Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The people that I talk to daily, they want to know what to do. They feel lost, they feel overwhelmed, they don't know which chat bot which this to do and so they're paralyzed by the abundance of choices. Like when you go to a restaurant and the menu just has so much in it, you'll just get the chicken satay because it's common and comfortable, you know, I don't want all this other stuff to be just too much a la carte choice, you know.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Welcome to the Agency Hour podcast where we help web design, SEO, digital marketing. Agencies of all types create abundance for themselves, their clients, their communities and their families. This is a pretty different episode of the Agency Owner Podcast. Our guest this week is my good friend Ray Miladoni, who at one point was the marketing manager of WP Elevation back in the day before we rebranded and he now is digital strategist at sgd. SGD is an agency based here in Melbourne. Seriously good design. It's grown up out of alumni really of our program. James Fulton, Simon Kelly, and now Ray. They run sgd.
They're a very successful agency with staff all over the world. And Ray and I, whenever we catch up, we have these big deep philosophical conversations about the future of the world and AI and robots and just culture in general and society and what the future looks like. We meditate on this stuff a lot and we think about this stuff a lot. And the last time we did this, we said, you know, we should just record this episode. We should record this as an episode of the podcast. And so today we did that. There's a little bit of talk about agencies, there's a lot of talk about AI. There's a lot of talk about the future of the world. There's a lot of talk about geopolitics and social constructs. Some of the conversations go to a pretty interesting place. It's not the usual topic of conversation that you're used to here on the Agency Hour, but I think there's something in this for all of us. Ray and I spend a lot of time thinking about the future and what our role might be in the future. So of course this episode of the AgentCR podcast is brought to you by E2M Solutions. They are our preferred and only recommended white label partner for all your WordPress development SEO, high level work content. If you need any assistance with your client deliverables, reach out to E2M Solutions. Tell em you come from us. We'll put a link in the show notes and you get a discount on your first month and that will help you increase the capacity of your agency so that you can then spend more time thinking about the types of things that we talk about in this episode with my good friend, Ray Miladoni. Our other partner also, of course, is WP Remote, the all in one solution to manage all of your WordPress websites from one dashboard. They recently just upgraded their platform. Their new dashboards look amazing. And of course, WP Remote comes with their suite of plugins, Blog Vault for your backups, Airlift for your performance, and Malcare to take care of all of your security. So go and check out WP Remote. They are our partners here on the Agency Hour podcast. So without further ado, let's go and meet my friend, Ray Miladoni.
Oh. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome to the Agency Hour podcast, the one and only Ray Milladotti. How are you, Ray?
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Just in one of your nukes. What's going on, brother? What's going on, good buddy? Nice to be back in this podcast seat.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for being here. For those of you don't know, for those that don't know, who are you and what do you do and how do we know each other?
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Well, that goes back to when we were we now it was, you know, lots of. We've crossed paths multiple times. I actually still remember being in my house on a live chat widget, considering whether I should sign up to the course at the time, WP Elevation. And I was like, is this really you? And you're like, yes, it's me. And I was like, God, this can't be real. And now we live in a world of AI where I still don't know if it's all real. So is this actually you, mate?
[00:03:54] Speaker B: It's not. This is not me, mate. This is. Hey, Jen and 11 labs. I'm just, you know, I'm not real.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: So, yeah, student of the product, I guess. Loved the, you know, the angle. Loved the way that you were shipping your products and building the Runway, like, with the community. And so much so that I was like, are you looking for someone to work with you? And, you know, then we've worked together for several years and helped kind of make the live studio stuff happen and pivot into different brands and run events around the world and what today is agency mavericks, you know, so digital's always been at our, you know, overlapping core.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: I reckon my memory is that you just turned up in the studio when we're working at a Revolver A Creative and you didn't fucking leave. You just. You just stayed There. And eventually I was like, I think I have to start paying you because you just.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Well, you know, they say power of association, you know, if you want something, get close to it, you know. And so I was just doing that and helping where I could. We're running events and, you know, maybe I strategically picked up that place, but not, you know, creative.
The co workers made had a really good, good vibe back then. It was kind of bit grungy, a bit rustic, and wasn't like the polished white, clinical look, you know. So it was nice.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it was good. It was good back in the day. And then you. So you came on board. You. In fact, you were out. I tell this story, and I can tell it now because I've had enough therapy. I tell the story now that you were our marketing manager for a period of time and you left. And on your exit interview, I was like, oh, dude, you know what's going on? And you're like, well, you just fucking won't let me do my job. You keep micromanaging me and you keep trying to rescue everything at the last minute. And so there's no point me being here. That was a huge lesson for me. I don't know. I don't think you and I have ever actually debriefed about this, but that was a massive lesson for me.
[00:05:40] Speaker C: Was.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: And it was. You were right. I was like, we need to do this. And then you'd get like 80% of the way through and I'd just swan in and take it off you at the last minute because I was a control freak and I didn't trust.
And so that must have been very frustrating for you to be in that situation.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: What.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: How do you think.
What was the.
