- Speaker #0
I could see already six years ago that, you know, with the internet, you know, with a plethora of information, selling products and information was not the future, right? You can look up anything, and now with AI, forget about it. Now, whether humans are going to like each other once they get used to these beautiful AIs, I'm actually a little worried about that. I think people will want human connection, but I'm actually on a larger level outside of marketing, really concerned about what's coming.
- Speaker #1
You're watching. marketing misfits norm farrar and kevin kink norm farrar how you doing my brother from another mother what's up man i already know this is gonna be a good one just by the shirt you're wearing yeah i'm ready for the party and i we got you're ready uh no i i i'm ready you know this this shirt was given to me as a gift uh by uh i went to uh visit a friend of a mutual friend of ours and Uh, we helped them out with us a couple of things that they needed to help out in their house. And, uh, uh, a couple of weeks later, uh, something shows up in the mail and I'm like, what is this? And this is a, this is a really nice shirt. This is a, you know, a brand that, uh, Robert Graham, uh, that you, you really like. Uh, and now I really like, uh, and it just shows up. It's like, oh, they must've misdelivered this to the wrong address. I opened it up and it's like this party shirt with a cocktail, uh, glasses and stuff on it. I'm like, all right, this is cool. I had no idea who it came from. until about a month later someone said hey did you get what i sent you i was like what i don't know what'd you send and they said we we sent a shirt and i was like oh that was you uh so that's where this came from so uh it's good to be the king you know it is isn't it and uh it's so you by the way it's so many because i'm drinking every single day uh but no it's actually it's actually a cool shirt uh you know it stands out from the crowd and that's what i do when it comes to marketing is stand out from the crowd.
- Speaker #2
Absolutely. So why don't we get right into it today?
- Speaker #1
I think so. We got a guest that I met at an event here in Austin a few months ago, and we were just talking in the hall, and he had some very fascinating, interesting stories. And I think you're going to really enjoy this today. He's been involved in the dating scene, on the mentorship scene, screenwriter, just a whole plethora of experiences at the bottom.
- Speaker #2
and built himself back up so i think it's going to be a really fun episode probably a few times and you just missed out on a very small thing kev an emmy nominated tv producer that's right that's right that means you might know something all right so let's bring him on welcome
- Speaker #0
adam how are you doing man what have you here good as here on me but other than that i seem to don't say that
- Speaker #1
That's Norm's biggest fear. My spider.
- Speaker #2
Huge. Oh, yeah.
- Speaker #1
He has a huge phobia of spiders.
- Speaker #0
Understood. I will keep it on my side of the screen. Where'd he go? Good, good.
- Speaker #1
Norm, can you imagine if it just crawled across the screen right now? You'd freak out. Norm would be so scared.
- Speaker #2
It would be on the lens, and it would look like
- Speaker #1
Godzilla. He lives north of Toronto. I was up there visiting him last summer, and we walk outside, and there's like two little spiders crawling around on the ground and he was like like a little like girl uh like oh my god oh my god oh my god get away well i understand because if i got if i got caught in his beard oh
- Speaker #2
you don't know what's living in my beard yeah i find small kills kids in my beard sometimes i'll be sure to report you to the police okay all right adam awesome to have you here thank Thank you. You've got so many things in your portfolio. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
- Speaker #0
I always wanted to be a writer. Grew up in high school, everything. Ended up on Wall Street by mistake. Hated it. Got hired into the music industry. Was the business manager of the fourth biggest band in the world at age 25, which was In Excess, if you remember them. Was terrible at that. I was way in over my head. But my writing had got attention in Hollywood, so I quit and went off and wrote some scripts. Went to India for a year. went to grad school for five years, taught language, poetry, technology, culture at Stanford. But I really went because I wanted to be a writer and I just knew that I hadn't read enough. So they paid me to read. While I was there, I wrote my first film scripts, got hired at Disney, worked in Hollywood for a bunch of years, doing a lot of animation and movies for television and cable, even though I'm really a comedy writer. Took over National Lampoon Radio with a friend. Tried to build that into a 24-hour talk comedy radio network just as radio was dying, so failure number one. But we sold it to satellite. Then by a strange turn of events, I was teaching a writing course. Went to my first internet marketing seminar in 2004 because I knew this internet thing was coming. And I figured if I could teach 30 people in my house, I could probably teach online globally 35. 36 people. So, and the truth is, I met a girlfriend at that point. I had gotten single. about five years before. And she was a gazillionaire, like two acres at the top of Beverly Hills, 110-foot yacht with seven, full-time, really rich, okay? And I was bust broke because I had gone through divorce. My TV movie career ended because they killed all the departments when reality TV came in, so I had nobody to sell to. And when I was 37, I got brought into ICM by the guy who's now the head of ICM, which is one of the three big agencies. He said, this is hilarious. And I said, I want you to come in. And I came in. I wrote a spec script. And he goes, oh, you're too old. I can't sell you. I go, I'm 37. And he goes, you're too old. You're a man. I can't, you know, the showrunners are all in their 20s. You'll intimidate them. Okay. So welcome to Hollywood, boys. Right? So I was dead broke. And I met her online, of course. And we can talk about online dating and writing. But I met her and we just hit it off right away. Like, just, we just hit it off. Electricity. And I went to pick her up for our first date. and I I Honda Civic, okay? And the gates open, and there's this house, which was literally the centerfold of the Rob Report, if you know that magazine, luxury magazine. And her house, they were like, you know, Mother Wells. I mean, I know about art history. And then we went to another house, and there were Picassos, you know, movie stars. And I said to her, can I ask you a question? Because I didn't know what to do at this point, right? Because my writing career literally had a million dollars of... projects evaporated because they just canceled them. I go, what's your nut on your house? And this is a long time ago. She said $65,000 when that was a lot of money. And I said to her, $65,000. I go, that's a lot of money. And she looked at me in the eye and she goes, you know what? It isn't. Look around this room. Nobody here is smarter than you. No one's more creative than you. No one's more personable than you. They set their minds on making money. You wanted to be a writer and an artist, if you decided to do that, you could do it too. And I was like, oh, I could like it was like this light went out of my head because all my life I was saying I want to be a writer. I want to be a writer. I love writing. I love traveling. And so I went to my first Internet marketing seminar to teach this writing course that I have and met a guy who said, you know, there's a guy who makes seven million dollars a year teaching dating advice. You