Okay, team, it's you project Patrick's here and so is Tiffing. And that's bloody terrific because without them, oh okay, TIFFs are already yelling at me all right, why don't you yell at me straight off the top? Go on, tell me off?
If you could just nudge yourself back off that microphone apps all the typs. If everyone's heard a difference in recent microphone.
No, no, we don't need everyone to get on the hype.
Crap on the mic listening to me, Well, it.
Sounds great in my ears on this end. You used to remember, you used to yell at me six.
Years or so to get you to put a set of head micro right.
And it's never been worse, has it. It's never been worse since I put on the fucking headphones. So surely you can be objective about that.
Make a suggestion, Tiff, Yes, please pray go turn turn your headphone volume up.
I can already hear me very loudly.
I know that if you turn it up a little bit more, just nudge it up a little bit more, because.
I just say, this is not the time is right now in the mid I don't know if you have any awareness but now it's not the time for this chat.
Well this might be interesting for people. So if you're running, if you're or not.
Or not you're doing it, perhaps on this one. Okay, I won't explain this. Yeah, let's let's not have this conversation. Hello, everyone, welcome to the project. We hope you're good. It's Friday morning here at typ Central. Patrick is up in blan Or, I call it milan Lan and TIFFs over there at her palace somewhere near the Beachwood. Thank you ourwood with the cat and the dog. Who are the actual bosses of the home. We start with the lady of the show, Patrick,
how are you hey? What's going on up there? I've had a.
Pretty hectic day, but I'm feeling like I've achieved something because you can teach an old.
Dog new tricks.
Go on, Well, I've got I'm house sitting with not house sitting, I'm dog sitting a little ten year old cross Schneutzer poodle and her name is Schnitzel. She's as I said, she's ten and she's never used a dog door, and I've taught her to use a dog door. So I feeling like I've achieved.
Did you do that by demonstrating and crawling through yourself going follow me, follow me. No, I just locked it out of the house all night, and I'm kidding I didn't. Did you strap some bacon to your ars and say get behind me and then just crawl through the door.
No.
I just gently held the flap up a little bit. Fritz went through first, and then she kind of nudged it, and then I got used to it, and then she got used to using it with her nose.
So many things. Well well done, well done, Tiff diff was onto it. I was onto it. You just kept plugging on. If we're glad, aren't we? We're so glad because, oh god, if we could just say whatever we wanted to say, eighty percent of the audience would be fucking on the floor of twenty percent. Right that, I'm out, I'm never listening again. Well that's good, mate. You could become a You could get a unique kind of job description as I trained dogs that are old and untrainable. Yep,
that's the one with the Banello method. TIF. How are you very good? Thanks with your shock of with your shock of red hair, looking like Pippy long Stocking over there at typ Central.
That was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid.
You kind of look like she would look when she's thirty. It's going to say, forty, what am I thinking? You look like a grown up Pippy Longstocking? Patrick? Do you not know who that is? Oh? Idea? Oh god? What kind of childhood did you have looking into Petrie dishes and fucking magnifying bloody insects and bugs and shit. But I do know, I do know what.
The Hindenburg was great, that's true.
Well Tiff didn't. All right, Tiff, you can now enlighten Patrick as to the identity of Pippy long Stocking. I can't.
All I can remember is she wore those scrub and brushes on her feet to clean house, and she had a be horse and I feel like she put it on a boat or something.
God, that was hardly your own mind. I feel like if anyone on this show is going to know about Pippi Longstocking, it's either going to be you or Patrick, and it ain't him. All I remember she was a central character in her childhood story. But that's about anyway. We probably don't. There's do you know what? There's a thousand listeners going you, dumb fox. I'll tell you exactly who she is. Get me on the show. Get me on the show. How's your week been, Patrick, It's been well.
I had a bit of a bug at the start of the week, so I've got to say I was kind of working, but I reckon I was running at about forty five percent capacity.
So I'm feeling a lot better today.
And because my voice was really croaky and a lot more deep and sexy, I.
Reckon everyone in Melbourne has got something at the moment. It seems like everyone I talked who's got either bloody influenza A or B or COVID or some other kind of bloody virus something.
I got through all of winter without getting a single sniffle, and now we hit into spring. Now I'm feeling a lot better though, but it's been an interesting week. I sent you a little video clip before. Maybe explain what I sent to you because I was pretty excited about it.
Well, I wrote a book one hundred and twenty four years ago called The Angry Ent, which was clearly a book for children, and it went okay. Actually, it's funny you sent that because I was thinking of writing another kid's book. You know that who's that author? That actor? Was it? I wasn't. What's that old dude that's got that incredible voice? Anyway? And that the book is cooled No in that ballpark though, in that kind of vintage
in that space. But the book is called go the fuck to Sleep, and he reads it tif can you find out for us? Anyway? It's tongue in cheek, but it's funny. But so Patrick took the cover of my book and made it into a little animated video. Well L Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, there's a lot of those old dudes have got those incredible voices anyway. Yeah, so why did you do that? How did you did you find some AI that does that quickly? Or I did?
