category? It's the birth of the clear collar worker or what color? It's a new color of a color. So you had blue, you had got white. But what do you think of that? Dan Sullivan [00:57:12]: Yeah, I like it. Mike Koenigs [00:57:14]: Okay. So that's what I got out of it is like a new. This, this, this needs to be a movement to matter. And it, and in a way it's a weird, invisible movement. But you feel it. I don't know anyone who isn't feeling it to some degree. It's just, how does it matter for me? So I'm going to take a look and see if that's available. It's like an interesting. Mike Koenigs [00:57:43]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:57:43]: Yeah, that's great. You said it. It's yours. Mike Koenigs [00:57:47]: Okay. Dan Sullivan, you're the best. You remember Tennessee tuxedo? Tennessee tuxedo. You're the greatest. It was the 1960s cartoon, the walrus and the penguin. It was. Dan Sullivan [00:58:05]: It's a really good term. Mike Koenigs [00:58:06]: Okay. Dan Sullivan [00:58:07]: And then you just describe what clear means. Mike Koenigs [00:58:11]: Yeah. Dan Sullivan [00:58:11]: I mean, people got choler and workers white collar, you know, white collar, blue collar. But it's clear. What are they clear about? What are the five things that clear collar workers are clear about? That was a breakthrough. Mike Koenigs [00:58:25]: It was. I like it. Okay. Dan, this was incredibly valuable. That was a breakthrough. Dan Sullivan [00:58:33]: And my big thing is, because I like history, I can go back and show that what we're experiencing with AI isn't anything new. There's always been breakthroughs, just that the population is much bigger right now. So my sense is that we're repeating something that has happened maybe hundreds of times in human history, where there's a new advantageous technique or capability, and it disrupts things. It disrupts things. And there's losers and winners. You know, it's rule number three, life isn't fair. You know, when you have new things, everything's made up, nobody's in charge, life's not fair. And I think that. Dan Sullivan [00:59:25]: I think we've achieved a lot from our conversation. Mike Koenigs [00:59:28]: Yes. Mike Koenigs [00:59:29]: I feel like a sense of peace in trying, and I have been trying to communicate what this means for a long time. And I've been looking for a simple word or a phrase, and this is the first time I really felt that in months. Mike Koenigs [00:59:50]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:59:51]: So, great breakthrough. Dan Sullivan [00:59:53]: I look at all the AI people, they don't look happy. Oh, yeah, they don't look happy. Mike Koenigs [01:00:00]: They're unrested, that's for sure. This is a very seductive drug. It's a very seductive drug. Well, fantastic. Well, this is, this is wonderful. So let's wrap this up. I've got a little takeaway and giveaway, which is to anyone who's listening to this podcast, you can have a copy of my new book, and the place to get it and experience a clear collar employee is to go to what is now digitalcafe AI. And it's going to guide you through, asking you some questions and reward you with a book for answering them. Mike Koenigs [01:00:34]: And you'll get a synthetic mic and even a synthetic video and audio. And my goal is to disrupt. Not disrupt. No, we're not going to disrupt. Transform, transform the business of capturing and following up and building intimacy with prospects in ways that humans usually fail at or they're inconsistent at. And it does the equivalent of what five or six really smart people on a team do, but it does it without any gaps, pretty close to flawless every time, and it's getting better all the time. So you'll witness a new platform and get a cool thing. And I'm even going to give you an audiobook that was generated with AI voices within it. Mike Koenigs [01:01:27]: So it's synthetic. Mike, reading the book to you there. Thanks, Dan. Dan Sullivan [01:01:35]: Thank you. You're right. Being part of the process, that was fun. Mike Koenigs [01:01:40]: All right, well, thanks, everyone, for watching, listening to another episode of Capability Amplifier. Share this with your friends.