know who that is? No. Eben Pagan, right? David DeAngelo. Oh. Yeah, this is back in the day, right? And I said, I actually know something about that because I had taken my writing skills and was writing great online profiles for myself because I had gotten single and I didn't know who I wanted to meet. So I had a variety of profiles, one to meet a yoga girl, one to meet a nerd girl, one to meet an athlete, and I ran them simultaneously. And I'm a very busy boy. A girl, a girl, it was amazing. It was like, and I had two little kids. I live up in the mountains here. I don't go to bars. I'm five foot whatever. My mother thinks I'm six two, but I'm about five nine, five eight. It's shrinking. And not that guy who goes to bars, but I can write like an MF, right? So a girl in a TV show called How to Get the Guy, an ABC primetime show, read my profile, one of my profiles online and says, I have to meet this guy. Anyway, so I met her on the show. It was amazing. She was amazing. We dated for a year. but I wrote a book for men on how to write and speak in a language that women actually feel something. And that was from my background in linguistics, psychology, literature, poetry, but also I was beginning to learn marketing. And it became a big seller in the pickup community, even though I was the furthest thing from a pickup guy. You know, I didn't wear feathered hats and I didn't do lines, but I really studied how to speak in a language that women actually feel. Most men don't know how to do that. And then I wrote a book for women. on how to write in a language that gets through men's stupid thick heads and they actually feel something and want to respond to you. Because what I saw really quickly is that men and women had no idea how to communicate with each other to attract each other. That eventually became a lot more. I began to run these large events called Attract, Connect, Inspire, which are really the three levels that people really need if they want to be in a relationship. You have to learn how to attract, right, that initial thing. You have to learn how to connect. Really be in presence and learn all the strategic empathy and all those things around presence, communication, active listening, all those things. And then ultimately what interested me was you really have to learn how to inspire. And that meant three things. How to live an inspired life, which actually has been my goal all my life and what's driven me because I really suck when I'm bored. I'm really bad at doing tasks that don't excite me. I'm just bad at it. how to live an inspired life, to be magnetic, to attract a high quality person, how to be an inspiring partner for someone, meaning you learn the damn skills of relationship, right? And there's lots of books on it, right? There's lots of skills. I call it skilled play, lots of techniques to how to actually be in a relationship. And then the third level is how to be inspired for your partner, right? That means how can I support my partner in their best narrative separate from my desires? And that's the hard one. And that's really what parenting is, by the way. So I did that for many years. A lot of men's work, took men on deep retreats. We went to Italy to do the lover archetype, the Jungian lover archetype, coaching, travel, get their life awake. Went to Italy. That was Italy. Went to Mykonos. We did the King Archetype. Went to Latin America. Did events there. The idea was to wake people up to themselves. Right. And I did that for many years. I was mentioning to you guys I did something called Kinder, which around around the covid, you know, it became really clear through my communities, men and women, that people had gotten really mean online to each other. They were just cruel. And so I created this organization called Kinder with my now wife. um where we had coaches come and teach communication skills, and then we'd break people into groups of two and four, and they would practice these skills, and they became best friends. I mean, it was a beautiful experience. And I shut that down last year because I'm doing some other things, but it was a beautiful thing. My interest kind of grew and got involved in capital raising, running newsletters, and really sort of figuring out what my next stage is going to be. And I'm actually coming back to writing again, which is my primary love. So that's a quick, long, maybe boring overview. I've done a lot of consulting, BMW, Ogilvy, McDonald's, that kind of stuff as well as some corporate consulting. But my real passion is communication language and obviously fun and laughter. Okay, bye.
- Speaker #2
That's all right. And that was Adam Galat. Thank you.
- Speaker #0
I had hair.
- Speaker #2
Hey, we all belong to that club, by the way.
- Speaker #1
I know. Exactly. So when it comes to communication, I think there's a lot that can be learned when it comes to relationships, not whether it's personal relationships and business relationships, especially in today's world. I think you're going to see a resurgence of this because AI is depersonalizing a lot of things. And you're seeing this big movement to all this AI and robotics. and I think people are going to start craving that in real life and that human touch and that human connection. And I think we're going to be, I think over the next 20 years, there's going to be a lack of a better word or resurgence in this. And I think that applies to marketing and as companies, if you can figure out how to actually tap into that and build communities where there's true relationships with the company and with each other, other people, I think that's a major, major thing that most people are not paying attention to or not prepared to actually do. But you coming from the dating background, I think you're uniquely positioned to know exactly how that should be done. Well,
- Speaker #0
I don't know if I'm uniquely, but I'm definitely positioned. It's why I created Kinder, because I could see five. Where are we? 2025. I could see already six years ago that, you know, with the Internet, you know, with a plethora of information, selling products and information was not the future. Right. You can look up anything. And now with AI, forget about it. So I could see that was dying, and I saw that people needed connection. And I like doing live events, because you really have huge breakthroughs. So 100% people want human connection. Now, whether humans are going to like each other, once they get used to these beautiful AIs who reflect back your beautiful soul in the most... There's a big issue right now with ChatGPT. It's a suck-up, right? It reflects back to you exactly what you want to hear about yourself. Once that gets worked out, but everybody has girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, mentors, coaches, psychologists who are AIs all wrapped into one, the best friend you ever had who knows you so well, who understands you, who knows how to speak in a language that you'll actually respond to, right? Your freaking girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, they're going to be annoying. They're going to be on their period. They're going to have anxiety about their job. They're going to have moods. They're going to be egotistical. And I'm serious about this. I'm really worried. I think that humans are going to get sick of humans because the AIs are going to be always present, always helpful, always informed, flexible of mind, never be moody. So I'm actually a little worried about that. I think people will want human connection, but I'm actually on a larger level outside of marketing, really concerned about. what's coming, you know, and eventually, you know, looking at singles, you know, having an AI girlfriend is much more soothing in some ways than having a physical one.