Yeah, well I've been I think typ people might remember my friend Tour that I was doing a podcast with. Okay smart Yes, released a couple of books, and so she wants she's rewritten or she's rewritten the first book of her fantasy series and now she's come up with a second book. So I animated the covers and the covers look amazing that if you could imagine a woman in in a hood and flowing robe holding an archery bow and one of them she actually picks up the
bow and fires the arrow. So it's all animated so the book, so the letters are still in front of the character. But it really looked quite stunning and and so she asked me if I could animate it, and I just use some great AI tools and just use the prompt to say, you know, animate the character, get it to pick up the bow and fire an arrow.
And it just looked stunning.
And that's I'll see if I can show you by doing the angry ant very good.
Well. And one of the things that makes me a little bit sad now is every time someone sends me something that's a video or an amazing picture, he go is this real? Or is this AI? And like everyone's doing that now. Like I saw this video the other day that was about cars and shit, and I sent it to Vinn, my mate who's a revhead, and I'm like, this is incredible, and he goes, AI, like is it and he goes that couldn't happen. That's not real, And
like I just thought it was real. It didn't occur to me for a moment, and usually it would occur to me before him. But he's like, nah, that's not happening, that's not real. I went dies because I was really excited, and I went real disappointed. We're going to be It's going to get worse too, Isn't it like you're not going to anything that looks amazing, You're going to assume that's not a real far or a real image or a real video.
I was at a cafe last weekend in Trent from catching up with a friend of mine, and I wasn't deliberately listening to other people's conversations, but there was a father with two kids, and the daughter might have been aged twelve, and part of the conversation was Ai Slop.
And it was interesting that a twelve.
Year old recognized because I think the father pointed out something and she said, no, that's Ai Slop. So it's great to know that kids are questioning and not moving. So it actually filled me with a bit of oh, thank goodness, you know, a bit of a relief, because it's one of those things that I worry about, you know, particularly children who you know. It's bad enough that you know those of our vintage are not you tif because you're younger, but those of our vintage can.
Be misled by AI like cars stuff.
But I thought it was very heartening to hear a young child recognize that that AI can be slop as well. And it's interesting because it was one of the things I wanted to chat about is how do you actually discern what is AI crap? AI slop?
You know?
How do you find it? And it was interesting. There was a guy from an ad agency was saying, at its heart, it lacks a human heart.
You know, isn't you know?
When I think about you know, images that are out there, there's lots of great fantasy stuff and you think, oh wow, that's great spaceships and stuff like that. But the reality of it is that when you look at something, there's an essence of, say a book cover that's created by a real person.
You know.
I guess I worry about the fact that AI is getting better. And the big challenge for a lot of publishers and a lot of producers of content is that the disappointing thing is that a lot of material has been trained on what we assume was copy protected copyright protected material, so authors have had their books all scanned and absorbed and new large language models. So the problem is that a lot of these larger companies like Meta and have just gone and arbitrarily copied and taken all
that information. And they're saying, well, we didn't copy it, we just learned from it. But the reality of it is, I can take one of the AI models that produces video, I produces pictures and say, show me a picture of a Schnauzer in a style of Van Goch, do something like Starry Night.
It might have.
And you know if I said to it, I want a backdrop of that's similar to Starry Night.
Well, the reality of it is.
It would do that, and I know it would do it quite successfully, because I'm pretty sure I would have done that. My first AI endeavors were generating Schnauzer pictures. Because that doesn't surprise anybody who knows me. What was the first AI image that you've jumped into and created, Harps.
Well, I don't know the answer to that. But pursuant to this conversation, you're Honor and tiv I the other day, like, I've got a gig coming up in a few weeks on the Goldie and I just wanted to do something like a little silly kind of how's my mic technique tip? I'm just checking really really good.
Thank you having Thank.
You, Ernie, thank you. I'm very very trying vally baally hard and anyway, Patrick, So I went, ah, here's a photo of my kind of I guess from my chest up. Here's an image of me. Use this image as the basis for a picture of me in the surf, right, because I just wanted to write over the top of that, Hey,
I'm coming to the goldie blah blah blah. Right. So the one thing that had absolutely to work with that was one hundred percent accurate was the photo of me that I sent it, and it creates this image of me surfing on a wave. But the head is not my head, like it's a it's a different head. It looks kind of like me kind of. But then you lean in. Patrick's gone. He's clearly bored. But then yeah, Patrick, just everyone. He just got up and left his chair
and walked out of the room. That's one of the one of the things that people don't this is an insight into podcasting. I don't know, you've had something legit to do, and it's fine, but it's funny. Sometimes you're interviewing one person and it's just one and one on the thing. Have you had this tiff? Then all of a sudden they get up and they walk out of their chair because they've got to go get a drink
or turn the fan off or something. Then you're looking at nothing and you're trying to stay as engaged as you were. Like the only thing that's like Patrick's not talking right now, which is a fucking rare event, but he flipping the mod. So but anyway, I gave it a picture of me to work with and it came back and it was complete bullshit. I'm like, yeah, there's a way to go. There is still a way to go with that, Patrick, I go on, tiff go.
So I was going to say, there's some Facebook pages that I've seen pop up in my feed where people put real old photos and ask for photoshop for free. Can you fix this sentimental where Arah and people do amazing stuff, but sometimes people turn those they do really funny stuff, but they turn them into little videos of doing incredible and they are incredibly accurate. They look real, they look like the actual person in the photo, and they move real and you wouldn't know the difference.
