← Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
The Art of Copywriting and Consumer Psychology with Perry Belcher
01:19:05
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- [00:00]
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- [00:59]
John Gafford
Funniest marketing fail you've ever seen live.
- [01:03]
Perry Belcher
Oh, gosh.
- [01:09]
John Gafford
And now, Escaping the Drift. The show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, Escape the Drift. And it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of. Like it says in the opening man, the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today in the studio, people, my guest is. I mean, marketing icon is really the only way you can describe this guy. This guy's been shaping digital commerce, online funnels, everything you can imagine when it comes to marketing for as long as I can even remember. He is a guy that Jeff Bezos used to look to back in the day for advice to ask him how to get things done. He's now the CEO of AI AI Bot Summit. He's generated over 900 milli in online sales. He's turned decades of copyright mastery, funnel persuasion, and generational business building into one of the in one relentless mission which is staying ahead of the curve. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. We are very lucky to have to share knowledge with us today. The one, the only, this is Perry Belcher.
- [02:22]
Perry Belcher
Perry, I need to carry you around with me, man.
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John Gafford
Dude, I'm a hype.
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Perry Belcher
Introduce me.
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John Gafford
Every time I go to a bar.
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Perry Belcher
You know, I meet a girl at a bar, I'm like, go ahead, tell her.
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John Gafford
Going to tell you. Let me tell you who this is. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. This is Perry Bel.
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Perry Belcher
You know what, man?
- [02:34]
John Gafford
I figured if I start you out at a high note, we'll stay There, I did it. You know, one of the things I, I like to say about you, and we are a kindred spirit in this is you are a local to your own break. And what I mean by that is this, right? If real estate was surfing, I'm the guy that catches every wave, Right. I don't, I'm a local on my break. I don't care for the last 15 years, I don't care what's happened in, in the real estate market. I have caught that wave and I've ridden that better than anybody else in the business. You do the same thing. The, the evolution of Perry Belcher has been amazing over the last 15 years because I started back when we did a little bit of research and we're going to start with this.
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Perry Belcher
Sure.
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John Gafford
This was amazing. Pre. AI Pre. Anything else?
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Perry Belcher
Yeah.
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John Gafford
You wrote five books in one year that all had nothing to do with each other.
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Perry Belcher
With each other at all.
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John Gafford
Yeah. Nothing.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah. That was the smartest thing to do.
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John Gafford
No, no. But, but I'm saying to me, I look at that and I'm like, here's a dude, that was a B split testing before that was such.
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Perry Belcher
I did them all with a voice recorder. They were all voice recorded. That's the way they were all written. I could write one in about 12 hours.
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John Gafford
Of just recording your own voice and having it.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah. And then have a, have somebody clean.
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John Gafford
It all up because I mean we're talking about you're going from one end of the spectrum, which was like copywriting, to the other spectrum. How to start a hot dog business.
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Perry Belcher
Oh yeah. We sell. Believe it or not, the hot dog book probably sold more than the rest it. Okay, so that was, that was one I did that was just fun because I'd done it.
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John Gafford
Yeah.
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Perry Belcher
And I just wanted to, I wanted to test a system out. So most stuff that I do is like trying something out and you know, I try a lot. The shit you don't hear about. It's all. That didn't work.
- [04:15]
John Gafford
Yeah. Of course. Because for, for every win there's, there's a handful of failures left on the stack. So I mean a B split testing was something that you were sure before anybody knew what it was. Because there was no social media, there was no digital ads. It didn't exist. So how did you approach looking at things to try, like when you're fishing for how to make money out of old Perry.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah.
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John Gafford
Fifteen years ago, Perry before, before all the tools we have before he was.
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Perry Belcher
A lot longer than 15 year old Perry. 15 year old Perry was still Internet Perry. You know, I. I started out in retail, so I started out in retail stores at 42 jewelry stores when I was 19 years old. 19 and 20. And I. Then I was broke at 21, right as that goes. And. But you. I think a lot of the stuff that got me to where I was, you know, pretty good at, at online and E Comm was coming from retail. Like, I. I grew up in retail, then I went to manufacturing, and then I went to. I went to manufacturing, then importing and selling to big box stores and then Internet. So kind of, I think I. I pulled all that stuff from retail and manufacturing and importing and big box sales. I took all that experience into online.
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John Gafford
I. I find that the people that are uber successful in a lot of cases have kind of looked at the business and said, what's the layer above this? What's. What's the layer above that? Where does that come from? Is that kind of how this.
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Perry Belcher
Wait. I've always been stupid that way.
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John Gafford
Really?
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Perry Belcher
Like, if you. No, I mean stupid in a kind of a good way. Like, if. If. If I decided I was going to sell hot dogs, pretty soon I want to own a hot dog manufacturing plant. And. And then I want the cows. Then I want the pigs and the cows and slaughter. Ramon. Slaughterhouse. And before long, I'm buying land and, you know, just stupid. You know, I. I love. I'm the king of. I always say I'm the king of insourcing everything. I don't like outsourcing anything. I like owning the whole process is.
