How To Generate Ideas That Sell with Author Robert Gaines

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Robert Gaines, author of “Scintilla,” which he describes as a practical, psychology-driven guide for anyone who wants to generate business, product or service ideas. 

For more information about Robert and his book, visit his website at 

https://freetimemastermind.com/ 

You can reach me at chrisbournea@gmail.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello, and welcome to the Culture Beats Podcast, featuring conversations about pop culture and many other aspects of life. I'm your host, Chris Bournet. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Robert Gaines, author of Scintilla, which he describes as a practical, psychology-driven guide for anyone who wants to generate business, product, or service ideas. Without further ado, here's our conversation. Well, Robert, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Sure, of course. Um, eight years in the Army, and uh right at the end of my military career, I started my first business, which was a recording studio. And uh a couple of years later, I was at uh University of Louisville where I got my bachelor's of business management. And uh, strangest career pivot after that was uh an art gallery in 2008, and then very recently started a mastermind group and and um podcast, wrote the book. And so yeah, I really got energized. But I I in the interim between that, I was in the insurance industry for a long time. I still technically am. They pulled me in on contracts. I was a fraud investigator, which is very exciting work. But during that time where I worked corporate, I put my entrepreneurial brain to sleep. And then about at the end of 2023, I got that hunger again to get to get back in. And I've been, you know, gonzo ever since. And I I've I'm so much happier, you know, doing this kind of stuff and and sharing ideas because it's yeah, I missed it.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Sure. So that's kind of a that's kind of a um a big um dichotomy between an art gallery and the insurance industry. How how did how do those how do those two things even intersect in the same thing?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Sure. Well, even the um even the recording studio, the recording studio and the gallery started almost exactly the same way. Uh, because I I'm not the world's worst artist, but I love hanging around artists because they have something I don't have. They have what I want. You know, I wish I had that talent. So I've always surrounded myself with people like that. And they always complained. Initially, bands were complaining that uh they couldn't rent live gear and uh they couldn't get anybody to run sound. So I bought some live gear, got it together, and after my tenth gig of people pouring beer right into my monitors and all my, you know, just yeah, it was bad. I said, you know, I enjoy this, but you know, where the smoke, people were putting cigarettes out on my panels and stuff, I thought, I how else can I do that? And that's what I thought. Okay, let me start a studio. Gallery was the same way. I mean, I was in the army, man. I was no art aficionado. I didn't know anything about it. But I was hanging around artists and they said these uh galleries are ripping us off. Same thing the musicians were saying about the studio, same thing. And I said, okay, what's a gallery? A gallery is some lights and some walls and a good marketing um program, which it which it was. Uh so I opened up a gallery in San Antonio. It did really good. It was during the housing crisis. It was hard to sell art during that time, but we did considering I was a first time and didn't know anything about art, we we did some really amazing stuff down there. And uh yeah, good memories about all of that.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Well, the way you describe the uh owning the recording studio, I mean it sounds like a cliche. It sounds like oh, rock stars or or musicians in general are known for trashing studios and you know, trashing hotel rooms. You think, oh, that's just a cliche from like biopics or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

But yeah, yeah, it's no cliche. The reason why I'd stopped the studio is somebody came in and stole everything.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah, I mean, I wish that was 98. I was really, you know, if you talked to me 15 years ago, I was still sad about it. But it look, that's not an industry where you grow old gracefully. So they did me a favor. I didn't now, I wouldn't have said that in '98, but I realize now that, you know, they did me a favor because you know, your ears go and a lot of other things. And and a good studio needs to keep their ear to the street and know what's hot and what's not. And that's very, very difficult to do. But I the big thing is, Chris, I got to do it. And and that was my at that time, that was my dream to have a studio, and I got to do it. You know how many men out there die with a dream in their heart? And I've got gotten to do a couple of things wild that I wanted to do. So hey, I'm grateful.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

That's so cool. And it seems like you kind of got out before the music industry took a turn and everyone is doing recording on their either their laptop or their phone. So the age of the studio with the the you know, the control booths and everything, it seems like that's kind of a not not totally a thing of the past, but it seems like it's less common.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

