The AI Playbook to Scale Without Playing It Safe

Ever feel like you're waiting for someone to give you the green light? Permission to lead. Permission to build a brand. Permission to finally act on that idea sitting in your Notes app. 

Joe Downs and Peter Swain break down why that instinct is costing you more than you think. 

Using Red Bull's legendary "impossible" marketing stunts as a jumping off point, they explore how small business owners and side hustlers can use AI tools to find their own version of an unforgettable brand moment without a massive budget. 

Peter introduces horizontal innovation, a framework for borrowing the best ideas from completely different industries, and reveals the AI automation quietly running his community gifting program behind the scenes. 

Plus, Joe and Peter get into how AI can help aspiring leaders build real strategic confidence before anyone hands them the title. 

This one is for the person who is ready but still waiting for permission.

Listen For

1:14 Are you waiting for a budget, a title, or a credential before you make your move in business?

5:05 What is horizontal innovation and how can you use AI to steal the best ideas from completely different industries?

13:52 Why does nobody actually care that your business runs on AI and what should you lead with instead?

17:46 How is Peter using AI automation to send personal gifts to 300 community members without touching a single one?

26:29 Can AI roleplay a difficult audience to help you stress test your message before a high stakes conversation?

Email the “Idiots” Joe and Peter Idiots@successfulidiots.com

Joe Downs

Website | Email | LinkedIn | YouTube

Peter Swain

Website | Email | LinkedIn | X | Free AI Business Audit

Transcript

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Joe Downs (00:00):

Most people wait for permission to lead. They wait for the title or the promotion or the moment someone says, "All right, you're in charge now. The boss is away for the week or whatever." And her point was simple. Don't. Leadership is a behavior, not a position. You don't need someone to hand it to you. In 2012, Red Bull partnered with the Polish State Railways and built a full slopestyle bike course on top of 10 moving freight trains. Not as a simulation, wasn't CGI, it was actual moving freight cars, actually rolling down the track. This thing got 628,000 TikTok likes and millions in reach. There's a brand strategist named David Breyer who posted about it this week. His point was Red Bull became synonymous with the impossible because they refused to ask permission before doing something that just shouldn't work. We're going to talk today about a pattern I see in business owners and in people building careers inside of companies.

(01:14):

They're waiting. They're waiting for a budget maybe, waiting for the title, waiting until they feel ready or qualified or credentialed enough, basically waiting for permission. Red Bull didn't wait. And today we're going to talk about why that instinct applied to your brand and your career might be the most important shift you make this year. And of course, how AI helps you get there faster than you think. I'm Joe Downs with Peter Swain. We're just a couple of successful idiots who figure out how to use AI to improve our lives and power our businesses. And that's what we're here to show you every episode. Peter, true or false? Earl Grey is just regular tea that got a promotion it didn't earn. What is so special about Earl Grey?

Peter Swain (02:00):

Blend because it has bergamot in it.

Joe Downs (02:02):

And do you take-

Peter Swain (02:03):

I always take tea with milk and sugar, even Earl Grey. What a heinous sin for a Brit.

Joe Downs (02:09):

So there's a brand strategist I mentioned, David Breyer, who's generated over $9 billion, Peter, for his clients, which is a number that kind of makes you want to read what he has to say when he says something. So his point regarding Red Bull was you can't become synonymous with the impossible by playing it safe. Most brands run focus group campaigns. Red Bull builds stages that shouldn't exist. Now, I'm not suggesting or myself going to strap a BMX rider to a freight car. But here's the question I want to bring to you, Peter. For the small business owner who feels completely invisible in a crowded market, can AI actually help them find their version of Red Bull's slopestyle course on moving freight trains? The thing that makes people stop scrolling, right?

Peter Swain (03:02):

Fascinating question. And the answer is yes and no. So we need to do a bit of tech for a second. You program an AI by pushing everything into it that was ever said, ever read, ever, ever produced. And it understands the connections between all those words. And then when you ask it a question, it tells you what it average thinks the average answer is. So it gives you the most probable answer based on everything it understands. So most people in the AI space, Joe, would tell you, and I think they're correct at this level, that AI can't produce a unique original piece of thinking because it's homogenizing everything else. Now that said, there's also, I think it was about 10 years ago, they stated that every piece of music that was ever going to be written has been written because there's only so many ways you can put the A, B, C, D, E, F, G, chords together before you've played everything there is to play.

