188. Guest: Dr. Bennett - Social Psychologist, Entrepreneur, Author

This episode features Dr. Bo Bennett, who shares his extensive entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the importance of mindset, the lessons learned from failure, and the transformative role of AI in business. The conversation also touches on managing the balance between persistence and flexibility as an entrepreneur and the ethical considerations surrounding AI in content creation. 

• The influence of early entrepreneurial environment on success 
• Importance of learning from failures and mistakes 
• Balancing persistence and flexibility in business decisions 
• Insights from selling a business for $20 million 
• The role of AI in shaping future entrepreneurial endeavors 
• Ethical challenges of AI in authorship and content creation 
• Emphasis on enjoying the journey rather than just the destination

https://www.bobennett.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Entrepreneurial Mindset
• 10:43 Entrepreneurial Learning and Critical Thinking
• 24:18 Navigating Success, Failure, and AI
• 34:53 The Ethical Implications of AI
• 42:55 Maximizing Success Through Mindset and Hustle

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Yeah, it's Mindset Cafe. We all about that mindset. Gotta stay focused. Now go settle for the last. It's all in your head how you think you manifest. So get ready to rise, cause we about to be the best. Gotta switch it up. Gotta break the old habits. Get your mind right. Turn your dreams into habits. No negative vibes, only positive vibes. What is up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Mindset Cafe podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:24

It's your boy, devin, and we are honored to be joined by Dr Bennett. He is a social psychologist, he is an entrepreneur, he is an author and he is a creator. He has expertise spanning from critical thinking, business success, comedy and even AI. He is honestly one of those people that I think you guys are going to get so much knowledge from. So make sure you guys break out that notebook. Bo sold his first company for $20 million at the age of 29. Most people are starting businesses at that age, yet he was able to accomplish that. Since then, he's launched multiple ventures. He's authored over a dozen books and even created a sitcom called Squat. So, bo, I just want to take the time again to say thank you so much for taking time out of your day to hop on and drop some knowledge for the Mindset Cafe audience.

Speaker 2: 1:13

You bet. Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 1:16

So let's dive straight in. I want to start off with your story, right? How did you get into the entrepreneurial space?

Speaker 2: 1:24

It started at, probably birth. I would say it's one of those things where the question is always is how much genetics is it versus how much environment? And I don't know the answer. Of course, science says it's really a mix, a combination of both, and I agree with that. But my parents were both entrepreneurs. My sister was an entrepreneur, my brother was an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2: 1:48

So I actually grew up in that household where I didn't know about like going out and getting a job. That was very strange to me. When my friends would tell me about their parents who would be gone, like their dad would be gone all day and then he'd come back, I'm like what? That's crazy. My dad worked in his basement, he was an inventor and my mom was in real estate, so she like went back and forth and my sister and brother did something as well similar. But the whole idea of getting a job was really foreign to me and I just never grew up with that. It was always clearly understood by me that whatever I would do, it would be something that I would do on my own, something that I would start or whatever.

Speaker 1: 2:33

So do you think that you know because a lot of people don't aren't lucky enough to have that kind of upbringing where it already gets your mind from a young age thinking in a creative way that the world doesn't just work you know one way and you have to get a job and you have to go to college and you know basically the normal game plan. Do you think that it was a blessing in some ways that you know, you were able to experience that from a young age?

Speaker 2: 2:56

Oh, I do think so. Yes, I think the the the greatest part about that was the idea that the option was there and it was more than an option. It was kind of like, like I said, like it was implied. It was like this is what you do. I think most people see starting their own business or doing their own thing as like, ooh, that's not for me, I can never do that. You know that's really tough. So they kind of grow up with that mindset. But that's not for me, I can never do that. You know that's that's really tough. So they kind of grew up with that mindset. But that's not the case when you just kind of accept like, oh, this is the way it is. Then, uh, then it really becomes second nature. So I do think I was lucky to to be in that circumstance where, where that kind of mindset was part of my environment.

