Marketing in an AI-First World: How to Sell Smarter | Adam Gilad

The Future of Human Connection & AI i could see already six years ago that you know with the internet you know with a plethora of 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 you're watching Watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Ferrar and Kevin K [Music] Norm Ferrar how you doing my brother Setting the Stage! from another mother What's up man i already know this is going to be a good one just by the shirt you're wearing Yeah I'm ready for the party And I We got to You're ready i know I 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 a a couple things that they needed to help out in their house and uh a couple weeks later 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 you Robert Graham uh that you you really like uh and now I really like uh and it just shows up like oh they must have misdelivered this to the wrong address So I open 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 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 it is isn't it and uh it's so you by the way It's so many cuz I'm 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 you want to do when it comes to marketing is stand out from the crowd Absolutely So why don't we get right into it today i think so Uh we got a guest uh that I met at an event Special Guest: Emmy-Nominated Producer Adam Gilad here in Austin uh a few months ago and uh we're 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 but invol in the mentorship scene screenwriter uh just a whole plethora of uh experiences been at at the bottom and built himself back up So I think uh it's going to be a really fun episode Probably a few times And you just miss out on a very small thing Kev An Emmy nominated TV producer That's right That's right That means he might know something All right So let's bring him on So welcome Adam How you doing man to have you here Good Good I had a spider on me but other than that I seem to be Don't say that Don't say that I did That's Norm's biggest fear My spider is huge Oh yeah Yeah He has a huge phobia of spiders Understood I will keep it on my side of the screen Where'd he go good Good Nor can you imagine if it just crawled across the screen right now you'd freak out Nor would be smart It would be on the lens and it would look like Yeah Godzilla of house up in uh 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 Oh my god Well I understand because if it got if it got caught in his beard it it would be Oh you don't know what's living in my beard I find small kids kids in my beard sometimes I'll be sure to report you to the police Okay All right Adam Sir awesome to have you here Thank you It's great to be here You got so many things in your portfolio Can you tell us a little bit about yourself um always wanted to be a writer Grew up in high school everything Yeah 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 Um was terrible at that I was way in over my head Uh but my writing had got attention of Hollywood So I quit and went off and wrote some scripts Went to India for a year went to grad school for five years Uh taught language poetry technology culture at Stanford Um 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 Uh while I was there I wrote my first film scripts got hired at Disney worked in Hollywood for a bunch of years uh doing a lot of animation and movies for television and cable even though I'm really a comedy writer Uh took over National Ampoon Radio with a friend Uh tried to build that into a uh 24-hour talk comedy radio network just as radio was dying So failure number one Um but we sold it to satellite Um then by a strange turn of events I was teaching a writing course Went to my first internet marketing seminar in 2004 cuz 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 you know 35 36 people So um I and and and the truth is I I met a a girlfriend at that point And The Dating Scene, Marketing, and the Rise of AI I had gotten single about 5 years before And uh she was a gazillionaire like 2 acres at the top of Beverly Hills 110t yacht with seven full-time really rich Okay And I was bust broke cuz I gone through divorce TV 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 I I 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 I said "I want you to come in." And I came in I wrote a 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 I can't you know the showrunners are all in their 20s You'll intimidate them." And so welcome to Hollywood boys Right So I was dead broke And I met her online of course and we could talk about online dating and writing but um 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 had a Honda Civic okay and the gates open and there's this house which was the literally the centerfold of 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 are there And I said to her I said to her can I ask you a question cuz I was I didn't know what to do at this point right cuz my writing career literally had you know a million dollars of of of projects evaporated cuz 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 I could Like it was like this light went on in my head cuz all my life I was thinking 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 teach makes $7 million a year teaching dating advice You know who that is no Evan Pagan right david D'Angelo Yeah this is back back in the day right and I said I actually know something about that cuz I had taken my writing skills and was writing great um online profiles for myself cuz I had gotten single and I didn't know who I wanted to meet So I had a variety of profiles One to meet sort of a yoga girl one to meet a nerd girl one to meet an athlete you know and I ran them simultaneously very busy boy A girl A girl Oh it was amazing It was like and I had two little kids I live up in the mountains here I you know I don't go to bars I'm 5 foot whatever My mother thinks I'm 6'2 but I'm about 5'9 5'8 It's It's shrinking Um I'm not that guy who goes to bars but I can ride like an MF right so a girl in a