That's absolutely true. Um, what's crazy is you know, the studio was 98, and by the year 2000, well, even in 98, there was there was a lot of piracy going on. So that so it was the beginning of the industry being destroyed. Because the, as you know, the big record labels didn't understand this peer-to-peer, this theft that was going on. And they responded it to it too late, and then it it was all over with. We thought naively that the internet and then later social media was going to democratize artistry because I love artists. I want to see them make money doing what they love to do. And even now with all this technology, it's a it's still just a handful of people that make all the money. You know, it's five, it's and you can look at any industry. There's five percent YouTubers, podcasters, same thing. Five percent are making 95% of the money, and then there's then there's everybody else. And I really naively thought that the internet or social media was going to even out the playing field. But that's that and that's not a sad thing, by the way, Chris. That just goes to prove uh you better not get into something unless you're ready just to hit it harder than anybody else out there.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Right, right. And that's kind of your area of expertise now, right? Is identifying demographics and how you can kind of scale up an idea.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Right about that in your book. Sure, sure. That's right. So how how that came about, um, you know, obviously part of that book was somewhat rooted in reverse engineering the businesses I had started because I didn't just do those two businesses. I was involved in other businesses. Those were two that I totally completely did alone, but there were other ones that I collaborated on, and then there were um where I went and consulted for people. And I like to get that story about where did you come up with that idea? And for a lot of people, I mean, you think about Christopher Reef, the guy that plays Superman, and I'm not saying this to be sarcastic, but he didn't do any research and he had no concern about people with spinal problems until he fell off that horse and then he couldn't move from the neck down. And then he became the face of a movement, helped generate a lot of money in that direction. So you'll see this line where there's this, you know, strong reason to cure this or to fix this, and then they become entrepreneurs. Well, I really got inside of that on the book. So, who my book is for is the old version of me a long time ago. You're trapped in a cubicle. You don't know, you want to break free, you want to get your freedom somehow, and you just don't know what to start. You, you know, you see people on social media doing this and that. You go through the book, and I explain both. If you're the meditative yoga type, I there's stuff in there for you. If you're more like me and you want to do searches and look at hard data and figure out what direction to go based on trend and out, hey, we've got something for you there too. So through the end of that journey of that book, at the end, you should come up, you should come through it with some ideas for products or services that will be viable that you can start your own business. Um, the the marketing is, even though I have a background in it and I, of course, I'm happy to talk about it, the book is mostly about coming up with the idea because I think there are other authors like Gary Vaynerchuk, for example, who are like there are already great books about marketing. So I tried to keep my book in my lane about seeing a good, you know, knowing something good when you see it. And um, just to say something that's unique about the book for your audience, I think the two, I'll just mention one of the two best things I think that somebody could invest their money in right now. Um, one is property in a foreign country, which is a whole other subject because you know, not there's nothing cheap here in the U.S. You're gonna buy gold, you're gonna buy silver. They're sky high. You can't go into the uh stock market because we all know it's in trouble and CDs aren't paying any money. So what are you gonna do with your money? You have to be careful with the the foreign product, uh, the foreign property. But the other thing that the book talks about is intellectual properties. What are all these bands doing now? They're selling all their IP to the labels and to these different why are they doing that? Because this is a great opportunity. Now, I don't expect somebody to play and invest their money without them knowing what they're talking about. But I think right now, because people think that there's no money left in recording or people think AI is going to stop the ability for authors to make money, yeah, people are scared and they're selling their intellectual properties for dimes on the dollar. So even me and you, you and I could get together and we could buy a former New York Times bestseller and reprint it, do a narrow, do a new cover. I'm telling you, it's people would be shocked to know the prices of some of this stuff that that's going forward behind the scenes. And it's gonna make and it can make you a lifetime of money because you you make that book one time or you reproduce it one time and then you sell it. Like audiobooks, there's nothing to print, nothing to manufacture. You don't have to worry about if we get into it with China. That audiobook's gonna just keep cranking out because there's no production cost as far as Amazon is concerned. So sorry for the rabbit hole, but I wanted to tie it all in.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

No, no, because that kind of leads into what I was gonna ask you about the um the creator mindset versus the editor mindset, because a lot of people can come up with ideas, but executing the idea or realizing, okay, this idea is viable, this one isn't. How how do you what's the process for that of determining what's a viable idea?

SPEAKER_01 10:40

I would say at its at its most basic, because there's a lot of things that people want that say, I want the solution to this problem, but are they willing to pay for it? That's the that's the big that's the biggest difference. And um as far as viability, there has to be some proof out there that people are willing to exchange money. Now, how do you do that really quick? Well, as I mentioned in the book, you can create, and Jeff Walker didn't invent this, but he came up with it. He mentioned it in his book Launch, which is a great book about how to launch a business. He says, start with your minimum viable product. So your idea doesn't have to be perfect. And I guarantee you, Chris, you've pivoted from the topics that you probably talked about when you first started your podcast, just like I did. And every business I started, I always ended up in some different aspect in the end, different from what the conception was from the beginning. So I just say start with the idea. Get it out there, shop it around, try to sell the most minimally viable version of it. Don't, and I know people that went and got patents and had 5,000 of something made in China and then had a shipping container of it shipped over, and then they found out nobody wanted it. You don't have to do that. Get some prototypes out there, do a Kickstarter. There's a lot of different ways. So, so I guess my answer to your question is it doesn't have to be perfect. Okay. Uh, the different, the the whether something is viable or not is really up to the buying public. It's hard to know. Even an artist, even famous musicians, they'll they'll tell you, we were in the studio, we thought this was gonna be our big hit off this album, and nobody, radio stations wouldn't even play it. And then the one song that all you know, you know, that one song that almost didn't make it on the album ends up being the the big hit. So it's it's hard to know when you've got a hit.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