Speaker 1: 3:51

It's funny Cause, like, as you were telling me that story, it was reminding me of the Rich Dad, poor Dad book. I've read all of his books, but that first book he talks about going into his friend's house and watching his friend's dad have these meetings with a bunch of people, and then he was just done for the day, versus his dad that goes to work every single day and you almost had that reversed, and so that's kind a cool analogy, I mean. I think it's it's awesome that you got to experience that, because not a lot of people do. I mean, my dad was a police officer and my mom was a pharmacy technician, right.

Speaker 1: 4:15

So it's like, you know, being the entrepreneur, I was the black sheep, versus, if you want to get a job, you would have kind of been a black sheep. You know, wanted to get a job, you would have kind of been a black sheep of the family. So what was your business that you, or what was the first business that you started? Was it the one that you sold for 20 million, or was there other small businesses before?

Speaker 2: 4:32

No, I did so many things before my first and it depends like, what do you classify as a business? But let's just say for the point of this conversation that my first business was me at 10 years making wooden key racks in my dad's basement Because, again, he was an inventor, but he was also. He also worked with plastics and worked with wood, so we had a full wood shop in there. So I made these key racks that that looked pretty decent. At least people would hang them up and not think twice about it. So I made those at age 10. And I sold them around our neighborhood for like $5 each and I did pretty well and it was funny.

Speaker 2: 5:09

There was a lot of lessons I learned from that.

Speaker 2: 5:10

One was the further I went from my house, the fewer people wanted to buy, meaning that I think most people bought from me because oh, it's the Bennett kid up the street. You know I was the neighbor and they were doing me a favor versus they really desperately wanted a cheap looking key rack. There were tons of lessons from that and I think the more important thing is just to really hammer home the point that, yeah, no, the big successful business that I sold at age 29 wasn't my first one. There was probably like a dozen different dozens definitely more than two dozen different business opportunities, schemes, ideas, whatever that I tried to go with and I tried to make work. Some of them did okay, most of them didn't. It was like they were just like massive failures and and what may be perceived as a waste of my time, but I really do believe that everything you do, you learn from, or at least you should look for like okay, what can I learn from this, so I do something better the next time.

Speaker 1: 6:20

No, I think that's so awesome. That's one of my biggest things I try to tell my team too is like there's a lesson in every day. Right, it could be from a conversation with someone, it could be from something not working out, it could be from something that did work out right, but you have to be able to analyze it and extract that lesson so that you can continue to grow. So I think that's really cool that you have taken that from your other business ventures that you know led up to your success, Cause I think a lot of people, especially with social media nowadays, they get so wrapped up in I can start a business.

Speaker 1: 6:50

I'm going to be an instant success, let alone the first thing be an instant success, and that's just not the case. I mean, even for myself. I know I had, you know, a handful of businesses before I launched my gym and franchise, right. So what do you think or what would your advice be? To like an entrepreneur that's just starting out, you know that's going through those initial phases of you know learning that they don't know everything and it's not that easy.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Yeah, it's the balance of persistence and flexibility. I think that's probably the most difficult lesson to impart on anyone or for anybody to understand. The big question is okay, am I giving up too early if I quit this? Or is giving up the right thing to do and change direction and do something better? Do something that's more exciting, that's more profitable, whatever. So it's not an easy question to answer, but I think you need to really examine that question when you get to that point and you have to look at what you're doing and say, okay, can I do this better? Like, what are the problems here?

Speaker 2: 8:00

And don't just write it off to be easy, like, okay, I'm going to do something else because that's the easy path. Just really think about it. Think about what your like statistics and odds and how you feel like gut feeling. There's so much that's involved in that. But the the bottom line is don't listen to people who go on about persistence and and try to teach you, like this self-help book, one-on-one crap, because it's it's like you know there's some good ideas in there, but really what they're doing is they're overgeneralizing and they're just giving you very generic advice that doesn't always fit with very specific situations. The advice of yeah, have persistence is really good, but you have to know when to quit too. That's really important. So I would give that advice to anybody try to to be open to the idea that you really should stop what you're doing and do something else. It's really time to do that.