I don't know what I'm trying to ask you, really, but I guess I'm saying sorry, right?
[00:06:04] Speaker A: No, I'm sorry, too. I think there was lessons both ways. I think, you know, I think as much as, look, a spade's a spade, and it is what it is, and we're all in this kind of crazy world learning as we, you know, as. As it all kind of unfolds. And I think for me as well, it's like I didn't have my voice either. I wasn't really clear on myself, and so there wasn't that ability to voice my opinion. I kept, you know, shutting my mouth and thinking that I'm doing the right thing, and subtly that kind of builds up and there is that kind of tipping point that happens. And I think, you know, I. There's days that I go, just bring back the good old days. You know, sometimes there is that lack of leadership. There is that lack of, you know, being clear and just going after. And who cares if it's Zoho or infusionsoft or fucking keep whatever. They change the name to like the tool doesn't matter. It's the values. And you know, I think if we make that our North Star, not the what and the tools, I think we can kind of get very stuck in that. And especially being tech minded individuals, it's not the what, it's the who. And being around great like minded people is the trick. Like they were the great old days, you know, back in the studio, making amazing stuff happen.
And, you know, stupidity allows a little bit of resentment or not able to like share what you're really thinking, get in the way of something great, you know?
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I mean, you know, back then we had really. I'd been winging it for a while at that point and was still winging it. We really had no North Star. We had no vision, we had no values. We had. We were literally throwing shit, literally throwing shit at the wall to see what stuck run. Sometimes it was brick wallpaper, sometimes it was timber wallpapers. Literally just putting shit on the wall, set up a live stream. I was just watching an episode of Science is Golden because someone pinged me and said, oh, the link on this is broken. I'm like, no shit, dude. It's like 8 years old. I wonder. The link's broken. And I was watching an episode of Science is Golden and gee, it was fun and, you know, I was definitely in my sweet spot, but it wasn't part of a strategy. We had no strategy back then. Right. We were l up every day to see what. How we could best serve our audience. And I think the philosophy we had back then was let's try and entertain and educate our audience at the same time.
And, you know, partially that philosophy is still true, but we've now got, I think, a much clearer vision of what we're trying to achieve. So you, you left agency or you left WP Elevation before it was called Agency Mavericks. You then went and did a bunch of stuff. Just talk to us a little bit about that kind of journey before you ended up where you are now, which is with Simon and James at sgd.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Yeah, so I wanted a respite out of the digital world. And so after leaving, I. I did a bit of consulting because that was easy. It was my bread and butter, but was actually introduced by you it was a Christmas party and there was a company called Farming Secrets and they were into farming and I had a farm and they did digital and we did digital and you're like chat to them. And so that opened up a door in a new kind of pathway where there was the ability to integrate as a marketing partner into, to that business and take their DVD subscription business into the digital world. I did that for a couple of years.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: And they literally had a DVD subscription.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah, they were Netflix before Netflix.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah. So in the early 2000s they were burning DVDs via DVD on Demand service and sending it to farmers across the world, across Australia and the world because there was no Internet in region. So DVD was the medium to educate.
And so we converted all Those digital, those DVD iOS files into MP4s and loaded them into a soil learning center and created a platform that was an education hub for farmers on how to farm with less chemicals. And I got really hooked on that. I was like me discovering soil gave me new roots and new purpose and a new passion. And I went down the soil path for a long time and doing digital and soil and during that journey set up Soil Connect, which was a digital agency for earth caring businesses. And Simon and James then come knocking and said, we're looking for some talent to expand our business.
We know how you operate. We're all kind of cut from the same cloth from the community. So we were all doing very similar businesses but just in silos. And so we, you know, Simon and James merged their business 12 months before me and then I was a second merger. And so over the last 24 months there's been, you know, a couple of mergers into this sgd. Yeah, seriously design fantastic.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: So it gets done.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it.
That's the real, that's the real name in my opinion.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. What's your, what's your role at sgd?
[00:10:59] Speaker A: So digital strategist. At the moment it is a bit of a, you know, with the world of AI unfolding and you know, strategies changing, we're having to be agile as I guess tech, tech companies need to be.
But it's, it's, it's interesting because I think at the moment we're identifying that there's a lot of people doing stuff, there's a lot of noise and a lot of busyness, but the strategic side of it is missing. And so we're leaning in and really looking to like become more strategist partners with, with, with, with campaigns and clients to understand what their actual end goal is not Just about the clicks and the conversions and the spend and the million dashboards that don't interconnect and give you false data 24 7. So, you know, those things never change you.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: I've been trying to solve. I've been trying to solve attribution as, you know, reporting and attribute, and we've used every platform on the planet, right? From clipfolio through to grow.com, which was, you know, $6,000 a year and everything in between.
And the attribution reporting, I don't think has been solved. I don't think anyone solved. I don't give a shit what anyone says. I've used them all.
