Transcription
Guys, we need to talk about this new study from Chachi PT, cuz it has frankly scared me and it's also changed the way that I'm using chatt. And I think if I was having kids right now, or if I had kids right now, I would want to know exactly the harm that chatt could be doing to my child's brain and how it could be impacting their creativity and their ability to think and innovate.
Also, in this episode, I'm going to talk to you about an app that I've been using that's been a game changer for me. It's helped me become more productive and get more done with less time. I'm also going to talk about the time that I got hacked. And as I'm driving to work, I see on my mobile phone with emails coming down, we've been hacked overnight. I've not really talked about on this channel publicly before. And lastly, I learned something about the brain, which I think is the secret to making a good podcast, making content, being good at marketing, being a good public speaker, and it comes from something that I learned in neuroscience. So, we're going to talk about all of those things in this episode. So, let's do it. Let's go. Let's go. Let's move fast. Quick. Will quick do a cup? I have no idea what he means here, but please subscribe.
>> Oh. Oh my god. This is pretty terrifying.
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>> I am uh sat here in my cyber truck. The car is driving itself. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something somewhat related, which is artificial intelligence. Ultimately, this car is driving because of AI. However, I read something just before I got into the car, which is a study done by MIT on people who use chat GPT. And it made me realize something about what's about to happen in society that I think we should all have a little second to discuss. It's actually a 206 page study about the impact of chat GPT on your brain. If you're using chat GPT, you need to listen to this. What they're discovering is that people who use chat GPT are essentially having their brains, their cognition decay. Researchers at a university called MIT, which is one of the world's best universities, conducted a study for 4 months using roughly 50 people. They split them into three groups.
>> Group one was allowed to use chat GPT to help them write their essays. Group two was allowed to use Google to write an essay. And group three wasn't allowed to use any tool at all to write their essay. 83% of people that wrote an essay just moments before using chat GPT could not remember what they had written. But in the brain only and the Google search group, they could remember basically everything. But they say writing is the best form of thinking. Like if you get a pen and paper and you write something down or even if you use a keyboard, it helps you to think about the idea. So what happens when you stop doing that and you just start prompting? What happens to your brain? I think it's pretty [ __ ] scary. But listen, it gets worse because they discovered something we call cognitive debt. When long-term chat GPT users then tried to write without AI in session four of the study, they performed worse than people who had never used AI before. And you know, everybody's going to continue to use chatbt because history tells us that humans choose the path of least resistance. And ultimately, I think our brains are going to atrophy.
>> If you don't use it, you lose it. It applies to going to the gym. If I don't use my muscles, guess what? They atrophy and I lose my muscles. And I think the same applies here. This is such a crazy thing to say because nobody's saying this. I'm predicting one of the great bets to make against AI at this exact moment is to use AI less for thinking. Choosing hard is going to be resisting the temptation to let ChatBt think for you all the time in every interaction and every piece of work. Are you going to think for yourself or is this the moment where you stop thinking entirely? And I hope behind the diary gang, I hope you guys don't uh go down the wrong road. Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear a bunch of different opinions. We have a chat on um on WhatsApp for behind the diary. And in there, the way that I talk about how we make our content is by is through the lens of the brain. Super simplifying the brain into these two regions of like the amygdala, which is driving parasocial relationships with the audience. The reason why people watch reality shows or vlogs or these kinds of things or behind the diary is because parasocial relationship which feeds the emotional center and then we we talk about the um other part of the brain being more like the prefrontal cortex to be more about what you describe as functional needs. So it's like they want to learn something. They want to learn how to hire.
>> Most companies innovate thinking of two axes. You've got the emotional needs and the functional needs. The question I'm asking all the time is okay what is our overall market and I don't think anyone has looked at it looked at it that way and yet we're trying to innovate and I'm saying okay well what are the functional needs we're trying to address what emotional needs are.