Speaker 2: 9:15

That's okay, that's not a bad option.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Yeah, exactly, sometimes it's not. It's not giving up, it's just pivoting. You know it's. You're not giving up on the dream of an entrepreneur, you're just pivoting because something might not work. So can you tell us a little bit about the company that you did sell? You know the one that was a success for, you know the 20 million and you know what led you to want to sell it versus continue to grow it.

Speaker 2: 9:40

Right. So I started that business back in, I guess, technically, 1994. It was one of the first web hosting businesses. This was like just when people actually before the vast majority of people knew what the Internet was, heard about it, just being a technical guy, and I was immediately like sucked in. So I just stopped what I was doing at the time, which was graphic design, and I created a web hosting company to host other businesses. And this was one of the first of its kind, because we had like a graphic interface that allowed just the average business user to upload files and design webpages and really simple, really basic, but it was still something different and it it. It caught on, I mean. And what was crazy about it too? Like every time I tell the story, I feel like like my mind tries to change the story a little bit. What really happened?

Speaker 2: 10:43

But if, if I think back to what actually happened, it wasn't like an overnight success, believe it or not. I mean, there were a lot of ups and downs over those next several years and there were some times when we thought that we were going to go out of business. It got competitive, our costs got incredibly high. I didn't know what I was doing. A lot of times I was hiring too many people, so it was a lot of ups and downs.

Speaker 2: 11:09

But then in 2001, right before the internet bust, the big dot-com bust, there was a large telecom company that approached us that wanted to buy us. So the the valuation that they gave us was like insane. It was pre-internet bust valuations and I knew that our company was not worth that much and uh, so it was like a no-brainer. I took the deal. The only trick was it wasn't really a trick, but let's call it a tricky situation was that the majority of what the company bought us for was in their stock. So I had and I couldn't sell or do anything for like a year. So I had to be confident that they were going to be around after a year. So I had to be confident that they were going to be around after a year. It turns out that they weren't. They went bankrupt but due to some like financial devices that I was able to take part in, I was able to get the vast majority of that money out before they went bankrupt. So that was a good thing, but that was my decision process.

Speaker 1: 12:46

Again, it was really like a no brainer. I knew the company was not worth what they were willing to pay for it and they mean I'm sure it's led you to continue to grow and to continue to build the things that you've built thus far. You know what were some of the lessons that you learned maybe from that company and the journey of growing it and selling it that was different from just maybe some of the other companies that you had started previously.

Speaker 2: 13:06

That company was the first one of really significant value. So I was dealing with other employees and how to manage other people. And that was a real stretch for me because I did go to college, I did graduate business school, so I did take some management classes, but up to that point it was all theoretical. You know, that's what the college is pretty much. I never had like an internship or anything. My businesses were my internship in a way. So I had to learn how to deal with other people and that was like the big learning curve for me.

Speaker 2: 13:47

But then eventually I got the hang of it and I realized you know what kind of boss I want to be and how I want to work with people. But that took that took some time. That was one of the big lessons. And then it just, you know, just dealing with that kind of volume, like we're dealing with as many customers as we had, dealing with the amount of bills that we had in total dollars per month, the slightest change could bring you to bankruptcy, whereas if you're dealing with a business where you're making a couple thousand dollars a month or whatever, it's not a big deal. If you make small changes, but with a large business it is when you don't have, like, a big cash reserve, which we never did, so that was kind of tricky as well.

Speaker 1: 14:42

No, that's crazy. So you mentioned that you did go to college. What was the reason for you going to college? As well as I mean, you have a PhD. So with a family that's all entrepreneurs and creatives, was that a push? Is that something that?

Speaker 2: 15:01

you just desired to do. My best friend at the time said hey, bo, I'm going to check out this college. Why don't you come with me for a ride? I'm like all right. And it turned out to be like a country club. I'm like this is really cool. I could live here for four years. So I signed up. It was the only college that I applied to. I was on the waiting list, but then I eventually got in. So I went Like honestly, if I didn't get in, I wouldn't have gone and if, if he didn't invite me that day, I wouldn't have applied anywhere. It wasn't really in my cards, I just did not care about it. It just turned out that it was a. It just was like it looked like a really cool place. I'm like, yeah, it looks like a lot of fun, I could do that, and I did.