TV show called How to Get the Guy on an ABC prime time 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 Uh 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 um to attract each other That eventually became a lot more I began to run these Attract, Connect, Inspire: Building Relationships in Life and Marketing large events called attract connect inspire which are really the three levels that people really need if they want to be in a relationship Uh you have to learn how to attract right that initial thing uh you have to learn how to connect really be in presence and learn all the you know strategic empathy and all those all those things around uh presence communication um 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 uh how to live an inspired life which actually has been my goal all my life and what's driven me cuz 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 Um so um how to be in live an inspired life to be magnetic to attract a high quality person Um how to be an inspiring partner for someone meaning you learn the damn skills of relationship All 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 to 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 Um uh a lot of men's work took men on deep retreats We went to Italy to do the lover archetype the Yungian lover archetype coaching travel get their life awake Went to Italy That was Italy went to Mkos we did the King Archetype went to Latin America did events there The idea was to wake people up to themselves right and um I did that for many years I was mentioning to you guys I did something called Kinder which around two 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 Uh they were just cruel And so I created this uh organization called Kinder with my now wife um where uh we had coaches come and teach communication skills and then we'd break people into groups of two and four and they would uh practice these skills and they became best friends I mean it was a beautiful experience and I shut that down last year cuz I'm doing some other things but it was a beautiful thing Um I my interest kind of grew and got involved in capital raising running newsletters um 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 my primary love So that's a quick long maybe boring uh overview I've done a lot of consulting BMW Oglev McDonald's all you know that kind of stuff as well as some corporate consulting My real passion my real passion is communication language and and obviously fun and laughter Okay bye All right And and that was Adam Galad Thank you I had hair Hey we all belong to that club by the way I know we Exactly Uh so so when it comes to communication I think there's a lot that can be learned when it comes to to relationships and not whether it's personal relationships and business relationships especially today in today's world I think you're going to see a a come a a resurgence of this because AI is depersonalizing a lot of things and and you're seeing this big movement to all this AI and robotics and 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 I think over the next 20 years there's going to be a lack of a better word a 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 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 of information selling products and information was not the future right you can look up anything and now with AI forget about it right so I could see that was dying and I I saw that people needed connection and I like doing live events because you really have huge breakthroughs Um so 100% people want human connection Now whether humans are going to like each other once they get used to these Will AI Replace Relationship Skills? beautiful AIs who reflect back your beautiful soul in the most There's a big issue right now with chat with chat GBT It's a suckup right it reflects back to you exactly what you want to hear about yourself Um 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 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 uh flexible of mind never be moody So I'm actually a little worried about that I think people will want a human connection but I'm actually on a larger level outside of marketing really concerned about what's coming you know and especially you know looking at singles you know having a AI girlfriend is is much more soothing in some ways than having a phys a physical one 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 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 Hey Norm they do a lot of really cool stuff if you haven't seen what they do like full listing graphics premium A+ content storefront design branding photography renderings packaging design and a whole lot of other stuff that Amazon sellers need 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 So if you want to take your product to the next level check out House of AMZ That's houseofamz.com House of AMZ I heard uh 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 And another statistic yes another statistic if you heard Zuckerberg a couple days ago he said you know he he correctly identified if you listen to Scott Galloway or or uh what's his name um uh come to me uh who's written about the man crisis so well um men are incredibly lonely Um most men make their friends in college I 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 Um 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 It's interesting you say that It's you just because I just took a little sbatical and I went to St Barts uh 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 4 days literally just just wrote personal stuff business stuff um goals you know 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 out who are my true friends and I actually wrote down like where and and I wrote I list I wrote them by name Norm was one of them Norm was Norm was he he made the he made the list So I'm part of the team Be part of the team But it was it was five people Five people that I know I could trust on depend on confide in or whatever is it was five people and that's all I had And I was like "Holy sh you know what is everybody else?" And I get my all my friends almost all of them come from this business They're you know from mastermind I met Norm at a at a mastermind They come from I met you at a mastermind Yeah Exactly So they they these kind that but you can't really get that from the AI or I mean you can't it's perfect but you want sometime you want that imperfections you know you want it's you're not human unless there's something you know Norm and I say something to each other that upsets each other or or you know relationship with a woman you you you need that that balance don't you of course I I 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 Successible S susceptible No No Susceptible Sus Yeah I 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 uh 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 Um uh and I can't believe I have to say that But these days um uh women women really crave connection on such a deep evolutionary biological level And uh and the kind and what I've seen already with AI when I see women talking to their AIs it's the it's the boyfriend they never had It's that 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 without a body But wait till they wait till they get these AIs into you know haptic artificial bodies whatever they're called the love dolls or you know whatever they are in Japan love dolls as those advance you know Steepford Wives is is suddenly is is is out there anyway But that's all future stuff Who knows hey there was a TV show out English TV show called Humans I don't 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 But the reason why all of this happened and they turn against a lot of uh the humans is because they're abused specifically for sex or for probably I mean that but that'll pass I mean now there's something called I think ASI artificial super intelligence 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 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 and says hey I 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 right now that's interesting is that conscious it's be it's be able to read somebody it's emotional intelligence in a sense yeah it's nuts and we're just the beginning of this 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 big these are big phil these are marketing questions These are big philosophical questions So sorry if we want to get back to marketing But that's also great about the communities right that's where you get to come together again and work through these emotions and you know live life with like-minded individuals Yes and and and that's the value of masterminds and it's the value of getting off grid Um I have friends who do three-day in Death Valley zero electronics you know out in the wilderness I think it's really helpful I've done that a bit in uh Peru and Colombia Although I have to admit there was a s there was a movie what was it one of these movies on Netflix where sort of one of those bombs went off over New York and knocked out all electricity And when the family went around trying to get online 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 Holy 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 like you if if you went to the beach in St Barton that sounds beautiful and lovely because it was your valition But if it's not by your valition it could be very scary Yeah that's true So so has have relationship has human nature changed i mean I always 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 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 versus 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 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 of the the idea of getting married is crazy Um 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 uh writing at Stanford and I had a student Chinese American student who I was a little concerned about obviously very brilliant and I said you I saw I saw just signals of you know instability whatever and I said hey you know do you date at all do you 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 take an extra 5 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 um and and not get all caught up And again going back to the messiness of of humanity the messiness of human contact you know there's going to be a lot of drama There's going to be a lot of you're going to be forced to confront your shadows in a relationship that's worth anything Um people just may not want to do that because they just may rather ride the AI train and have their questions answered 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 Obviously by the way Grocki Grock what's that you got to try if you want to feel uh yeah like uh really low and depressed Uh Grock unhinged Okay I don't know about that but um yeah Grock Yeah the Grock AI unh it's the unhinged one It will it will cuss you out It will like tear you up and down It's it's pretty great It can be pretty bad 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 chatbt I've programmed I said listen I want you to give me the most brutal nos assessment of this decision you know give me a swat analysis and be brutal don't you know and it does it's it can be really good but you know we should have to depend on that so you the question is you know have men and women changed um I think there are big changes out there I don't think people are running into relationship as much as they used to um and I I think there's economic reasons for that but I think there's also technological reasons How does that change how would you if you're advising BMW right now that they came back to you and you said they're like "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?" Well they were way ahead of me cuz when I went over there uh to Munich um and it's a really funny story So someone recommended me here for them because to write this movie for them basically based around design because BMW the culture is all about the engineering right it's all about the engines and here's a guy who said you know this this company doesn't give us enough attention