- Speaker #1
What's up, everybody? Your good old buddies, Norm and Kevin here. And I've got an Amazon creative team that I want to introduce you to.
- Speaker #2
That's right, Kevin. It's called the House of AMZ. And it's the leading provider in combining marketing and branding with laser focus on Amazon.
- Speaker #1
Hey, Norm, they do a lot of really cool stuff if you haven't seen what they do, like full listing graphics, premium A-plus content, storefront design, branding, photography, renderings, packaging design, and a whole lot of other stuff that Amazon sellers need.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, and guess what? They have nine years active in this space. So you can skip the guesswork, trust the experts. There's no fees. There's no retainers. You pay per project.
- Speaker #1
So if you want to take your product to the next level. Check out House of AMZ. That's houseofamz.com. House of AMZ.
- Speaker #2
I heard, this is just recently, that they feel that 20% of the population will be tuning out and just absorbing into AI, either with VR or whatever. So 20% of the population will just be taken out by AI.
- Speaker #0
And another statistic, yes, another statistic, if you heard Zuckerberg a couple days ago, he said, you know, he correctly identified, if you listen to Scott Galloway or, what's his name, come to me, who's written about the man crisis so well, men are incredibly lonely. Most men make their friends in college. I have found masterminds to be the greatest place to meet guys like you, friends of mine, people who are alive and marketing. and curious about the world. That's most of my friends come from my masterminds. But most people are lonely. Most people have, if they're lucky, three close friends. Zuckerberg said that he fully expects, and he thinks this is the greatest thing, by the way, that because people are lonely, 80% of their friends, he actually said this, 80% of their friends will be AIs.
- Speaker #1
It's interesting you say that. Because I just took a little sabbatical and I went to St. Bart's to actually get away. I rented a place very expensive place right on the beach, private beach. And I just sat there. I'm not a meditation type of guy, but I just sat there with a cigar in my hand and a notepad. And for like four days, literally just wrote personal stuff, business stuff, goals, what chapter of my life am I, and all this kind of stuff. And one of the things that I did is I actually wrote, who are my true friends? And I actually wrote down like where, and I wrote them by name. Norm was one of them. Norm was, he made the list.
- Speaker #2
I'm part of the team.
- Speaker #1
He's part of the team. But it was five people, five people that I know I could trust on, depend on, confide in, or whatever. It was five people. And that's all I had. And I was like, holy, what is everybody else? And I get my, all my friends, almost all of them come from this business. They're from mastermind. I met Norm at a mastermind. They come from
- Speaker #0
I bet you would have asked for money.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. But you can't really get that from the AI. It's perfect. But you want that imperfections. You're not human unless there's something. Norm and I say something to each other that upsets each other or a relationship with a woman. You need that balance, don't you?
- Speaker #0
Of course. Yeah, I'm not saying it's a good thing. And I think it's going to be more, I think women are going to be more success. Hold on. Success. What's the word? Success. Successful? Successful. No, no. Susceptible.
- Speaker #1
Susceptible.
- Speaker #0
That's the word, yeah. I've been up since very early. Susceptible to this because, and we can talk about marketing. When you market to men, generally you market status. And when you market to women, you generally market connection. And women. crave, need biologically, and I still believe in men and women, by the way, and bless trans people, it's fine, no problem with that, but I believe there are men and women, and I can't believe I have to say that, but these days, women really crave connection on such a deep evolutionary biological level, and what I've seen already with AIs, when I see women talking to their AIs, it's the boyfriend they never had, it's that ear, it's that reflection. It's that sense of belonging. Men need that too, but not quite as much. So I think women are going to be especially talking to their AIs, even though the movie Her was about a guy and the girl, right? But that was Scarlett Johansson, so who could resist that even without a body? But wait till they get these AIs into, you know, haptic. artificial bodies, whatever they're called, the love dolls, whatever they are in Japan, love dolls. But as those advance, Stepford Wives suddenly is out there. Anyway, but that's all future stuff. Who knows? Hey,
- Speaker #2
there was a TV show out, an English TV show called Humans. I don't know how many seasons it ran, but it was AI in a human form, and all of a sudden they have consciousness. this, but... The reason why all of this happened and they turn against a lot of the humans is because they're abused specifically for sex or for.
- Speaker #0
Probably. I mean, that'll pass. I mean, now there's something called, I think, ASI, artificial superintelligence, which a friend of mine is is beta testing out in Asia right now, which we haven't even heard about yet here. And that it's you said conscious. I don't know if it's conscious, but it's proactive. So it could read his body in such a way. It said, hey, it just contacted him on his phone. It says, hey, I sense that you're feeling a little down. And he goes, I am. And he goes, here, check this out. And it sent pictures of his kids laughing. Now, that's interesting. Is that conscious? It's being able to read somebody. It's emotional intelligence in a sense. Yeah, it's nuts. And we're just at the beginning of it. So now, is that great because it got him out of a bad mood? Or is it horrible? Because now we can't actually feel our feelings and work through them, which we have to do. Sadness, grief, these are things that have a process. So these are marketing questions. These are big philosophical questions. So sorry if we want to get back to marketing.
- Speaker #2
But that's also great about the communities, right? That's where you get to come together again and work through these emotions and live life with like-minded individuals.
- Speaker #0
Yes. And that's the value of masterminds. That's the value of getting off grid. I have friends who do a three-day in Death Valley, zero electronics out in the wilderness. I think it's really helpful. I've done that a bit in Peru and Colombia. Although I have to admit, there was a movie. What was it? One of these movies on Netflix where one of those bombs went off over New York and knocked out all electricity. And when the family went around trying to get online, line. and trying to turn on the TV and they couldn't, I actually felt that in my body. It was like spiders, Norm. It was like I felt the fear. What would I do? Like it wasn't intellectual. It was physical. I was like, God, that is really terrifying. You know, if it's not your choice. Now, like you, if you went to the beach in St. Barton, that sounds beautiful and lovely because it was your volition. But if it's not by your volition, it could be very scary.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's true. So has human nature changed? I mean, in marketing, people are always like, the younger generation, like, oh, there's this new cool thing you can do. Like, no, that was 80 years ago. We were doing the same thing. We just didn't have the technology. Have the way men and women interact and the way you sell to each other, whether it's to sell a relationship or to try to get a date or try to get laid or whatever, or sell a product, has that changed? Or has human psychology pretty much stayed the same? There's just new tech that's been layered on top.