How many people do you reckon and doing a version of that, Patrick James Bonello, Like, here's a picture of me from ten years ago. Make this fucking amazing. And then they're going and putting that on some kind of dating website, like where you know, they've just gone from you know, a four out of ten to a two. Not well, I don't you know what I mean. It's like, it's like me, I put I'm sixty one, I look like a desert boot. I'm cool with that, right, So
let's use me as an example. Right, Like, even when I was young and healthy and good, I was a six. Right, I was never a fucking nine. I'm okay with that. But now we put up a photo of me and
I'm a fucking nine and a half. And then my date whoever he is, turns up and you're like, fuck, bro, you don't look at anything like it, And they just want to, you know, they walk and they look across the room, they see that that's you, because there's a vague resemblance, but they're thinking, oh my god, how the fuck do I get out of here without him seeing me or her seeing me.
Look, I agree with you. I've never understood the idea of trying to put the best shot ever that's been photoshopped or aied up there, because you're just going to disappoint the person you're meeting.
In fact, if you do the opposite, you know.
Lower the expense exactly exactly.
Yes, that's my that's my go under cell over to Liver, like, put up a shot that's close to shit. If they turn up, how fucking happy are they going to be? Firstly, you're probably not going to get any hooks, that's okay, but imagine if you do, they turn up and your fucking Brad Pitt or whoever the equivalent of that is.
Next time I'm down your way, all you're going to do is take a photo with Fritzzer. I've got to tell you will get so many hits on your dating profile with that little schnauzer face and my dog.
I think he just called me a schnauzer face. I want to talk about one more tech related thing while Tips here, because Tip's got to do a runner and
we've kind of spoken about similar things. So this morning I was at the Old Cafe, which is often the source of much of my material as it is today, I was sitting next to Dino made of mine, and he's a good lady wife, Rachel, who's lovely, and she wanted to start talking or she started talking to me about her sleep quality tip ram right and that, and she started saying that it's she's wearing an app and it tells her every day, you know, whether or not,
like you, she slept well or didn't sleep well. And then said, I woke up this morning and I felt good, like I felt like I'd slept pretty well. Said then I looked at my whatever the fuck is watch what do you call those things? Just watch app whatever, and it said that I'd had basically a shit night's sleep and expect to be grouchy today. That's what it said to her, Like, if that's not setting you up for
a shit day? And then I said, now tell me honestly, so you felt pretty good when you woke up, not through the roof, but felt pretty good after that, She goes, I felt terrible, She goes, I still feel terrible. I wish I didn't look at it. I'm like, here's here's my question. Is your life better or worse with that thing? And you the attachment that you have to that, they expect, the anxiety that's now around it now she starts to get anxious heading up to bedtime about about potentially not
sleeping well. So the thing that she's worrying is turning up the anxiety which is making her sleep worse. I'm like, throw that fucking thing away. I go, throw it away or put it in a draw. I go. You know, it's better than technology biology. Listen to your fucking body, because your body smart. You have a sleep, you wake up, you go, I feel pretty good. Well, then maybe you feel pretty good. I think that you know to both you like, this is like you with your glucose monitor,
which was widely inaccurate. It was causing you fucking chaos based on data that was absolutely untrue.
Yeah yeah, and I just had I just took my watch off for a couple of weeks, and I've cleared all of the data from being able to be seen on my watch face, and I've blocked the app on my phone so I can't use it like that because I did the same thing. I would wake up.
And even knowing.
That the its ability to track the quality of your sleep is probably the poorest function on there and wildly inaccurate, we all look at it and it would still play into how I felt for the day.
So I think this is one of the distinct potential downsides of wearables and this kind of health focused I put an asterisk next to that tech that's kind of infiltrating every corner of humanity. Patrick, Look, you know, it's a really valid point.
I was just thinking as you were saying that a friend of mine got me on the TikTok and it lasted a day because I was looking at the TikTok videos and they're viral videos. They're made for you to keep swiping. They go for a very short amount of time. They grab your attention, then you want the next one and the next one and the next one. And I said to him, I can't keep this on my phone. So after twenty four hours, I just deleted the app. I've been out of social media for about eight years.
It's funny we manage social media for our clients and yet I don't use social media at all anymore. But I found that for me, and I think, if you're probably the same, you have to go cold turkey, do you Patrick?
Just sorry to interrupt, I would think I totally get why you do that, and clearly it works. Do you think that for your job, right, Not because you necessarily want to go down some you know, IG rabbit hole or Facebook rabbit hole, but do you think it would be good for you to go all right, well, every day between whenever it might be nine to nine thirty, I'm just going to open up this shit, look at it, just to get my head around, and then shut it down.
So I spend thirty minutes a day where I mean, if you are working in the space of social media and helping people with their social media, I would think it would be valuable for you to have insight into what is happening right now at the coal face. You know, everything you've said is absolutely spot on, except for one point.
Employ somebody to do as social media for it.
Yeah. But at your company though, but the buck stops with you a sure company. Yeah, right now.