(04:08):

So many of the same music has the same chords, but when you apply a different treatment, it becomes a different thing. So here's what I'd recommend to people. Have you ever heard of something called horizontal innovation? Okay. So Steve Jobs, when he wanted to launch the Apple stores, took proposals from retail specialists on building stores and he wasn't impressed with any of them for exactly the same reason that you just said of the proposals he was getting for retail didn't match the brand values that he believed were Apple. And he didn't know how to fix it. And apparently he was staying in the Waldorf in New York for one of their conferences. And when he walked in the concierge in the lobby, he went, "This is what I want retail to feel like." So the person that planned the Apple stores was actually an interior architect from the hotel industry.

(05:04):

And the job was to make it feel like a hotel lobby. So if you think about Apple, it has the things down the side, it has the check-in desk and you check in with people and you book a time with a specialist. It's all based on the hotel industry. And it's a concept called horizontal innovation. Most people do vertical innovation. My competitors are doing X, so I'll do X plus one. That's vertical innovation. Horizontal innovation is who else in a different industry is doing something different that I can bring into my industry? And if you take those two together, AI can be very helpful. So you could have a prompt. "I'm in the business of X, my customers are in the business of Y. I want to do some guerrilla marketing based on other industries, other viewpoints, things that have been successful. How could I take the campaign from a different industry and apply it to mine?

(06:01):

Give me five ideas.

Joe Downs (06:04):

So I love this and this is expanding my brain right now, but that sounds too generic to me. Would your prompt be ... Would I add to that because I want my customer ... "Thinking about your Steve Jobs example, he wanted his customers to feel something different, right? I think that's what you said.

(06:27):

Wouldn't I add to that, give me experiences from other industries so that my X feels Y? My customer, maybe in this case, feels like they do when they walk into a circus or Red Bull's was clearly ... Red Bull's mantra is it gives you wings, I believe, is their tagline. So they're running around coming up with the most insane ideas of things that give people ... They got guys jumping from the edge of space to now obstacle courses on moving freight trains. So they're obviously honed in on that experience. Take my company that sells widgets or my service or my this or my that. How could I take what you just said and expand it beyond just the horizontal experience because now I've left it up to AI to decide, which might not

Peter Swain (07:21):

Be bad. Yeah, I think there's always a difference and it depends what size of business you're at, of whether you're in brand building or in direct response. And I think most of the people that we're speaking to, you and I are in direct response world. Building a brand is a very expensive endeavor that can have a great deal of risk attached to it because for every Red Bull, there's a Relentless and a Monster and a Caribou and they're just like six energy brands from the UK that are not Red Bull and will never be Red Bull because Red Bull got it right. So I love your addition of what are you trying to achieve? Because Red Bull aren't trying to achieve anything except everything.

Joe Downs (08:07):

Well, we're different. You nailed it. There's so many energy ... They might've been the first, but there's so many ... I don't even know if they were the first, but to me, I think they were the first, but they are synonymous with daredevil. I love this conversation that I never even saw it going into the horizontal space, but how do I then ... So take mine, and I love that you said building a brand is scary as I'm building a brand. Thank you. But way to put that in my head. Geez, I'm going to need therapy after this one. Help me use AI to help myself understand what is the differentiator that I'm looking for that when people say storage moguls, they don't think of anyone else but me.

Peter Swain (08:54):

If you're building a brand, your metrics are brand impressions, brand recall, how many people think of when I say this word, what do you think of this? Whereas yourself, for example, our measurements are, what is my cost of acquisition? How much is it? What is the ascension? What is the lifetime value? What is the lifetime revenue? All those things. So we're more focused in when we deploy a dollar, what do we get back from that dollar? That isn't brand building. Brand building is a very long game. It's a 20 year game, a 30 year game of, you're not focusing on when I deploy a dollar because you can't argue that there is an intrinsic return on investment for any of those things that Red Bull have done, but there obviously is a return on investment for all of the things that they have done. Do you see what I mean?

(09:50):

What was the ROI of jumping in a wingsuit from the edge of space? Zero. Exactly. Or immeasurable. Both zero and investment. Very

Joe Downs (09:59):

Difficult.