Speaker 2: 15:55

After that, I didn't go back to school for like another 20 years or so. My master's and PhD in psychology happened much later, because I always knew that I wanted to make money. That's what I want to do at school, for or after school, that's it. That was my only focus making money. But I was always really interested in psychology as well and that even sparked my, my curiosity in psychology a little bit more in the college, because there was a course called the consumer behavior and that was like really looking in the minds of consumers and that had to do with a lot of marketing. So I'm like, yeah, psychology really good and I think it would help me out. But it wasn't until like after I sold my company and I had my, my family, and they were like in, um, my kids were in high school, I think. When things were kind of settled down a little bit, I'm like, all right, I could start this up again.

Speaker 1: 16:47

Did you tell me where your kids looking at schools and you're like, hey, we're going to go to college together.

Speaker 2: 16:50

Yeah, go to college together Like a back to school with Ronnie Dangerfield movie from the eighties.

Speaker 1: 16:56

If you haven't seen it, so with that I mean, honestly, psychology is so interesting to me as well. If I were to go back to college, probably not, but again, I do read books on it and stuff because it is so interesting. So what, in your opinion? What is the role or what role does critical thinking play in successful people or achieving success?

Speaker 2: 17:34

I feel like critical thinking in a way could both help and hurt people's entrepreneurial spirit, if you like. Critical thinking is all about, like the name implies, thinking critically, which means being critical of ideas that come into your mind and ideas that other people tell you and are trying to sell you, and so forth. It could make you cynical in a way and it could make you dismissive and, if you like, really believed in the statistics, like I don't know what it is today, but I know when I was going to school it was like 95% of all businesses fail. It doesn't make sense, like a good critical thinker would say, yeah, this doesn't make sense. It makes more sense to get like a secure job, but so you have to kind of put that aside or at least do some compartmentalization and keep that part locked up a little bit and be able to take risks. But where critical thinking comes in is now you could take more calculated risks and you can like if you could be really confident. You have to have a lot of confidence in yourself, because you need that extreme confidence to balance that type of cynicism and critical thinking that makes better decisions for you, because ultimately that's what it's about.

Speaker 2: 18:51

Critical thinking helps you make better decisions, which is a really good thing, and a lot of times, risking all of your money on adventure is not a good decision, no matter how you look at it. But it's usually those people that make bad decisions. They're right one out of 20 times and that's how they succeed crazily and make a lot of money. So, like I said, it's a really strange balance, but I think that if you do embrace critical thinking which everybody should, because outside of business it's like universally it's going to help you in every part of your life.

Speaker 2: 19:28

Just be a better person, be a smarter person. Be a better person, be a smarter person, be a better friend with relationships, with everything. Navigate life better, not get scammed. I mean, there's so many benefits to it. But when it comes to business, again, I think you really have to have a lot of confidence in yourself and take the risks. You could understand that they're the risks. Critically, you could say, yes, I know, this is a strong, this is a big risk, this is a high risk, but I'm going to do it anyway because I really believe in this idea, and just have a backup plan. Say, if it doesn't work, then I'm going to do something else, and that's where you have to balance that critical thinking versus the entrepreneurial spirit.

Speaker 1: 20:12

No, I think that's so important and I don't know if it's categorized as a different name. But, like, when I think of critical thinking how you're saying like, let's say, the stats of the 95% of business owners right, you know fail, or you know fail before five years the thing I like to think about too is like, okay, well, with that critical thinking or making my decisions off just that kind of critical data, it's like I start to think about okay, well, how many of those entrepreneurs actually gave it their all? How many of those entrepreneurs didn't just open a business, think it was going to be a success and then close their business and all those different factors. So I don't know if there's like an analytical, critical, you know, kind of version of thinking, but I think you have to take the data with a grain of salt and try to think why is the data or why is it that way? What could have led to those things?