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John Gafford
Looking at a process like that and thinking you can just figure it all out yourself. Would you consider that a toxic trait or an advantage?
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Perry Belcher
Oh, I consider it incredibly ignorant. You know, it's an arrogant. With no. You know, no. An undeserved level of confidence. Almost anything.
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John Gafford
I gotta tell you, that's why I had, like, in anticipation of my book coming out, I told. Cause I was. I'm a member of Kent's Mastermind boardroom. Cause it's real estate.
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Perry Belcher
Oh, yeah. I love Kent.
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John Gafford
It's real estate. Heavy. And I told Ken, I go, I gotta stop commenting. Can't do it. He's like, why? I'm like, because I come here and I sit in this room and I hear somebody say something that's making money. And my first instinct is, ooh, ooh, I could do that squirrel. Go down this hole of like.
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Perry Belcher
And the next thing you know, you're selling hot dogs.
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John Gafford
No. Next thing you know, you're writing books about selling hot Dogs. Because you did it at a high level. So how do you control that, that squirrel in you? How do you control it? Or do you.
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Perry Belcher
I don't, I don't do it well. I'm doing it better. I'll tell you what, help you age, you know, your, your amount of, you know, I don't manage time anymore. I manage energy. It, you, it's really sucks. You know, you get, as you get older, you get so much smarter, so much wiser. Your at bat percentage is so much higher. Right. Confidence levels really high and that. And you do learn a lot of things that are transferable to the next thing you do. Right. What you lose is energy. You just don't have the same level of energy. You know, I used to work 18, 20 hour days. Craziness. You know, I could run, you know, 10, 15 businesses, you know, that, that I could, I couldn't function to running one because my attention span is about 25 minutes.
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John Gafford
Yeah.
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Perry Belcher
So, you know, if I only had one thing to do, you know, I'd have 23 and a quarter hours a day with nothing to do.
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John Gafford
Yeah.
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Perry Belcher
So I, I always have a lot of different projects, but I used to be able to do a lot more. And you don't have the energy for it.
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John Gafford
I mean, does that, do you find that's just age and health or is that just like, for me, comfort.
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Perry Belcher
Partially.
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John Gafford
Okay. For me anyway, I think there's this weird like correlation between risk and energy.
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Perry Belcher
Oh yeah. The more at risk you are, the.
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John Gafford
Higher the risk is because they're fighter going to fight or flight, man. It brings, it brings that awareness thousand percent. And I think when you're a younger person, you're willing to take more risk because I mean, what happens.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah.
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John Gafford
Right.
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Perry Belcher
When you get comfortable as you make more money and comfort. I always say, Delray, comfort's the opposite of progress. You know, the more comfortable you get. Ryan Dice and I were business partners for a long time and, and we, we sold a business to Blackstone Group. Ryan Roland.
- [09:06]
John Gafford
I did traffic and conversion.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah. Yeah. And, and a few months later we, we were doing a thing together and, and he said, how you doing? I said, man, just motivated. I can't go on, you know. And I said, you know, I've got millions and millions of dollars now to invest in anything I ever want to do, and I'm doing less and less. And he said, you know why? Why? It's because you got millions of dollars. You're like, you're comfortable. You know, you're comfortable and I think you Find people, like reading a Bill Gates thing yesterday that, you know, people get into. They either get into a lot of adventures, they get into philanthropy. Something that has no bottom.
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John Gafford
Yeah.
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Perry Belcher
You know, because if you don't, you can be like, yeah, okay, I already done that. I don't do that anymore.
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John Gafford
Well, you look at, you look at, you know, epic sports coaches.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah.
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John Gafford
That are dead within two years of retiring.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah.
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John Gafford
Because they just don't have that edge anymore. I mean, you know, there's not a scoreboard anymore. There's not boosters breathing down their neck saying, why aren't we winning?
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Perry Belcher
Well, we're more genetically, I mean, caveman. I talk a lot about caveman behavior, but we're. Storytelling is interesting because you were. The reason storytelling works is because we're predisposed to figure out the end of the puzzle. A, B, C, dot, dot, dot. You got to know what the next letter is. You got to know what the next number is in the sequence. We. Pattern recognition is built into us. So we're. We're always trying to figure out what the next thing is. When, when there's not a next thing, it's time to lay down and die. I guess like the Indian takes a long walk in the woods. Right.
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John Gafford
Yeah. No, no, you do.
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Perry Belcher
Right.
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John Gafford
I get it. And it's got to be, you know, one of the reasons, I think, especially you're so exceptional what you, what you do is again, technology is coming for a lot of what you have mastered over these years. And you look at. We're going to talk heavily about AI.
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Perry Belcher
More excited about it now than ever, though.
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John Gafford
I know because, because you're on the right side of it. You're riding, you're riding the wave and not being swept up in it. That's the difference.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah.
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John Gafford
And I think that's the choice you've got to make when it's a frustrating.
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Perry Belcher
Part, when you do have limited energy. And now you get this, like this GPT, which is a general purpose technology that we have now that is artificial intelligence. And all of a sudden I'm like, there's 10,000 things I could be doing now and I want to do them all.
