How is your messaging driving people to action?

Should we be terrified or hopeful about the future? My guest today believes we face huge challenges with climate, technology, and inequality, but he also sees routes to tackle them. 

I can’t wait to introduce you to Brandon Burton. Brandon’s a Brand voice Strategist who helps businesses scale their communication in a way that means they still sound like themselves. 

He’s also a futurist - with a long-term perspective that puts me to shame. Something that we sorely need in a world obsessed with the next news cycle. 

In today’s episode we cover a LOT of ground, from 

• Communication being at the route of all the world’s problems, to
• The importance of equal and easy access to decent information, to
• The pressure we put on our children when we assume they’ll come up with the solutions to all the world’s problems, 
• Whether we’re using the opportunities we have to communicate with our audiences in ways that drive them to positive action, 
• And whether AI actually holds the key to solving some of these huge, seemingly intractable problems. 

If you’re looking at your newsfeed right now with a mix of confusion, hopelessness, and an inability to take Elon Musk seriously, then you need to listen in. 

Keep a notepad handy - you’re gonna need it! Let’s welcome Brandon to The Soap Box.

Find Brandon on Instagram
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Check out his podcast (especially episode 2 for his prescient thoughts on AI!)

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Transcript

Should we be terrified or hopeful about the future? My guest today believes we face huge challenges with climate, technology, and inequality, but he also sees routes to tackle them. 

I can’t wait to introduce you to Brandon Burton. Brandon’s a Brand voice Strategist who helps businesses scale their communication in a way that means they still sound like themselves. 

He’s also a futurist - with a long-term perspective that puts me to shame. Something that we sorely need in a world obsessed with the next news cycle. 

In today’s episode we cover a LOT of ground, from 

• Communication being at the route of all the world’s problems, to
• The importance of equal and easy access to decent information, to
• The pressure we put on our children when we assume they’ll come up with the solutions to all the world’s problems, 
• Whether we’re using the opportunities we have to communicate with our audiences in ways that drive them to positive action, 
• And whether AI actually holds the key to solving some of these huge, seemingly intractable problems. 

If you’re looking at your newsfeed right now with a mix of confusion, hopelessness, and an inability to take Elon Musk seriously, then you need to listen in. 

Keep a notepad handy - you’re gonna need it! Let’s welcome Brandon to The Soap Box.

 Brandon. I'm really excited that I get to talk to you on the podcast today, but all the conversations that we've had in real life or online have been amazing. So I'm really looking forward to sharing you with everybody. 

I'm really grateful to be here. Thank you. Yeah.

That's all right. So before we get started to give everybody else a little bit of context do you want to tell people a little bit about who you are, what you do day to day, and how you got here? 

Yeah. So I'm Brandon. I'm a brand voice strategist. So generally help businesses. Figure out their messaging and then build like marketing campaigns around it. anD a lot of the time I'm focused on how businesses can scale their messaging. So rather than just defining it, figuring out how other people and now more recently.

AI can take their brand voice and their messaging to to write on their behalf. So that business owners, CEOs, service providers don't have to do all of that themselves, but then also don't have to sacrifice quality in the output as well. I got into this because my older was in sales and I just really fell out of love with it. 

The more I figured out, the more I thought my work wasn't really adding much value to the world.  And then the stuff I really want to do, marketing seemed like a really good bridge to that. I think everything I've wanted to do the skills I'm learning and like,  the stuff I'm figuring out along the way is helping me become closer to doing the stuff I want to do.

So, yeah, for the time being, this has been a really good career for me. 

I'm a father of four kids, which is like, which is cool. I think that's a big part of who I am because again, in a similar way, when I figured out that,  I wanted to do more meaningful stuff, it's, it was with that view in mind, my oldest kids, my oldest child's 15,  the youngest is one.

And yeah, I want to, at the time I started a blog called our children's world, which was basically around being able to create a better future for. our children  and also  to then be able to raise children who would be able to thrive in whichever world they end up inheriting from us. And I just felt like the role I was in at the time was the furthest from that. 

As I was trying to build that blog, I realized how tricky getting online reach is, how tricky digital marketing is. And so I fell into that world. And then I suppose each kind of brand and.  Project and, like, skill that I've tried to take on since then is just again, yeah, been getting me closer to being able to build that out because I think that might be what I'm supposed to do. 