Speaker 2: 21:04

Sure, related to that, there's something called the self-selection bias that's done in survey research and what made me think of that is, yeah, basically this whole idea of people outdoing the statistics. When people come to me with right now, one of the companies I run is book marketing and promotion. I run is book marketing and promotion. The statistic is like crazy like 1% of books actually sell, like actually make money, and the other 99% don't. But that doesn't mean that everybody who comes to me saying I want to market my book, it has a 1% chance and the reason for that is the self-selection bias. These people are self-selecting themselves out of that generic pool of people who write books and don't care. They care enough to come to me to say I want to market my book, I want to do something about it. Automatically that puts the success of their book the probability way up from that 1%. So it's similar just in life in general.

Speaker 1: 22:13

Oh no, that does make a lot of sense. So how would you balance emotional decision-making and rational decision-making? Because in both business and life, there's so many things that happen to us or whether it's an obstacle or just an event in the day that have an emotional tie to it, but we are required to make a rational decision even with our emotions being so high.

Speaker 2: 22:37

Yeah, this is a really interesting psychological discussion, or philosophical discussion, I should say it's more on the philosophy side because when you think about it, every single decision we make has an emotional element to it, an emotional component. You could always drill down the logical and say, okay, well, you can never do it, Like, if you try it, you could spend hours doing it. You could try to make a purely logical decision like this or that. There's got to be some kind of emotional component to it and so you can't separate that. You have to understand, like your own emotional state and your biases as well, and that's part of critical thinking, like understanding any kind of biases that you may have that would affect your decision-making, and then you take that into consideration while when making the decision. So that's kind of the the rational aspect of decision-making. It's it's not completely separating your emotion, but it's understanding your emotions and taking advantage of it. Another similar, related story and taking advantage of it. Another similar related story. I like to tell this story because it shows people that no matter how many PhDs you have or how smart you are or how much you talk about critical thinking, you could still not be critical thinking at times About a year ago, two years ago, when we just moved into this house, I had this big bedroom setter basically that we were desperate.

Speaker 2: 24:18

I was desperate to get rid of. It was taking up all the space in our basement and I wanted to use that space for exercising and I wanted to get rid of it so badly. I put an ad on Facebook for Facebook marketplace and then so I got a text message from somebody saying like oh, they would love to buy it. And, to make a long story short, it was a total scam. It was one of those things where they're going to send me some money and I need to return the money to them and it was like the biggest scam ever. Nobody in their right mind would fall for it.

Speaker 2: 24:51

I fell for it why? Because I wasn't in my right mind. All I was thinking about was getting rid of that thing. That's all I cared about. There was like my emotion level was at a 10 when it came to this transaction. In addition to that, I was also chatting with like four other people about the same thing. So I wasn't able to focus and I just, like the guy, walked me right down the path. I ended up losing 300 bucks. You know nothing. So disastrous, but it was a scam. I got scammed because I just completely let my emotion take over. So it happens. It happens to everybody, it happens to the best of us when it comes to critical thinking. But you got to be careful and from that point on, after that happened to me, I am so much more careful now and I try to keep my emotions at check when it comes to decision making or especially engaging with other people in any kind of transactions.

Speaker 1: 25:53

No, I think that's so important and I have actually gotten similar messages and stuff like that in the past, so it's funny. I was smiling when you said that, because I've seen that message before.

Speaker 2: 26:05

And let me make something clear it wasn't as obvious as this guy wasn't the prince of Nigeria. It wasn't that obvious. This guy wasn't the prince of Nigeria. It wasn't that obvious.

Speaker 1: 26:13

I've gotten that one too. Or someone needed to do personal training and they can't make it to the gym and this whole long thing, and I'm like this is odd. But with that, and accompanied by your previous businesses that maybe didn't work out right, how do you view something like that getting scammed or failure or pivoting in a business? How are you able to view it for yourself, to not dismotivate you, so that you can pivot and continue moving forward, to not dismotivate you so that you can pivot and continue moving forward.