Peter Swain (09:59):

Yeah. And if I was to propose that to you on storage markets, you'd be like, "What are you talking about?" I'm like, "Yeah, they spend $250,000 and let's do this challenge where people have to pack all of their stuff into a suitcase and burn the rest of their house because we're proving that storage is important." You're like, "Are you gone off your head?" No, let's spend that on Facebook ads to a lead magnet. It's like, that's a whole different thing. However, we are all building a brand to some degree. So we have to think through how do we want people to feel when they experience the company and the brand? I'm still confused by Lexi being a copywriter selling hats. So I would never do business with her because a confused buyer does not exist. If somebody is confused, they will not spend money.

(10:57):

So we need ultra clarity on, I do X for Y. So to me, you and I spent a lot of time talking about storage moguls of your belief, which I have no industry experience, but I believe you to be correct, that it's this one, two unit, one, two facility is the sweet spot of where people are looking at now. And the way we speak to a couplepreneur, two brothers, husband and wife about buying one 10-unit self-storage thing is very different to how we talk to somebody that's going to build a 50. So what do we want that person to feel? We want them to feel probably that they're safe. That's probably on the list. We probably want them to feel a bit one up over the neighbors because they're doing something that's risky. We want them to feel a status lift by doing it.

(11:51):

You called it storage moguls, not storage schmoes, and even that says something to people. Do they want to be a mogul? Yes or no? Is that aspirational? Yes or no? It's really fascinating when you think it through because you don't get to define your brand. Your customer gets to define your brand based on what they receive from you.

Joe Downs (12:13):

I feel like our, not to make this about storage moguls, and I do want to clarify something for any confused listener out there. What Peter meant was-

Peter Swain (12:21):

Yeah, sorry.

Joe Downs (12:22):

You can buy one facility with 200 units. Well, I think is it fair to say my brand differentiation, because it's really an education platform at the end of the day, is my differentiator the fact that it's AI powered and I don't think anyone else is of my competitors out there. Is that enough of a differentiation? I mean, it's not a racetrack on a train, but is that-

Peter Swain (12:51):

There's so many- Am I

Joe Downs (12:51):

In the right direction there?

Peter Swain (12:53):

So the first thing that you always need to understand is how does the business make money? So in your instance, the initial sale is largely not important because it's a lifetime value ascension model. It's a community. So actually how you acquire somebody's attention and how you keep somebody's attention are different. Whereas if you're an e-comm business, you might get some repeat orders, but really you have to make money from pretty much the first purchase to ... And e-com people would greatly disagree with me, but as a general rule, you're going to sell a product for $97 and you're going to buy that product for $30 and you're going to pay some ad cost. So the cost, the brand associated with acquiring the customer, for you, it's more important to keep them than acquire them. We would rather acquire less customers and retain a larger percentage of those customers.

(13:52):

I said all that to say, does the AI side of things, is that enough? In my opinion, the answer is no, because nobody cares. Take for example, but it's close because what do you care about Walmart, the supply chain? You don't care about the warehousing, you don't care about their efficiencies of staffing. What you care about is the tin of baked beans cost 79 cents, not 95 cents. That's why you shop at Walmart. You don't shop at Walmart for any other reason than it's cheap and they've got everything you need. Well, but those things, supply chain, warehousing, all those things are what makes that price point possible. I think contextual, accurate, timely engagement that understands their needs and feeds their needs is incredibly valuable and only deliverable at scale.

Joe Downs (14:51):

Okay. So here all this time, I thought AI-powered community was-

Peter Swain (14:56):

I think we just talked about the acquire versus keep. In the acquire moment, it's something different. So it's enough of them to go, "Ooh, that's interesting." But is that going to keep them? No. Is what the AI-powered community can give them going to keep them? Yes. Do you see what I mean?

Joe Downs (15:14):

Okay. So I wasn't crazy. Yeah. So I'm not crazy up based because I would argue that Red Bull's stuntman jumping from space or the track on a train, I would argue-

Peter Swain (15:25):

It's 100% acquired. Honestly, that's more about fighting for column inches to what's called brand wash you. It's a mashup of the words brainwash and branding. You are getting brainwashed by the amount of times you see the word Red Bull into remembering Red Bull. And the only way you can do that in today's media world is to do stuff like build ski slopes on top of train tracks and train cars and fly out of space. That's going to get you media. It's going to get you YouTube and TikTok and it's going to go Red Bull, Red Bull, Red Bull. There was a recent example, one that I loved, Burger King. Burger King sponsored a division three football team in the UK, a division three, like this is the lowest possible soccer. Soccer

Joe Downs (16:17):

For the US audience at soccer.