So what what do you think is the difference between being uh persistent and just uh not giving up on an idea that you think is viable and being kind of foolish? And you know, the old cliche about doing the same thing over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, which I don't think is always the case. But like, for example, I I I I don't know if you've ever seen the Rick Bieto uh YouTube channel where he's talking about the um I don't remember the artist's name, the song that's really hot right now, Ordinary. Um, that artist had posted that song on TikTok like 147 times before it took off and went viral. And the label the record label had told him this is not a single, no one's going to be interested in this. And for some reason he just had this feeling in his gut that if the right people just hear this song, it'll take off and become a hit. And now it's like it's it's huge. It's one of the few songs that me as a music fan could one of them one of the few contemporary songs that I could actually name. So what so he obviously had a belief that despite the uh the 146 unsuccessful times posting the song, that just not to give up on it? When what is the turning point to know, okay, it's I've tried dozens of if not hundreds of times, now it's time to give up, versus like the uh who was it, uh Edison that supposedly did 10,000 experiments before he came up with the light bulb. How how do you know when to keep going and when to give up and just say, okay, I tried this, it's not viable?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Well, and all of those great questions, by the way. And all, and I've never been asked that, although I do I love the subject because there's to my knowledge, there's only two books about when to quit. And I've sought them out because people don't like talking to. Look, I was in the army for eight years. They didn't want you to quit on anything. You're on a road march, don't sit down. You're running, don't ever stop. And unfortunately, I was raised in that I was taught that in the home, and then I was taught that in the army. And so I tell you what happened. I I wasn't, I'm not a big fan of college, by the way, even though I went, even though I got that piece of paper. I'm not a fan. And if I had it to do over, I probably wouldn't have gone. I don't have a lot of regrets, but I will tell you the one moment where I felt like the professor hit me across the head. And I was in my 30s when they said it. They defined a phrase called commitment to escalation. I had never heard that before, didn't know what it was. And then they were saying it's when you're so involved in something and if you've you've already poured in so much time and resources, you just can't let it go. Even though anybody, and here's the key part of the definition, even though everybody on the outside can't possibly see how that's viable. Um, and that's tied into sunk cost and a bunch of other things. But that's one of the few things in business school where I was like, okay, because I had done that so many times because I was told to just hold on no matter what. Um, and sometimes no just means no, not right now. Look, and and again, I like to to make a comparison that that we both deal with. I play around with the titles of my videos on my podcast. Sometimes I have to go back and play around with thumbnails. And I know it's a good episode. The guy was engaging and and I know the values there. So I just I keep doing enough iterations of it, and maybe it'll find its audience. But for me, and the answer to your question is everything has a time burden, has a time cost. And for this young man, it worked out. But I also know because I was in the business for not for very long, but but I still have friends that are in the business. And there are guys, I'm telling you, they've been trying to get signed for 30 years, but they they want to sing and play guitar. They're really good guitar players, and they don't, they should never have their mouth near a microphone. And I'm telling you, and I'm sorry to say this, it's never gonna happen for them because they can't sing, you know, and and that's okay. I had artists come in that their art at their current level was never going to be on the wall. And that was hard, and I never said it that way to people. I was always nice. But um, yeah, sometimes you have to go back and just get better skills. So for me, when I'm making that decision, because I've abandoned a lot of projects, because after university, I learned don't get, I don't care if I spent I spent six thousand dollars on something two years ago. It was very painful because I thought it was going to solve a lot of problems and it didn't. And I had that, I could feel that my fingernails were holding up and had to just let it go and say, you know what, that was a$6,000 lesson, and don't ever give that guy money again. And yeah, so it if you're I think commitment to escalation is rooted in um it could be rooted in poor self-esteem. Because now I believe, I didn't believe back then when I was hanging on to everything, but I realize now I have enough confidence that either myself or the fellow members of the mastermind group, we can come up with another good idea. You know, I don't feel like the guy that I only have one good song in me. I've I've got intelligent people around me now that I can pitch something, we can shape it, we can refine it. But the people on their own, they're the good, they're the ones that have it the hardest. So they need peer peers and mentors around them. And that's gonna just having a couple of other eyes and ears around you prevents so many problems. And inventors and a lot of entrepreneurs are loners by nature, and you've got to team up with people. Man, that solves so many problems.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, for sure. How do you tell, um, how can you tell between someone's subject subjective opinion that this idea isn't good enough, or you just don't you just can't sing, and you know, so many things, especially uh creativity, uh, are subjective. How how can you tell when you're getting feedback that is actually useful and not just an opinion that someone else may have a different opinion?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

What I try to do is, and this is hard for a lot of people, it's hard for me for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Um I try to think like the consumer of the product.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

And if their criticism or suggestion is is valid in the through the eyes of the customer, that then I I might make I might make some changes. Because you again, you and I both know as podcasters, we were at that point where we weren't getting many views and there wasn't a whole lot going on. People are really easy with their suggestions, even if they've never had a podcast before. So first I have to look at the person's background. Did they have they had a podcast? And the people that I listen, the my favorite people to listen to are the ones that are just one step further down the road. It's a guy, if I and I've never talked to a billionaire, but I don't think I could relate to them. They're so far down the road. Um yeah, you know, they're like, just buy a yacht and you'll have fun. I'm like, oh, okay, thanks. You know, I did ever when I was young, I was at a party. Um, it's probably in my early 20s, and a very wealthy woman, the classic string of pearls, she said to me, Have you ever been to the South of France in the summer? And I'm like, there no, and probably never will, you know, and just there's different worlds out there. So I like to go to somebody who's who's just achieved it or achieved it last year. Um, I take great value in in the suggestions of that person because they just went through it and the lessons are fresh in their mind. So I mean, I do think there's value in talking to an 80-year-old Wall Street veteran too. Yeah. But but but for the immediate development of a product or the immediate solution of a problem, I just need somebody who's just a little further down the line.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Yeah, what you're saying sounds like the concept I've heard a lot about uh in the past few years of deliberate practice is that the way you get better at something is to not just put in the whatever it's is 10,000 hours of practice to become fluent at something. Because if you just blindly do practice something, you'll you'll bake in bad habits if you don't get the right feedback. But getting advice from someone who, as you said, is just a little bit further from you, not someone who's a maestro who they can do this with their eyes closed. Someone who actually, like you said, they're successful, but not so out of the out of the stratosphere successful that they're not relatable.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

And I'll share a trick with you, Chris, that that I do to make that more effective. So I've had a lot of careers. Now, I I don't know if I've ever said this during an interview, and I've wanted to say it several times. Have you ever gotten that printout from the Social Security Administration that shows all the all every job you've had since you were 16? I think I have 34 or 36 jobs in there. And I'm I'm not I'm not even close to exaggerating. I can I could probably name 20 of them, but we, you know, we don't have time. Um so I've done a lot of different things. But there's a trick that I've that I learned when I go into something new, just like when I went into podcasting. I grabbed a bunch of books about podcasting, I grabbed a bunch of books about interviewing, I grabbed a bunch of Books about asking questions. So anytime I, and that's, and I'll tell you the very quickly this the story behind the book why I decided to write it is I got into a situation where a friend needed me, he needed to come up with a bunch of different product ideas. He was basically creating a miniature version of Amazon. And he thought naively, and he hadn't done his research, that he was just going to get a bunch of cheap stuff from China and and compete against Amazon on a small level. I'm oversimplifying it. But um, and then he found out he'd have to order a ship full of that product to even get a low enough price to make a margin. So he came to me, he goes, Do you think we can come up with some stuff from scratch? And I said, I mean, we could do merch. I said, we could get shirts, and I said, but from the ground up, are you kidding me? He says, Yeah, can you? Because he was paying me. So I said, uh, I'll look into it. So I immediately went to go grab books about how to come up with product ideas. Chris, there weren't any.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