>> Am I right thinking of this as like emotional needs are the audience have these sort of emotion-driven motivations and then functional needs are would be things like I want to learn something? So it's okay, so it's providing that framework for everyone to operate in will helps guide sort of what sort of what future talent we sign or acquire or what type of format show we do etc and who we're trying to serve. Okay, this is a bit of a secret but I think it explains from a neuroscience perspective why some people are really good at making content marketing speaking on stage and other people are not. The brain kind of has these two basic regions. The emotional center where all of our emotions, our fears and all those kinds of things live and our functional center which is our prefrontal cortex where we're rational and think about learning and information. And the problem is most content creators and marketeers either find themselves in this corner or this corner. They either scream at your logical brain about the features and specs of their product, which is the prefrontal cortex that analyzes things and compares them, or they try and tug on your heartstrings, which is targeting the limbic system of the brain, which is our ancient emotional center that drives desires and fears. But here's the thing, humans don't work in that way. We're not robots evaluating spreadsheets, and we're not purely impulsive emotional creatures either. I think the sweet spot is right here. Here. This is where brilliant marketing, storytelling, public speaking lives. And if you think about great companies, Apple doesn't just sell processing power and electronic devices. They sell creative empowerment. And Nike doesn't just say they sell trainers, they sell personal transformation. So if you want to make world-class content, you have to make people think and feel. And I can't tell you how many talks I've been to where the presenter just hits the functional parts of the brain. They pull up graphs and stats and figures and they deliver information. I think the dark arts of storytelling, being a content creator, being a marketeer, making a podcast are hitting right here. Hitting both their emotional needs and their functional needs at the same time. And one way to do this is make sure that when you make content, when you do marketing, it metaphorically starts with once upon a time. I'm not saying use those exact words, but it should be a story cuz that is storytelling. And that is how you hit both parts of the brain, the emotional part and the functional part. Great.
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Hello. You're all right. See you. Take care. Bye-bye.
>> I understand this is for the DOA app community. Do you see the kind of this role expanding?
>> Yeah. So, you could be the toilet cleaner and and as the CEO if you're good enough within 3 years. My companies have always been like this. Always been about merit. I remember Jason Fischer was 18 years old when he applied.
>> Jason is like 12. He's like the best person at video I've ever seen in my life.
>> And within like 2 years he was the head of the studio and he was managing 30 people and he was 20. He's actually managing the whole production team at Flight Story. So he's working with me now for like 10 years. It's just merit. Like if you're good enough, you'll fly up. If you're not, you'll be out the door. We have a hiring problem. Finding exceptional people is tough. For every a thousand people that apply, we have one interview.
>> Thank you so much. Bye. Bye.
>> One of the big mistakes I think people make when they interview people is they interview someone and they like they go off and they carry on with their day and they come back later to talk about it or to make notes about it. After every interview that I do, you have to in the moment get the thoughts out of your head. So I just did my interview with Jamie there to be the head of community for Dire of Sio. And then immediately I use Whisper Flow. I press that button on my keyboard and I speak at my computer. I get every thought I have out of my head onto paper. So important that you strike while the inspiration and the thoughts are hot and get it out of your head onto a piece of paper. Um, and that's what I do. I've got uh seven interviews back to back today, all for the same role, the head of community role, and I'm going straight into the next one. Let me just quickly show you how Whisper Flow works and why it's been a game changer for me. Across any app on my iPhone or on my computer, I can use Whisper Flow just by clicking this button here. And when I click it and start talking, it transcribes what I'm saying with AI. Makes it really neat. Cancels things out that might have been mistakes, but also over time it's learning how I speak and what I mean. So, it gets better and better and better and better. I hit this button. That candidate was incredibly enthusiastic. I have some question marks around why they want the job. Um, there's a couple of red flags I guess to do with their previous history and one of the references a little bit concerning. Um, and uh and yeah, otherwise I think they're a good candidate. Right. So, I intentionally did a couple of mistakes there. Let's see if it caught them. That candidate was incredibly enthusiastic. I have some question marks around why they want the job. There there are a couple of red flags to do with their previous history and one of their references is a little bit concerning. Otherwise, I think they're a good candidate. So, what it's done is it's cleaned up what I was saying and it's made it um neater. And when I use this app across Mac and iPhone, the more I use it, the more it knows me, the better it gets. Which means that I can be walking down the street in London or LA and quickly send an email just by kind of offloading my mind and it's getting better and better and better and better. It's a game changer. I highly recommend you use it.