Peter Swain (16:19):

It's for $20,000, but they did it because they found out this team were going to be in the next FIFA Xbox PlayStation game. And then they ran campaigns of assemble your ultimate team. So you could have Neymar and Messi and Beckham on this team wearing this Mansfield Town division three top with the Burger King logo and post it on social. They got millions of impressions for Burger King for a very, very small budget. And in comparison to sponsoring Man United, which would cost you 10 million pounds per year type thing. Yeah.

Joe Downs (16:59):

So I think if someone is a solopreneur or an entrepreneur, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they almost want to take the transcript of this conversation, but take the ideas from this conversation and I'm going to reach back to maybe episode two, three, four, five, somewhere in there and co-create-

Peter Swain (17:25):

100%.

Joe Downs (17:25):

Is this where you ask Claude to co-create and come up with relative to your business, like storage moguls isn't putting a track on a train, but have it create memorable moments, unexpected, maybe even slightly ridiculous ideas for you to choose from.

Peter Swain (17:46):

This is something I've never actually spoken about before out loud. We have a program called Moments of Magic. And one of the things our AI does is it watches our social accounts of our members and understands what they post and we send out flowers to ladies and we send cookies to guys. So if you were to announce on social that my son just graduated, you would get a gift from me. "Hey, Joe, I just wanted to say congratulations on your son graduating. I thought you might like to share these with the family and it's a box of cookies."

Joe Downs (18:18):

That's really good because you've got AI scraping socials for you. You probably have some sort of automated service set up and it's an unexpected surprise. In fact, I think I got something from you now that I think about it. I don't know what I posted. I think you sent me a book. Wow, that's a good one. That's a good one. Normally you get the birthday cards, right?

Peter Swain (18:42):

So we should be trying to move metrics. We should always be ... The whole of business is just about moving a metric. Which metric can I make? Cost, profit, revenue. They're all just numbers. One of our brand values for us is that we want our community to feel like family. That's what, because we run it, a husband and wife, we want it to be an extension of our family. So we want to celebrate our community's moments of wins in life because to us, AI isn't just a business skill, it's a life skill. And that's where we want to differentiate. But what I want is when you join my world, you can't imagine not being in my world. That's what I want of just you're just loved on, cared about, embraced, picked up. So how do you do that? One of the ways to do that is gifts.

(19:30):

It's one of the love languages of the world is to give people gifts. Now here's the question. Do you think that anybody cares that it was automated at the point that they get it? Do you think that they care? I think that as long as they know they were remembered, I don't think they care.

Joe Downs (19:49):

No. And in your world, which is you're an AI guru, guy, consultant, mastermind, I think when they get it, and I'm trying to remember, I was slightly confused. I was like, "Wow, that was nice." My reaction was that was nice. And then I remember wondering what that

Peter Swain (20:09):

Was for. We decided to do Christmas gifts and we wanted them to come post Christmas because we didn't want to get caught up with Christmas. So you got it like January the 20th. And it was just a thank you for being in our world.

Joe Downs (20:19):

Yeah. So just rewinding to what you just said a second ago, regarding AI and how people are confused by it, I think I would just ... Well, now I know, but I would just expect going forward if I were to get something that, oh, that's cool. Peter built something in AI that's doing this for him because I know Peter and I know he's not paying somebody to follow me on social media. "Hey, Joe's daughter just graduated from high school. She's going to college. Let's send them something."

Peter Swain (20:48):

"When we had 25 members, that is what we did, but we now have 300 members. It's at the point where humans can't do that anymore. And this is the point I'm making.

Joe Downs (20:59):

Interesting.

Peter Swain (21:00):

British Airways could do that for all of their customers.

Joe Downs (21:03):

So you just said a second ago, people are confused by AI or they don't ... And I've been making this ... The whole point of this podcast is to introduce people to AI. Because people don't know what they don't know, in your mastermind, I think it was last week, you were talking about the audit you perform. Why don't you tell people how they can take advantage of that? Because I know how powerful it is when you don't know what you don't know about how AI can improve your business. Or like our opening tagline says, "Power our businesses." I know we have, there's the solopreneur, the entrepreneur listening who loves these ideas that we throw at them and they don't even know how to implement them.