I do want to talk about AI, because you and I have nerded out about AI quite a bit at some live events over the last couple of years, and I do want to talk about that, but before I do that, I want to talk about this piece about strategy and tactics. Right. And I want to break it down. I remember when we were in Thailand for one of our first masterminds with WP Elevation, and Cass Hughes was there and she became a coach of ours and she was saying, I don't. I'm not a strategist because I don't understand what that word means.
[00:12:39] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: And so the way I think about it is if your client has a goal that they want to achieve or a problem they're trying to solve, that's the, that's the overarching objective, that's the result that they want. Strategy is a plan for how we're going to help them get there. And then tactics are the tasks that we're going to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to, to drive the strategy.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: How do you see, you know, what's the shift that you've seen over the last three to five years in the agency landscape because of marketplaces like, you know, Fiverr and Freelancer and Upwork and the kind of flattening of the world, we can now hire someone in Pakistan to do a job for a tenth of the price. How have you seen that shift the responsibility of. Of strategy over that period of time?
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Oh, lots to unpack there.
It's funny because I'm seeing. So there's a trend that I'm seeing which maybe goes against the classic agency model where a lot of companies are paying retainers or fees that are quite substantial and they get the itch to bring it in house and that'll make sense for a short period. Then they start realizing that you have the ability of just one person's brain.
And I think that's the key to Agency World is the ability to plug into a person that has multiple data points, that can see what's happening across multiple clients, see what's happening in trends, and keep the finger on the pulse.
And so what I'm seeing is that marketing coordinators, marketing whoever at a company, they are lacking the ability to know what needs to be done. And so the strategy that we can partner with them and become like a growth partner empowers them. That's the keyword that I think really sits at the heart of this, is people are feeling disempowered, they're a bit lost, they don't know what they need to do. So business owner or marketing contact at a particular company.
My role these days is more about empowering them. And I agree it's not about the tactics, because what I'm finding is that when you empower business owners to think clearer and, and, and know where they're heading, the tactics actually become easier for them to do. And that's why I was interested in the post that you put in the community recently, where it's like, I'm finding that we have to do less fulfillment because we're creating more clarity and our business contacts or our business marketing coordinators now know what to do. And the tactics come easier when you have a clear strategy.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. I had a conversation with a guy yesterday in Western Australia who runs an agency, and he was, he, he. He's basically saying, I need someone to help me stay focused and hold me accountable. I'm like, dude, you and everyone else. Because we. This is why our mantra here is plan the work, work the plan, right?
On average, we consume 70,000 messages a day from the external world. And, you know, I go back to an episode of Silence Is golden where Simon and I were talking about, if you don't have a plan, you become part of someone else's plan. And I'll tell you what they've got planned for you. Not much, because their plan's all about them.
So every email that lands in your inbox is someone trying to get you to do something for them as part of their plan. Sign up to my webinar, buy my shit, get my course, do my thing, Recommend me on LinkedIn, whatever the fuck it is, right? And it's all about their plan. And so if you have a clear plan, it's very easy to triage those messages and ignore them. Because the simple question becomes, is this gonna help me get closer to my goal? And Work on my plan or is it a distraction? 99% of the time it's a distraction.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: When was the last time someone emailed you and said hey Ray, how can I help you achieve your quarterly objective?
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Never.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Never.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: Right?
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Never.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: So having, and you're right, the tactics become self evident if you've got absolute clarity on the plan because then you know what you have to do. And figuring out how to do the thing has never been easier.
[00:16:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: You just go to ChatGPT or you go to Claude or you go to Google, you go to YouTube, you ask someone you know on your network.
Figuring out how to do the thing has never been easier. Figuring out what to do next is the hardest thing right now because we are bombarded with so many distractions on a daily basis. And I think agencies, whether it's AI content, podcast, YouTube, growth, web design, whatever, I think agencies jobs are fast becoming.
Helping the client figure out the strategy, the plan and then keeping them accountable. Yes, maybe delivering some of the fulfillment of that.
But I'm not sure that if agencies are just relying on fulfillment, I'm nervous about that future.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So we've gone, we've kind of doubled down on this where we, we put six month strategies that are reviewed every three months just to make sure that we're course correcting and that we're following the North Star. And a lot of those things adds more work onto our clients play but it's meaningful and it's moving multiple parts forward because we know like what's the outcome we're trying to achieve in this six month strategy. And, and so I, I it, you know, this is what's working for me but I'm seeing more and more evidence and maybe I'm just looking in the spots that, that reinforces that but it, it definitely is showing like, like the people that I talk to daily, they want to know what to do, they feel lost, they feel overwhelmed, they don't know which chat bot which this to do.
And so they're paralyzed by the abundance of choices. Like when you go to a restaurant and the menu just has so much in it, you'll just get the chicken satay because it's common and comfortable. You know, it's like I don't want all this other stuff me just too much ala carte choice, you know. So our job as strategists is to just zoom that in a bit and go just look at on trades, make a choice. Awesome. You know that kind of smaller bite pieces in the strategy.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: There's there's an interesting. I'm going to, I'm going to quote two books in a minute. I think because of AI and the Flattening of the World. It's a fantastic book by. This is a whole side up. There's a fantastic book called Hot, Flat and Crowded by.