 Thank you. So As on this podcast we talk a bit about  the causes that people get on their soapboxes about we talk about how they work those out in their messaging like why those things are so important to them, that kind of thing.

So what would you say your soapbox or your soapbox is? 

I think that, so they probably all do fall under that general umbrella that we are on course to create a world that's worse than the one we should. And I think that responsibility to do the opposite. If I had a single kind of soapbox, a single issue, a single thing that I think is just that.  I think almost all of the problems we have are communication problems.

And,  again, a big part of why I wanted to get into marketing or to understand more about communication was because,  as marketers, we're some of the best communicators, we're some of the best problem solvers, we're some of the best  persuaders and I think being able to understand that, we're in a really  Powerful position to be able to impact issues that are a lot bigger than maybe some of the ones we're tackling right now.

I

And what kind of issues do you spend your time thinking about? 

mean,

laying awake at night going blah.

them. Yeah. Yeah. If, yeah, if, yeah, pretty much all of them. No. Yeah, I remember speaking to a futurist a number of years ago, this might have been 2017, 2018. And they said to me that. The three biggest issues impacting our future are climate change, artificial intelligence, and the growing inequality between people.

And I think the last five, six years have really demonstrated that,  the rich grow rich,  the poor definitely don't. And  The first two issues, climate and AI, are accelerators of that problem. I think that  generally  a lot of the things that we're distracted by, or that we're told, or that we're that are given kind of short term priority, really do feed into the fact that  on a medium term and longer term, a lot of these problems are compounding.

So, yeah, I spent most of my time thinking about  the impact of current events on  the next 10 to 50 years. Yeah. 

Do you find that's quite a lone voice thing? Like because it does feel like when I'm like on social media, when I'm reading the news, when like I listen to tons of podcasts, I read books, you know as much as having children lets you read whole books Like, and it feels like  most of the noise is around those, is around the next, like, not even 10 years, like the next five years, the next three years.

And a lot of the argument is, like, there are so many problems that we're dealing with now that we, like, we don't have the headspace right now 

Yeah.

10 to 50 years in the future.

Yes, I've definitely underestimated that over time because  and, and both sides are true, right, there are issues right now that are more pressing and certainly feel more pressing, but I think a lot of them,  the underlying cause of these issues are the same things that will impact the issues that we'll come across over and over

Yeah. 

And, you can look back 10, 20, 100 years and you'll see the same underlying problems there.  So,  so, and I suppose my way of,  and you're right, my way of looking, slightly more into the future, it does feel...  Even more than I thought it would quite  lonely or quite like, not many people are looking at it that way  and it is a challenge, but also I think it, again, I think if more of us did look that way, we'd potentially be able to step back and see some of the problems for what they are and recognize the patterns that existed in them, as opposed to  reacting to  timelines and reacting to news feeds and like,  really being at the mercy of what we're told is a problem and.

Some problems that get introduced  on any given day have been problems for a while, and, some problems that we think are the most pressing are actually just,  part of what is a larger, more systemic issue. So I think I've tried my best, especially over the last few years to step away from some of those immediate, here's what you should be worried about conversations  and also then to invite,  though it's difficult, like opposing views into my worldview.

So like, who are the people I disagree with? Where do I seek them out? How do I follow them? Like, because again, if, I think if we're told what to worry about and we're told the timelines that we should worry about them that's almost always fueled by someone else's agenda. So, taking a longer term view. 

I think it's rarer than it should be, but I understand why it's a very challenging thing to do because the world's never been easy,  but I feel like it's never going to get easier if we don't take a step back and analyze it properly. Yeah.

the argument, isn't it? Like, when things are a bit quieter, we'll worry about, like, climate change. Or when the economy is doing better, we'll worry about homeless people. Like, it's it's like me saying, when work calms down a bit, I will, like, clean out the loft. Or, I will, like, I'll deep clean the bathroom.

All things that I should probably be doing anyway, but like, there is, there's no quieter time. Like, it's not going to calm down  you have to decide what's priority. 

Yeah. Oh, definitely. And I think the prioritization base is really important. I've fallen into the mistake before of,  like, I used to take a really black and white view of things and just think, like, as a parent, if I tell myself and I tell the world that my biggest priority is my kids and their future, therefore, all my actions should be aligned with that.