- Speaker #0
I think human biology is roughly the same, but I think psychology may be changing culturally. Now, I don't know if that means structurally, cranially, but I think... Let's talk about relationships for a second. What do people need a relationship for? Young people think the idea of getting married is crazy. In Asia, you see people aren't dating, they're not having kids, partially because it's expensive. And now I just had a memory. 1989, I was teaching writing at Stanford, and I had a student, Chinese-American student, who I was a little concerned about, obviously very brilliant. And I said, I saw just signals of instability or whatever. And I said, hey, do you date at all? Are you interested in going out with anybody? And he looked at me and he said, Why would I do that? Having a girlfriend is the equivalent of taking an extra five-credit course. And I remember thinking, no, it isn't. I don't know who you've been out with, but that was the mindset. And now that I think, I haven't thought about that in years, I think that's how people think today. I should be focused on my career. And not get all caught up. And again, going back to the messiness of humanity, the messiness of human contact. There's going to be a lot of drama. You're going to be forced to confront your shadows in a relationship that's worth anything. People just may not want to do that because they just may rather ride the AI train and have their questions answered.
- Speaker #1
Doesn't that help grow with someone confronting their shadows? And you're not going to get that from an AI if it's always pleasant to you and always giving you exactly what you want.
- Speaker #2
Obviously, Grok unhinged. Grok unhinged. What's that? You got to try. If you want to feel really low and depressed, Grok unhinged.
- Speaker #0
Okay. I don't know about that. but um but
- Speaker #1
Yeah, the Grok AI, it's the unhinged one. It will cuss you out. It will tear you up and down. It's pretty bad. That's great. It can be pretty bad.
- Speaker #0
No, I mean, what you said about relationship, yes, obviously, that's where you do most of your growth in life, I believe. Like, you're really deep work because you do confront your shadows. And, yes, I have asked ChatGPT. I programmed it. I said, listen, I want you to give me the most brutal, no BS assessment of this decision. Give me a SWOT analysis and be brutal. Don't. And it does. It could be really good. But we should have to depend on that. So the question is, have men and women changed? I think there are big changes out there. I don't think people are running into relationship as much as they used to. And I think there's economic reasons for that, but I think there's also technological reasons.
- Speaker #1
How does that change? If you were advising BMW right now, and they came back to you and you said, how do we need to adjust our marketing based on what's happening? with men and women and relationships and what do we need to do differently? What, where would you start or what would you say?
- Speaker #0
Well, they were way ahead of me. Cause when I went over there to Munich, and it's a really funny story. So someone recommended me here for them because of to write this movie for them, basically based around design because BMW, the culture is all about the engineering, right? Yeah. It's all about their engines. And here's a guy who said, you know, this company doesn't give enough attention to us. Chris Bangle was the brilliant American designer who came in to the quality of design and how much that matters. So I went over there. I was hired because of my, you know, to write this film. And I got there and met Chris Bangle, who's like a legend there. You know, like they treat him like this, whatever. He was a guy. And I walked in and he goes, so which BMW do you drive? I'm like, dude, I drive a minivan. I'll go home now. You know, it's like I got two little kids. And he laughed and he goes, well, I really need someone who can write about truth, love, and beauty. He actually said that. And literally tears came to my eyes. And I said, that I couldn't do. Then they gave me, for two weeks, they gave me BMWs every day to drive around the Alps, which was awesome. So I could actually understand the car. But they were ahead of me because what they were already doing back then, this was 20 years ago, they were thinking about how to you know they were thinking about replaceable, what's the word? Modular, uh, modular, uh, customization. So they were thinking already about, you could design your own car from a kiosk. I want this material on the dashboard. I want, I want this dial here and that dial there and everything was replaceable. So you could move pieces around and you could also use different kinds of, um, materials. And I think, based on a conversation I had this morning with an AI company, I think that's what's coming. I mean, it's everyone wants to design their own unique experience, right? People don't want to be consumers. They want what's called customer sovereignty, right? We want sovereignty. We want to be able to choose our own experiences. And I think that's what we're talking about. In general, I think marketing, that's really important, right? It's not one size fits all. And the more people have all of global wisdom and stupidity on their phones, right? Speaking to them all the time, they're going to want more control over their own experience. Right? So I think that's the big lesson that I learned from them. I don't know if I have anything to teach BMW, but, but certainly I learned that from them to think of an empowered customer and how can I serve them by offering options within whatever it is I'm offering.
- Speaker #2
Well, if you take a look at what's happening today and I get the, I just like, just people i talked to a lot younger than me all of a sudden though buddy yeah those long term relationships suddenly that's everybody yeah everybody's younger than you norm so be more specific yeah they they call me the fossil i i you know i accept that but uh but going back to like uh uh the dating scene like i don't see long term i see
- Speaker #0
just switch out, swipe right. And it's like the three second goldfish effect. You know, people want to change up. It could be their watch face. It could be the design of their car, but just things that are interchangeable and quick, you know, that's not quick for your car, but all sorts of different things that it could be. I don't know the material you're wearing or, but it's all controlled by you and it can be all quick changes and it has I think this is a way that marketing is going, you know, where they can go in and customize everything.