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>> This is a new segment on Behind the Diary called Steve Reviews Things. I spent most of my life on planes flying around the world. So I get to experience a lot of things especially airlines, airports, lounges, etc. Let me show you this first class experience. Okay, so you have your own basically room in the sky. It's like an apartment. Okay, you have this chair that turns into a long long bed. The biggest screen, probably can't see this, but it's like a 32 in screen. Let me put this down. Look at this. So, this thing here is like like a full desk. Voila. I can do my work. It is absolutely crazy. You know, I've got to say something to you. I think the first time I got on a plane other than when I flew from Africa as a baby to the UK, I think I was like 19 or 20 years old and I flew to Thailand in economy with my best friend. And I remember sitting in economy and being just absolutely blown away by the fact that this tin can called a plane was going to attempt to fly to Thailand. It was like mindbending to me. And then 5 years later, I'm running Social Chain New York, which is our New York office at the time, and I'm traveling in first class or business class. And then the flight attendant telling me I had to put my laptop away, put the laptop away, and I sat there like annoyed. And at that exact moment, I looked over to my left and there was this woman that I'm going to call Judy. And Judy was clearly on her honeymoon. And she was sat there like, "Oh my god." God. And she was looking at everything, the safety manual, catalog, and oh my god, they have champagne in the air. And she was on cloud n. And the crazy thing is me and Judith were both sat in the exact same seat on the exact same plane, going to the exact same place, but we were having two entirely different experiences. And the only difference was expectations. And this goes back to something Mo Gordat said on my podcast many years ago that changed my life.
>> Happiness in that sense becomes equal to or greater than your perception of the events of your life minus your expectations of how life should be. If your boss is annoying and your expectation is yeah bosses are annoying. This is what life is about. They become bosses because they're annoying. Right? If that's your expectation, you're going to look at it and go like yeah I need to learn the skill of managing annoying bosses. And if that's the case, then you're not going to be upset about it.
>> And from that, you can also conclude that unhappiness is when your expectations of how your life is supposed to be going go unmet. And that is exactly what was happening in that situation. And let me just say the very fact that you clicked this video and you watch this channel means that you're someone who is probably striving to accomplish something. So you're living in a permanent state of expectation delta. There's a gap between who you want to be and who you currently are. And that gap will cause you a lot of dissatisfaction which will transfer into motivation to cause you to do the things. But that gap will also cause you a lot of unhappiness. You'll continue to strive for it. So what I wanted to say to all of you is I understand that you're striving and I'm striving to. I have goals that I want to complete. But just for a second remind yourself that right now really wherever you are and whoever you are that this was it. This was a dream that you once had. Every single person watching this right now is in some way, shape, or form living a dream that they once had. But I'd guarantee that like 99% of you are so far off in the future creating an expectation gap on yourself that means you haven't actually realized it and you don't feel that good. And you are me on that plane frustrated that I couldn't get on the Wi-Fi. You are the person causing yourself self-inflicted misery via an expectation delta which is robbing you of your happiness. And this is one of those moments. So one of my rituals is when I get on a plane, the minute I step on a plane, now thanks to Judith and what she taught me from her excitement is I take a deep breath in and then I take myself back. I take myself back to the kid that was struggling, that was dreaming. And that kid is now sat here on this plane with friends, with so much love in my life, with privilege that I never could have imagined. And I'm going somewhere on this plane to do something that I've chosen to do, that is voluntary, that is meaningful, that is hard, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm absolutely exhausted. It's Saturday as well. Shouldn't I be at the club? I probably should be, shouldn't I? Isn't that what people do? Drink champagne and celebrate. If you can't tell, I'm deliriously tired, but I feel obliged to record something for you guys before I jump into bed. So, speaking at this event tomorrow, looking forward to it. Going to get about 6 hours sleep, unfortunately, which is a great shame. But that's all God will allow today. Up at 10:00 and uh do my very, very best on stage. I bid you good night.