I'm, I'm going to look it up because it's worth. Thomas A Hot Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman. Now his first book I think was just called Hot and Crowded maybe and it was about the planet heating up and becoming overpopulated. This book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, which came out in, I don't know, 2008, right.
Flat refers to the flattening of the middle class because predominantly China and India, right. There have been, you know, hundreds of millions of people that have come out of poverty and have achieved a middle class and are now, and largely because of the Internet are looking at what's been happening in the west and going, I want that kind of lifestyle, right?
And the Internet has given us access to their skills and their talent and has given them access to Western opportunities and clientele, right? And so we all have staff in the Philippines or Vietnam or Thailand or you know, Indonesia or whatever, right?
And all of our stuff is made in China. Like all of our clothes are made in Bangladesh. And so there's been this flattening of the, the, the, the, the kind of the middle classes has really has grown a lot over the last, you know, 10. Now this was a book written in 2008 which was a. I read, I still read it now and go, he's so bang on. He's got so much of it, right.
He says there are problems, but he also proposes a lot of solutions. One, the smart grid, where you know, which is happening where we don't, you know, all power is renewable and we have cars plugged into batteries overnight that, you know, refuel or that top up and that everything is run by an algorithm that tells you exactly when you should be using energy and when you should be contributing it.
This is already, you know, we're on that journey. It's taking a lot longer, but we're on that journey. So anyway, Hot, Flat and Crowd is a great book, but one of the things that as a byproduct of this is that because of the flattening of the marketplace and we have access to all of this talent now all around the world is that the, and because of AI, there's a lot of people that, predicting that, you know, a one person agency will be, will be able to Run a million dollar agency with one person and AI within the next, you know, two or three years. Here's what I think is going to happen. I think our job as agencies is to employ and nurture and foster thinkers.
Because even if I was, if I lived in Vietnam and I was a video editor and all my clients were in America or Australia, I'd be very nervous, right? Because AI, I mean, Riverside already we record this podcast on Riverside. At the end of this episode, Riverside's gonna produce a bunch of shorts for us with captions. I don't even need a VA to go and use capcut anymore, right? Like AI is just getting so good at so many repeatable mechanical tasks that I think. And the two books I'm going to recommend are Creativity Inc.
Which was written by Ed, Ed Catmull, who president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation.
[00:22:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: That's the first book I'm going to recommend. And the second book is the Creative act by Rick Rubin, one of the greatest music producers of all time. Both of these books, one of the core messages in both of these books is that creativity takes time.
And so if all of your deliverables and all of your fulfillment is done by AI or a handful of people in emerging economies who, who are using AI to do a better job faster, right? A great opportunity for people in emerging economies to embrace AI and just earn more money by doing less stuff, right?
Then our job as client facing strategists is to fucking sit and think and take time to think and brainstorm and get messy and come up with creative solutions to our clients problems and know that the deliverables and the fulfillment is a given that is done.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Meta, have already said that you'll be running your Facebook ads with AI by the end of 2026.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: Right?
[00:23:31] Speaker B: So this is my take on it. I could be, I don't know, I could, I mean maybe I'm partially crazy, but I'd love to hear like what happens to the people who are, you know, what happens to the media buyers and the SEO guys and the web designers and the web developers in three years time. What's their job?
[00:23:48] Speaker A: The million dollar question or multimillion dollar question. And I agree with you, I call it Project Beige. I think we're going to go into a world where it's like beige. Everything just looks the same. Everyone's just copying and pasting garbage in, garbage out. The derivative of AI just gets thinner and thinner as it keeps recycling itself. And I agree, I, I share stories. This is not even around Digital. But, you know, there was a time where blacksmiths were at every pub fixing horseshoes and nails. And I don't know if we already spoke about this at the, at the dinner we had months ago or years ago, but you go get a wrought iron gate made today and it costs you tens of thousands of dollars because the craftsmanship to do that is a lost art. Now all those lost arts become extremely valuable. Now, I'm not saying you have to sit here and wait for SEO to go through this massive wave of beige and AI and, you know, automation, but I agree that if you sit there and polish a craft and you sit deeply with it and you think and you look at the intersect of how different industries can come together, that's, I think, where the magic will happen. And I don't even know if we can even predict it because we don't even know what jobs are going to emerge from this, this, this, you know, from, from this movement. And so look at fine arts. You know, people pay tens of thousands of dollars for art where it's like actual paint on a canvas.
Doesn't mean that NFTs don't happen and the digital art craze happens. But all that did is solidify that physical art means more, you know, and so, yeah, I think that's kind of, that's what I, if history leaves clues, that's what I'm seeing.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: It's interesting just to kind of lean into this AI conversation. I want to, I want to touch on it and just a warning for the listeners too.
This could go to a dark place.
Ray and I had a very interesting conversation about AI.
I don't know when it was. I think it was the Gold coast last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a big follower of Scott Galloway, Professor Scott Galloway. I think his, his content is, I mean, his predictions, you know, are pretty accurate.