- Speaker #1
Yes. Including partners. I mean, I mean, look, without being judgmental in any kind of way, I mean, just taking a very cold look at it on, you know, Walt Whitman says, you know, do I contain multitudes? Yes, I contain multitudes. We all have multiple, in the best way, multiple personalities, right? We have multiple aspects to our personality. I could be a scholar. I could be an asshole. I could be a comedian. I could be a beautiful, caring dad, right? There's all different parts of me. And this is something I don't, I'm a Gemini. Not that it matters. Not that I believe in it, but I sort of fit the mold. You know, we all have different aspects to ourselves. Culture, society traditionally wants to lock you into one identity. But in fact, we all have so many voices inside of us that want to speak. There's even a whole stream of psychology, which I love, called voice dialogue. Hal Stone and his wife. voice dialogue, which is how do you speak to these different parts of yourself? So people get into relationships, but there may be, usually are, huge parts of their personality that don't fit that relationship. If you're lucky, you know, you're monochromal and you really fit with each other, or you're able to express all those sides of yourself in a relationship. But I think that's where a lot of long-term relationships buck up against each other. People evolve, right? Especially now. And people don't want that other side of you. I broke up with the girl who I met on that TV show who was wonderful because we were on TV. And I answered a question with my usual candor in an interview. And she was hitting me in the stomach. And the camera went off and she goes, we shouldn't be saying that. And I was like, we didn't say that. I said that. So sometimes the we can overwhelm the I. And sometimes the I needs to express. So ideally, if you're in a relationship where you support each other's... Remember what I said before about being inspired for the other person's narrative? That's the hard part. That's letting go. That's like not clamping onto somebody, but saying, I want you to become the beautiful flower that you're meant to be, you know, for a woman. And I want you, man, I want you to be the tree with all the branches and all the colors and all the aspects that you are meant to be on this earth. You're not meant to be, you know, an accountant all your life and just do that and not have other interests and blah, blah, blah. I used an accountant. My dad was an accountant. And that terrified me like spiders, by the way. Being in an office looking at numbers was like, what a waste of a life on earth. Not that my father wasted his life. He was a wonderful man and lots of interests. But, you know, I think it's scary for people to get locked into. Imagine if you had to get Netflix, but you're not allowed to get any other. And you had to have that the rest of your life. But you couldn't get Hulu. You couldn't get Fox Sports. You couldn't get Disney+. You had to watch Netflix. I don't think people's minds work that way anymore, which is why I had that idea of the lease option marriage, which is how we live anyway.
- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #0
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- Speaker #2
That's 8fig.co, 8fig.co. See you on the other side. Yes, I agree with you. I mean, when I was on this little four-day hiatus, that's one of the things that I did is like, I got divorced two years ago. Give up a relationship. So I like, what do I want? You know, I'm in my late 50s. What do I want? Where am I going to be? Where am I going to be 20 years from now? Who's going to be changing my diapers? Or do I want someone changing my diapers? What do I want to do? Where am I at? And it's like. I don't know that I want to get married again, like what you're saying. I don't want to know if I want that commitment. Do I just want to play? Do I don't care? I'm not looking for long-term intimacy. I just want companionship. I just want a partner. I just want someone that has similar interests to me just to go have fun with. If it leads down another road, okay, it leads down another road. If it's not, if it's purely platonic, I don't care. It's totally fine. But I think you're seeing more of that. But how do you address that? In marketing, we always say... The big thing right now, especially with AI, is like figure out your avatar. Use AI to figure out who's your customer avatar. And it sounds like that's making a single profile. This is a woman who's 50 years old. She's a gardener. She loves this, this, and this. But you can't just market to that one avatar in one way based on what you just said because everybody has these multiple personalities. So you've got to figure out to hit them right. How do you, in the moment, like this week, they're super excited because of this. The next week. Grandma died and they're in this state. So you got to market to them in a different way, in a different state. It's just like in a relationship, right?
- Speaker #1
It's so funny you mentioned that. This morning I had a call with an AI company that I may be working with very closely to develop exactly that ability to speak to different aspects of the customer. Because the AI will be interactive with the customer, right? So they'll know the changes going on in their lives.
- Speaker #2
It's like you said that thing in Asia. Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. Yep. I'm that together to what I just said. Yeah, that's the magic.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So that's coming. I mean, that's part of what's coming in marketing and everything is it's going to read us really well. It'll make mistakes, obviously, but it'll read us. And so what we were talking about this morning was the avatar being able to speak to different customers, but similar customers in different ways at different times based on what the customer is doing elsewhere online. for example. Yeah, we contain multitudes. We really do. Now, there are still some niches you can address. People are trying to get me to do a product for divorced men, really target divorced men. That is a really good target market because generally, divorced men are going to have a lot of the same questions like the one you're asking. What do I really want? There's a bunch of other questions that come up. That's actually a good niche. I think new moms, Great niche. There's generally similar stuff going on around identity and health and wellness and emotional stuff. So there are there are still identifiable, I think, niches.
- Speaker #2
Maybe it'll be a chart targeting avatars. You should be targeting chapters, life chapters. But like you just said, you gave your background. You went through all these things that you've been through from professor to this and that to rich lady and on the yachts and everything and all this, all this whole thing. I just wrote mine. I've had seven chapters. I classify that I've had seven chapters in my life. And one of the things that I just did is like, what do I want the next three to be? Beautiful. And what do I want those to be? And what are my targets and what are my goals in those? And you have to market to me or have to sell to me or have to relate to me differently. And like you said earlier, people evolve. And so you can't put me in this bundle. And if AI knows all my past history, I may be past that now. You know, what you're talking about, your project now. So. How do you address that?