I collaborate with my colleagues, so I see the work that he's producing, and we talk about the work he's producing, and he shows me things that are going viral or whatever it happens to be. So I do lean over and have a bit of a look at what you know is trending. If he points something out to me, so I guess I rely on him to do that, and as you appreciate, you know, when you surround people with certain skills, it's great to be able to then
entrust them to help you with that. So you know, TIFF's producing the podcast, she's going to be able to put it all together and will go to air at the weekend, and the types of things that you know, once you realize that if you surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and more talented, that's where you're going to succeed in life. No, I really mean that. I mean I've got I'm very lucky. I've got a
great colleagues who do really good stuff. So whether it's you know, building websites or doing social media, I can do little bits. But it's a valid point. And but I think you could kind of. I don't like to micromanage either, so you know, let him do his job.
I think. So if he becomes an addict, fucking as long as you're not.
He's been paid, though, he's been paid to.
Become an addict. Jeam, Well that's all right. Well there's some kind of remuneration for him, so enjoy your addiction, and here's some cash just to offset that. Love Patrick, Wow, Hay, Tiv, have you got to go?
I've got to go.
Where are you going? Where are you going?
I've got a zoom meeting to jump on.
You're on a zoom meeting right now.
It's a really fun one.
This one probably won't be fun.
But now responsibility, Well, if somebody that we know who's wearing a baseball cap AND's got a snouther in the middle of his legs, if that person you know didn't move the time, you would have been able to have the whole hour.
I know life was really good and then someone changed the time.
I'll tell you what. Between Patrick and the bloody Wearables, it's tough. Life's tough, and Ai I'm a butler.
I'm a butler.
Do what you can learn to fight and I keep fighting. I sold you on. Keep you long stocking, by the way, learn more about the woman that you look like or the girl that you look like.
Have a good day, Tiv fall Well, guys, bye.
And she's gone. It's just you and me now. I don't know if we can be trusted. I don't think so either. Just quietly, I wouldn't trust it. Let's hit up your list, bro, We've got half an hour, tell me, teach me, enlighten me and the listeners.
Okay, let's keep on the track of AI a little bit. I don't want to overdo the AI stuff. But there's a group of scientists at Imperial College in London and they have been working for a decade looking at how bacteria evolve and how they can eventually evolve into dangerous superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics, something that concerns all
of us. Well, recently they plugged in all of their decade worth of figures into Google's new AI system called cos Scientists, and in forty eight hours, it generated the exact same hypothesis that they'd taken ten years to come up with.
Fuck that is that is what would you if you were that team, if you were the leader of that team doing that research, what would your emotion be around that? Oh?
Look, you know what's interesting is the article that I was reading was that they were actually quite elated. What they're saying is it's like any tool, and there are always going to be things that the AI can't do, But that number crunching is it's great that they were
able to collaborate. And I guess look at that to verify the hypothesis they come up to it generated four additional entirely plausible hypotheses as well, so they had other tracks that they're now going to go down and investigate further. You know, it's great. It's like using a calculator. My colleague who's I, as I was saying, is really talented. He's very creative, visually creative, but he's terrible.
At math sometimes.
You know, well, I don't know why this happens every now and again, but it might be adding up some figures and my head because I like the challenge of adding up you know, I'm not really good at maths, but I like the challenge myself and say, oh yeah, I'll add that that that and add it up in my head and I come up with the right number.
Whereas he uses a calculator, like the challenge myself to see if I can be quicker than him on his calculator, which is kind So those sorts of things, but ultimately it's a check and measure, isn't it.
Yeah, But I think yes, But I think with all of these things, like truly, some people just are not great at maths, and that's cool. They can draw brilliantly, or they can run one hundred miles an hour, or it's like lots of things that I'm terrible at, a few things I'm good at. So I think, why on earth wouldn't you use a calculator? You know, I'm like, well, that's a resource you had. Why would don't you use AI? Why wouldn't you use you know? And I understand it.
There are you know, there are going to be there's going to be a human cost, whether or not that's in jobs, or whether or not that's in mental health for some people, or but I think with every breakthrough in technology or even in science or you know, any of the other kind of fields, there's always there's It
can never be all positive. There's going to be you know, it's like when you you know this story better than me, probably, but when they invented, you know, a diesel and petrol driven cars, and then all the fucking horse and cart businesses went out of and all the cart makers went broke essentially because who wants a cart and one horse when you can have a twenty five horse power car and that doesn't shit everywhere, you know, So you know,
they said TV would never take off. They said the Internet would never last like and because there was a cost to that, like Encycloperetic Encyclopedia Britannica when the way the Dodo bird when the Internet came out, because who needs thirty seven gigantic books on their shelves when they can just look on their computer. There's always a cost, I guess, you know.
One of the quotes from the scientists involved was that AI is a tool to accelerate, not replace scientists.
Oh yeah, that's beautiful. I love that.
Yeah, and so yeah, I think is it going to replace jobs? No, but it's going to make jobs easier, and it means that they can focus on the human based skills that AI can't do, which you know, this is really important work looking at how bacteria evolve and potentially become these deadly bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, because that's a real worry for everybody.