And I think for a short while, I was quite judgmental of people who didn't see things that way. Who were like, well, actually, yes, I really love my kids, but I'm going to do X, even though there's conflict there. And I really struggled with that for a while. And now I just recognize that these things are, one, a lot more difficult to do, but also not everyone sees the world I do.

And that's probably my fault, not theirs. I think  that we can push things off to the future, but we've always pushed things off to the future and things haven't got better  in the ways that we've always wanted them to.  I also think it's quite  like, again, the argument in a similar way to what you just said, the argument that I've always heard.

Is that  our kids will be in a better place, we'll have more resources, we'll have, in order to tackle these issues that we can't and didn't. But I think that's,  the best case scenario of that is that we get extremely lucky. But again, there's no pattern to suggest that's the trajectory we're on.

So I think it's quite worrying to think like that. Although, again, I recognize why it's quite comforting to think like that. I recognize why it's quite easy to think like that. And quite like in any given moment, it's really convenient to think like that. I just don't know if that's. I've got no reason to think that's how it's going to play out.

Yeah.

a lot of pressure.  Like, on our little small people, there's  there's a, so Caitlin Moran who's the feminist author I think it's, looking around to see the book, I think it's the How to Be a Woman book, but there's a passage in it where she describes like, a group of parents. 

Not like a dinner party, but like sat around a dining room table with glasses of wine, like they come to the end of the meal, the children are like running off all over the place and they're talking about  climate change, or they're talking about like world inequality, I can't remember off the top of my head. 

And it's all quite doom and gloom and then one of the kids runs in and someone goes, but don't worry because these guys are going to grow up and like be geniuses and sort it all out. And I'm like,  she talks about how like that pressure of hearing that the world is essentially falling apart  and then also being told that you were the ones that are going to save it.

Like, it's a lot for kids to grow up with. But like, I definitely recognize that in situations that I've been in.

Yeah, definitely. And,  it sounds crazy, but I do have an expectation of my kids to be better than me. I think it's my job is to, I think a lot of us have that role. I will, we are. I may be expected or hoping to raise a generation that's better than us, but  I, yeah, I feel like we're failing our responsibilities if we just kick the can down the road completely and, or if we don't empower them to take action, if and when, like, they have to, because,  um, again. 

Maybe our kids will be superheroes and can do these things that we can't.  But I'd assume that generations before us would have hoped that about us too. In fact, they definitely did and they definitely had every right to. But we're here now, so it's like...  And some of these things, there's a finite amount of time that we can keep pushing them off.

So, so yeah, while I recognize there's a lot of challenges that exist right now and to not tackle them would be crazy and to not acknowledge them would be crazy. I think that  when we look at these immediate challenges, if we aren't able to see them from like a wider perspective, then we're we're missing the point.

We're just like fighting fires in the short term. I don't think we're really. making much progress. Yeah.

Yeah. So how do you keep that, like, longer term perspective,  personally? 

Um,  to be honest, I,  to be honest, I struggled not to. In fact the opposite is sometimes the issue in that, like, I really struggled to just concentrate on the here and now I've had to do a lot more work around that.  I think I've shared with you before, but like I was a parent quite young, so I've never really been an adult and not thought about.

my actions in terms of the future. I've never really thought, oh, what am I going to do, and have that just be around now. It's always been around, like, well, if I do this, then,  in five years, the kids can't do this or that. And I don't, that's not like, I'm not even sure that's a good thing. I just think now it's just, again, I struggle more in the inverse.

When it does come like  to long term thinking, I think there is just about patterns and trends and like trajectories you're on.  I think, I don't think it's, I don't think in many issues it's difficult to see that if you do X right now, Y will happen soon  and Zed will happen eventually. Like I think you can always see the path that we're on.

I think we can make excuses and we can rationalize. Well, actually maybe this, but I think generally we're all quite aware  what will happen next as a consequence of what we do now. And yeah, I think I'm like either blessed or cursed with the fact that I really struggle to switch that off.

Yeah, 

Yeah, I guess it can be both things at the same time. But you talked at the beginning about communication, and so it's something, it's a, so thinking and looking in that kind of perspective is something that you, that comes very naturally to you. And you're right, that on the whole, we all know.  like, what we should be doing, like we have a kind of a grand understanding that,  um, we should be thinking about the future of the planet and that we should be thinking about and that things are coming down the road that are going to cause us bigger problems, and so we have to have that longer term perspective. 