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John Gafford
It's exceptional how fast that goes. But let's go back, right? I'm going to go back because I think, especially with something like copywriting, I think. And I'll tell you a story before we get into that and why, why I think this is the five. There's. I think there's 5% that is always going to be missing in a GPT. And here's the answer to that. So a really good friend of mine owns a massive online Fitness brand, like $1.5 billion valuation. And they are very heavy with VSLs, so video sales letters, very heavy. And he says, we hired this guy.
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Perry Belcher
I can just wildly guess who that might be.
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John Gafford
Yeah, it's the V shred guys.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah, I get it.
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John Gafford
Right? So we're, we're, we're out. We're out last week and he's telling me, he goes, yeah, you know, we hired this guy and the closest I can describe him is the dude with the hat in days and confused. It's like, you cool, man. Like that. He goes, this is that guy, right? But people told me he just writes the best copy, best copy. And he's like, came out and like, he's late, he's late, he's late, he's late. I'm just like. He's like, oh, God, this guy's killing me. And all of a sudden he produces this copy, we run it, and he goes, and. And at like 6x is anything else we've done that.
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Perry Belcher
David Ogilvie said, copywriters are all crazy, and that's exactly the way you want.
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John Gafford
Yeah, right. But here's the thing. Then he said, he goes, so he. I asked the guy and he gave me his last, like, his biggest hitters that have sold like millions of millions of dollars, right? Billion. Whatever dollars it is. He gave me like his best scripts. And he goes, I trained a GPT with it. And he goes, it's probably 95% there, but the magic is that 5%.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah, yeah.
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John Gafford
You can't replicate. That's the magic.
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Perry Belcher
It really is.
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John Gafford
And that's it. So for you, that was a long lead into this question, which is what's your 5% that made you such a good copywriter? What is it.
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Perry Belcher
Dude? I don't know. You know, I don't. I don't know. Any copywriter could tell you that. Really. I think it's just life experiences and shit, you know, I grew up dirt poor. A lot of tragedy and stuff, but everybody has a lot of tragedy, you know? I don't know. I admired it. I admired the art, and I think that's part of it, you know, you gotta, you gotta, like, if you want to be a songwriter, you gotta admire songwriters, you know, if you want to be a singer, you gotta admire singers. I admired the art and I, I wrote. I'll tell you how I mostly learned to write copy. There's a Gary Halbert who's super Famous in our space. It's a crazy man, but really, he had that magic in a jar. Right? I. When I decided I wanted to learn to write copy, I got the Gary Halbert letters. And you can print them all off. They're still on the Gary halbert letter.com. and it was letters that he wrote to his son was in prison. Did you know that?
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John Gafford
No.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah. There are all these letters he wrote to his kids to teach him everything he knew about life while he was in prison. And. And there was a. And then it became a newsletter and there does hundreds of issues of it. If you print it off, it's about 1,500 pages. I printed all those and. And then proceeded to take a pencil, to take an ink pen and a legal pad and write them all longhand. I wrote them as I read them over a thousand pages and. And by the end, damn if I wasn't almost a copywriter, but just absorbed his. Yeah, you absorb the style. But the, the secret to being a good. I'm not a great copywriter, to be frank with you. If you.
- [14:53]
John Gafford
I think people would argue with you.
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Perry Belcher
There are a lot that are better. A lot. I'm getting to be one of the best living copywriters because they're all fucking dying. Yeah, right. You know, Clayton make piece of. My great friend Clayton could mop the floor with me. You know, so many of these guys could just mop the floor with me. What I've always been really good at. I'm a much better product positioner, so I couldn't. If I'm writing copy for you, I might not do well. I'm building the product. So I'm typically developing the product I'm gonna write copy for. So I'm. I'm figuring the hole in the market. I get the privilege that most copywriters don't have. Most copywriters say, you know, people say, here's a widget. Sell it.
- [15:34]
John Gafford
Yeah.
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Perry Belcher
I get to figure out what the market is and what widget the market wants, and then I sell it. Well, so my. My quality copy is much higher because I've. I developed the product.
- [15:47]
John Gafford
Let's talk about that. Because I think so many times, you know, one of the things that I learned about being an entrepreneur, that was the hardest lesson ever, was don't fall too much in love with your own ideas.
- [15:56]
Perry Belcher
Sure.
- [15:57]
John Gafford
You know, I've had some things that I've done over the years that, I mean, I've got a hundred thousand dollar bottle.
- [16:01]
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- [16:59]
John Gafford
Vitamins sitting on my desk and you.
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Perry Belcher
Are not your customer.
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John Gafford
No, no, no.
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Perry Belcher
That's another big one.
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John Gafford
Right. A lot of people collect trophies. I collect failures in my office. Like, look at, like, look how stupid this was to remind me not to make the same mistakes. You know, warehouse of them. But it. How do you. So when you're looking for a product, you're looking for a hole in the market. Sure. Walk me through that process. Perry's brain of walking through that, because I think that's incredible.