to us Chris Bangal 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 I met Chris Bangal who's like a legend there you know like they treat him like this whatever He was a guy and I walked in he goes "Uh 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 to 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." Okay Then he gave me then they gave me for two weeks I they gave me BMWs every day to drive around the Alps which was awesome Um but so I could actually understand the car But um they were ahead of me because what they were already doing back then this is 20 years ago They were thinking about how to you know they 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 Modular Marketing: Customization is the Future what's called uh customer sovereignty right um 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 sizefits-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 um 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 Well if you take a look at uh what's happening today and I I get the I like just people I talk to a lot younger than me All of a sudden everybody Yeah those longterm relationships suddenly that's everybody Yeah Everybody's younger than you Norm So be more specific Yeah they 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 just switch out swipe right and it's like the 3-second goldfish effect You know people want to change up It could be their watch face Uh it could be the design of their car but just things that are interchangeable and quick you know Now that's not quick for your car but all sorts of different things that it could be uh I don't know uh the material you're wearing or but it's all controlled by you and it can be all quick changes and it h I I think this is a way that marketing is going you know where they can go in and customize everything Yes including partners I mean I mean look without being judgmental in any kind of way I mean just taking a a very cold look at it Um 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 can be a scholar I could be an [ __ ] I could be a comedian I could be a a beautiful caring dad Right there's all different parts of me Um and this is something I dealt with I'm a Gemini Not that it matters Not that I believe in it but I sort of fit the mold Um you know we all have different aspects to ourselves Culture society traditionally wants to lock you into one identity And 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 Um House 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 You know I broke up with the girl on who I met on that TV show who was wonderful because we were on TV and and uh and uh I answered a question with my usual cander uh in an interview and she was like hitting me in the stomach like and we got 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." Right so sometimes the we can overwhelm the eye and sometimes the eye 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 on to somebody but saying I want you to become the beautiful flower that you're meant to be you know for a woman I want you man I want you to be the the 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 use accountant My dad was an accountant Um but that terrified me like spiders by the way Being being being in an office looking at numbers was like what a waste of of a life on earth Not that my father wasted his life He was a wonderful man and had lots of interest But um you know the 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 Plus 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 Hey what's up everybody kevin and Norm here with a quick word from one of our sponsors 8 fig Let me tell you about a platform that's changing the game for Amazon sellers That's right it's called 8FIG On average sellers working with 8ig grow up to 400% in less than a year 8FIG offers both funding and free tools for e-commerce growth and cash flow management And here's how it works 8FIG provides flexible datadriven funding tailored to your exact needs You know they can fund anywhere from up to $50,000 all the way up to 10 million 8FIG gives you free tools to forecast demand manage inventory and analyze cash flow Visit 8fig.co That's 8fig.co to learn more or check the link in the show notes below Just mention marketing misfits and get 25% off your cost That's 8fig.co 8fig.co CEO See you on the other side Yes I agree with you I mean when I was on this little uh 4-day uh hiatus that's one of the things that I did is like what do I I I'm recent I got divorced uh two years a two years ago uh came out of a relationship So I like what do I want you know I'm I'm in my late 50s Uh 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 uh or do I want someone changing my diapers um what what do I want to do where am I at and it's like I'm I don't know that I want to get married again Like like what you're saying I don't want to know if I want that commitment Do I just want to play just do I don't care I'm not looking for long-term you know intimacy I just want companionship I just want a partner I just want someone that has similar interest 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 Uh it's it's totally fine And but I think I think you're seeing more of that And then but how do you how do you address that like 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 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 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 they're in this state So you got to market to them in a different way in a different state just like in a relationship Right 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 cuz the AI will be interactive with the customer right so they'll know the changes going on in their lives They'll know what they're doing in Asia that you're getting these gonna say just tying that together to what we just I just said Yeah That's the magic Yeah Yeah So So that's that's coming I mean that's part of what's coming in marketing and and everything is it's going to read us really well uh it'll make mistakes obviously but it'll read us and be and so the what we