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You've become a household name pretty much globally right now. Where do you feel the most pressure? Where does pressure come from for you?
>> I think I think pressure comes from everywhere. So, you start a business at 18. You have hundreds of employees. You're 21, 22, 23 years old. You have 500 employees. The company goes public on the stock market. You go through everything. I remember the day that I arrived at work and as I'm driving to work, I see on my mobile phone, which is in my car, emails coming down. We'd been hacked overnight. And the hacker had sent personalized, very tailored, specific abuse to all of our our clients from my co-founder's email at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. And he'd made it seem like it wasn't meant to go to them. And at 23, dealing with those situations, losing 80% of our business, really really in one week, you come to learn a couple of lessons. I think one of them is that even when something in the face of it seems to be insurmountable and unservivable, it probably isn't. So I got trained in reframing crisis which is focus on what you can control in the situation. If the room is on fire, there's really like three type of people. There's the paralyzed person who's saying nothing and doing nothing and they're going down with the burning room. There is the person who is screaming that the room is on fire. They're also not helping at all. And then there's the third type of person who I consider to be the leader who is well aware that the room is on fire but is is expending every unit of energy on the plan to get out of the room. And so that's kind of what I've tried to do over time is just when in those moments of crisis is to stay in my prefrontal cortex and focus on my my controllables. Um I'd say it's just this obsessive obsessive focus. When things get hard, I think I perform better.
>> Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.
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That's Teddy from the brand Perfect Ted, which is I think Europe's biggest matcher brand. They're doing about 4850 million ARR, an investment we made here at Flight Story in our fund, Flight Story Fund, and it's been a smash hit success. There's actually a video on the channel if you want to learn more about them and and their journey so far. And he asked me a question there which I thought was really interesting which is.
>> It's the first ever time in our company's history where we have not all three agreed on something and it's gone to a vote.
>> What was it?
>> It's from the US.
>> Okay. So this is a prime example.
>> If you us massively you're scratching the surface in the UK. The US is obviously like the golden goose. There's a opportunity in front of us where largest or second largest distributor is choing at a bit to launch us. There's a very very clear path to redistribution but it could risk everything here. I actually I respectfully disagree that it would be a risk. I think there's a very strategic way of doing it.
>> High level concept.
>> High level is that we are being pulled by demand. We're not trying to force a product into a market that already has a bajillion different matcha products.
>> You look at the history of food and beverage brands that have launched in the US.
>> And there's like not a single one that has done it unbelievably well. I said to Marissa, I said, "If you can give me one example of a business that succeeded in America that came from the UK, then I'm I'm down."
>> I don't think it's fair to compare us to other businesses.