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Perry Belcher
Sure. So I am usually starting by looking at a trend. I find a trend, hear a trend. I subscribed all these trend hunting things. It's much easier today than it used to be. Yeah, there's a, there's a really good one called exploding topics. I don't know if you know that one or not, but you can kind of see big macro trends and kind of my rules are, what problem can I solve in an emerging market? Not a, not a, not just solving a problem that people have. Because if, if, if I'm solving a problem people have and the problem's an older problem, there have been a lot of people who have attempted to solve that problem, you know, and those solutions may or may not exist. In emerging markets, problems aren't necessarily solved yet. So that, that gives you a lot of wind to your back. And then I kind of look at if there are competitors out there trying to solve that problem, how are they going about it? Right.
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John Gafford
By emerging markets, do you mean products or do you mean locations?
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Perry Belcher
No, no, no. Products wise.
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John Gafford
Okay.
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Perry Belcher
Products wise. Because we're trying to sell globally. We're doing our very best to sell globally. So you know what, what products are being created? Well, like right now, for instance, AI has created this enormous gap in technology integration. So we Own a company that does that. Integrates technology. Integrates AI technology into companies because there's a lot of technology out there. Companies know they need it. I'm, I don't have the billions of dollars to play in the, I'm going to build an AI platform.
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John Gafford
Sure.
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Perry Belcher
Space, but there'll be a lot more money made, honestly, frankly, broadly, broad spectrum wise in me coming into your business and integrating AI technology into your business.
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John Gafford
Building AI agents is what you're talking about.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah, but a lot more. I mean AI agents are real customized solutions, customized automation solutions, analysis. I think people are still using AI largely the wrong way.
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John Gafford
Like using it Like Google.
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Perry Belcher
Huh?
- [19:24]
John Gafford
Like Google.
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Perry Belcher
Well, are they using it to complete dumb tasks? Yeah, it's like having Albert Einstein in your pocket and saying, hey, go clean the toilet, you know, so stupid. I thinks better than we do using AI for advisors. Many of that get off the topic. But like, so I just try to figure out, you know, what market I want to play in. And I'm usually looking at the carg in the market, the cargo in the market, which is the combined annual rate of growth. And there are markets out there that are growing at 3% a year and their markets out there are growing at 40% a year. So I'm trying to be in like the 25ish percent a year range. Not usually chasing the sports car, I'm chasing the luxury sedan. Right. And, but I know that if I get into that market position myself well at all, I'm going to grow 25% a year if I'm an also just because the industry. I'm an also ran. Right. So I got that win to my back and then I try to figure out now, now where do I want to position myself? Am I going to be a luxury brand, a variety brand, a value brand, whatever brand. And you know, that's step, step one is positioning. And I think the vast majority of businesses skip it.
- [20:43]
John Gafford
Are you testing them? And obviously now you are testing positioning before you do any product.
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Perry Belcher
Oh hell yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to see if the, if the, you got to see if the dogs eat it right. That it's not going to work if you don't. Because you can have a clever idea that you really believe all the, all the data says, oh, that's going to work.
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John Gafford
Yeah.
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Perry Belcher
You know, you know there's a lady right now that one of my clients is in the, she's just determined to get in the self serve real estate space, you know, your space, you know, because she says, you know, it's just prime. It should be self serve, it should be automated, you know, and, and she may be right. Right. But it doesn't matter oftentimes whether we're right or wrong. It matters when we're right or wrong. You know, and, and it may be that sometime in the future you want to sell your house. You'll go on, take five pictures, put it on an app and sell the house. Maybe, I don't know. I don't know your business.
- [21:36]
John Gafford
Now can I tell you why that won't happen? Sure, I'll tell you. And I've said this 100 times and I'll always say it. When Expedia came out and killed travel agents.
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Perry Belcher
Sure.
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John Gafford
For lack of a better phrase. And then they said, oh God, here comes Zillow for real estate agents. Right. They're going to take over the market. They're going to do this. This is why it will never happen. Because is there a certain segment of people that have the intestinal fortitude are built that way to make that level of decision on their own? Absolutely.
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Perry Belcher
There are probably 2 to 5%.
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John Gafford
The majority of people still need a trusted advisor to stand next to them and say when it's coming to the biggest, largest financial investment they will ever make. This is okay.
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Perry Belcher
Well nobody wants their own and they'll always need it. Nobody wants, even if they don't need it, nobody wants to be responsible.
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John Gafford
That's number two.
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Perry Belcher
You want somebody to blame.
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John Gafford
Well no, no, no. And that's number two as somebody that is normally running in the lawsuit department of 2 to 3. Keep in mind we've never done, we don't do anything wrong in these transactions. It's just.
- [22:32]
Perry Belcher
You just do enough business.
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John Gafford
You just do enough business. We do 4, 000 transactions of one. Yeah. We did yours.
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Perry Belcher
I know of one of an old in law of mine I think you guys got to match with. You know they're wrong by the way. I know.
- [22:46]
John Gafford
Well, yeah, they're, they're wrong. Well luckily a mutual friend of ours has helped change some laws to protect me on a couple of things that we kept getting in front of judges over.