were talking about this morning was the avatar being able to speak to different uh customers but similar customers in different ways at different times based on what the customer is doing elsewhere online for example Um yeah we contain we contain multitudes We really do Um you know now there are still some niches you can address Like people were trying to get me to do a a product for divorced men like 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 you know and there's a bunch of other questions that come up Um so 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 there are there are still identifiable I think niches Well maybe don't be instead a chart targeting avatars You should be targeting chapters life chapters But like you just said you gave your background You went through all the things that you've been through from professor to this to that to uh rich lady and on the yachts and everything and all this all this whole thing I I just wrote mine I've had seven chapter I I classify that I've had seven chapters in my life And one of the things I just did is like what do I want the next three to be uh and beautiful and and how what do I want those to be and what are my targets and what are my goals in those and and you have to market to me or have to sell to me or have to relate to me differently uh based and like you said earlier people evolve and so you can't put me in this this bundle and if AI knows all my past history I may be past that now you know what you're talking about project now so how do you how do you address that well you just did actually Um I actually spoke about that this morning with them So three I have three approaches to that question One as uh Shakespeare right the seven stages of man I believe seven or six right uh the the the child muon puking in his mother's arms And then this the boy with sunshine face satchel on his back going off to school And then the brave young man And then the 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 Um so he has 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 Does it remind you like it um that's one way he really sees that there were seven stages that we go through Now that was in the old days right um the in India they have stages of life and we would be you the three of us would be in what they would call beyond the householder and really into the what do they call it the I think the sage state of stage of life where really we should be focused on wisdom giving back sharing meditation you know we're over the drama of commercial life well clearly we're not but that's one way that India does it um this morning I spoke to them also about sort of the archetypal journey Um if you look at Young there's there's two amazing there's three amazing books by a Youngian therapist whose name I always forget Robert Johnson I think it is which is weird cuz 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 the the the journey of of masculinity and heat using the story of parcifal and the holy grail from sort of innocence into attraction to the knights you know 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 uh goddess and aeros 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 you know the kind of hope that everyone brings to relationship in in in she in the story Psyche Psyche Psyche is her name It sounds funny It sounds like Saki but Psyche um she marries Eeros Eros saves her from the marriage to death He calls he calls the initial marriage women have is a marriage to death because it's the end of that uh infinite possibility youth right now they're locked into a relationship So something dies right and then she his her his he was the 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 challenge me Right and 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 I married a god but actually he's just a dude right which is what my wife has gone through clearly Um on some level but all of us right we we we 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 and has moods and whatever Um but she goes through her process of maturation and these are kind of hero's journeys Um 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 to identify those stages you know at 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 Um and speaking to them as they as they progress through life So uh that's how I would look at it listening to you describe what you just described I think of dating apps You put up your best face It's you you know and then when you meet somebody they're not at all like they are or like right 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 a false the the false narrative for that person It dep 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 Uh they've developed algorithms and questions to help people actually talk about what's real to them I I haven't 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 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 and here's how it began And put on your marketing hats Ready um I didn't say you know I'm a lawyer I've been to 37 countries which most people do right men speak in what I call the garage sale The garage sale profile Uh here's all my status Here's all my status Here's all my status I know you don't give a [ __ ] but that's all I know how to talk about right cuz that's how men talk to men So what I did was my profile began uh you are inspired and inspiring vivacious and witty with a great openhearted 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 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 only talking to me which is what you want to do in marketing Right i talked about my customer my client my prospect the woman 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 Do you think men can market to women i mean in our in our space there's a lot of men selling beauty products for example uh and in in the Amazon world and they don't know the first thing about an eyelash They don't know the first thing about um any any of the creams or what they do there Do you think they can effectively market and and sometimes they