The other day I had a pod. I had somebody booked, somebody pulled out, and so literally within about not very long, like twenty minutes, I need to figure out what I was going to do to do a podcast for tomorrow, And so I just went into chat GPT and I said, you know, everything I've written and everything, you know, all my podcasts, you know, all my shit. And I talked to it like we're colleagues, not friends. But I go I often will have a conversation with it in terms
of I've got an idea. What do you think about this? It'll say blah blah blah. We'll go back and forth. Right and I said, based on all of my shit, I want you to come up with an idea for a podcast topic that I haven't done before. And it came up with ten, and about seven or eight were and straight away, by the way, seven I are okay. One or two were good, and one was I thought really good, And it was the psychology of enough. I'm like, that is really good. Like let's talk about what is
enough and when is it enough? And why isn't it enough now? And when I go, I'll have enough when I have ten, And then I get ten and I go, oh, no, ten's not enough. It's actually twelve or no, it's like what is this And not to go, ah, here's the solution, everybody, but rather just to lean into this idea of enough, you know, because we it's a very common human trait to be dissatisfied. Like wherever we are, whatever we've got, there's no contentment or there's very little. It's not enough.
We need more of this, we need more of that, and need to be quicker and better and faster. And you know it's like, oh what about the ops? What about the pendulum swing of that? So yeah, I just I think it was with Tiff. We just riffed for like fifty minutes just on this idea, this thought bubble, and it's like for things like that, where it goes, oh, here's an idea. Now, it didn't give me a script, it didn't give me you know, I just went I actually like that, and then off that prompt that it
gave me. We spoke for fifty minutes on something that's an interesting idea but also relevant for everybody because at some stage, like if whatever you have, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, if it's never enough, then you're never going to be content.
Yeah, And it's funny you say that because I could relate that to a whole so many different things in life, whether it's that extra piece of a block of chocolate. You know, I think I'm just going to have one row, and you have that one row and then you go to the next row or the extra pringle or you know, or going to the gym and pushing out an extra set.
Yeah, yeah, it's so exactly. It's just like a good you could you know, in relationships, in your spiritual journey, if you've got one in your you know, your property portfolio. It's like for me, I weigh up. Like my business model now is very simple. Go to companies, talk to the people, come home, right, that's it. Maybe you talk for an how maybe you talk for day record podcasts, have sponsors, work with Novo, work with Patrick everybloody Friday.
Whatever it is right, it's not complicated, and I know I could do bigger and better and more. But where I'm at now, which is can compared to when I had heaps of employees and heaps of standalone businesses. For me right now, this is the best model because on an emotional and social and mental and commercial level, it's just for me. Not wouldn't be for a lot of
other people, but for me, it's the right mix. And I go, yeah, this is enough, this is good, and I think it's good to reflect on that, you know, and get and I'm getting a little bit deep, but
I'll shut up after this. But I think like in the continuity of life, like we're always in that river that's flowing, and your life has got momentum, and your life has got energy, and there's all these rules and rituals and things that we do on autopilot sometimes to swim to the side of the metaphoric river, get out of the river, get up on the bankment, or I'll sit on a rock and just sit on the rock and look at try to get some perspective on the river that's flowing by, and thinking, Am I in the
right river? Am I swimming in the right direction? Am I? And you might come back with, yes, I'm exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing. Or you might go, maybe I need to swim in a slightly different direction, or maybe I'm swimming against the tide and it's killing me.
Yeah. Sitting outside of yourself and reflecting on how your life is proceeding is a difficult thing for a lot of us, where you get swept up in the moment all the time.
And you're absolutely right.
I remember you saying to me many many years ago. I'm talking more than twenty years ago. How that every New Year you make up a little list for yourself.
Yeah, between Christmas and New Year, I spend those six days or whatever it is planning the next year and or just thinking about like it's it's not as strategic because it once was. It used to be quite commercially driven, and these days it's more contemplation and trying to get you know that that river metaphor, that is really about awareness, you know, self awareness and being aware of you that
you have a life. If you're in the middle of a life, but it is not you and you are not in you know, you're in a story, but you're not the story. You're part of the story, and you're writing the story. And you can change the direction of the story anytime you want, because you're the fucking author. You don't have to be in that river going in that direction, you know. But this kind of intentional thinking and this kind of mental and emotional distance we can
get from our life. It is as you suggest, it's a tricky thing to do because I work a lot with small business people. One of the biggest challenges for people in business, small business particularly is to work on the business, not in the business. Is to step back because generally, if you're working in a small business, you take on multiple roles. You know, I hate bookkeeping, and I have a bookkeeper and I have an accountant, but I still do some of the bookkeeping.
I do the invoicing, but I put it off because I hate it, and it's the world because I need to invoice otherwise I can't make any money and pay my staff on my bills. And yet it's one of the things I dread doing because I like being creative and it was interesting this week. I can't go into the details, but we run a Google Ads campaign for a client who's a really good, really great client. They
listen to what we say. But the guy who owns the business has a mentor and coach, and the spend that they were currently making on Google Ads, the mentor said, look, you're not spending enough. You need to increase the spend. And it was increased to a point that I felt uncomfortable because the more you're spending, the more management. And it sounds like a silly thing to say, but I called them the other day and said, look, let's not
spend this much. I know it's going to make me more money, but I think him sit back and ask why are you spending this money?
What do you want to achieve from.