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Perry Belcher
I heard about that.
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John Gafford
Yeah. Yep, I'm sure you did but yeah. Because his wife got wrapped up in one of them too. They're crazy.
- [23:00]
Perry Belcher
People are just crazy. You're going to get, you're going to hit a we in, in our businesses. You know I own 11 businesses now and I, I like I'd rather have 115 million dollar businesses now than $155 million.
- [23:15]
John Gafford
Yes.
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Perry Belcher
Because you Just your target. The bigger the. The bigger you get, the more transactions that you produce. There is a x percent of people who are just batshit crazy. And there's just no way around it. You never got satisfied. We. We've given refunds before to people who didn't buy things from us. They bought things from someone else and thought they bought it from us. And they were just crazy enough. I just give them back money because they're just crazy.
- [23:47]
John Gafford
I went to a construction defect. I do. I did give a depot for a construction defect. In a settlement that we were named as a defendant in the settlement.
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Perry Belcher
Yeah.
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John Gafford
There were 20 defendants on this building. Construction defect. I was sitting in the waiting room with the guy representing Portalet company.
- [24:02]
Perry Belcher
Wow.
- [24:03]
John Gafford
The company that dropped the toilets off was named in the construction. The guy's just like, we'll just wait for everybody else to settle and then tell them we're not going to settle. Tickets, trial, and they'll let us go.
- [24:10]
Perry Belcher
Isn't that crazy?
- [24:11]
John Gafford
And that's what we ended up doing the same thing.
- [24:13]
Perry Belcher
Yeah.
- [24:13]
John Gafford
But we had nothing to even do with this remotely dampness. But yeah, people will sue you over everything. So. Yes. But again, that was my second reason is the transfer of liability. You know, somebody, one of my agents came to me yesterday. And the beautiful thing about our company, the beautiful thing about our brokerage is we have spawned some other brokerages by agents that come here. They learn what we do.
- [24:34]
Perry Belcher
Sure.
- [24:34]
John Gafford
And then they want to go do their own thing. And I have the same conversation with these people every time. I'm like, let me ask you a question. And I want you answer me. Be honest. I said, if you have a burning desire and it's always been your dream to own a real estate brokerage, absolutely. Go do it.
- [24:52]
Perry Belcher
Yeah.
- [24:52]
John Gafford
High five. I will help you with whatever we can do to help you. But if you think maybe an investor. If you think I've invested in a.
- [24:58]
Perry Belcher
Lot of my people's businesses that have went on.
- [24:59]
John Gafford
But if you think this is a business decision and it's going to be incredibly profitable to bootstrap up a real estate brokerage right now, you're nuts. You're going to lose your ass. We need to figure something else out and quash that. But if it's your dream, I will high five you and I'll support it. Because I think, you know, it's kind of like. Like restaurants. Why does so many of them fail? People have that dream known a restaurant. They do this without doing those things like looking at emerging markets and figuring Out.
- [25:22]
Perry Belcher
Sure.
- [25:22]
John Gafford
So back to the emerging market. So you figured out your crack in the system. You got what you want to do.
- [25:27]
Perry Belcher
Yeah. You got to, you got to figure your position then. Next, a largely overlooked piece is aesthetics and design. Right now I see aesthetics in design more important than copy. And that coming from a copywriter. Right. I've never really been that. That in that position, but there's so much data right now. Stanford and Harvard have both done these huge studies that 50 nanoseconds, when you hit a website. 50 nanoseconds, you've made 60 of your judgment whether you're going to buy from that company. Wow. In 50Ns, you can't read the, in the copy.
- [26:10]
John Gafford
No time.
- [26:10]
Perry Belcher
But you think about it. How many times have you been on a website? You go to hit a website, a search, and it just looks bobo and you just bounce out.
- [26:17]
John Gafford
Looks like the, looks like the PTA website where they're putting up the calendar for the bake sale.
- [26:21]
Perry Belcher
It won't necessarily make sales for you, but will absolutely kill sales for you because the people, it's like just being the ugly dude at the bar. Right. If the girl looks over the ugly dude, he could have the most stellar personality. He could be the greatest guy in the world and, you know, good looking girl, good look, whatever. There has to be a certain level of attractiveness or you're never going to have a conversation.
- [26:43]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [26:44]
Perry Belcher
And in today's world, that used to be important. Today it's paramount because trust has been completely eroded. We used to, you know, you, I don't know how old you are, but I mean, you. 53, you probably remember. Yeah. Okay. You're old enough to remember. You know, you, you used to. If you wanted to buy a widget, you went to the store and you had a good, better and a best.
- [27:05]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [27:06]
Perry Belcher
You had three choices. Now you want to buy a widget.
- [27:10]
John Gafford
8,000 choices.