Peter Swain (21:50):

Because learning AI really genuinely is easy because you talked to it, it talks back to you. It's no more complex than learning how to use WhatsApp, but learning where to put it and where to deploy it is really hard. We've been programmed for, if you're 50 years old, 30 years you've been programmed, the way you make money is X. Do more, hire more people, do the ... It doesn't really matter what you do. It's a very similar model and the model has just massively shifted. So we put it together to help people with exactly that.

Joe Downs (22:23):

And let me put it this way, because I'm actually, I'm in a hotel room right now because I'm at a storage mastermind conference. And I just came off stage talking about, Scott had introduced a tool, an AI tool to use. And he said, "Is there anything you want to add to after it was done the whole presentation?" And I said, "Yeah, that's the how and the what. I'd like to talk to you about the why." And I put a wrapper around it, but to me, that's what's hard. The how and the what are easy to see sometimes if you can see it. It's the why and how it integrates into everything else. So how-

Peter Swain (23:03):

Yeah, so it's audit.peterswain.com. As you said, Joe, it's completely free. The results aren't gated. You don't need to talk to anyone. It's just purely fill it in. It'll ask you some questions, analyze the business, and it's based on a couple of thousand conversations we've had as to where we saw the win. So it'll tell you people that are in this space typically could benefit from this, this, and this. So just pattern matching across all of these conversations as to where, what, how. So it's really good. I really like it.

Joe Downs (23:37):

I highly recommend it because you just don't know what AI can do for your business.

Peter Swain (23:41):

This thing scans people's social and orders a cookie. I know that you could go into Cowork and build that tool, but thinking of it. When I say da, da, da, people go, "Oh wow, that's brilliant." And when I hear other people, I go, "Why didn't I think of that?" Because it stretches your imagination.

Joe Downs (24:00):

And that's also where co-create. Right. The audit and co-create, I think come in there. Yeah. Wow. All right. So Dorie Clark is an author and she's a professor at Duke and Columbia. And she wrote a book called The Long Game. I saw a post this week on LinkedIn that got, I think she had 300 some reactions. And that's important because LinkedIn posts, that's a lot of reactions on a LinkedIn post. So people are talking about it. And she said, and this is why I bring it up, and it's actually related to this, to the Red Bull example. She said, "Most people wait for permission to lead. They wait for the title or the promotion or the moment someone says, 'All right, you're in charge now. The boss is away for the week or whatever.'" And her point was simple, don't. Leadership is a behavior, not a position.

(25:03):

You don't need someone to hand it to you.

Peter Swain (25:05):

100%. Anyone that employs people.

Joe Downs (25:07):

But historically, before I was the boss, it either had me with people looking favorably at me or people looking at me like, "Who is this asshole?" Or at the same time, right? Where did you come from? Why do you think you have a voice right now? And in those moments, it felt defeating a little bit because I hadn't earned necessary by the typical or traditional definitions of whatever earning that voice meant. But man, did I have really good insights in that moment and I voiced them. And so here's the practical question that I want to bring to you, Peter. For someone who's trying to act like a leader, me who maybe doesn't have the chutzpah that I shouldn't have had in the certain moments, before they officially have that role or before the title or the team or someone gave them permission or credibility, how can AI actually help them do it, not just think, but do it in a way where maybe they don't get the reaction, sometimes the visceral reaction that I got in my past.

(26:12):

Well, how does AI prepare you? I shouldn't say prepare because that's innate within you, I think. How can AI help you deliver that message in a way that's better received than perhaps it was coming from me?

Peter Swain (26:29):

I would go back to the role play capability of AI. And I've done this quite a few times. I would ask the AI to take the perspective of somebody deliberately cantankerous and difficult and ask it to critique what you just said because there's been quite a few times when I need to deliver something or say something and I'm like, "I need to say this in a certain way." So let's take, for example, some people hear this, so hi, we're changing the abundance program that we have. So it used to be two back-to-back sessions on Thursday and now it's one on Thursday and then a four-hour Friday at the end of the month. The reason that came around was twofold. Number one, I felt that we weren't delivering to the value that I wanted to deliver to our clients. Number two, I was doing too much, too energetically draining, doing three one hour calls back to back on a Thursday.