Where do you think,  where do you think the mismatching communication is. That means that we have that general understanding,  but  there seems to be quite limited  inserted action. 

I think there's two things. I think like when, if I think communication, like if I say every problem is a communication problem, I'm thinking  if we talked more and listened more and spread information more and  when people say that, like, I think it's like 50 percent of communication is body language or whatever.

I think as much as we can talk and we can say things, I think real communication, real, the ability to like, Spread those messages and articulate these things is in the body languages is in what we actually do, right? It's in like demonstrating some of these things.  So I think part of it is that just we don't have the attention span or the willingness to do those things to just focus on those conversations.

I think the second part.  Again, maybe the more damaging part is that  as much as me and you and a lot of other people would agree that these things are, we can see them where we might be relatively educated around them, we might be able to have conversations around them. I do think that the amount of  uninformed people.

Misinformed people, that's a that still makes up the majority. And when I think of the communication problem, I think how,  like, you could have a thousand scientists and a million intelligent people spread around the world with all access to this information. But if 90 percent of people aren't having that message translated to them, if most people on this planet don't recognize these challenges. 

They still make up, your voting populations, they'll steam up, the voices on your Twitter feed, there's still the people that you see, these still are decision makers, these are still the people who are part of that. So when I think of communication being a problem, I think if we all had access to the same information,  and we were all willing to communicate on it.  then wherever we end up is where we deserve to end up. But I think we'll end up in a place that we collectively don't deserve to end up because that knowledge or that power or that, like, those conversations are concentrated in really small areas. And like, and as soon as I thought about that's when I thought, no, these are just like,  and again, it's crazy because.  I might be the least suited person  to have in  conversations at scale with as many people as possible. I might be like the least suited person to like, like originally my plan was to create a podcast and a community and a membership. And like, I might genuinely be the least suited person to do that.

If I've spent again, five, six years. Just hoping someone else will do it like my whole thing at the start was like, well, this seems really obvious to me. I don't know why I can't find it anywhere else. Why is no one else building a version of our children as well? But that's fine because I'll see it.

Someone else will do it. It's cool. And like, they just haven't, it just hasn't happened yet. And like, it's not that I don't want to do it. It's just that I genuinely think someone else right there is probably better suited to it.  But it hasn't happened yet and I'm a little bit concerned because that means like, it's just means that like, what do I really have to, I really have to,

You, yeah, you do, you're gonna have to do it.

yeah. And not again, it's just, yeah, some of those things are around the communication things are stuff that I, again, I don't take for granted because I think having communications at scale,  really trying to impact people and,  um, build audiences and all this stuff is not, it's not easy, but some people do find it easy.

And I think I just, yeah.  Maybe there just isn't, maybe there's a reason why you can have one and not the other. But that personally, that's my ongoing challenge because  to me it feels like such, such a logical way of getting to where we need to get to. But yeah, I wish someone else did it. 

Anybody listening would like to partner with Brandon?  And...

Takeover, oh like, I need no credit for anything. I just feel like these are important things to do. So yeah, 

I think, because we had  two years ago, a year ago, we had a chat about about your, like, community and this concept that  there is no one  place where parents specifically...  And talk about these big issues  that are secretly or not so secretly terrifying them because of the impact that they'll have on their children and like how we navigate them and and where we find decent information and how we how we educate our children without terrifying them,  like in an empowering way. 

Because all these different forums  that exist,  exist, that used to be these open source places where you would have those conversations have been infiltrated by advertisers and misinformation and trolls and bots and um,  and TERFs and like you think about like Mumsnet and Twitter and like and Facebook, like all these places,  none of them are any longer  safe places to have those conversations.

Yeah, I'd agree with that completely. And again, not to, every place, well, most places, a lot of places have their value on the internet,  but,  but again, I don't know if because there, again, there are so many problems that need solving today that a lot of them will be focused on, and like, anyone should be able to go and post, I have this issue right now, I need to solve this right now.

These are all valid. Yeah, I suppose at the time, and maybe even still, I didn't see the other side of the coin, which is like...  Because all of us look at our kids, and if you don't have kids, just at the potential of the human race and see so much in it, right? All of us do. I think it's really difficult not to. 

And the only reason I, originally I angled it towards parents was because  I've never spoken to a parent who doesn't resonate with that. I've never spoken to a parent who doesn't think my kid could be whatever they want when they grow older. My kid could do whatever they want, and I only want the best for them.