And that's when I went, oh, that's the idea.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

And unfortunately, I had to go to him and say, look, you know, we can't wheelhouse this and build this from scratch. I don't have the intellectual firepower and there's nothing out there, but I'm gonna take a couple of months off from this project and I'm gonna write this book because it I had enough again to reverse engineer what I had done before to figure out how I did that. And then the rest of the book came from uh research. And I apologize, I probably didn't answer the question.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

No, you no, you are, you are.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Okay, got I got lost.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Yeah, you know, an entrepreneur uh that I follow is Tom Bilew, who was uh involved in starting Quest and sold it for like however many millions. And um a concept that um he comes well I bring him up because he said that when they first started selling Quest bars, he got the target audience wrong. He thought it would be bodybuilders, but it turns out it was like an every everyday average person who just wants a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Bodybuilders aren't really interested. They they have a very specific, you know, fit uh nutrition regimen that they follow. And I've heard I I've even heard uh like a documentarian uh named Keith Otwat who said that his first documentary it was about um uh athletes who are over 60. And he thought that his target audience would be other athletes who are over 60, and it turns out it was like the actual target audience was um administrators and organizations like AARP and people who work at like um uh agencies that serve older people. But it took trial and error in both these cases for these people to to find out who their target target audience was, and their hypothesis was totally off the mark at first. So how do you find out who your ideal customer is or your your your demographics? Sure. We're we're talking about guess and it turns out to be totally wrong.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

We're we're talking about finding finding the tribe, right? Because if if the if you believe in the product, if if something tastes good, I mean, if something tastes good, I'll buy it. You know, you can email me, send me some free samples, you know, because I like Tom's products. I think he sold the company off and he did very well for it. And I've enjoyed some of his interviews too. And uh as I go into that, I wanted to go back because I've I forgot, I now remember the point I was trying to make. Why why I read so many books when I go into something new? The reason why I read so many books before I go into something, particularly if I don't know much about it, is only so that I can learn the language of that industry. So when I was in the army, we had all these acronyms and I learned the language of being in the military. I could be in a grocery store now and I can hear a guy talking and I can tell he was a Marine or Army because we have a way of, we have a special way of speaking. Um, and that's true with nurses. That's true with so I buy the books, I read the book, listen to the books through audio so that I can learn the language that when I do find that mentor, I already speak their language. I don't know what they know, but I know how to ask the questions to find out which goes right back to how do you find your tribe? You have to speak the language of your target market. And it's very hard if your product is is aimed towards 80-year-old people and you're 25.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

This is where um, just like podcasting is is spreading seeds. You know, the our goal is when we when we're uh guest on somebody else's uh podcast, is that somebody in their audience will become either a buyer of our product or they'll also become a member of our audience with a product. If you're out on enough platforms, and I know some people that are like, I will, Robert, I will never put my book on TikTok because that's some Chinese, you know, and then they got some crazy conspiracy theory or whatever. Right. Let me tell you. Yeah, they or they don't know or they don't want to learn something new or whatever. I'm telling you, uh book, book talk, as they call it, is a massive force in book sales. And it's hard to convince somebody my age or older to get involved in that. So if you want to find if you if you have a product and you want to find your tribe, I mean, if it's we're not talking about advertising dollars, we're talking about organic. Organic that costs you nothing other than your time. But if you're spreading the seeds around the whole lot, and the beautiful thing, Chris, when we well, again, I can only speak for myself. My first business, I couldn't pull data. I can tell you how many people in Australia listened listened to my podcast yesterday. We live in this amazing era where we can look at the data. So the answer to your question is spread your product or service in as many platforms that are trackable and traceable as possible and see what pops. And when it's something starts to pop, you lean into it. And same thing with us playing around with our thumbnails on on YouTube, you know, more contrast, more make the text bigger. You just it's a constant iteration. And again, this is you know, the perfection is the enemy of so many good things in our lives. We're just we're we've got a jewel and we've just we're constantly filing the edge. And at the end, after enough time, we have a diamond, or after we've put in so much time, we need to throw that out and start something new. And there's no shame in that.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Right. Something about um you you you talked about the the upside of being able to pull data, but something that I've heard a lot of, especially creative people talk about is like what's frustrating is the constantly moving goalpost. Like, for example, a lot of authors um you know put keywords in their descriptions of their books on Amazon, but then the algorithm changes and the keywords that you used six months ago are obsolete. So you constantly have to update you know, you talked about like tweaking the thumbnails and uh of your podcast. So it's not just a case of okay, I found my tribe, my target audience, and here's the one way that I can reach them. It's like you have to keep revising and revisiting and updating, or else you your you and your products will become out of date. Is that is that accurate?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

That's where the f so so I just I dislike the fact that it's true, but it is true. Right. Um it's grow or die. It's not say it's not hold the road, stay in the middle of the road. You will get destroyed. Um and that's no different than nations on earth. You know, what what's the news obsessed with? The old Rishi uh Russian missile can go, you know, so everything, even our podcasting gear, you know, we're all in a war. Better camera, better microphone, better lights. You know, I started powdering my face, so I don't my face don't remember. I mean, it's ridiculous. But if you don't, the the the price is very high. You know, you're gonna spend all that money on marketing and and you know, everything running an office and doing all this staff and then just sit there hoping you can ride out to retirement on cruise control. We're this planet, like it or not, and again, it's it's some it's terrible that it is the way it is. We live in a dog eat dog, Darwinian, evolutionary, the people with the power make the decisions type thing. And if you're not a hundred percent committed to something, you probably should just go back to the 99 to 5. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's not an insult. I sometimes think that entrepreneurship to some degree is a character, uh, is a character flaw. Because think of it, if civilization were all like us, it'd be scary.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

It it would be it would be scary. And um, I still sometimes get called in on contracts where I basically I'm working a nine to five and there's no shame in it. And I have a and I have a deep abiding love for for the tradesmen, the plumbers, the mechanics, the well, they keep this whole thing together. And I'll tell you, they've never had it better than the way than now, because so few people want to turn a wrench or put a bead of weld down. So if you're seeing this and you're trying to decide if you want to influence your son to be an entrepreneur or a welder, he can do a little bit of both. But I I I again, if I had it to do over, I would definitely have had some trick more trade school training in my background. So no shame on that.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

How do you decide uh when to bring in someone to help you? For example, bringing in someone who is an expert in uh social media advertising, like how to place Facebook ads. How do you know that that person is going to be effective and you're not just throwing money down the drain doing paying them to do something that you could train yourself to do?