(27:29):

It was killing me when I got to Friday, so I needed to change it. Now, if I'd said to my audience, "We're changing this program because it's taking too much energy from me," there would have been ... Some people might, "We love Pete, great, fine." Other people have been, "Well, there would have been pushback." So the question was, how do we frame what we're going to do? We're not changing what we're going to do, but how do we frame what we do so it's received in the way that we want it to be received? But I literally put into AI, "You're now to take the role of somebody in this program. It knows my programs. It knows how much they are. It knows their kind of ideal customer. We're about to make this announcement, shoot it down and be cantankerous. I need you to be difficult.

(28:17):

Find the holes in what I'm about to say." So I then said, "This is what we're going to say, da, da, da, da." I did it on voice. I gave it the transcription and it came back with the objections. I'm like, "Whoa, shit, that's not what this is about." I'm like, "Okay, let's try again." I'm like, "Well, how could I reword it and rephrase it to help with that? And you could try this. Okay, let's try that." And we went through three or four iterations before it went, "Yep, perfect." There's nothing unreasonable to critique. You're not going to get rid of the people that said, "But I'm not free every Friday at the end of the month. You're not going to get rid of those people, but you've got rid of the emotional pull that it can say." So in those moments, that would be my number one.

(28:59):

I couldn't agree with this post more because I look at my own team and going, "You don't need permission from me to lead. You don't need permission from me to act. You have permission. Go do." But so many people, as you said, are waiting for somebody to hand them this mythical baton of responsibility, which simply doesn't exist. You've got it.

Joe Downs (29:24):

And let me translate that to the corporate world. So what we're talking about here is, because you're already the leader there, you're just using it appropriately for the-

Peter Swain (29:37):

Fine tune the delivery.

Joe Downs (29:37):

Strategize. You're already the leader. This is about becoming a leader. A true leader is expected to see around the corners, the second and third order consequences, which is what you just demonstrated you did. You're already a leader, you just use it appropriately. For the aspiring leader who's got the voice, the idea, the passion in them, but just hasn't, but not the title of the role. So they're just sitting there clenching their fists or biting their tongue, if you will, in the meeting. How do they break out of that shell? How does AI empower them? I got the meeting coming

Peter Swain (30:27):

Up. I think we covered it.

Joe Downs (30:27):

We did sort of cover this, but it was about you and you were a consultant. Now I want you to transplant yourself into, I'm an employee.

Peter Swain (30:37):

We talked about how to work with your boss and how to use it in order to frame conversations and plot the corporate retreat meeting was the frame that we had on this before. But it's the same thing. It's like have a conversation and say, "I've just seen this. I'm super frustrated. I think I could help here, but I have some reticence." This self-coaching of how can you step up and what's holding you back? What is the thing that's blocking you? Is it anxiety? Is it social awkwardness? What is the issue of the human intelligence here that's stopping you from going, "I've got a great idea."

Joe Downs (31:14):

But I guess in my head, you're right, we have covered this at different angles, but in my head, I'm channeling that the employee who's two layers down from whoever's at the head of the table in the board meeting, and they're there for support for their boss, that type of scene. And I think it's the lack of confidence in knowing what the second and third order consequences are because there's never been a tool like AI to help them with it. So I think that's what I'm answering my own question, I think is sometimes this is therapeutic for me too, Peter, but I think that's the advice I want to give somebody is, look, do this before the meeting. The company's about to turn left and you know it's the wrong move. You got to turn right or stay straight for another year or whatever it is.

(32:13):

But you sit there quietly because you're two layers below and you're afraid of what not only your boss, but what your boss's boss will say to your boss about who's that? Is that another Joe Downs in this meeting just spouting off and he doesn't understand that-

Peter Swain (32:28):

I feel like we're talking from personal trauma here, Joe.

Joe Downs (32:34):

Well, it's been a long time. I've been unemployable for a good 25 years now. But that's what I think I want people to understand is you can use AI to map out every scenario or likely scenario where you can have that response. So when you speak up, you'll have the confidence to say, "Sir, I don't think ..." Or man, whatever. "I don't think we should go in that direction because A, B, C, X, Y, Z. I think this offers us the better direction it's from a conservative standpoint, whatever risk, and then we can go to this jumping off." I think just being able to say that when your boss probably couldn't even say that and your boss's boss definitely didn't think of it, to me, that's what I wanted to get out of. That's what I took from that post was,

Peter Swain (33:22):

"Yeah,

Joe Downs (33:22):

The post wasn't about AI. It was about stop being fearful, speak up." Now, a lot of people whose job depends on, or income life depends on that job, are not going to speak up unless they have that support. And that support only

Peter Swain (33:39):

I think

Joe Downs (33:39):

Comes from AI at this point.