And so, for me... That  universal power that sorry, that universal like  outlook, like we should be able to harness that we should be able to look at that and say, Okay, well, then what does actually mean? What can we do about that? Where are the where the immediate challenges? But again, I definitely underestimated just how  no judgment, because I'm involved too, about how just like distracted we all are.

Like how many other things consume our time and how kind of short term we are all forced to think. But again,  I don't think that's by accident. And if we as a populace are  distracted and confused and forced to think short term,  who does that serve? And why does it not serve us? And I think that those challenges in itself are like, yeah, bigger than me.

So yeah. 

yeah, it's like a massive global problem. We can do a little bit of it though, we can like deal with a little bit of it.

Definitely. 

So what part do you think?  AI plays in this. Like I don't spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about AI because it does feel like everybody's talking about AI and that's fine but,  and but it's not like I use it in my business for different things and it can be quite useful.

But I don't think it's the be all and end all.

Yeah.

And I also think that some of,  that it has the potential to be another one of those distractions when actually we could be focusing on a bigger problem. buT when I heard you at TCC IRL in London and you talked about, like, the future of AI and what you'd been exploring and the potential. 

Firstly, it wasn't anywhere near as depressing as I thought it was going to be. I...

for me. 

Because it feels like, whenever I have a conversation with you about anything, you tend to have this ability to take the topic and add this, like, tinge of hope. 

Oh,

nice.  And I quite like it. It makes me feel genuinely more hopeful about the world. 

But my,  my my thoughts around AI as I see it at the moment  is right now it's adding to that distraction and also  adding, not adding to, also  reducing the effectiveness of some of these platforms that we still do have these conversations on. So. For example,  um, LinkedIn recently introduced this ability to, like, do AI generated comments on posts  because everybody's like, well, the algorithm likes it when I comment.

So, and it's too much work just to actually. Have a thought. So I'm going to shove it into AI and it's going to put out this. So a lot of conversations that were happening in comments of some really interesting people  were all of a sudden like getting drowned out by these like blatantly AI generated things.

 And at the same time  there are, there's a conversation around like the natural biases of these different AI tools. Something which was flagged up really recently  on I think it was, no, on Sky News by an Israeli Palestinian historian who had plugged in  to to chat GPT.  Do Palestinians have a right to freedom? And the answer was basically it's complicated. And then he plugged into Israelis have a right to freedom. And ChatGPT was like, yes, like all states, Israelis have a right to freedom. 

That kind of thing feels less like a distraction and more  integral to where we want to take that kind of conversation.

Yeah, I would firstly agree that  it has become a distraction, although I'm hoping  that's a relatively short term issue in that  some of these things are just hype, right? And like the LinkedIn comments is a really good example.  If the market decides and by that, all the people who use LinkedIn decide that this is no longer an experience we're happy with. 

Either  LinkedIn  changes the way that works or people move to a different platform. I don't I'm not, it's not that I'm not worried about that because I'm worried that's even possible. I don't even think how have we got a technology this powerful and that's how we used to choose to use it.

I think that's crazy.  I think the secondary issues around bias and things like that, they're complicated because bias is definitely built into AI. And  there are times when it makes sense, there's almost, there are very few times that it makes sense.  Most of the times when it doesn't.  So the example you gave is a really good one and like quite a.

A chilling one, really, if you think about it,  um, most of those are less about the technology and more about the way someone has built  consumer facing model that we use. So whoever designed chat GPT has decided that, it should be  maybe more like  friendly and agreeable, first of all, which  is sometimes an issue in the, in, in the instance you just suggested, it's 

Not just the people who made it have, but that the data it scraped from the internet and where it's got that has  most of these models are trained or reinforced by actual humans. So at some point, someone sat in Kenya for 1. 32 an hour has had to see. That response enough times and feedback, but this one's okay.

And this one isn't that does that's been reinforced by humans. So  eventually we'll move beyond that. And there's already companies not doing that. Generally, I just think like most technology,  AI is a multiplier. So.  If we as humans are in this position, here's is what, here's what we're going to get, right?

If this is what we're doing and this is what the world is, then here's what we're just going to get like a multiplication of that. That's just gonna be amplified. So again,  if I look back systemically, I think what needs to change in the world for AI to reflect a better worldview, because the flip side of it is that  most people who are really excited about AI.