The campaign, and let's track it to see if you're getting the type of results that you want, not arbitrarily tripling the amount of money. We're talking a lot of money, you know, for a relatively small business. And I think sometimes it's just easy to make those knee jerk reactions and not to step back from it, not to step back and say, well, where do I want to go
with this? You know, As you know, I had a business partner in Melbourne when I just started getting into graphic design web design, and you know, we work together for about three years, and then I realized that he wanted to build a multimillion dollar company with hundreds of staff, and I thought, I don't want to do that. I'm not interested. I don't want to be the CEO of some big, enormous organization like what I'm doing. I like the relationships that I make with other people who are
in business. And you know, one of my clients, I've now had the same client for more than twenty years and it's had three owners in that time, and it's about to be handed over from a father to a son making number four. So to me, that's a sense of achievement because we've a had the continuity. The business has been robust enough to continue. I mean, that's because of the hard work of other people, but we've contributed a little bit to that. So you know, in some
ways I find that exciting from my perspective. So it's easy just to get caught up and not to realize, well, what is actually better for me?
Well, I think also, you know, that's about your values, right I If somebody said to me, oh, we want you to come and talk for the day to our team and we'll pay you thirty grand, I would say, you won't. I go, that's ridiculous, you know, I would go, I won't take thirty grand. I would take yeah, sure, but I don't charge thirty grand, so you're not paying
me that. I'll do it for whatever it is, right, And I know a lot of people would go, you're an idiot, But you know, I think you know, I've turned down more than a dozen campaigns which were somewhere between not bad dough and really good dough on this on this show one very recently because I just can't it doesn't align and I'm not trying to sound like goodie two shoes, and I get lots of things wrong and sometimes I'm a prick yep, all of that right, But I can't you know one that I can talk
about because I've mentioned it before, but as you know, selling booze, which I'm not against booze. My parents drink booze, my most of my friends drink booze. I'm just personally, personally, I don't. That's because that's my choice. Secondly, I work with alcoholics and addicts, people who really struggle with addiction issues, a lot of them. I've got friends that are also alcoholics who struggle. And then I'm not going to sell it.
I'm not going to go, hey, everybody, you should get your booze here or And it's cool that I think other people should do that because it's kind of aligned with everything and it's all good, but but I just can't do it. And I think that when you know, when you figure out actually what does matter to you?
And look, if you said to me in a different life, if I had like five kids and I was struggling and a wife and we were I don't know, maybe I would maybe I'd be maybe my morals would have to take a backseat to post school fees or something. I don't know, but where I am right now, I'm just going no, I can't do that and I won't do that. And I think if you did something where you were only doing it for the dough, well firstly
you wouldn't do it. But if you did it only for the dough, even to the potential detriment of your clients, you hate yourself. Yeah.
You know, what's something that's creeping into corporate culture now is corporate conscience, which is interesting and it seems to be almost a contrast, you know, directly in contrast to what corporations are supposed to do make more money. But I'm seeing that coming in. I signed contracts at the start of this year with the big wind farm company
building wind farms around Australia. We were doing the community stuff, community marketing, and you know, when they move into an area and generally it's a rural area, and they build a website they inform people about what's going to happen with the wind farm. But they're a Chinese company and the contract I signed was twenty four pages which included
a slavery clause. So what that means is they look at the supply chain and what your personal supply chain is, and they say, we committed to all of our suppliers making sure they know where their goods are coming from. That didn't affect us so much because we only work in Australia. We don't use offshore, so it wasn't something that was an impact for us specifically. But it's interesting
that companies in our thinking that way those terms. I know I've talked about this before and it's really not tech, but it doesn't matter.
I had this as a good chat. We'll get to the tech next week. Go on. Well.
IBM is a well known company that has its fingers in lots of pies. It's been around for many, many years and they provide a very high end technical infrastructure for a big sporting event that I was involved with.
And they pulled out of that sporting event a few years ago, and there was no real chatter about why they pulled out of particular event, but I spoke to somebody who I got on to know really well with and they said it's because the company was concerned that the event had too much of a reliance on gambling advertising and contrary to the company's standards that they set
for themselves. So they walked away saying that, and look, this is a secondhand story, but it was someone who was quite involved in the sport in the organization, and they told me that that's what the reason was that IBM walked away. And I thought, wow, that's my estimation. And IBM jumped a lot after hearing that.
That's good. I mean, firstly, I believe you. Secondly, I don't hold as much faith for corporations and organizations that are driven by profit and shareholders to be that philanthropic and moral and ethical as you do. I had a lady on here this is very relevant to this conversation, and her job was to hook or baseticularly connect companies with genuine charities, like charities that were real deal, not bullshitty.
You know, ninety six cents in the dollar goes to you know whatever, and four cents goes to the kids or whatever it is, but companies that have been very thoroughly screened and genuine legit charities and organization not for profit organizations that need sport. So she companies would employ her because she was an expert in that space to find a charity or a not for profit that they could partner with as an organization, which sounds lovely and it is, and they do partner with them, and they
do give the money, and so it's all happening. And then I said to her on this very show, I said, how many of those companies would do that in your estimation if nobody knew that it was happening, like if they couldn't talk about it or write about their relationship with this charity or use it as any kind of pr leverage. She said zero. She said none of them
would do it. And I went, wow, wow. And I'm sure there are companies, like you said, like IBM and if that's them, and congratulations, that's amazing, and there are there are ethically driven businesses now we know. But yeah, I just that I think I think we overestimate the morality or we can of organizations that really and understandably like they're in existence to make money. They're not in existence to save the world or do good. Like have
you heard of the pharmaceutical industry. It's like they do some good, they also do some fucking terrible stuff, right, So yeah, I don't know where we're going with that, but I just think that if you can you on a personal level, hopefully me on a personal If you own a small company business, I do too. You go all right, well, what can I control? I can control me. I'm not going to take money to sell booze. That's okay. The next podcast can and also that is also okay.