Peter Swain (33:41):

Just wanted to kind of dovetail in here of one is to say ... First of all, I completely agree, but one is to say if AI is going to start having significant potentially negative impacts on employment and recruitment, do you really want to be the quiet guy in the corner? I'm not sure that's the role. I think that companies are going to be looking for leaders and people that are thinking about their employees and thinking about their customers and thinking about the direction. I think that there's going to need to be more of those voices being my first. The second thing I wanted to say, and this is a large point more on the personal side, one of the things I love about AI is A, it doesn't have an ego and B, it doesn't have a memory. So you can have some really, really deep personal conversations with AI that you would never dream of having with somebody else because they're human, they're going to judge.

(34:39):

No matter how close they are, no matter how much they love you, it's just not possible. The robot doesn't care. The robot doesn't care if you say, "I think I'm addicted to gambling." The robot doesn't care if you say, "I just cheated on my wife with her sister." That would be bad.

(34:59):

It doesn't care. So all those conversations that you simply don't have with another human, you can have with this. And I'm not saying it's as good as a therapist or as good as a career counselor or as good as a colleague, but there's so many conversations you don't have because of fear of what the other person is going to take away from that conversation that with this thing you can have. I had one recently, my wife says she doesn't care about Mother's Day. You know who she is, Joe. Is she telling me the truth or not? Or does she actually not care? Safe answer, Pete, buy the flowers anyway.

Joe Downs (35:33):

Yeah. And I think what you just said was it's not as good as a therapist. We can agree. 100%. But your therapist isn't in your pocket at all times. And if you don't feel comfortable asking your friend, your mother, your kid, your spouse, whatever, because they might be like, "What? Why are you even asking? Where's your brain?" Sometimes some of the things you want to ask it are a little out there. Here's what I just heard in all of this. It's a safe space. It's a safe space to brainstorm.

Peter Swain (36:06):

I was lucky enough to meet the team that invented the Kindle way back and I asked them, "How do you think this is going to be a book? This is a terrible experience. I don't want to read on this little digital screen, the four hours worth of battery life. A book is a book. It feels good." And the guy laughed at me and said, "You're comparing the wrong thing." I'm like, "What?" And he went, "You're comparing the Kindle to a book. Of course, a book is better than a Kindle, but a Kindle isn't a replacement for a book. A Kindle is a replacement for waking up at seven o'clock in the morning, driving to the mall, going into Borders, having the conversation with the 18-year-old that knows nothing, looking at 12,000 books, buying the book, bringing it home, putting 10 of them in your suitcase to go on holiday, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

(36:54):

We aren't replacing the book. We're replacing the ecosystem of reading. I'm like, whoa.

Joe Downs (37:01):

"That's exactly where I was. Gone are the days of traveling with five books

Peter Swain (37:06):

Because

Joe Downs (37:06):

You're not

Peter Swain (37:07):

Sure

Joe Downs (37:07):

Which one you're going to want to read.

Peter Swain (37:08):

For me, it's the same when we talk about a therapist. I would actually argue that AI is as good as a bad therapist, but is AI as good as a good therapist? No. But do I have that good therapist available twenty-four seven, 365 for $20 a month? No, I don't. For $20 a month, I'll take the 80% facsimile of something every day and twice on Sundays. So yeah, I think that I hope if you're in that not-leading space and you know something's wrong, I hope that you find a way to speak up and I think AI can help you get there.

Joe Downs (37:43):

I agree. And I think the permission thing is real for a lot of people. And it's not just in corporate jobs, but in business too. And waiting until you feel ready, waiting until you have enough experience or credibility or runway. Dorie's point is that waiting is the mistake. And the practical version of that is you can use AI to get leadership level strategic reps before you technically even have the role of-

Peter Swain (38:06):

So Joe, do you give them permission?

Joe Downs (38:07):

Cost of nothing. Well, maybe 20 bucks a month. Well, it's not up to me, but I give them permission to use AI. It's fun constantly giving people permission. All right, Peter, I was really excited for that one. It's a really good conversation. Folks, if you have any questions, you want us to run scenarios, ideas, questions, obviouscations, points of wonderment or doubt, as one of my old Latin teachers used to say to close out our class, please email us at idiots@successfulidiots.com. That's idiots@successfulidiots.com. For Peter Swain, I am Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. We'll see you next week.