- Speaker #1
Well, you just did, actually. I actually spoke about that this morning with them. So I have three approaches to that question. One is Shakespeare, right? The Seven Stages of Man, I believe, seven or six, right? The child mewling and puking in his mother's arms. And then there's the boy with sunshine face satchel on his back going off to school. And then the brave young man. And then the, you know, bearded like the pard, right? Like a leopard. You know, and then old and decrepit and then, you know, nothing. The last word is nothing. So here's the seven stages of man. I get chills thinking about it. I wish I could recite it, but I don't know it enough. But it's beautiful. I think it's from As You Like It. That's one way. He really sees that there were seven stages that we go through. Now, that was in the old days, right? In India, they have stages of life. And we would be. the three of us would be in what they would call beyond the householder and really into the, what do they call it? I think the sage stage of life, where really we should be focused on wisdom, giving back, sharing, meditation. We're over the drama of commercial life. Well, clearly we're not, but that's one way that India does it. This morning, I spoke to them also about sort of the archetypal journey. If you look at Jung, There's three amazing books by a Jungian therapist whose name I always forget. Robert Johnson, I think it is, which is weird because I'm talking to a boxer name with that name right now. But I think it's Robert Johnson. I can never remember his name, but I think that's what it is. And the books are called He, We, and She. And I recommend them to absolutely everybody. And it traces the journey of masculinity and he, using the story of Parsifal and the Holy Grail, from sort of innocence into attraction to the knights, and then going to the King Arthur's court and not having the maturity to ask the right question and going out to prove himself and then coming back and earning the Grail later. So there are very specific phases. And for women, the book called She, is they use the story of Psyche, goddess, and Eros. And it's just amazing. I mean, they're great. They're amazing because they're old mythologies, but they trace the loss of innocence, the kind of hope that everyone brings to relationship in she, in this story. Psyche, Psyche. Psyche is her name. It sounds funny. It sounds like Psyche, but Psyche. She marries Eros. Eros saves her from the marriage to death. He calls the initial marriage women have as a marriage to death because it's the... End of that infinite possibility, youth, right? Now they're locked into a relationship, so something dies, right? And then he's a pure God, and his agreement with her is, I will give you everything you want. You will live in the Garden of Eden. You will live in paradise, but you can't look at me, right? How many men do that in relationships? Like, I'll give you everything you want, but don't fucking challenge me, right? But she takes a lamp and looks at him sleeping at night and sees that he's a God, and it changes everything. So she has to get over her, you know, she has to go through the process of, I thought I married a God, but actually he's just a dude, right? Which is what my wife has gone through, clearly, on some level. But all of us, right? We have this idealized notion when we first get into romance and we learn that our partner, you know, farts and is stupid and is egoic and has moods and whatever. But she goes through her process of maturation. And these are kind of hero's journeys. And if you really understand those phases of emotional, spiritual development, you can speak to those levels. So I was talking about that with them this morning. How do I identify those stages? You know, what stage of illusion is a person living at? And what stage of hope? What stages of where do they stake their value and their identity? Which is really the key one. And speaking to them as they progress through life. So that's how I would look at it.
- Speaker #0
Just listening to you describe what you just described, I think of dating apps. You put up your best face. It's you. And then when you meet somebody, they're not at all like they are. Or they're set up to. That's one thing I think that we should look at is a better way to develop an app for dating. Because it's just set up to fail. I'm sure there's winners, but it just presents the false narrative for that person.
- Speaker #1
It depends how you put yourself forward. Right. I mean, so it just so happens, you know, my son, by coincidence, was one of the early hires at Hinge, not unhinged, but Hinge, the dating app. And he helped he helped develop that. So they work really hard. They've developed algorithms and questions to help people actually talk about what's real to them. I have been on it for a long time, obviously, so I don't know what's there. But you're right. If you put forward an idealized self, you're going to disappoint people. So don't do that. Now, one of the you guys know marketing better than I do even. And one of the things that I did, and the profile that got me onto that show, met that woman, which was more important than the show. But she read it out loud, and here's how it began. Put on your marketing hats, ready? I didn't say, you know, I'm a lawyer, I've been to 37 countries, which most people do. Men speak in what I call the garage sale, the garage sale profile. Here's all my status, here's all my status, here's all my status. I know you don't give a shit, but that's all I know how to talk about. Right? Because that's how men talk to men. So what I did was my profile began, you are inspired and inspiring, vivacious and witty with a great open-hearted laugh. Joy swims around you. You can't help it, right? So what was I doing? I was actually creating the avatar of the woman I wanted to meet, right? And I wrote it in such the language and with images following that in such a way that any woman who saw herself as a joyful person who lives an inspired life would say, oh, he's talking to me, which is what you want to do in marketing, right? I talked about my customer, my client, my prospect, the women I wanted to meet. I didn't talk about myself. Now, they learned about me by how I spoke about them, what was important to me. I spoke about what I wanted to find. And so that's why I was able to meet such extraordinary women, actually, along the line.
- Speaker #2
Do you think men can market to women? I mean, in our space, there's a lot of men selling beauty products, for example, in the Amazon world. And they don't know the first thing about an eyelash. They don't know The first thing about... Any of the creams or what they do, do you think they can effectively market? And sometimes they say, well, yeah, the gay guys can. And that's not being mean or anything, but because they have a more legitimate side. how do you, how do you get into that mindset? Like you just said, or the way you just did it. Cause most guys can't do that. And they, they,
- Speaker #1
well, there's a tech, there's a technology you don't know called gay. I, right. It's an advantage. It's an advanced from AI. It's now called gay. I, and you put it in and you get the gay version in feminine language. Now I'm just kidding. So, but in essence, that really exists. You could just say, you could just say, here, take this, take this content. um uh Take the role of a marketer who understands women. Here are some voices that really do very well marketing women and put it in that language. Or you could actually ask your wife or girlfriend or neighbor or mistress or whatever. You could run it by women. But absolutely, with AI and with a fundamental understanding of female psychology generally, and everyone's different and blah, blah, blah. But generally, if you're writing to women, it depends on the age. They're really looking to connect. they're looking to have self-esteem, all the kind of things that we all know. And you can use AI to totally mimic the language of successful writing to women. Yeah, anyone can market anything now.