Speaker 2: 26:52

Well, I guess I'd want to separate the traditional failure from getting scammed, because I felt like getting scammed that time. That really hurt me. It was like a huge psychological hit and it took a while to get over. And it was only through, like stories of dozens of other people that I really respect, like smart people like ah, you know that something similar happened to me, and they told the story. I'm like oh, it happens to everybody. And then being able to look back at my situation to see where I was at the time, why that happened, to examine that whole thing, I was able to learn from it and move on.

Speaker 2: 27:32

But when it comes to business, I mean, that's part of the game. I think that's a critical part of success is failure. So you have to do that. You have to go through all these things. So I don't even feel bad about it, like if, of course, like anything I do, I risk only as much money and resources as I'm willing to risk without, like it, destroying me or hurting me. But so so when that happens, it's just, you know, part of business, move on. There's no strong emotional negative emotions associated with that, whereas the whole scamming thing that hurt. But yeah, business was a little bit different.

Speaker 1: 28:21

No, that definitely makes sense. I can see the differentiating between the two then. And with your ventures and your projects, and now your sitcom and everything like that, how do you keep yourself? You know, staying productive and staying motivated when you've already reached a level of success to continue to reach that next level well, I don't think, uh, you could.

Speaker 2: 28:42

You could say like, um, there's one level and that's it. You know, you always have to keep on pushing yourself to go to an additional level and keep on going up. And when we're talking about success, we're not only talking about financial success. You have to define what it means to you. What do you want? What do you want from your life?

Speaker 2: 29:04

And one of the things that I always wanted is I wanted the freedom I wanted to be able to live and work from home and spend as much time with my family as possible. And I realized, like that wasn't. I'm not going to be like a CEO of a billion dollar empire, like with those desires, because that's not conducive to a CEO, a billion dollar empire. You know you have to be like on the road all the time you got to be at the company or whatever. You kind of define where you are, define what success means to you and just keep on pursuing that.

Speaker 2: 29:43

And then I am like just ambitious by nature. I think that's a large part of it too. So when I do kind of get what I want, I want more, and that I completely understand. That could be a good thing and could be a bad thing, depending on your mindset. Always wanting more, on the one hand, pushes you to keep on doing more and achieving more, and I'm not talking about always wanting more money or more things, but more achievements, more accomplishments, but more achievements, more accomplishments, doing more things for other people, whatever it may be. More is more and and I I want that I never not wanted it at any point of in my life which which keeps me going and keeps me motivated.

Speaker 2: 30:40

But also it could be if you don't have the right mindset, like if I thought oh my goodness, this next level of more that I want, I'm not achieving it, it's still out of reach. I'm such a loser. Life sucks. You know that's like completely the wrong attitude. You have to also appreciate what you've done and what you have. So again, it's a balance. You know, if there's a word of the day, then it's balance. You got to balance with the things that you have and the things that you've accomplished, with that which you want to achieve and then that that keeps you going so, with your background in psychology, I want to ask there's this?

Speaker 1: 31:20

So, with your background in psychology, I want to ask there's this, not push, but you hear it, more so with a gratitude mindset and waking up and doing affirmations and different things of that nature? Do you do any daily practices, whether it's meditation, affirmations, gratitude, anything like that? No, is there a reason? Why is it? You know, like a psychology that you've learned, or is it just something you never really dove into?

Speaker 2: 31:50

no, I I never. Well, I tried like um meditation before and it never stuck. I, I can't. I can't clear my mind for that long and, uh, when I did do it, I didn't see the kind of benefit when it was working, even a little bit, not to say it doesn't work, just saying like it doesn't work for me or I couldn't get it to work. In terms of gratitude, I think that's a great thing. I think it's a great thing to constantly be grateful for what you have, and I would say that I don't mean for this to sound like a cop-out, but I do feel like I'm grateful every day, and I see I go through my day being grateful without having to consciously acknowledge everything on a regular basis. I don't need to remind myself. The reminders are all around me, so it's very easy to stay in a grateful attitude. So maybe I'm just fortunate that way, but I never required that kind of mantras or affirmations.