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Great question. Okay, so um I I wouldn't I would have answered this differently two years ago. But where where all this started for me is when I read Dan Martell's uh Buy Back Your Time. The book came out in I think October of 2023. I read it a month later. It changed everything. Uh I immediately hired a VA because I had been trying to do everything myself. Um I have some problems with the platform, but I use upwork all the time. And sometimes I'll do a contract for work where I'll request, hey, do you know about this? And I'm not trying to do this on purpose, but I'm trying at first trying to hire someone. And then based on the conversations I'm having with these people, checking their background, explaining my problem. This is before I sign the contract with them. Through all of these multiple conversations, I'm able to make an intelligent decision whether I, you know what, I should just do this myself. Or it's worth because when we get down to talking to them about the money, that's where I have to make the decision. Am I going to learn this new? Because you know, at 54, to be honest, I really don't want to learn too many new things. You know, but uh but Dan Martell says, um, and I agree with him, that I should be engaging only in things that either I have very high degree of expertise in, or the thing that causes uh the highest amount of profit in what I'm trying to do. And I bel I believe, but look, I realize not everybody can go on upwork and hire somebody. But there are people overseas and even here in the Western Hemisphere. I have some wonderful friends in Nicaragua, and there's some virtual assistants that are very happy to get$5 an hour. I mean, that's that's good money for them. And they're good people and they and they work very, very hard. But yes, I would say um get somebody involved early, even if you're just gonna contract with them for a couple of hours to to look at this problem. But if something's out of your wheelhouse, unless you've got a lot of time or you have if you if you if you have a lot of time and you don't have a lot of money, you're just gonna have to learn that skill.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

But if you can afford it, um, and I'll tell you, it's just it's just like um this is a author copy, but um the cover that cover was that's that's$400 worth of work, the cover. And you know, I don't know if I'll ever make that money. But on top of everything I spent on that book, to be quite honest with you and your audience, I don't know if I'll ever recover that. I get 60% off Amazon, but it's a calling card for me. Yeah, uh that book does a lot of things uh far beyond me trying to recover the investment in that book that are gonna make money in in other ways. But I know people, uh my whole thing was I'm gonna put six months in this and I and I see these guys doing these homemade covers. No, I'm paying somebody. I just did my audio book. I ran a studio, Chris. Did I edit my own stuff? No, I paid an expert that that that's all they do is they edit audiobooks. Now, could I have done it? Yeah, I wouldn't have done it as good, and it would have taken twice as long. She did it in two days, and she's a beast. And I and I I paid her 200 bucks and tipped her, and I was happy. And that was another one on Upwork. So, yeah, so I didn't expect I didn't plan to keep answering all of these with such long answers.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

No, no, it's it's great information. Is it okay to um ask someone for like a work sample or say, okay, let's do something for a trial period just to see how it works out?

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Sure. I posted today, Chris. Um, I want to I want a new logo for my um for my for my podcast. I think it's decent, but it it it it it needs a refresh. So what I said in the ad, and this was just posted a couple of hours ago on Upwork, I said, if you want to do a mock-up as an application to this job with a watermark on it so that I can't use it. I want to protect their IP. I said that's gonna give you, I openly said that's gonna give you a better chance than me looking through somebody's resume.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Do the work, do do a light iteration. I'm not saying I want you to work for free, but I can tell pretty quickly if I can work with this person or not. So I do, I do ask for quite a bit up front because I am so I'm generally very generous with the money and I'm a and I'm a good tipper. I think a lot of people on Upwork probably don't tip at all. But uh and I've got but because of that, I've done 43 as of today, I've done 43 contracts on Upwork, and my rating out of five is a 4.99.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

So I believe in paying people, communicating, and being good to people, but I'm not saying I was even capable of doing that when I was 35. So, you know, I'm very much a work in progress. But I think Upwork is good. Hire people, look at the work they have. And the great thing about Upwork versus just getting somebody off a Facebook marketplace, they have ratings, they have their portfolio up there. It's really a great resource. I again, I have some issues with upwork. They're trying to run that company with chatbots, and um but the but the upworkers themselves are great. It's just the platform's a little off.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Right. So if you're an entrepreneur or um some kind of artist who's just getting started in putting your products and services out there, how do you I mean you mentioned upwork, but should you try to uh get referrals to someone who can you know design your book cover or I mean you mentioned the process of kind of deciding if someone is right to do the work that you need done. But if you don't if you're just starting out and you know you've been working a nine to five your whole career and you don't know even where to begin in finding people who can help you get your idea out there, should you should you try to get referrals from other entrepreneurs or other artists? Like where do you even start?