say "Well yeah the gay guys can." And that's not being mean or anything But because they they have a more of a side But but how how do you how do you get into that mindset like you just said or the way you just did it cuz most guys can't do that and they they Well there's a tech there's a technology you don't know called gay right it's an advantage It's an advance from AI It's now called Gayi And you put it in and you get the gay version in feminine language No I'm just kidding So but it in essence that really exists You could just say you could just say here take this take this content um uh take 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 um you could run it by women but absolutely with AI and you know with a fundamental understanding of of female psychology generally and everyone's different and blah blah blah but a general generally if you're writing to women depends on the age right they're really looking to connect they're looking to have self-esteem all the kind of things that we all know um and you can use AI to totally mimic the language of successful writing to women yeah anyone could anyone can market anything now Now a quick word from our sponsor Lavanta Hey Kevin tell us a little bit about it That's right Amazon sellers do you want to skyrocket your sales and boost your organic rankings meet Lavanta Norman and I's secret weapon for driving highquality external traffic straight to our Amazon storefronts using affiliate marketing That's right It's achieved through direct partnerships with leading media outlets like CNN Wire Cutter and Buzzfeed just to name a few as well as top affiliates influencers bloggers and media buyers all in Lvant's marketplace which is home to over 5,000 different creators that you get to choose from So are you ready to elevate your business visit get.lovant.io/misfits That's get.lavanta lavanta l van n t a.io/misfits and book a call and you'll get up to 20% off Lavanta's gold plan today That's get.lavont.io/misfits It's amazing how much you can do when you actually connect on the emotional side uh 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 something happened and I went and consoled them and I I you know 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 Uh that's I know you're a true friend uh not because most most stuff is transactional Uh and most is is that's those are her exact words Most stuff is transactional I know you're a true friend and I really appreciate you 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 Uh and 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 that you can hit on that you can have great success Uh yeah I have a I have a framework for that Funny you mention it I have a framework for that that I've taught and I try to live by Um 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 right i give you something you give me something And as a teacher of mine used to say you know we're train you know if if 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 he was talking about BBD girls in LA 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 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 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 Um 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 you know the the the person we really wish to be right that's transformational and that's wonderful And that's the whole PD movement personal development right and you can and and transformation is a huge hook in selling obviously right uh the third level the highest level is transcendent um 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 at that question what what percentage of relationships or marriages if you want to say that go there you think actually are true true true pure love I mean they always say a dog is one of the only ways to get actually pure love pure 100% love uh but what do you what do you what do you what do you what's your take on getting finding true unconditional love in a relationship I think all of them except yours happened [Laughter] but she connected to his bank account It was transactional Norm Yeah We didn't get to the second and third phase Oh yeah I I don't know I don't have statistics I I have a My son is a data scientist so I I've been trained not to give answers around things that I have no idea about Um I have no way of knowing I know a couple of them You know Travis do you know Travis travis i think he has one I think 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 and it's a practice You know I always say love you know this is my teaching over the years that uh 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 Yeah What's that saying you can't you can't be loved unless you love yourself Brown talks about that 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 uh bat away all the 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." You know and it's a practice to receive the love of the cosmos You know that 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 we're prey animals humans We're not predators We're prey animals with super weapons but our our fun you know we're not we're 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 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 um 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 Recovery from Crisis: Selling Out an Event in 4 Days Now you said that you've had you had a uh a challenge and we had to rebuild You said you were doing some sort of event or something uh and it it and you you were cruising along doing well in this event and I do events I'm in the event space so I I can understand uh understand have some empathy there and it things just crashed and burned and you had to believe that a good story I um I had connected I met a girl most of my stories start I met a girl and at an event and she was really into this teacher David da do you know who he is he wrote the way the superior man he's 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 uh 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 cuz 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 "You