Look at some of the most pressing challenges of our time  and see AI as the route past those, whether that is climate, whether that is, world hunger, whether that is disease, whether that's, like, whatever it is, they see AI as the most likely route to getting us through some of the most important challenges.

If we were, a  decade before, and this was happening and we approached like a COVID pandemic with AI,  would we have had a much better chance of tackling that in a much shorter amount of time? Most people would say, yeah. So,  so I think it is just, and again, just like with most things, it's about getting our own house in order, deciding what our priorities are  and then using technology to to tackle those.

I think the only issue is an AI is. An exception is that  it's very likely we're creating an intelligence that  is more intelligent than us. And we don't know how that goes because we've never been in that position before. And again, it doesn't have to be a bad thing.  I think a lot of time when I talk about AI, it tends to like, I tend to cross a bit negative because there's so many unknowns.

But really, I just think it's just that, like, if it reflects humanity and humanity is in a good place, we shouldn't have anything to fear. 

Yeah, because that was going to be the next, my next question is like, is AI the key to solving some of these big long term problems? Because we don't have the attention span, but like, A compute, an algorithm working on it. Does it like that the  the planet that they make in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in order to answer the, like the plan that, that massive computer is just like working on in the background while we are just getting on with our lives trying to solve all these big problems?

Like is that Yeah. Is that the key, is what we

To me, that's such like an,  it's such an exciting possibility to think that we could end up even close to something like that. And not just possibility, like we could, but that's actually a trajectory that is realistic for us. Like we could, that's really within our lifetimes and everyone will put different timelines that could be, we could be five years away from that, 20 years away from that.

I know a lot of people don't like Twitter or have left Twitter  but Elon Musk has named the AI they're building into Twitter, Grok,  which is based on.  the same AI model you just talked about. And there's potential in that in a very similar way that this is like, but I don't, firstly, I don't want to give that man too much credit, but also these things are like.  Again, if they're reflective of what we do then I'm probably way less focused on the technology and more focused on like, what do we decide our priorities are and who has access to this information? And because if we tackle those then it should be a lot harder to get these things wrong.

Yeah.

No, that's a really good point.  So.  Along those lines then, if we are, we want to be having those conversations, we want to be working out what those priorities are and aside from getting on the plane and flying to Davos and hobnobbing with all the millionaires and billionaires.  It's like adding to climate change just by arriving at a ski resort.

  How do we do that? So the people listening to this broadcast, apart from, my mum tend to be tend to be people who run their own businesses, or who are part of businesses or organisations or brands. And  They are building those businesses and they want to, they want to make money to all, like, do whatever their vision was for that business.  But they also want to  be addressing some of these causes. They want to be helping, they want to be contributing to those conversations, like pushing them forward keeping them in people's minds at the forefront, like, all that kind of thing.  As business owners, as communicators how do we do that in our messaging, do you think? 

So, I think.  First of all, it's obviously, it's very difficult. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Like over time, it has been very proven to move the needle as business owners because there's a conflict, right? There's a conflict between this idea that you need to earn money and there's a specific systems that allow you to do that and there's ones that don't. 

And also that, in order to earn money, you appeal to as many people as possible and your messaging is therefore quite restricted.  So it is really challenging. I think.  The number one thing is you have to decide like where those red lines are like what you're willing to not do what you're again, like I said earlier, I think a lot of it as much as just like you. 

I'm really focused on messaging  and where businesses  can like  how their words can align with their value, etc. I think a lot of the times, especially now. In 2023, people want to see actually, did they say that, did their actions reflect that, where can I see that and what they actually do in their business?

And that's a whole, that's a whole different piece.  But I think just.  Like,  obviously it's different if you're a personal brand, if you're a one person, if there's, a relatively small team, I don't think it ever hurts to be as vocal as you can be about the things that matter to you  in saying that I very rarely think those things should be like  similar to what we said before, just reacting to what's going on around you.

I rarely see that being helpful. And I think most people,  even if intentions are right, I think most people see through that. I don't know how much buying you get from that anyway. I think. I think I always look to the people who are  not just maybe consistent and have been doing it already.  But might even be willing to disagree with the timeline because at least I know that what you say, you mean, like there's very really, there's very little in this for you to gain other than you letting us know what you think.