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Sure. If if we're talking about a book, and I'm gonna be very frank, if if you write a book and you don't have the money to to put a good cover on there, uh set the book away until you've got the money to do. Because I'm telling you, the great and and I I'll give you an example. Just today, I I listened to a sample of an audio book, and it had a uh very famous guy in the intro giving credibility to this writer, saying how great he was. And I thought, oh man, this is gonna because I really respected the guy that gave the acknowledgement. And then the book started, and it's that AI virtual voice, which which audible uh, and then I immediately I looked at the reviews 3.7. I don't I won't normally buy a book that's 3.7. My time is valuable. I'm listening to the 4.6 and better. Yeah. And this guy got an endorse. Can you imagine by if you're into basketball and you get Shaq's endorsement, yeah, and you worked hard and you wrote this book, and then you're gonna have a robot read it to people? So my answer to that is wait until you can do it right. Because I guarantee you put your book up there, look what happened to this guy. And he had a famous endorsement. He dropped it, he dropped the ball, and that book's not selling. And uh, if you're if you're already unknown and Shaq's not behind you, and you put an ugly title on your book, I'm I'll guarantee, I know what's gonna happen. You're not gonna sell a single copy. So yeah, just it's okay to wait until you've got more money. It's okay to wait um until you're ready. There's no shame in it, or find somebody. Um, because I do I invest in intellectual properties. Reach out to me. If it's I'll look at your manuscript. If it's really good, I'll I'll pay for your cover. We're gonna do some kind of deal, you know, like like Shark Tank. But uh, but there are people like me that'll fund it. Um, I love artists, and there are a lot of writers out there um much better than me, that haven't put out their masterpiece yet. So yeah, reach out, ask, ask for help. But I've every interview I've been on, I tell people reach out to me. Um, LinkedIn, I'm easy to find. I answer every message. Uh, don't wait until I cut become a billionaire because then I won't be answering emails. Now's a good time to get me, you know.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Yeah, before you have your assistant and the assistant's assistant whose job it is to keep people from bugging you.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Yeah. And honestly, I hope I never, I hope I'm always able to answer because that's the fun part for me.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

You know, I like having a book and my face on. That's cool. But man, being a part of something greater than yourself, like when I was in the and I'll tell you, I've said this before, my favorite job I've ever had was I was a cook, not a chef. I was a cook in the back of a very fine restaurant because what we were putting out was some of the best food in that city. And those customers never even saw my face. But the fact that we were in this team producing plates that you could put them in the Smithsonian, I still think about that job. I mean, that was a we were doing amazing work and people didn't even know who we were, but we knew what we were doing. So yeah, find that too in your life. You know, be a help somebody else, be a part of something greater than yourself. It gives you so much more joy.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Yeah, you talked about, kind of joked about all the different jobs you've had, but do you kind of feel like um all if not or some, if not all, the jobs kind of prepared you for what you're doing now and made you able to write Cintilla?

SPEAKER_01 41:18

I'll I'll tell you where it really shined. Um, and I felt ashamed for a long time, but because you know, people in my personal circle were helping were helping me feel ashamed, you know, like family, you know, mom's worried about you, you know, Ike look, I get it. I I did have this um internal North Star where I knew I was gonna be okay because I'd already done crazy things and I had survived. So I knew I was gonna be okay. But on the outside, yeah, it was very scary to a lot of people what I was doing. But where it really, really shined is when I became a fraud investigator because I grew up in my dad's body shop. He worked on cars, you know, we grew up in relative poverty. So I kind of knew that and uh all these jobs. I had worked through all of these trades. I had seen the logistics side, the management side. The I worked at a courier company. And so when we started investigating fraud, they were, they, they were working, they'd bring me something they had worked, their best people had worked on it for two and a half months. And I'm like, oh, you know, and I would just get, you know, it's like a movie. I was like, oh, well, just call this. He's this is, and they were like, there's no way you could know that. And I said, Well, I know you can't call those guys on a Friday because that's the worst possible day to get a hold of. They were like, How do you know? I said, Well, that's the day everybody goes to pick up their car. And so it was a mix of a lot of experience and and a and a fairly good memory. If I have anything, the the memory I've got that going for me. But that varied experience absolutely helped me. I can look at a I'm not looking at a problem with a pair of eyes. I'm looking at it with 14 pairs of eyes. I can think, and man, yeah. So I'm I'm grateful I had all of that experience. And if somebody's listening to this or watching this and they're that kid or that guy that's been through 20 jobs, go get 20 more. Uh, because you'll eventually now you've got to keep trying, because in addition to working, I was also had my you know, entrepreneurial things that I was trying to do. So you have to you have to keep the lights on, keep working those different jobs. And uh I did some couch surfing too, where I will, you know, I'd stay on somebody's couch and uh yeah, just you you will hit your stride if you're not doing drugs, you know, or or drinking every night, and you've got a good personal circle of entrepreneurs, you'll you I'm telling you, you'll be fine.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

Yeah, I want to go back to something you said earlier about the uh audiobook that you decided not to listen to because of the AI voice. Do you feel like AI has any kind of role in idea generation? I mean, there are people who just go overboard and just, okay, uh, chat GPT, what are seven ideas? ideas for a profitable business that I can do remotely or or can you use it to like help analyze the data you collect about about your target audience or is there any role for AI or should you just kind of do everything yourself so you're not you know letting your brain get lazy relying on AI to do everything?

SPEAKER_01 44:19

This is this is a jerk I'll give you a very jerk answer to that question. Did you see the movie Limitless where the guy took the drugs and then he knew everything that was with um yeah Bradley Cooper. Yeah great. I love that movie. There's a scene where he he only runs into the guy that gives him the drugs two two times one when the the he gives it the drug the first time and the second time he's he's he runs into him right before the guy dies. And there's a tossaway line that I that really caught my attention. He said it works better if you're already smart. And um because I spend a lot of time thinking about thinking and and you know that investigative fraud mind, I can get things out of AI that that are really, really good, but I also argue with AI and I catch AI lying to me, not in not intentionally, but it's it's it sometimes it'll just do a quick little search and what it comes back is a bunch of opinion based stuff and I'll and I'll question it like I would uh uh during a fraud investigation I'd say where did you get that information? Oh I got it from I said well where's the data for that? And it'll go, oh, and and you can it's like when a person gets caught not knowing what they're talking about. And I and so I'll ask questions about um like ginkgo boloba. You know it's supposed to give you a good memory. And I'll say does ginkgo beloba it says yeah there's there's some evidence. I said well what's the peer reviewed evidence of the echo efficacy I said give me the dosage and and how big was the the trial and then you know and then AI's like oh you know gotcha it's full of it. So AI works but you've got to ask it really good questions. And I'll say as a writer I've not seen anything that I keep hearing AI really writes really great stuff. But Chris, I've not been able to get AI to produce anything that I would buy and I've not seen AI produce anything with anybody else that I would buy. So I'm I don't have to worry about it. It it fools AI writing can fool people who don't read books. Yeah. But if you're if you're avid you're not gonna fool no you know you're not gonna write a business book and and and fool somebody who went to Harvard. Not that I did but AI can't fool somebody at Harvard.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

Yeah.

unknown 46:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

So it's a tool.