He talks about.
He gave a talk at a conference in, somewhere in Germany, I think it was, and the video was up on YouTube for, for a week, I think. I sent you the video. By the time I sent it to you, it was gone. It had been taken down by the conference organizers.
I think they wanted to put it behind a paywall. But essentially he said the risk with AI is that. And again, you know, alert for listeners here, not my content, so don't shoot the messenger. But the risk with AI is that particularly young men who, and I know this is a, I don't, I'm not making this agenda conversation, but I'm just repeating what Scott Galloway talked about. The risk for young men is that they come out of school, they come out of university, they come out of trade school, they find themselves in a situation where there is no job for them.
[00:26:47] Speaker C: Right?
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Even if you're a teacher. I saw this great video the other day on YouTube of this lecturer who went fucking nuts at his class because his class averaged 94% on their final exam and the national average was 65%. And he said, you all cheated and you're all doing that exam again right now without your books and without chatgpt, right? If, if, if you're a, whatever industry you're in. And I, and again, I don't mean to gender it, but typically speaking, a lot of, A lot of careers and employment opportunities for young men over the last 20, 30, 40 years have been replaced with robots and are now being replaced with AI, Right?
So his, his message was we need to look after our young men more than. Because they are, you know, four times more likely to suicide than young women, right? We need to look after our young men more than ever because they are going to feel completely lost and useless.
[00:27:51] Speaker C: Right?
[00:27:52] Speaker B: So there's that. And in the context of that you and I were talking about what does, what does it, what, what does the future look like? You know, is everyone paid a minimum wage to stay home and not cause civil unrest because there's nothing for them to do because the robots are doing everything. Like, I was in California, you know, six months ago, and there's driverless Uber, Uber Eats, delivering a little fucking little esky on wheels down the street. It's like, it's a little esky on wheels, goes down the street, pushes the button, you come down, you open the esky, you take your Uber Eats, order out. Like, where are the Uber drivers going? They're gone, right?
All the delivery drivers, they're out of a job. Now, again, don't want to be gendered, but most people that drive trucks and delivery vehicles and Uber, most of them are men. So what happens to and I? We don't have the answers to this, but, you know, I mean, are you optimistic or terrified of this?
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Depends which side of my brain I want to listen to, I think. So this is what I'm noticing. So at like AI is here and near, and so monthly, there's a group of business owners that now get together over an AI dinner. So we talk about AI, but it's brought us together, we've connected, which none of us had time to talk about other things and whatever. I think it's community. I think it's Connection. I think humans at our core, at our centuries ago DNA, we are kind of wired to be connected and be together. So I think what will sprout from a lot of this stuff is connectivity.
Is that, that creativity, the, you know, maybe the respite that people are looking for. Because I do feel like we have a group of workers at the moment that are feeling exhausted, burnt out, hustle, hustle, hustle, you know, more money, all this other stuff. So maybe some of those dilemmas disappear and we go back to, you know, sitting under a tree watching a herd of sheep. And that's your job. And maybe that connects us more to Earth, connects us more to each other.
But I agree, and not, you know, the gender thing to play into that, but the other trend to even lean into what you're saying is what the life events that people have, like getting married, having kids, has also expanded.
And so I agree with what you were saying there as well, is that we are going to have this time and period where we do need to care for the masculine energy because they're not getting married, they're not having kids. And so that purpose of coming out of uni, not knowing what to do and not having a family and not even knowing how to make friends as an adult, which is a very big trend search thing at the moment, you know, how to make friends as an adult is a very big problem.
So. So yeah, I definitely think we need to care for each other, look out for each other, ask the right questions and be there. You know, that connectivity and it's got nothing to do with digital, so nothing to do with AI.
But I think it is going to be something that we will find a new balance in the world of civilization, of what that looks like. And I don't think anyone really can predict or know the answers.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, is there or is there not a loneliness epidemic? I don't know. I kind of think, I think there's, you know, there have been books been written about it. I think there is. And I think, and again, just to kind of wrap up the gender kind of conversation here, my observation is that, and you know, I'm married to a wonderful woman, we've got two beautiful children. I see. I've always seen that women are far better at social networking in real life.
My wife does not use social media and I think she used it for five minutes and went, well, that's a fucking train wreck. I'm never going to use that. And so she's never used it. But she has such an incredibly large Rich, diverse social network. And a lot of them are other mums.
[00:31:53] Speaker C: Right?
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Mums connect with mums because they're going through a very particular experience that you can't understand unless you're a mum. Right. That's just the way it is. And so I think men aren't as naturally.
And again, I know this is a gendered conversation, I do apologize in advance. But men I don't think are naturally as good at. And I've had to work really hard over the last 10 years to nurture my mate. I've got five beautiful men who are my best friends and my best male buddies, and I spent a lot of time with them because it's important. In fact, the older I get, the more important.
It's kind of like the most important thing in my life is to have those meaningful connections with the men in my life.
[00:32:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Plus my, my brother and my dad.