Speaker 1: 32:54

No, I think that it's a level of gratitude, too. Some people have been able to just see it and acknowledge it as it is, and then other people that maybe don't have as much of a gratitude. You know, build life or mindset. They have to, you know, practice it just like you know, if you've never gone to the gym, you have to create that habit until it's just a part of your life, you know, and so I think that's something that you're lucky enough to have, you know, accomplished without having to sit there and, you know, tell yourself that you're thankful because you already are. So I think that that is really awesome. One thing I did want to kind of pivot, though, too, before we wrap things up, I wanted to dive into your, your background and your knowledge on AI, because it is so prevalent in today's world. How has it shaped your work, maybe the things that you're doing, the projects that you're doing, and are there things that excite you or concern you about it in the future?

Speaker 2: 33:50

It has drastically changed a lot of what I do. I remember it was back of March of last year when I was on the waiting list for ChatGPT and my number came up and I got access to it and it just like that day, changed my world. I mean seeing what it can do. I was able to like just tons of ideas about revising everything that I was currently doing and then creating all these new ideas. I was talking to my daughter the other day and I told her I'm like I can't stop thinking about all of these ideas that I would love to do, but I can't. You know, I just don't have that time or the resources. I need to kind of take things one at a time. But there's so many ideas, so many possibilities we're at, we're at the forefront of something huge and I think anybody should be able to. If you recognize this, you're one of the fortunate ones and you're able to capitalize on it.

Speaker 2: 34:53

I feel like this is the position I was in back in 1994 when the internet was first becoming a thing like ia, um, ai, is, is is coming, becoming a thing now, right, so we're at the same, uh, precipice. Just a different time in history for a different technology, the. There were a couple other ones, obviously. Obviously there was, like the personal computer. I mean, that was huge. I was around for that, but I was really young. I had one of the Commodore 64 was my first computer, back when I was like 10 or something, and then it was, and then, yeah, like the internet. And then, after the internet, it was like social media. That was like the next big thing.

Speaker 2: 35:43

And I really do think, like AI, this is it. This is probably going to be the biggest. It's like, where's it going to go? I don't know, I'm not afraid of it. You asked me if, like, it's something that I fear or something I forgot how you worded it, but no, like, ultimately, it's not something I'm afraid of. I don't think it's going to take over the world and kill everybody. I don't think it's going to destroy the economy. I think it's only going to. It's like a tool that's going to be used mostly for good, and the good is going to far outweigh the bad that's done with it. And I think that everybody should if you are, if you have any kind of technical ability whatsoever see how you could use it and see how you could take advantage of it and how you can make your business easier, your life easier, whatever we're at a good time in history.

Speaker 1: 36:39

No, think that's so awesome and I think that it's so important that you you said it's a tool, because I mean, that's how I see it as well it is a tool, it's something that you can use, just like, you know, if you used to only write things on paper and now you use word doc, it's like it's a new tool, right, it's obviously way more advanced.

Speaker 1: 36:56

I will say, the thing that kind of makes me smile or like, get some, get some little humor out of is the fact that that movie I robot with Will Smith you know, I think it was Will Smith way back when a lot of the things that like Tesla is doing with, like the, the van and you know all these things, it's it's funny how he's literally modeling it after like the I robot movie for some of the vehicles and I'm like, are you doing that on purpose, or you know, that part kind of makes me laugh a little bit, but honestly, I think it's so, it is so important, it is so cool to use it and especially if you use that as a tool, right, do you see any ethical challenges that we could?

Speaker 2: 37:45

be facing, you know, with some businesses or business owners or leaders in the future? I do. I think that there's a lot of ethical issues that's raised by AI and we need to navigate our way through that as a society, discover what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. I think, like for in my industry, publishing I have an issue with people putting their own names on books that are written by AI. It's not like against the policy, it's not against the rules or anything, but I see like a questionable ethical issue there and it's not as black and white as did AI write the book or did it not? Because a lot of times AI it helps you, like word, something right. So you have the ideas you could feed in, all the information you could feed in, like the whole story, the notes, the information you could feed in like the whole story, the uh, the, the notes, the whatever, and then AI will output something beautiful and flowing and it would be great.