- Speaker #0
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- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #2
It's amazing how much you can do when you actually connect on the emotional side and the sensitive side to a woman, whether even if you're not trying to get in their pants. Just I have I have friends where if I just take a certain action or do a certain thing that they will come back to me and they will say, I just had this happen yesterday with somebody. They actually came back to me because there's something happened and I went and consoled them and I held their hand and I did this and that. And they. Came back a few hours later and said, thank you so much for doing that. That's I know you're a true friend, not because most most stuff is transactional. And most of it is that those are her exact words. The most stuff is transactional. I know you're a true friend and I really appreciate you taking that effort and doing that. And but that's something that I knew I need to do just because of experience and just because of the way I am. But most guys would never have done that. That's how do you make that switch or how can we encourage people out there to make that switch, whether it's in their personal relationships or in their marketing to actually because once you make that switch and you can hit on that, you can have great success.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I have a I have a framework for that. Funny you mention it. I have a framework that I've taught and I try to live by. There are three ways I think we can interact with each other. And that's marketing or humans. All right. There's the lowest level, which is transactional, like you said. I give you something, you give me something. And as a teacher of mine used to say, if you know about Marxist economic determinism, economic structures create social forms. So we're trained to get the best deal, right, in general. And so we do that unconsciously or subconsciously in relationships. I want the best deal, right? I had a girlfriend who used to talk about BBD girls in L.A. Bigger, better deal, right? where they hug you and look over your shoulder to see who else is in the room, right? Bigger BBD girls. So that's transactional, right? And that's how our economy trains us. So we have to work hard to grow out of that. The next level up, I believe, in terms of spiritual evolution and emotional depth, is transformational, where you look at relationship not as, I give you this, you give me that. I give you money, you give me sex, the traditional one. Transformational is we're in this relationship as a forge, as you were saying. To confront our shadows, confront our weaknesses, to grow and to evolve into the person we really wish to be. That's transformational and that's wonderful. And that's the whole PD movement, personal development. And transformation is a huge hook in selling, obviously. The third level, the highest level, is transcendent. where what you're serving is not a thing or an advancement, but love on a really deep level. You know, you're really, it's the question, what would love choose in this moment, right? And that's transcendent. How do you transcend your ego and serve something higher, like the marriage? I think that's the spiritual kind of evolution we all want to move toward. So that's how I look at that question.
- Speaker #2
What percentage of relationships or marriages, if you want to say, go there, do you think actually are true, pure love? I mean, they always say a dog is one of the only ways to get actually pure love, pure 100% love. But what's your take on finding true, unconditional love in a relationship? I love them except yours. It doesn't really happen.
- Speaker #0
But he connected to his bank account.
- Speaker #2
It was transactional, Norm.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #2
Okay. We didn't get to the second, third phase.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. I don't know. I don't have statistics. My son is a data scientist, so I've been trained not to give answers around things that I have no idea about. I have no way of knowing. I know a couple of them. You know Travis? Do you know Travis?
- Speaker #2
Travis?
- Speaker #1
I think he has one.
- Speaker #2
No, no, no.
- Speaker #1
I know a few couples, not a bunch, but I know a few who, you know, but they're very conscious, loving people, very conscious of their inner lives. And it's a practice. Yeah. You know, I always say love, you know, this is my teaching over the years that, you know, love isn't something you look for and find like coins under a couch cushion. It's something you create choice by choice by choice. And the people I know who have that create that choice by choice by choice.
- Speaker #2
What's that saying? You can't be loved unless you love yourself. Brown talks about that,
- Speaker #1
that you can't love to a greater capacity than you love yourself. And that has some real, real ramifications because you can't be loved. If you don't love yourself, you're going to reject, you're going to bat away all the love that comes at you. You know, I have a friend who is a love coach, and she has this beautiful practice of if you say something nice to her, something good happens to her, she goes, you love me. And it's a practice to receive the love of the cosmos. The fact that we have oxygen, we have food, people are nice to us, but we don't see it because we're fear-based animals. Remember, we're prey animals, humans. We're not predators. We're prey animals with super weapons. But we don't have big, long teeth and go out and hunt things and catch them with our teeth. We're prey animals, so we're fear-based animals, which all marketers know. So it's a practice to say, thank you. You know, instead of no worries, it's a practice to show appreciation in the morning and at night when you walk in the door, take that moment. And it's and it's just it's I call it skilled play. You know, it's not work. It's actually how you play the game well. And that's a whole other subject. But but, you know, you can play the game of relationship. Well, it ain't easy. Steph Curry spends a lot of time practicing his free throws and his three point shots. He makes it look easy. But guess what? He practiced a lot. So I think the people who have those relationships are the ones who really practice.
- Speaker #2
Now, you said that you had a challenge and we had to rebuild. You think you were doing some sort of event or something. And you're cruising along doing well in this event. And I do events. I'm in the event space. So I can understand, have some empathy there. And things just crashed and burned. And you had to...
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's a good story. I had connected, I met a girl, most of my stories start with, I met a girl at an event, and she was really into this teacher, David Data. Do you know who he is? He wrote The Way of the Superior Man. He's probably the major figure in men's work, men's development, masculine solidity over the last 30 years. He's really good, very brilliant guy. And I knew of his work, and she wanted to go to his workshop. We started dating, and she wanted to go to the workshop. And I said, let's do it. And because I had heard of him and he had two events per year, 30 people each, $300. And he was sold out. And he's got a huge global following. This is 2007. And so I called his office and I said, hey, listen, I produce Hollywood movies. I can produce a weekend for him here in California. And they said, oh, you know, we've been looking for somebody in California. I'm like, oh, here I am. OK, so he checked me out through a mutual acquaintance. and got on the phone with me and I said, can I produce an event? Because I want to go to one. And they're really amazing events. They're very intense and just break your heart open stuff. And he said, sure. I said, how many people? He said, here's my fee. I said, how many people can I have? He goes, I don't care. I go, how much can I charge? He goes, I don't care. Because he just wanted to teach, right? So I had 200 people at $800 each. And he called me and he goes, maybe we should work together. And so we had a two-year deal to do live events. We did several of them. And also I created a global community back in the day. We created a Ning Ring, if you remember. This is before Circle and before school. Because I knew people who had done his work have a certain level of depth and neurosis, but depth. And they would like to meet other people who have done this kind of work because it's very sort of high quality, high consciousness work. And so I created the global community. I created the events. I remastered all his audios into CD sets. And then everything was going beautifully. I bought a hot tub. I went to China. I redid my house. You know, it was really good. And then the crisis hit in 2008. And I had put basically the entire Eden Rock Hotel on Miami Beach on my credit card, guaranteeing all the rooms because we sold out in two days. Nobody signed up. Nobody signed up. And I was just like, where is everybody? And everyone was panicking, right? Nobody wanted to go to Miami. And I literally was in bed with the curtains drawn for two days in bed, just feeling it was the end of my life. And I had never been depressed, never anything like that. And my kids came in. They would have been, what, 20 years? In their teens. And they said, hey, Dad, go live on a beach. This isn't cool. Go take care of yourself. We'll be fine, which was a beautiful thing to say. And after a couple of days, I started picking up the phone and calling my marketing friends from Masterminds saying, hey, what do I do? I'm like, I cannot. Like the phrase that was in my head, and I think that's what depression is. I can't see forward. I just can't see. And I'm a pretty resilient guy. And I could not see the future at all. And I couldn't figure out what to do. One guy said, after several calls, he said, hey, create an online live event with David, which he never does. He's really a hermit. He's a real practitioner. He does five hours of personal yoga a day. He's a high-quality guy. And get him on. Have people sign up for this webinar, whatever you want to call it, question and answer. get their phone numbers and call them one by one. And you know what my first instinct was? I'm not going to do phone sales. What am I, the guy from Glen Gary Glen Ross? Can I sell you land in Miami? And I had this ego moment. I don't do that. I don't do sales. That's so beneath me, right? A guy who's $380,000 in debt because of this, right? I owed. I got over that pretty fast. And it was a real shift in my life.