>> Okay, so this is a prime example. Getting this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy to come in to a room and you lay out the thinking, I guarantee someone in the room is going to point out something you never thought of. And he asked me a question there, which I thought was really interesting, which is should founders like him that are in a high growth business have a board of directors? And actually there's something here which is I think every single person listening to this who is starting a business should have some kind of advisory board. I think mistake mitigation through shared collective experience of people that aren't in the in the room is the value of a board. Now we when we think about boards we think about a group of people in suits and some kind of boardroom. But actually I think in your own life you should assemble your own personal sort of board of directors which is four or five people who have a diverse experience on the thing that you're trying to do. And these four people with four different perspectives at different stages in the journey. You meet with them every 30 days and you talk to them about one or two big strategic challenges you've had. And if you can't assemble all of them at the same time, here's what I recommend doing. Send 50 to 100 people that you respect an email and try not to go for people that are extremely extremely busy and send them this email. Say, "I'm such a big fan of the work you've done. I admire you so so much and I hope someday to work in your footsteps." There we've hit ego, one of the pillars of motivation. Next, we're going to say, "I know you're someone that likes to pay it forward and helps people and is an inspiration to more more than just me. So, I was wondering if you could help me." There, we've hit ideology, which you've spoken to their ideology as someone that helps and someone that's a giver and someone that is philanthropic with their their life, their advice. Next, we're going to hit reward. I'm looking to assemble an informal board of advisers to help me get to the top of my industry. And this would involve just responding to one question that I have per month. I would be deeply appreciative for that. I'm willing to offer you your stake in the options pool, the equity pool of my company for free. And that could be 0.1% of the equity in your company. And so when you look at that equation, what do you get? Four or five exceptional advisers who are going to stop you making mistakes, going to answer your most critical question every single month. And as your company grows, they will take more of an interest. They might invest. They might open more doors for you. They might come closer and officially join your business. and all you have to give up in return is the tiniest slither of your fledgling high potential but not realized potential yet business but at the stage they're at where they're approaching $100 million in annual revenue ARR it's time for them to formalize it a little bit more and bring those people together so that's what I was talking about but everybody watching now you should think about assembling your own sort of career even if you're not building a business yet you should think about building your own board of directors for your career Perfect Tech came into Dragon's Den 3 years ago. They were pitching for 50K investment for 5% of their business. We invested in the den, but then we invested an additional million dollars after cuz we were so impressed by them. And Nina here does product development. So, these are new products that are coming out.
>> Products.
>> And what is this?
>> That might be coming out. That's the thing. We never know if they are.
>> Okay. So, what's this?
>> So, we've got a crisp apple energy drink. Has an added benefit with raw apple cider vinegar.
>> So, you're joking. That's a joke. That was a joke. When you're thinking about a new product, what is your framework for deciding whether you develop that product and it goes to market or you kill it?
>> I really like that golden circle analogy that I think was put forward by Steve Jobs.
>> Simon Snick. As it turns out, all the great and inspiring leaders and organizations in the world, whether it's Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers, they all think, act, and communicate the exact same way. And it's the complete opposite to everyone else. All I did was codify it. And it's probably the world's simplest idea. I call it the golden circle. Why? How? What?
>> And so in the case of this product that you that I just tried, this one here, what was the why?
>> The why is because we all genuinely believe in the power and the functionality of the energy drinks, but we don't think that the current flavors we have are, I guess, enticing on shelf.
>> Okay. So, let me tell you my interpretation of that. You're saying that because the current flavors are like ginger and pears. They're a little bit abstract. So they're appealing to the abstract consumer. So if you make more common flavors like apple, which is what I just tried there, then you'll pull in.
>> Whereas you have other brands doing things like a cherry crush peach vibe. It's like those flavors that sound experiential. They sound fun. They sound, I guess, appealing to everybody. They know what they're in for.
>> And so that's the why. What's.
>> So the how would be we do it by making flavors more appealing. And the what is.
>> Is that.
>> Is that drink there. Okay. And in terms of getting feedback on the product, because you come downstairs, you give me a shot of it. I'm obviously biased. How do you get really honest feedback?
>> So, I know of a few specific people in the team who will always be brutal with me and I have them specifically. I know kind of their flavor preferences. So, M in finance, I know she likes everything to be very sweet. Whereas, for instance, Rom, I always say Rom has the palette of a waitress buyer. If I have both of them taste test and they both say [ __ ] yeah, then it's most likely going to be a [ __ ] yeah and I move it on to like.
>> What's this [ __ ] yeah thing?
>> If it's not a [ __ ] yeah it's a [ __ ] no. It's the mantra of NPD perfect.