SPEAKER_00 46:35

Yeah and um I'm a I'm a journalist uh in my day job and I feel like as you said it's a tool like I use it to transcribe interviews that I've recorded because that saves me hours of having to like listen to the interview and keep typing you know word for word what the person said or I dictate ideas into my you know phone I send an email to myself and use the so I I I feel like there's uh functions of AI that can help make your job easier but it shouldn't replace the you know your your brain power I've heard it described as like it should be used as a calculator not doing the work for you.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

That's I think that's that's very accurate. I've recently started using it to help me with questions uh for the interviews because I normally do a lot of research on the guest probably too much to almost to a to a scary because I you know I want to I want to they're spending they're giving me their gift of their time so the best thing I could do is is be prepared. And um but I did start to lean on AI, particularly now that I've uh hooked up with PodMatch which has been a been a great resource um but these people have these but the the guests that I struggle with the most are the ones like me that have had a widely varied background. So I I throw everything to ChatGPT and I'll say look give me 10 questions and five of them will suck and the other five I'll have to change them to a certain degree. But I'll tell you as a writer what I really enjoy that AI can AI can catch mistakes better than the way let's say Grammelly does.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

And and I don't know if you would agree with this, but sometimes if let's say you as a journalist or me writing a chapter, I might have two completely disparate ideas that I definitely want in the same piece, whether it be a chapter or an article. And I have trouble because I'm a fledgling writer I'm only about an hour and a year into this journey and I never wrote that much before it can bring it can it can help me build a bridge paragraph to put those two and I and I'm not capable of that. And I won't use what AI gave me because it's crappy but it gives me the idea of the string that I can use to connect these two two paragraphs. So that I think it really shines there. Now how do you how do you use it um more for your day like day to day for journalism?

SPEAKER_00 48:54

Yeah I I guess it's how you um define AI because I define AI as anything that's like a digital tool not necessarily something that's branded AI like uh chat GPT or Claude or Copilot or whatever. So um the to me a thesaurus is is you know an online thesaurus is AI. Just today I was writing a story and I said you know what's another word for um hone I've used the word hone more than once in this story and you know this the the thesaurus said sharpen.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

So I wouldn't my human brain wouldn't have come up with the word sharpen but I didn't let I didn't let the uh you know the the thesaurus uh write my whole story it couldn't yeah I would I would never use AI to like write an in write an entire story but what do you think about using AI to um as like a um a a VA a virtual intern like for example if you can't afford to hire a VA even people who work for very reasonable rates as you said to to come up with draft uh drafts of social media posts if you weren't going to write that yourself anyway you were gonna hire you were going to farm that out what's the difference between hiring a VA and uh using uh AI to do it social media i in since you gave me that as a constraint uh huh that's that's that's difficult because I believe so I'm from the school of Gary Vaynerchuck which is post you know and I'm not posting as much as I should but and I don't like the word authentic or authenticity because I I hear it uh 20 times a day uh it's like synergy here in the synergy in the 1980s I break out in hives when I hear that but people are look look at the podcast they're interested in the personal stories AI can't do that that's why um you know AI had a kind of I don't listen to country music but it had some song that a lot of people thought oh that's that's really really good and I said yeah okay give me a blues song about a guy and and you know a breakup and the guy had his heart ripped out and because when we listen to music like that or Miles Davis we you know where he's that's a phrase that's that's a feeling coming through that trumpet AI can't do that. And sometimes we know the story of the artist and we connect with that story. Oh Mariah Carey lived in her car or so and AI can't produce that. So for social media posts I really try to put my own it's not always about me sometimes I'm telling stories about other people. AI can't cook that up I have to talk about the the lady who risked it all to open up a little restaurant down the street and she's struggling and she was crying at my table yesterday, which is all true. That that did just happen. AI can't put that in there. So for social media posts it's tough it can give me ideas to riff on um so I think it's it can be influence influential but more directly to your previous question about it being a VA I have the paid account for chat GPT and boy do I wish it could create could be full VA like call somebody or email because I have tried to get it to do certain things and it's very powerful. And I will say since I I really started understanding Chat GPT 5.2 in the last four or five months, I think my productivity has has probably doubled. I'm because I in one way I can tell because I'm already writing a follow-up book to Cintilla this is more about making human connections, networking and I'm using LinkedIn as a vehicle to drive drive the narrative I'm writing at almost four times the speed that this first book was one because now I've got a little bit more experience as a writer not like you but you know I'm I'm I'm about ready to take my training wheels off maybe but uh I know how to use Chat GPT for the research and the ideas and and so yeah chat GPT and and AI has been a been a great help but I but it's not a crutch. I'm not going to lean on it. The ideas still have to come from my you know life experiences or or or good research that I've vetted.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Yeah I think it's kind of a slippery slope because um like for example I like to write song lyrics as kind of a hobby but I I'm not a musician so I can't write a melody I'm not I I'm trying to learn to play the guitar but I mean that's something that takes years to to master if I had the time to to put into it. So what if I actually took song lyrics that I wrote you know that came out of my human brain and put that into one of these um AI songwriting apps and said okay give me a R B song with these lyrics that I wrote and then I take that uh song that AI generated for my lyrics and took it to a song to a musician friend and said this is the demo tape. I you know I didn't write the melody AI wrote the melody but this is this is the vein of you know the song that I would like to have uh created for my lyrics can you work with this? rather than me trying to like hum a melody that I might hear in my head.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