I think  businesses might struggle therefore to like bridge the gap between their audience, their community, their people, their customers and decision makers.  I think. Again, if you, let's say, for instance, you're a business and people see you on their timeline twice a week and they see you in their inbox once a week and, and then when you're selling something, they might see you even more.

That's an opportunity that not everyone has to like actually reach people. And that doesn't mean you spend half of your word count, like convincing people that, climate change is real and this is what we should tackle it. But  in seeing your messaging and in seeing what you write about, they should be closer to  Taking action in areas of their life that matter than not.

I think we waste a lot of words not doing that. I think we waste a lot of time just  getting people to buy stuff when  we claim to represent more than that a lot of the time. 

yeah, that's quite a big challenge, 

Yes.

yeah, we're all like

But I...  Do you know what? It is a real challenge but I will say again, me and you had this conversation and you're the only person who reacted to this conversation in this way. So,  so I've always had a problem with  with Facebook ads. I think that the Facebook  targeting machine  has probably done more harm than good.

I think it's been extremely problematic in the past. And I think that's intentional. I don't think that's like a by product. I think they know exactly what they're doing and it makes money. And I think when you decide a business owner to run ads,  no matter what your intentions are, no matter how you decide,  how you justify you are contributing to that machine, right.

And that sounds really black and white and really harsh, but I think in some way or another,  that is part of that. And. I completely get it because almost all businesses have to run ads to gain attention. That's cool.  But as an example, let's say we're marketers, right? So we get to decide or at least get to shape what marketing is.

We have that power. Not all businesses do and that's fine. But if you're a marketer and you get to design marketing campaigns and you get to build them and grow them and decide how you reach new audiences.  you're almost uniquely positioned to consider the alternatives, to think of other ways to do it. 

And if in those actions, other people can see there are alternatives to doing stuff, there are other ways to.  Shape the internet to build things, to create stuff, to reach people, to communicate your message, then  way more than the powers we have of consumers of like, Oh, well, I'll recycle and hope that they actually recycle it.

Like, rather than all of that, you have actual direct ability to do stuff and we're talking as marketers, but in all industries, that's the case, there'll be something in your industry that is.  That is doing more harm than good and you have the ability to go a different route to, and we really on a sacrifice,  a level of profitability or a level of like revenue in order to do that.

And  I'm past the point of like saying everyone should do X, everyone should do Y, everyone should do the thing because I don't think anyone should be able to do that. But in the same way.  If you look at your own business and you can think, okay, is there something I could be doing about, even if it feels tiny,  what impact does that have in on my small audience, my large audience,  how does that speak more to my values than the thing that I say about my values?

Like, could I say, oh my gosh, I really hate like, timelines and algorithms. Yeah, I could say that, or I could just stop running ads. Like, and again 

people listen to this might think that's crazy. I'm never going to stop running ads.  And that's fine. But for me, it's like, if that's not it, what is what, where's the thing that you decide is the line you would draw?

Where's the thing that you think in order to grow my business in the way that I've told people I am and to the way that I want to, where's the line I'm going to draw, what's the behavior I want to change? And I think that's probably the biggest impact we can have because all the rest of it  can be confused as like  performative or

Not very impactful.

So yeah, I think what we do and how we do it is maybe more powerful.

yeah, like demonstrating that there is some element of sacrifice. Not in a, like, martyrdom type way.

Yeah.

Like, oh, woe is me, I'm so poor because I won't run out. But, like, but yeah, saying I'm doing this  and I'm not doing it because it's good for my business. And I'm not doing it because... It like, strategically it makes sense.

I'm doing it because these are my values and this is what I've, this is what I've talked about, this is what I've thought about, this is what I've decided  and yeah, logically it might sound really stupid but this is. This is why. And that kind of,  that opens up, as well as demonstrating that you do actually live your values, and therefore people will, you'd imagine, take you more seriously generally, it also opens up that conversation  with those people around that value and around why you hold that value  widens their perspective  in terms of Yeah, things that they might not have thought about before.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think any, in our work, but just generally, I think any chance you have to do that, if we talk about like influences, but anytime you actually have the opportunity to influence people in that way, to make them think a different way, to make them  see things in action, rather than just, because we've all heard, we've all heard everything.

There isn't a message or a promise or a commitment or a value that I haven't heard. That I haven't seen on a website or an about page  and none of us could now be like blamed for not believing any of it because it isn't always easy to demonstrate and we can all think of examples where things have contradicted that.