>> I really liked your point about having people in your ecosystem that you know will be bridly honest and I think there's something really unappreciated about those people in business because for my entire career I've had this like group of people who I know will be honest with me and they are always the people I go to first. They're the most valuable assets in my professional life. And I think we have this assumption in business that the people that say, "Oh, that's 9 out of 10. Good job." are going to be the most valuable because you're going to like them. But actually, the metric for success is not likability. It is honesty. Especially when you get, you know, you're in my seat where you're like, you're the founder. People are a little bit less likely to tell you that something you've made is [ __ ]. If you're working in a company right now, be the person who has the courage to be honest. And I think this is the long-term way to make yourself a valuable person. The people in my life that are in my personal committee are people like my brother and Will and Alex and Jules and Amy who I know if I show something to them they will be brutally honest. So that's something for you to think about. Are you a likable person that's very agreeable or are you that individual that's going to be honest and disagree with a group of people and is going to risk ruffling feathers. Beautiful morning here in Cape Town. Look at this. This is insane. This is um this is the view from where I'm writing the book.
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Here's a secret that I've uh been keeping from you. Over the last 2 years, I've been working on a book called Just [ __ ] Do It. And this is the book that I've been writing for people who want to do the thing but uh don't know how to do the thing. And you know what I'm talking about because there's something that you've been thinking about doing. You might even have started doing it already. But you need someone to hold your hand as you do the thing. And I've spent I think the lot about 2 and 1/2 years collecting notes into this notes section in my phone. And I've flown out here to bring all of those notes together into a book and to give that to you. So writing books is one of the most painful things that I do. You know, I will sit here now for the next next 10 days without moving from 9:00 a.m. in the morning till just after midnight writing and thinking really really deeply about ideas. People don't talk about this enough because I don't think they understand until it's a problem. But I think it's about 80% of the Western world gets back pain. So much of that is because of these [ __ ] things, these chairs. So I've got my standing desk um really, really important. And I found this really interesting fact out from interviewing a bunch of anthropologists who have spent time in Africa with the Hadza tribes who never get back pain. Hadza tribe don't understand what chairs are. They've never like seen them before. So when they brought their chairs there, Hadza tribe didn't know what they were. The researchers went out for the day. They came back and the Hadza tribe were all sat on the chairs and wouldn't give them back because they're so unbelievably comfy. And that is where back pain begins. That back pain is what we call a mismatch disorder. It's actually something we get because of the way we live our very very comfortable lives. So one of the things I've done as I have standing desks now all over the place whether it's in my offices or whether it's at my homes around the world. I actually want to talk to you about this cuz I have told you guys that I eat a pretty ketogenic diet most of the time. And so I wanted to show you what my food looks like. So, this is actually my breakfast today. This is an omelette with asparagus and some salmon in it. My breakfast, I got some chicken with some cheese, some mushrooms, and some avocado, which gives me a nice range of fats. And then for dinner, I'll try and get a lot of plants into my diet and protein. I'm showing you this because people ask me all the time. They say like, "What is your diet? What do you eat?" I try and just eat things that are clean, things that run, things that walk. That's my diet. And um I posted my body fat statistics recently. I'll put them on the screen somewhere. But my body fat used to be this when I did my DEXA scan with Peter Ailla. And it is more recently this. And I realized that it kind of supports what I see when I look in the mirror as well. So I'm eating very clean at the moment. No carbohydrates that are bad for me, no sugars that are bad for me or refined sugars or anything like that. But it's been a game changer for me and especially as it relates to cognitive performance. And you can see how fast my mouth is moving now with all of these words flowing out of it like a stream like the River Nile is. I can talk like Buster Rhymes when I'm in the ketogenic diet. Cuz I'm feeling like I'm winning. I'm feeling like I got to get away. Get away. Get away.
>> Man, it's crazy how much diet matters. It's so [ __ ] crazy. Anyway, I better get on with it. Probably got to get up to about 60,000 words. I love you and I'll see you later. Camera team were like, "Steve, you need to set up two lights. One needs to be a hair light. The other needs to be a main light. And you need a back light and a side light and a front light. We need to make this glossy. [ __ ] glossy. This is real. I look like I'm next to the [ __ ] sun.
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This is YouTube's worst lighting. [ __ ] dandruff on my top. Are disconnected. One of these has got to work. Hello. This is all going to be a bit impromptu cadence on my laptop. Oh [ __ ] This is what they don't show you about making YouTube videos. It's spilling your investments into your computer and then cleaning it up with the socks you were planning to put on.
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