- [27:11]
Perry Belcher
8,000 choices. So there's no way other than some legacy branding that that is okay. But you're seeing now these brands pop up, new brands pop up by the thousands. Right. And they're eating into legacy brands because largely design and esthetics, you can't get to the message until you get through the esthetics. So, you know, that's. I hire design firms now, pay a lot of money. I used to never do that. And I used to do our. We used to our own design a pretty good job. It was good enough. It's not good enough anymore. Got to get aesthetics just right. Branding's got to Be just right. You've got to really think about colors and fonts and, and emotional stirring of the brand and things like that. I tell people all the time, if you take the McDonald's colors and the McDonald's fonts and you put it on the Tiffany building, how would that look?
- [28:07]
John Gafford
Like a big McDonald's.
- [28:08]
Perry Belcher
If you, if you took the Tiffany fonts and the Tiffany colors and stuck them on a McDonald's, how would that look? Neither would work.
- [28:13]
John Gafford
Like you're in, what is it? The place in New Mexico.
- [28:17]
Perry Belcher
People don't think, people don't think that way. They're like, hey, give me a logo. I got it, I got this thing ready. Stick a logo on it. Right. So aesthetics have to be good. Then you have to write a message. So one of the challenges I see people, the biggest mistakes I see people make in business is there's about. We've got a list in our business of 27 or 28 points that we use either when we're, we're founding a new business or we're bought a business and we're gonna go re, retool it. We have a list of 28 things that we do. And, and they're all fundamentals. There are nothing fancy about them. But the problem is when you're good at something, that's your entry point. Like me, oh, I'm gonna start this thing. Let me go write some copy for it. And really writing copy should be like step 10.
- [29:04]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [29:05]
Perry Belcher
In your process. But I'm going to start with that because that's where my competency level is. And I'll get back to the other stuff eventually. Which you never get back to. And then down the road the wheels fall off the bus and you don't know why. And it's because you didn't build these fundamentals out. So you get messaging next. And messaging today more importantly than ever is primal. You know, you got, you get this little walnut sized brain in the back of your head called the reptilian brain. And that little brain makes all your decisions, is just a pure desire engine. It wants everything. What it really wants is to exist and reproduce. That's its primary function. And that little brain controls your lungs, your heart, your liver, your kidneys, all your eyes blinking, all that balance upright and that thing wants everything. And then you got this second brain in your head called mammalian brain in the middle. That's like a hard drive that stores all your memories and things that you know. Well, the last time I did that, last time I dated a Mexican girl, her Boyfriend busted all the windows out of my car, so I don't want to date more Mexican girls, by the way. True story.
- [30:16]
John Gafford
Colt Hamadan, if you're listening to this, she's going to kill you one day.
- [30:20]
Perry Belcher
Hey, I'm an equal opportunity asshole eventually. I eventually offend everyone. But you know, then you've got this prefrontal cortex brain, which its job is to protect you. So it just says no, right? To almost everything. This brain wants everything. This brain, this brain is the party girl that goes out at night and this brain is the ugly girl. She breaks with her to make sure she doesn't.
- [30:45]
John Gafford
The fridge sees the fridge, right?
- [30:48]
Perry Belcher
And. And they both serve a purpose. But the problem with this front brain, you know, if you can learn to turn it off, you can learn to turn it off with messaging and good copy. That's what good copy does. Good copy creates something called a temporary suspension of belief. It turns this off like you're at a movie or a store or like drugs and alcohol do. What happens when the good girl eventually gets horny enough and wants to go to the bar and get laid? She goes out and she gets drunk. So he gives her a buy. And as she sleeps with the guy and she wakes the next day, oh my God, I can't believe I was so drunk last night I slept with him. You know, it gives her a buy, it gives her an out, right? We purposely try to turn this brain off from time to time. We do it with drugs, with alcohol, with stories, nostalgia. There are certain things that chemically stimulate this brain soup, that is dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin. And after definitely in your brain, these chemical. This chemical soup, we can be a good copywriter, a good storyteller, or watching a movie or whatever it can. It actually creates drug synthesis in your brain.
- [32:05]
John Gafford
Do you think it's getting harder to hit those points with people with the amount of dopamine they're getting slaughtered with?
- [32:10]
Perry Belcher
No. It's getting easier.
- [32:11]
John Gafford
It's getting easier.
- [32:12]
Perry Belcher
It's so much easier.
- [32:13]
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- [33:12]
Perry Belcher
I'll tell you the master of it's Donald Trump, right? If you, if you. When you overstimulate the brain so much, it becomes exhausted and it's far more suggestible.
- [33:26]
John Gafford
Yeah. I was watching somebody the other day, I don't know who was. They were telling a story. They said they went and met him at the country club in New York. And he said, oh yeah, you got to try the clam chowder. It's best in the world. So he's like, all right, I have the clam chowder. You order the clam chowder. And he thought to himself, I mean, it was okay, wasn't great. They had to meet him again a couple weeks later and he goes, oh, make sure you get that clam chowder again. It's the best in the world. He goes, okay, I'll order it. And he ate the clam chowder and saying, man, this is, this is pretty really good. Trump goes, that good clam chowder? He goes, yeah, it's really good. He goes, see, if I tell you something's good enough times, you'll believe it. Exactly.