I also have a lot of female friends as well. But that, that's just. I've had to work. That doesn't come naturally. Like men, I think, have to work hard at that. And so I think, I think we are kind of at this, at this interesting inflection point where the, the businesses that exist today, I just don't see how they're going to exist in 10 years time. And I'm not talking about Uber drivers, I'm talking about agencies. I'm talking about accounting firms, I'm talking about financial planners, I'm talking about, you know, mentors and, you know, even authors like that. The whole knowledge industry is going to be completely upended by AI. It already is. And it's happening at a pace that we can't even keep up with. And so I think the journey for us and the work for us is to find meaning in what is in what. I think we're going to go through a period where it's difficult for any of us to find meaning apart from our family and our connections. I think they're going to become more meaningful because the work that we do is going to be rapidly replaced with robots, AI, emerging economies.
And it's a really. And you know, it's like you. It depends on how. Which side of the bed I get up in in the morning, whether I'm optimistic about it or whether I'm terrified.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: But I think also the ability to have discourse and conversation about it. Um, and I think that is one of the other signals that I see is that like, you know, you've had to apologize multiple times around the whole gender thing, you know, and like why can't we just talk about gender? Doesn't matter what you believe of, you know, as. Even, like, you know, as a. As a gay male, you know, like, that really pisses me off sometimes because I get put into this category where I'm told that I need to basically believe and comply with the framework that now is this. This movement. And I have opinions on it as well, but I don't always feel like I've got the platform to speak what I'm thinking about unless it's within a closed door. But I think the ability for us to just have discourse, have conversation, and go. You think this was blue? I think it's teal. Good for you. Have a great day. You know, who cares what color tone it is? You know, it's just like being. Giving ourselves the ability to.
Yeah. Just. Just have our differences and, you know, we know what's happening in the world at the moment. When someone has a conversation at. Feels a little bit too against the grain, you know, that I feel like that's the. That's what scares me more.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Well, I think, you know, you've seen the Social Network, the film. Have you seen.
What's the other one? Not the Social Network. Social Dilemma.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: You seen the Social Dilemma?
[00:35:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: I mean, that's required. I mean, my kids will watch that before they use social media. Right? I mean, and hopefully there's an updated version to Social Dilemma, because the algorithm and I've. I've seen this. I can retrain. I can retrain my Facebook feed in about 24 hours, right. If I want to completely change my Facebook experience, I just start engaging with it in a way that within 24 hours, it'd be full of guitars.
[00:35:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: And then 24 hours later, be full of agency stuff again.
[00:35:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: And so the. So the point is, it's. It's very. And if you think about the film her. Joaquin Phoenix, where he falls in love with his operating system and then discovers that she's having relationships with 8,000 other people at the same time, and he's heartbroken.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Right. That's fucking hilarious.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: I mean, we're there.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: We're humans. We have emotions and feelings.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: I mean. I mean, Scarlett Johansson had to send OpenAI cease and desist letter to stop using her voice as one of the voices with, you know, voice driven. We're there. We are already there. And I think the danger is that it's so without connection and without a rounded, holistic, diverse group of friends.
[00:36:08] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: It's very easy to become to. To end up in A, in a silo where you look for, as you said before, you look for things that prove your beliefs. Right. So the attention bias, right, is well, I'm only gonna, I'm only gonna like content that reaffirms my belief that I'm right and everyone else is wrong. And you very quickly end up with, you know, hundreds of thousands of fractions of sorry factions of people that believe things and they believe they're right because everything they're seeing in their feed reaffirms that what they're saying is right and that their belief is right.
And I think without connection, that's a real danger because if you have connection with people in your life that care about you and love you, they will keep you grounded and they will stop you from slipping into a rabbit hole, whatever the rabbit hole is, right. And so we saw this happen during COVID we've seen it happen since COVID really, it hasn't stopped. And so it's an interesting philosophical conversation and I don't know where it ends.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Well, I think just train the muscle of being a critical thinker. I think that is like the, you know, because it's about having a group of diversified friends. But are they critically thinking, are they? You know, I always used to say there's three sides of a coin. The heads, the tail and the edge. Which, the edge is the most interesting. And this is why I really gravitated to the soil farming movement because they are naturally trained to look at the lay of the land, to look at the signals. You know, farmers can walk on, on soil and feel the sponginess. Know when it rained last, can smell the rain coming. There's this intuition and that was what was really exciting when I was working in that space because it took me away from the screen time and got me into like green time. And being in that is just a different rhythm, but the rhythms are the same. It was just different. And it's very hard to, to explain. But you know, I think that is like being outside more, being around great minded people, you know, being able to have a little friendly disagreement but still be great friends.
I think that's, that's the error, otherwise we will end up all beige, you know.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: Yeah, well, here's, here's my, here's my roadmap, if you like. Here's, here's what, here's what I'm going to do and here's what I think everyone should do over the next five years. First of all, get used to the idea of spatial computing because screens are a Thing of the past, right? As you know, the future. My Oscar's eight, right? He's in school and he loves watching. He's become obsessed with AFL in the last couple of months, which is great. I mean, I couldn't get him interested in football, but he started playing at school with his friends and now he's obsessed with it. He's a Saint supporter, so he's set up for years of disappointment. But anyway.