There's no judgment, it's just like trying to I think if you know truly what you stand for, then it doesn't make all the decisions and actions easy, but it makes it much clearer, you know, because you're like, oh no, that doesn't fit in my scope. So I wish it did because I'd love the dough, but I can't, so thanks. You know.
I like the idea of working on a micro level, so whether it's giving or contributing, I now only really contribute to small charities and organizations in proximity to where I live, so you know, I help our neighborhood house. I do work for a few of our community organizations, and that's the fulfilling thing for me because I can see real value because it affects my community directly.
And that's where I've kind of changed my mindset.
But that was because I've been living here over sixteen years now in a rural town that's a population of just over three thousand people, So that gets done in the town is obvious. You know, we had a new library open recently, and you've never seen so many people flock to a library and be so excited. But wow, it's awesome, it's amazing. But what's really heartening is that you see lots of people engaging and young and old.
They have a great area for kids.
To be able to go with their parents, to hold big children's area, and you know, maternal health is in there. So that's a big thing for a community to be able to have something like that as a facility. And I think that's what changed my mindset when I moved out to a rural town because those decisions really impact the community.
Yeah, hey, before we go, we've got ten minutes. I want to I'm just looking at your list of things that we haven't gotten to, which is most of them.
But it was our last podcast. We got through everything, our last body that's this one because this one is relevant to me. Apple watches can now detect hypertension, which of course everyone is high blood pressure.
I like that. So for me, I used to have quite bad hypertension genetically because of Mum and Dad, and I've had a recent experience just quickly. So since I first got prescribed my drug, which was Averpro one hundred and fifty milligrams was the dose, I was twenty kilos heavier than you know, mainly muscle, but I was a bullfeed I was a bodybuilder. And now all these years later, I was feeling shits and it kind of occurred to me, Well, you have low blood pressure now because every time you
stand up you get dizzy. Every time you bend over and do one arm rows and stand up, you're dizzy. When you get out of the shower, you're dizzy. And I don't know why the scientists didn't think of this a long time ago. Oh well, now you weigh twenty kilos less, you're probably fitter because you walk ten kilometers a day and you take the same dose that you did when you're one hundred klo buffed, So harved it better, you know.
White coat hypertension is something that I know you know a lot about and I suffer from as well, which means when you walk into a doctor surgery and they put the cuff on your arm and they start inflating the cuff. You start to get more stressed and that affects the reading that you get, and the problem with that is that you never get an accurate reading. So the new Apple Series eleven Watch, which is the Ultra three that's.
Just come out.
So Apple have their big event and they talk about all the new gadgets that have come out. They have this super slim line phone that also came out as well, the light I think they're.
Going on or air Wow wow Apple.
Yeah, whatever it is, the Apple Phone air or something anyway, but this thing is really cool because what it does is they're using machine learning or clever I guess tech to monitor a person's signs of hypertension. So it's not like a blood pressure monitor where it's constantly monitoring what your actual blood pressure is. It's looking for signs of hypertension, and then if it thinks that you're experiencing what they're calling chronic high blood pressure, it is now go and
check your blood pressure. So it's constantly looking at you on a day to day basis, which gives you a much more holistic way of what's going on. Because this is something of a holy grail for me, because I've struggled with the you know, I've go to some doctors and I say I've got white white coat hypertension and they say, well, no, that's bullshit, it doesn't really exist, or they don't really believe that you've got it, and
they want to put you on drugs. And I don't like the idea of being, you know, taking drugs because I'm fit and healthy. Well I think I am, but there are other side things that I test for. So, you know, I went to my optometrist recently and had my eyes tested, and the little tiny, tiny veins in the back of your eyes can be an indicator of
whether or not you've got hypertension. Prolonged hype pretension be so delicate that you know, And because I've been to the same optometrist for years, I can go back, you know, five or six year and see the same photograph of the back of my eye and they can back whether there's been damaged.
So there are little things like that that.
Can also give you a bit of an idea of whether your hypertension is over a prolonged pit pardon me, period, but it's but I think this is great. You know, more techno, I don't. I guess I don't want to be in a situation where as we spoke earlier with Tiff, where you become reliant on that device and you're checking it constantly. This is much more of a generic kind of approach where it's monitoring in the background and I notifies you if it finds something that could indicate you've
got hypertension. So that's what I really liked about this. I thought that's quite interesting.
Yeah, if you use it as a tool rather than the ultimate medical kind of decision maker. But yeah, I agree. And of course we've got a I don't know that you've ever had an item on your list that you send me that's been about poohing. And I couldn't be happier. I couldn't be happier because somehow you have tied shitting with tech.
Proceed proceed well, Okay, A lot of us, and I've putting me in this, A lot of us take our phones to the bathroom.
Oh you're disgusting. I know.
Everyone put your hand up in this podcast. Have you ever taken your phone to the toilet with you?
No?