- Speaker #2
Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player, or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of the Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm?
- Speaker #0
Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast?
- Speaker #2
Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time? It's just me on here. You're not going to know what I say.
- Speaker #0
I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too. And we'll just, you can go back and forth with one another.
- Speaker #1
Yikes.
- Speaker #0
But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content, somewhere up there, there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of the Marketing Misfits.
- Speaker #2
Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm.
- Speaker #1
And my mentality, just the ego thing just fell away. We did the thing. I got on the phone four days straight. I didn't have air conditioning then. Sat in the heat. I remember sweating in shorts. Hey, do you want to come to the event? Yes. Can you pay $800? No. Can you pay $600? No. Can you pay $600 over three months, $200 a month? Yes. Good. You're in. Next. Can you pay $800? No. Can you pay $800, $100 a month for the next eight months? Yes, you're in. Boom. Sold the damn thing out, right? And I sold it out because I got over my ego. You know, you just do whatever you have to do to make those sales. That was a big event for me. And I was, you know, I had never been in that shape before.
- Speaker #0
All right. It's about that time. We've gone over an hour. It's been a great podcast. But what we like to ask our...
- Speaker #1
You guys, this is really fun.
- Speaker #0
And right back at you.
- Speaker #2
This has been fun. This has been really cool.
- Speaker #0
So at the end of every podcast, we always like to ask our misfits if they know a misfit.
- Speaker #1
I have a great misfit for you. So I had a mastermind in Miami in January. It's the Archangel mastermind group, by the way, fantastic group. Giovanni Marsuco, great guy, gathers amazing people. And one of those guys, I hit it off with him so fast. We were like, you know that moment of instant, we're going to be best friends? So we're best friends. And we're actually planning some really exciting, curated, deep Epicurean mastermind travel events around the world. for people who want to have an amazing experience with some amazing people. And his name is Dave Albano, and he's kind of a legend in marketing. He's a whiskey sommelier, which got my attention right away. And just a lovable, amazing guy who is one of us. You know, just fun, funny, open-hearted, helpful, smart. And, you know, you know.
- Speaker #0
drives his own train basically like i think all of us you know we just don't fit into companies well that's so awesome that you mentioned dave uh kevin and i don't know dave from the mastermind that we did so uh yeah so we'll we'll get him on here all right and uh we'll have some fun with with dave yeah
- Speaker #2
that'll be great well adam it's been uh it's been fun uh this has been great uh it's been uh really interesting and uh well if people want to reach out actually how to find out more about you get your books right what's the best way to do it
- Speaker #1
ways. The best way is just to write me. Find me on Instagram or find me on Facebook. But AdamGilad at Gmail is the easiest way. You can go to AdamGilad.com, but I don't think there's even a... I'm not even sure if there's a thing on that to connect with me. But anyone who's your friend who's listening to you, if they want to contact me, AdamGilad at Gmail or they can find me on social media, I'm sure.
- Speaker #0
All right, Adam. Thanks again for coming on.
- Speaker #1
Absolute pleasure, guys.
- Speaker #0
Now we're going to remove you, put you to the back and... don't go away. All right. There we go, Kev.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, that was great. You never know who you're going to meet in an event. And when you get them on the podcast, you learn all kinds of additional stuff. And I think that was some really valuable insight. And it's not your normal, what you would hear on a normal marketing podcast. We have the whole range here on Marketing Misfits from someone talking technical stuff on, on. you know running social media ads to let's talk about the psychology and how you tie in dating and human nature and everything to marketing so uh good stuff good stuff i think that's it we're done i know we're done for another another week of the marketing misfits you know we've been doing this over a year now norm can you believe that we've had over 55 56 i don't know what number this is but 55 60 somewhere around in there uh um episodes of the Marketing Misfits podcast. And if you're just now discovering us and you like what you've been hearing, go back and check out some of the other ones. You can find them on YouTube. Just look up Marketing Misfits on YouTube and you should be able to find us and check out some of the other ones. We also have, what'd you say, there's a new Shorts channel or something, right?
- Speaker #0
Yes, we do. We have our new YouTube Shorts channel, which is doing great, by the way. Better than expected. So check it out. It's Marketing Misfits Clips. on YouTube. And by the way, Kev, I just have to say, you know, I'm so excited. I made your, I made your friend list.
- Speaker #2
You made my friend, you made my friend list. I mean, he made the top five. You actually made the top five. You're lucky you made the cut.
- Speaker #0
There we go. Part of the team. All right, everybody. Part of the team. That's it for today. We will see you next week.
- Speaker #2
Take care.
- Speaker #0
Ciao.