And he wants to watch AFL videos on my phone all the time, right? And, and I let him, and I supervise him and I do it with him and we talk about it. I don't just give him the phone and off he goes. And the parents at the school are all talking about, oh, you know, when our kids are teenagers, how are we going to get them off the phone? I'm like, dude, these won't exist when our kids are teenagers, right? They'll be wearing smart glasses. Mesa now have deals with Ray Ban and Oakley. They'll be wearing smart glasses. They'll be wearing skin colored nanopods that are the best fucking speakers you've ever heard there. They will. It'll be, Oscar, take your glasses off, I'm talking to you. That will be the message when he's a teenager. Screw. I would not invest money in manufacturers of screens.
[00:39:24] Speaker C: They're dead, right?
[00:39:25] Speaker B: Spatial computing. Get your head around that now. What that means, Ray, is that we no longer have to work in an office environment because we don't need to plug screens into PowerPoints. We'll talk to our devices, we'll talk to our glasses, right? The screen will be a hologram in front of us, right? The speakers will be in our ears. We are free to work from the park, we're free to work outside.
As long as Elon's got a satellite up in the sky we can tap into and Skylink, Skynet or whatever it's fucking called. We've got Internet, right?
[00:40:02] Speaker A: You're in the Terminator. Yeah, yeah, Starlink.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: We've got Internet, right? And so we don't need to work in offices anymore now. And we don't want to after Covid. There's all this commercial property all around the world in CBDs that is plummeting.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: I mean, a co working space, it's empty, right? I wouldn't think it's even a 25% capacity, right? People are leaving every day.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: There are high rise car parks in capital cities all over the world that are empty because no one's driving to the office, right?
So we end up back in the village.
[00:40:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: And so I think this is, I believe it. I mean I think that screen time is a moment in time that will dissipate, that will disappear and we will be connecting with each other through smart glasses and wearables.
[00:40:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: You watch your nanopods, your smart glasses. And so socially, there's that socially we need to figure out how to connect again, how to go and sit in the park and have a picnic and, and how our wearables are going to interfere with our social connection time.
[00:41:08] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: From an agency point of view and a consulting and a strategy point of view, we need to figure out how to help our clients leverage technology to still achieve what they want to achieve. Bearing in mind that a lot of businesses are going to disappear, a lot of business models are going to completely disappear.
[00:41:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: I think E commerce is, is, is always going to be a thing, but it'll be spatial. You won't be looking at a screen, you'll be, it'll be optimized for your feed glasses. I know a lot of people thinking this is a lot of bullshit. Go to the Apple App Store and have a look at how many apps are already optimized for VR headsets and Apple glasses.
[00:41:44] Speaker A: Yep. And, and I, and if you want another signal of this is look at all the content creators, mainly in China that are doing the three second review videos and making millions of dollars an hour holding up products for three seconds. So if you think, timing, market or like you like it's, it's like you find the who that you resonate with and whatever they say you should be doing, you go by. And so who needs a long winded story told arc of an ad when you're holding up coat hangers and people buying thousands of them and holding up shoes and people buying thousands of it. And like Gary Vee was Talking about this 10 years ago and he predicted it, you know, like there will be social content creators as we have now, which will now flip to AI. So the AI agents will become the content creators that are telling you what to buy and people will buy.
[00:42:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: So have you, so you've seen, have you seen whatnot, the social selling?
[00:42:37] Speaker A: No, I haven't seen no one yet.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: So what not is a social selling app where it's basically people are live streaming. I watched this guitar guy the other day and he's in his guitar shop in the States, he's got all these guitars and he's bringing them out, he's reviewing them and showing them and, and people are bidding. Oh, he's bid $250 and it's like a live auction. Oh, you got it. 450 bucks. It's all yours, right? And you make the payment, the details come through, he ships it out to you. So he could shut the doors, right? He doesn't need to rent a shop anymore. He could have the guitars. Right now the big question for me is at what point do we stop manufacturing plastic crap that we don't need?
[00:43:12] Speaker C: Right?
[00:43:12] Speaker B: At what point does Fast Fashion stop dumping their fucking recycled clothes into waterways and destroying ecosystems?
[00:43:21] Speaker C: Right?
[00:43:21] Speaker B: I mean, this is. And, and I predict that this is going to take longer than we think, longer than we hope. Because human beings don't know what to do with themselves if they're not busy. Most human beings in Western culture, we don't know what to do. If we sit still for five minutes and do nothing, our whole graveyard of fucking unresolved trauma comes up and starts banging on the door and frightens the shit out of us. And so we just go and play with ChatGPT and we get busy, right?
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
See, golden is as silence is golden, you know, the ability, like, let's rebrand that show and bring it back to life and just play a live stream of silence. Because I agree. The ability to sit with your own thoughts, not be distracted, feel the, feel the grief, feel the pain, feel whatever it needs to be.