No, you don't take you leave it outside the toilet.
Oh yeah, definitely, yeah, believe you only only when I'm awake, I take it in.
So researchers they did a small survey one hundred and twenty five adults at the Boston Medical Center and they found that there is a relationship between sitting down and pooping and the increase increased of hemorrhoids. And what they find what they're finding is if you take your phone into the toilet with you, you're more inclined to spend more time sitting on the can and that's where the
problem arises from. So they believe that smartphone use on the toilet is gives you a forty six percent increased risk hemorrhoids. Now do you want to tell everybody what a hemorrhoid is.
Well, it's basically a little ruptured blood vessel around your anus or lakes can be inside your anus, inside the little canal there or outside. Kind of looks like a grape or they can it's a little bit. I'm sure a lot of people have them that are listening, But I can hand on heart say I've never had one, but of course I know what they are, but I can't say I would want one, I should probably do stop doing phone meetings while on the crapper, Patrick, do you look?
I would never answer a phone in the toilet for the most part.
What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? That's called efficiency? Really?
Yeah, thank goodness, is not smell of vision. But so, but they can be really painful and it can lead to us problems. I mean, there are other reasons people get hemorrhoids as well. It could be you know that you're not having enough fiber in your diet, that you're straining to hard when you go to the toilet. And I know we always talk about the pooping seat. What do they call that? The little bit?
Yeh, squatty potty? Did you say I got one gifted this week? Oh?
Did you?
I've been one for years. It's great. Here's a funny story that my listeners know but you don't, so I'll tell you.
So.
I was walking back from the cafe. Here this bloke yelling my name from the other side of the street. I've got headphones on, but I just was aware of waving arms and someone gesticulating towards me. I tap my headphones off. He's calling out my name. No idea who he is, and he goes apps and I'm like, yeah, you know when you think, oh, maybe I'm meant to know this person, so you don't want to be rude. You might have met him four times anyway, I'm like, hey, mate,
how are you. I'm like, fucking no idea anyway, I'll Mate holds up the one finger universal sign for can you just wait. I'm like okay. So I stop on the side of the footpath and o Mate opens the back of his car and gets out of Squatty Potty, a brand new one, and runs across the street towards me, across Hampton Street carrying Squatty Potty not weird at all.
And so then he goes, hey, is, yeah, I work for Squatty Potty and blah blah blah blah blah, and I've heard about you talking about him on the show. Thought you might be due for a new one and bibbity Bobby boo, and I'm like thanks, I guess no, he was lovely. It was. It was funny though, And yeah, shout out to Squatty Potty man. I'm not sponsored by them, No, you're you're on mute. By the way, I don't know. If you know that, you do you use it? Have
you used one pre every day? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I've been. I've been using the elevated foot position. If you go interestingly, folks, it's not a gimmick at all. There's actually a real anatomical advantage that actually unkinks your colon and does a
whole lot of amazing shit. But if you go into any AI program and just say, what are the advantages of going to the toilet or you know, snapping one off, backing one out, shooting one off to where I be, dropping the kids off at the pool, releasing the chocolate hostage, whatever you want to call it. You welcome, you welcome Boys' school. With my feet elevated, it will take you into quite a deep, clinical kind of assessment of why. And I'm
not kidding. Yeah, it makes a massive difference. Can I admit something?
Yes, when I travel, of course I don't take it with me, you know, but I'm always concerned because I know how important it is to elevate my feet.
Yes, I'm China, and you use a squat toilet.
So when I go to places like friends houses, I look for things I can one per one hundred percent leak up against the wall or whatever, just to try to keep my feet up so that I could get my card.
Can I tell you what I do which I've never said this to any human on earth at alone on a fucking This could be the end of my career. Shout out to the hotels that I stay at. I slide the draw out of whatever it is. So I take the drawer out, I turn it upside down, and then it usually angles up and I just put my feet on the edges of that like I don't like put all my weight on it. And now my feet are elevated, I snap one off, I do my business. Then I put the drawback in, and no one's any
of the wiser, and life is good. And then you have a shower straight after it. Of course, people who shit and then don't shower, what the fuck is wrong with you. I've not had a shit without showering in twenty five years. My ass needs to hit the water within sixty seconds, and that's too long. Wait a minute.
I mean, I know you're regular, but what happens if you're at a conference?
Don't shit? You don't shit. I will not shit if there's not a shower available. You know that one day you're going to Mount Na. We have an arrangement, mean my bow have an arrangement. Patrick. Tell people how they can find you, follow you, connect with you, please. I don't even know to go with that.
You can websites noow dot com dot au is a website for one of my businesses, and you can kind of connect with me. And the other thing I was going to say is if you want us to talk about a specific topic and get me to research it, either jump onto the Facebook of typ and send a message or just message me at websites noow dot com TODAYU because I would love to deep dive into something that you might be interested in. Because we kind of
you know, we talk amongst ourselves. I come up with a list, we sometimes look at it, we sometimes don't look at it. But that'd be cool. So if you want to send a message just to give us something to talk about anytime, even if.
You've got a specific to you question about tech. And it might seem a little selfish, but there's a fair chance that if you want that answer, someone else wants it as well. All right, mate, you're the best. We'll say goodbye affair, but thanks again. Buddy, Yeah goodness. Chat