know we've been looking for somebody in California." Here I am Okay So he checked me out through a mutual acquaintance um and uh got on the phone with me and I said "Can I can I produce an event because I want to go to one?" And um and they're really amazing events Like they're very intense and just break your heart open stuff And um and he said "Sure." I said "How many people?" He says "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 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 Um 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 highquality high consciousness work and uh so I created the global community I created the events I remastered all his um 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 in Miami Beach on my credit card guaranteeing all the rooms cuz we sold out in two days Nobody signed up Nobody signed up And I was just like like where is everybody and everyone was panicking right nobody wanted to go to Miami And I literally was in bed with the the the curtains drawn for two days uh in bed just feeling it was the end of my life Um and I had never been depressed I never anything like that And my kids came in They would have been what 20 years in their teens and they said "Hey dad you know go live on a beach This this isn't cool Like you're you know go take care of yourself We're we'll be fine." Which was a beautiful thing to say And after a couple days I started picking up the phone and calling my marketing friends right from masterminds saying "Hey what do I do i'm like I cannot like the phrase that was in my head." And I think this is what depression is I can't see forward I just can't see And I'm 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 a online live event with David," which he never does He's really a hermit kind of he's he's a real practitioner He does 5 hours of personal yoga a day Like he's he's a high quality guy And um get him on have people sign up for this webinar whatever you want to call it question and answer Um 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 Glengary Glenn Ross you know can I sell you land in Miami and I had this ego Yeah I had this ego moment I don't do that I don't do in 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 Hey Kevin King and Norm Ferrar here If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits thanks for listening this far Continue listening We 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 well this is an old guy alert Should I subscribe to my own podcast yeah but what if you forget to show up one time and it's just me on here You're not going to know what I say I'll I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too We'll just You can go back and forth with one another Yikes 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 Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm and my mentality uh just the ego thing just fell away We did the thing I got on the phone 4 days straight sat 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 Boom 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 Um that was that was a big event for me And I was you know I had never been in that shape before All right it's about that time A Misfit Recommendation We've gone over an hour It's been a great podcast But what we like to ask our I love you guys This is really fun And right back at you This has been fun This really cool So at the end of every podcast we always like to ask our misfits if they know a misfit Um I have a great misfit for you So at a mastermind in Miami in uh in January uh it's the uh the Archangel mastermind group by the way fantastic group Giovanni Marugo great guy Um 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 uh some really exciting uh curated deep epicuran mastermind travel events around the world for people who want to have an amazing experience with some amazing people and uh his name is Dave Albano and he's kind of a legend in uh in marketing He's a whiskey uh somalier which got my attention right away and just just a lovable amazing guy who is one of us you know just fun openhearted helpful uh smart and uh and you know you know drives his own train basically like I think all of us you know we just don't fit into companies That's so awesome that you mentioned Dave Uh Kevin and I do know Dave from a 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 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 or get your books or anything what's the best way to do yeah different ways Uh the best way is just to write me you know find me on Instagram or find me on Facebook but um adamgilladgmail is the easiest way You can go to adamgillad.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 Adam Gilladgmail or they can find me on social media I'm sure All right Adam thanks again for coming on Absolute pleasure guys Now we're going to remove you put you to the back and don't go away All right there we go Kev Yeah that that was that was great Uh you never know uh you know who you're going to meet in an event and uh when you get them on the podcast you learn all kinds of additional stuff and uh I think that was some some really valuable uh insight and it's not your normal what you would hear on a normal marketing podcast You know we 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 uh been hearing go back and check out some of the other ones You can find them on YouTube Just look up Marketing Misfits uh on YouTube and you you should be able to find us and and check out some of the other ones We also have uh what' you say there's a new shorts channel or something right yes we do We have our new YouTube shorts channel which uh is doing great by the way Uh better than expected So check it out It's uh 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 You made my friend You made my my friend list I mean the You made the top five You actually made the top five So you you're lucky you you made the cut There we go Part of the team All right everybody You're part of the team That's it for today We will see you next week Take care Ciao [Music]