- [33:56]
Perry Belcher
It's the truth. If you hear it enough times. That's old Roy Cohen. Yeah, Roy Coin lesson. Yeah. So you'd you with the more stimulated people are for the handful of people. And man, I mean, it is a tiny handful of people that understand to talk to that little walnut shaped brain back here. Everybody else is talking to this brain. You just got to talk to this brain. Because eventually if you stimulate this brain enough, it's going to override this brain and do what it wants.
- [34:29]
John Gafford
So if you had to break it down to like four simple desires, obviously the need to reproduce whatever else but the basic four desires, does the one that you're trying to talk to change based on the product? Or you just. Are you trying to hit the same nerve no matter what it is?
- [34:41]
Perry Belcher
Well, you got to figure out what the. I call it peeling the onion. Why do people buy a house? Well, that ain't to have a roof over their head. Right? I think it's 70. See the 72% or 78%, I think it's 78% of new car purchases every year are made to people who have a perfectly good automobile.
- [35:00]
John Gafford
Oh, sure.
- [35:01]
Perry Belcher
If, if we were in A. If we were in a world where people bought what they needed, only we'd all be broke, right? So you just, you got to figure out, what is that emotional. What's that emotional signal? And it's usually status. It. 9 times out of 10, there, there is survival. But once you get past the Maslow hierarchy, you got a roof over your head, you got food in your belly, and, you know, then those things become largely irrelevant, right? They're. They're back there in the back of the brain. And like you said, fight or flight, we get if we're threatened, those move to the forefront, but generally speaking, they're forgotten. Right? But you're. Every equation to me is like imagine a scale, okay? So imagine a scale and every buying decision or every action decision, you make ways on that scale. So for instance, like people watching right now, if I said, hey, what's your dream car? Right? I. I used to be a total car junkie. I'd. Rolls Royce and Ferraris, all kinds of. And. But if I said, you know, you know, Rolls Royce, Rolls Royce is it. And I can be in a room full of people that are, I know, are very successful, well healed. I'll say, who has, who has credit over 700. And a lot of people raise their hand. I said, why don't you go buy a Rolls Royce? Then it will definitely elevate your status. So why doesn't everybody have one? The reason is because if they can't make their mortgage, the threat of their status lowering is greater than the benefit of their status rising from the purchase. So you gotta be able to explain to people how they can raise their status with a purchase without threat of lowering status. Because really, status is the driver of most people. And it can be a driver on a $10 purchase. Right. If you believe it or not. Because status privately is. I'm gonna feel stupid if I buy this thing and it turns out I got hornswoggled. Yeah, it's gonna lower my mental status. Right? Well.
- [37:10]
John Gafford
Well, that's why people always lie about what they paid for their house, of course. Because they never want to look foolish in the eyes of others.
- [37:15]
Perry Belcher
Right? Nobody does. I mean, one of my clients and, and former partner, the Gore Company, they do a billion six a year. They do a billion six a year selling financial newsletters. Newsletters on investing. Good lord. Right? Yeah. And the craziness is half the people that buy the financial newsletters don't have a stock trading account. Isn't that crazy?
- [37:34]
John Gafford
It just makes it feel smarter to.
- [37:35]
Perry Belcher
Get it so they can Sit at the bar with their buddy, go, well, you know, Nvidia is going to do this next year. They just regurgitate that. It's kind of like talk radio. Same thing. It. It makes people. People don't have a political position. They'll listen to talk radio and then they'll parrot those political positions that they hear because they don't have any of their own. But it makes it. But it increases their status in the room. It makes them. It makes them appear informed.
- [38:06]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [38:07]
Perry Belcher
Which is crazy.
- [38:08]
John Gafford
And for those of you listening to Think God, dude, owner, Rolls Royce want to improve your status? I will say this. When my engagement goes down on the old Instagram and I get in my car and I shoot one of those videos, I don't do the stupid head lean where you could see the logos. I don't do the headline, but you can see the headliner. And you know what car I'm in.
- [38:26]
Perry Belcher
I did it all. I'll tell you, until you know you're breaking your neck over here.
- [38:30]
John Gafford
Like Neil. Neil Dinger and I. What do we call that? Roll. Roll. Roll Sciosis or Scroll. Scrollsis. That's what it was. Your neck is permanently to the right.
- [38:38]
Perry Belcher
When I was living out here in Anthem and iOS, I did that big exit with Clarion. I bought a. It was so ridiculous. That house had a big circle thing on it. And I would. I'd have the Rolls, the Porsche, and the Maserati.
- [38:52]
John Gafford
Like that poster we all had. We were like 20 years old.
- [38:55]
Perry Belcher
Yeah. Because, you know, I was a poor kid. I grew up a poor kid poster. So I had all you from Kentucky, Right. You can live in a trailer. As long as you got a hot car, you're cool, right?
- [39:04]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [39:05]
Perry Belcher
So I. I had all these cars. But it. It's funny how people make buying decisions. If you want to read an amazing book, if you haven't read it, Alchemy by Rory Southern. Truly one of my favorite books in the world. And I. It was funny. You probably know Cole Gordon.