So that's how I sure well well look in in the 1980s you know my my my generation yeah they were taking yeah they were they would take beats from songs. That's that's no different. So I wouldn't look down on you as a as a creator as a musician if you did that to start to build this the structure of the song because that's what they did in the 80s. They would go get that album from the 1960s and they would they would sample that three seconds of bass because it was just you know funk parliament funkedelic and and all that and and thankfully it gave some of those bands a second life later on down the road. So I don't know how that impact is going to be with AI but yeah I would say to to use that as a sketch of your idea and then have somebody who really can play bass get yourself a Bootsy Collins. Yeah I think I think that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

Yeah I always you I'm a huge Prince fan so I always use him as an example he used drum machines and synthesizers but he also played 27 instrument instruments. So his drummers and percussionists when he toured they would have to trigger the the you know the lindrum sound but they were also playing live to like bolst bolster the sound. So it was a combination of you know machine and human working alongside each other.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

Yeah he was he was definitely he was definitely one of a kind and and when musicians pass away um you know I didn't know him I I had never been to his concerts but he was one of the few music musicians when he died it actually it really it it bothered me. I I think I think I was uh yeah I think I was I was I was very sad about it for several days because I grew up on on 1999 and then later got it got into his older stuff. Uh-huh and um that period after Around the world in the day I I kind of I couldn't connect with that as well because I was you know I mean I'm a kind you know a guy from Kentucky so the the um kind of avant-garde kind of music yeah yeah the 1999 and and and that stuff but I started getting some some of the bootlegs that that are coming out now that have extended solos and alternate ending. Oh man where he goes way far out because Warner Brothers was holding back some of his genius because you know they just wanted hit after hit after hit after hit. We we know what he went through for that. But some of his more offbeat alternate versions of songs I think now are displaying just how incredible his genius was I mean just it's hard to quantify how great of a musician he was I mean just the sheer number of songs he produced alone was sorry you got no no I'm I'm I'm the one who brought it up and I think part of the reason why it's not just our age or whatever that music today seems so um artificial is because there are no constraints.

SPEAKER_00 56:59

It's like when you have the constraint of you only have 24 tracks you know tape is going to run out it's like having those built-in constraints kind of makes you kind of puts parameters on your creativity and in in a in a good way. So I think even though you know the amount of songs you could record now is limitless the amount of songs you could put on an album is limitless because it's streaming it doesn't have to be on a physical compact disc or or or vinyl you know not having any constraints sometimes can be a bad thing.

SPEAKER_01 57:34

Absolutely some of the greatest arguably some of the greatest music ever done was late 60s early 70s and that was all four track. That's all they had was four track Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, all of that stuff that was four track. To think that they were just ping ponging and bouncing tracks I mean it's just but think about um let's pull that into to to business right so how do you how do you make Led Zeppelin four and and why is it so great? What did they have to do? They had to do a lot of rehearsal and they had to do a lot of planning because they only got one shot at a lot of that and same thing with business. So it's like what we were saying iterations and and coming up with a prototype and then you're shaping that and reshaping it and reprinting it and fashioning it and putting it out to this market and changing the thumbnail and changing the description um all of that is very much what needs to be done now. And I will say because AI has is starting to make people so lazy and it might be a generational thing too I think right now I'd be so bold to say in 2026 it's never been easier to stand out um because everybody else is kind of on cruise control on automatic so it's I think it's a little easy in some ways it's easier.

SPEAKER_00 58:58

It's there's a lot more noise but it's also easier to break out yeah if you were a a prodigious talent someone like a a prince and you came out with very original music I mean I you would definitely stand out from all the auto-tuned crap that's on the on streaming and what's left of the radio industry.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

And I I haven't heard too many musicians in the last couple of years that really wow me out and and in my uh advanced age I'm I'm now getting into a lot of jazz fusion. I was never into that when I was younger. But I think now that I have a deeper uh understanding of music and a deeper respect for the musicality these jazz fusion guys and I mean I'm sure if you played that stuff to the 18 year old version of me I'd I'd run I'd run out of there. But what those drummers can do what the bass I mean the time signature change I mean it's magic man. I'm just stunned with what those jazz cats can do. It's unreal.

SPEAKER_00 59:55

Yeah absolutely well Robert it's been fascinating talking to you.

SPEAKER_01 59:59

I'm sure we could just go down a million rabbit holes but I want to be respectful of your time so how can people reach out to you you mentioned LinkedIn whatever yeah LinkedIn of course they they can come to the podcast as well I'm mostly a YouTube guy free time mastermind but I'm Robert Gaines on LinkedIn uh I've got a unlike some people I got a fairly current picture so I look like myself on there um and if you guys if you if you want links of course all of that is on my pod match account too feel free to put my links on there and if they want the book Cintilla it's available as a any flavor you want. I got it as a Kindle paperback hardback you want the audio book that's narrated by myself as well. So and I would encourage you to get the book and then the people that do they're gonna get a heck of a discount on this second book that should be out hopefully by April of next year.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:47

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

Or this year April of this year sorry it's already next year.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

I know I know it's like hard to believe we're more than halfway through the decade already that's a good way to put it yeah yeah well Robert thanks again I look forward to reading uh Stintilla and uh yeah thank you so much for sharing your your expertise. I appreciate your time thank you so much bye bye thank you for listening to the Culture Beats podcast. If you like this content and would like to lend your support please leave us a review, a rating andor a comment. That helps other people discover the podcast. Culture Beats is an independent endeavor. Views expressed by guests are their own. Thanks again and talk to you soon