Speaker 2: 38:48

So who actually wrote that? You know, I don't think it's much different than, uh, people hiring ghostwriters or, um, yeah, like somebody writing it for somebody else and they put their name on it, but yet, like Donald Trump never wrote any of his books, he always hired somebody to do it, but his name was on the book as if he wrote it and he probably dictated to the guy who actually wrote it, and then the guy wrote it, and so who actually did write it? I don't know, it's questionable. And then that's only in my industry. And then you could take this whole idea of AI and ethics and you could look at every single industry and there's going to be questions. But it's not for me to have to figure out every industry. I just got to focus on my own.

Speaker 1: 39:40

No, it's definitely an interesting point you bring up, though, too. I mean, I have a book coming out too, and it's it's one of those things where I did all the audio and then I had it transcribed. So again, there was an AI version of it that was transcribing word for word and then me editing it and then an editor editing it to make it actually sound like it wasn't someone just talking, you know, and so I could see exactly where you're saying, cause it does make sense. What's the difference between AI and a ghostwriter? They're both still not you, you know, so that is interesting.

Speaker 2: 40:12

So even when I wrote my first book this was back in like 2004 sometime I hired a professional editor for my book and they like destroyed the whole thing. I'm like this, this is not me, like I was reading it. I'm this is these are not my words and I ended up not going with them or not going with the version. But I mean, this was before AI, it's. I just felt like there was, there was more like there was more than an ethical issue. It was more like. This just isn't me. This isn't what I want to say.

Speaker 1: 40:46

You completely twisted what I wanted to say grammatically incorrect, like just just highlight it, let me know, I'll let you know if it's supposed to be like that. And then so she said okay. And I was like, believe me, I don't want it to be. You know, it doesn't need to all be like politically correct, you know, or grammar grammatically correct.

Speaker 1: 41:11

It's okay for some things you know, but one thing I do like to ask all the guests is you know you have a legacy wall right. So, on Dr Bennett's legacy wall, what would be one lasting message that you could leave for the up and coming generations? Whether it's in the entrepreneurial space, whether it's just something that you learned in life, you know any area, anything that just deeply resonates with you and your journey?

Speaker 2: 41:37

I guess if I had to sum something up, it would be enjoy the journey. And I guess if I had to sum something up, it would be enjoy the journey. I think too many people are so focused on the goal, the destination, when, if we look at life, the destination is really death and we shouldn't be looking forward to that. And if you look at it that way, then the journey is life and we need to enjoy it, because this is the only thing to enjoy.

Speaker 2: 42:01

People are constantly and this is where, like, a lot of psychology comes into play, positive psychology especially people are constantly always looking like at the next thing, like right after, like okay, and life is never good enough right now, but it will be if these certain conditions are met, which they're always moving the goalposts, because then there's something else or they change. So you really need to get in the mindset and get in the habit of enjoying yourself and enjoying life right now, right here, and then you could always look forward to the future. There's nothing wrong with that. But enjoy the journey no, that's so awesome and I think that is so true and trust the process, but enjoy the future.

Speaker 1: 42:39

There's nothing wrong with that, but enjoy the journey no, that's so awesome and I think that is so true and trust the process, but enjoy the process right. The man that can enjoy the process or enjoy the journey will walk further than the man that's just enjoys the destination. So thank you so much for taking the time out. Guys, if you are listening, I know you guys got a ton of information for this because I did personally. So make sure you guys share this episode with a friend. Make sure you guys leave us that five-star review, because it does help us in the rankings. Bo, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to hop on and drop some knowledge.

Speaker 2: 43:12

Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Missing the game. Life mindset causes shites. Got my mind on the prize. I can't be distracted. I stay on my grind. No time to be slackin'. I hustle harder. I go against the current Cause. I know my mind is rich to be collected.