And don't get me wrong, these things are extremely hard. Like I always say. To people that values are very hard, like, I think we put a lot of effort and work into like defining our values and stuff, but actually living by them is extremely difficult. None of us can say we do it all the time, but I think that there is like a wide gap between saying we're a thing and doing the thing.

And we all know in our minds really deep down where we fit in that spectrum. And I think any opportunity we can get to like close that gap to be closer to one is like,  To me, it's almost like the responsibility of entrepreneurship. It's like, if you're building a business and you're saying all these things, you really do have the opportunity in a small way,  but in a way that compounds to like really shape these things.

So, yeah, I'm all about that. 

And and you are really, because I, there was a story, I don't know if it's on your feed, but there was an Instagram story a couple of weeks ago, where you talked about. Anthropic versus OpenAI 

yeah.

which was so interesting. And not only was it interesting because it told me lots of stuff that I didn't know about working practices and ethics and that kind of thing, which is really helpful from an informational standpoint, but also from like a decision making standpoint. 

But  you didn't tell everybody who was using ChatDPT that they were being unethical.  Like you didn't go, this is wrong, stop doing it, do this instead.  Which I think,  sometimes when you've,  sometimes when you have a value or a belief or an opinion and you've, and you want to speak out about it, it's really, it's much easier to go, like, I'm now right, and I'm telling you that all, that you're all wrong, and you all need to change.  Whereas what you did was you presented the information um, and  you empathised with your audience. Like, that it was not an easy decision and that it wasn't cut and dry and that it didn't mean that they were terrible people if they were doing all this. And you gave them permission to carry on doing whatever it was that they were doing anyway. 

But you just held out this, like, other option for them as something else to think about.  And that was quite a tricky balance. 

To you because I I'm always really conscious of that, like, again, like, we can all do it, like, you discover something and suddenly you're holier than thou and you know everything and like, I'm really wary of that because none of us know everything. So thank you for noticing that.

Yeah, I actually archived that post because um, and I did make very clear in the post originally that none of these companies are perfect. Yeah. And I would definitely say that the way Anthropic  approach their work  is more responsible, it's more safety focused, but it isn't perfect.

So none of these are, and I archived it because at the time I was going back and forth and I was thinking like, just because it's better doesn't mean it's best. And am I giving that impression? And I really need to go back and think through that. But to me, ultimately.  It's more about choice. I think  it's like with anything, if there is only one provider, only one way of doing things, it doesn't really matter  whether we like it or not, we have to do it, right?

Or we feel like we have to do it. And I think the more...  Like, for instance, when it feels like there's only Facebook because you're either on Instagram or Facebook, it feels really restrictive and it's very hard to step away from. I think AI is a similar example to that. Like, if we ever feel like we're restricted to one thing, even if we think that thing is okay, we should really question why we're restricted to one thing and who else can we use because we spoke about bias, we spoke about things like that.

Any one way of doing anything.  With this technology is particularly dangerous, but yeah, I do try to,  I, yeah, I think my business could be better  if I did other things.  aNd I try not to just like create content for the timeline. I think if I create something, it's because that's what I think.

And that's that,  like, if I ever get clients from Instagram, which isn't a lot, it isn't people who have found my thing at the time. It's someone who I might've seen somewhere else, but it's gone to my Instagram before. Okay.  There's a connection there. And I think, like, I'll always encourage people to do that, to make sure that there isn't that disconnect between what they say, what they do, and then what it actually turns out that they do.

So, I'm trying my best, 

I think you're doing alright. . Well, that seems like a good place to wrap things up. I could like sit and chat about this all day, but like, we've both got kids, so we don't have the time. If people want to come and find you and devour all of your content, Then where would, should they go? 

I am Mr. Brandon Burton on all the platforms or Mr Brandon burton.com. 

And if people want to hear you talk more about AI, then you've been on Kira Hug and Rob Marsh's podcast, AI for Creative Entrepreneurs.

Yeah, correct. Yeah. 

It's called.

yeah. Yeah. And but yeah, generally check that podcast out anyway because, it's good and it's a good way to look at AI in maybe as an entrepreneur in a different way, but yeah come find me anywhere. Cause I'm always willing to talk about these things.

Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you so much, Brandon. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Thanks, Peter. This was awesome.