That is the muscle that I think we need to be mass, like growing at the moment, because if we're not ready, it's going to hit us like a ton of brick. And, you know, I don't. You know, there's been lots of conversations around AI the world. You know, Diaries of a CEO has done a great job in doing some amazing clickbait titles to scare everyone about it. But there's an element of that that you have to kind of go, well, what if some of this is true?
Am I going to sit here and be naive and, you know, and ignore it? You know, I'm convinced that there were people going, I'm not selling my horse and buying these stupid cars that they're trying to push on me. I'm not buying into that car movement rubbish. It's just a phase. Well, you know, the rich now have horses. You know, where the rich originally bought cars. You know, that shift happened. And if history leaves clues, I just think it's a rinse and repeat of similar trends. You can resist it all you want.
It's going to happen and you either are an early adopter, a middle adopter, or a late adopter. You know, so there's not, it's, it's like, let's lean into it, let's create rules, regulations, boundaries, coping mechanisms, networks, people of support. You know, one of the things that shifted for me over the last, you know, five to six years is I used to be a really big champion of being self sufficient. It's like, if it's meant to be, it's up to me, you know, how do I get resilient and how do I become self sufficient, grow my own food, learn my own knowledge, all that kind of stuff. And then it hit me and I was like, that's the mistake I've been chasing because it's all about me being alone and that gets lonely really quickly. It's about being community sufficient, you know, and I, I, I've coined this my bread lady project. You know, how do I find someone who's my bread lady, you know, someone who makes bread and feeds the village, you know, who's the mechanic, who's the engineer, who's the digital marketer, who's my psychiatrist, you know, those kind of things. It's about being community sufficient.
And I think that's, you know, to the point of being connected, being around like minded people, as you said before, your five best friends, like that's what's going to be a huge commodity, like a huge, I don't know, it's going to be valued a lot, you know.
[00:46:28] Speaker B: Asset. Yeah, asset. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What are you most excited about over the next, you know, between now and into the year? We're at the end of September now, we've got a quarter left. What are you most excited about? Personally, professionally? Just in, you know, in general.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: I think for me it is like, for me and the team it is very much about AI assisted work. You know, we're not, we're not trying to like be replaced by the agents. I'm not, you know, we're not buying into the whole, you have 100 agents working at the moment. But I think it's really exciting seeing staff and even customers and clients get lit up a little bit when they can see how some of these tools can help solve some problems that have been lingering around.
The price of gold has got me excited.
You know, just there's a few things what crypto is doing. I know just like, yeah, just the world of tech and just seeing the adoption of many systems that sat on the fringe, coming more to like day to day, you know, I always find like, you know, when my mom and dad talk about crypto, you know, now they're talking about AI. You know, it's just like, there's that same energy around it of, like, oh, it's gotten to household level now. So, yeah, I just kind of keen to see how this all unfolds. And.
Yeah, you know, I. Yeah, I definitely. I think screens are a thing of the past, but I just.
I think you're a little bit more excited that they're going to happen sooner. I think there's going to be a lot more people that hold onto that bit of technology just because.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: I agree 100%, because they don't know what to do without them. What are you most frustrated by at the moment?
[00:48:05] Speaker A: The lack of ability to have a heated conversation and still be friends. You know, I think that really keeps me up at night, especially, you know, in the. In the groups that, I mean, where I'm just, like, told that I have to go with the main narrative. And, like, how can you even think or say that? You know, Like, I think it's sad that we have to talk, you know, apologize about a gender conversation. I just don't think that's a healthy civilization, you know, so that.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: I, for one, love having robust conversations with you, brother. And I mean, I've known you a long time. I love you to bits and I love the way you think and I love the way you challenge me to think about these things. Very few people I know who think about the future the way that. That you do and the conversations that we have. So been a pleasure to have you on the Agency, our podcast, and would love to have you back at some time in the future to see if our predictions or our. Or our meditations are right in any way.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: I agree. That's, you know, I agree. And ditto to you, Troy, because, yeah, it's always been pleasure even. We hung out recently in Bali and it was just like we instantly go back into the good old day conversations, even though there's a gap between one chat to the other. So, yeah, love your work and awesome. Yeah, been great.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: Thanks, Mr. Melodoni.
Hey, thanks for listening to the Agency Hour podcast. Please subscribe, like, share, do all those things and share this with someone you think may find it interesting or useful. And if you are ready to take your agency to the next level and navigate the future that is coming at us very quickly, then just book in a time to chat with our team, see if we're a good fit. Chances are we're not, but if we are, we can have that conversation and let you know how we work and if we're not, then we'll definitely point you in the right direction to give you some resources and make sure you leave that call better than when you started. All right. I'm loving the bringing you to the podcast every week here. I'm really enjoying being in this, and I hope you're enjoying the podcast as much as we're enjoying making it. I will see you again next week on the Agency Hour podcast. Until then, I'm Troy Dean. And remember, one single teaspoon of honey represents the Life's work of 12 bees.