- [39:21]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [39:21]
Perry Belcher
Yeah. So Cole had me out to speak at his group, and, uh, it's all these young phone banging bros. You know, they're. And they're cool. And he had me and Rory Sutherland. I didn't want to go. I didn't really have time to go. And he said, can you come? I said, I don't know, man. I don't think I can do it. Well, I got Rory Sutherland. I said, okay, I'm there.
- [39:40]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [39:40]
Perry Belcher
So I went out and it was funny. Rory and I both spoke first day and nobody cared. They, they were listening to, you know, how do I close more deals on the phone? They didn't give a. About how behavior works. Yeah. So Rory and I, who I'd never met, was a huge fanboy, got together at lunch, and we spent the next two days together. And it was absolutely. I learned more in that 18 hours, I guess, than I've ever learned from any other human. The guy's just a freaking. He's forgotten more about how humans tick than 99 of us will ever learn.
- [40:23]
John Gafford
It's so funny you say that, and. Because for me, I had a problem, right? Like, I couldn't, like, if there was an event going on and I wasn't speaking or I wasn't going to be there and whoever was having was like, oh, you can come hang out. I'd be like, no, I'm not gonna hang out like that. My ego would be like, bro, if I'm not good enough to be on your stage. And finally I got over that because I'm like, bro, I can go in that green room. Yeah, I, I Green room.
- [40:46]
Perry Belcher
That's awesome. Yeah.
- [40:47]
John Gafford
Oh, dude.
- [40:47]
Perry Belcher
The most time you can. Right?
- [40:48]
John Gafford
Yeah. Hang out with these people and learn way, like, get out of the way of your own, which it was just funny. Do you still find people, like, have you ever. Because you grew up a poor kid in Kentucky.
- [40:58]
Perry Belcher
Oh, yeah.
- [40:58]
John Gafford
Have you, did you ever hit a peak where you had, like, a bunch of ego in this, or have you always been a student of anybody? I can get it from, I want to get it from.
- [41:06]
Perry Belcher
I don't know if I, you know, if you had ego, you probably don't remember having ego, but I, I'm sure that I did, you know, I'm sure that I did. There's always been, there's always been people I looked up to in the business. You know, I, I, I've been lucky enough to. I met accidentally two billionaires when I was, like, in my late 30s, and I got to spend time with both of them. They were both older, and one, one was not older. He's still around. He still lives here in Vegas, actually. But, but I was lucky enough. I met Kimmins Wilson, who started.
- [41:41]
John Gafford
Well, don't, don't just go. Don't gloss over that. Let's talk about that, because. Tell me about meeting some billionaires and having them take enough interest in you to share with you, because I think that, like, so many people want a mentor. They, they want, they want to get to be mentored.
- [41:59]
Perry Belcher
Nobody's humble enough, but it's but it's.
- [42:01]
John Gafford
There's an art to it.
- [42:02]
Perry Belcher
Yeah.
- [42:02]
John Gafford
So what was. How did you approach these people? How did these relationships develop?
- [42:06]
Perry Belcher
I didn't. I mean, I think that. I think show ambition and mentors will appear almost, you know, you. If people don't show enough ambition anymore. When I. I get three. Three real quick ones. But when I was a little kid, when I was in my. When I was a teenager, 14, 15 years old, my mom worked in a restaurant and couldn't afford daycare, so she would stick me outside on the porch of this hotel where she worked the restaurant. And there was an old guy that lived in the hotel, Mr. White, Clark White. And he just took an interest in me because I'd. I could sit and have an intelligent conversation at 15 years old with this guy who was a retired financial planner. And he taught me how to read the Wall Street. He used to pass me sections of Wall Street Journal when I was 14 years old. And in Paducah, Kentucky, every Sunday, me, the president of the bank, the president of the newspaper, got a copy of the New York Times, Sunday edition.
- [43:03]
John Gafford
Those are the three copies I dropped off in town.
- [43:06]
Perry Belcher
I used to ride my bicycle to read more books, pick up my copy, though, of the New York Times, drive home and read every single page of it. And I read the financial pages. I read Wall Street Journal, and. And that was all because Mr. White showed a little interest in me.
- [43:20]
John Gafford
What was that saying that said if you read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal every day for a year, you'd have the equivalent of an mba.
- [43:25]
Perry Belcher
I heard that it might be true.
- [43:27]
John Gafford
I heard that.
- [43:27]
Perry Belcher
I know Bill Clinton does the New York Times puzzle every day in ink. Talk about having a vocabulary. Yeah, but. But, yeah, that was that. Later on, I met. I met this guy, Kimmins Wilson. I wanted to buy an old piece of equipment. I was in the manufacturing business, and I. I was at my label printer, and I said. I said, man, how much would you tell me that you sell me that little conveyor, that little label? Said, well, that's Mr. Wilson's, is not mine. And I. So I said, well, how can I get a hold of him? And he gave me a number, and I called this office and I said, I need to speak to Mr. Wilson. And crazy. They said, okay, just a minute, Dottie. Secretary said, yeah, just a minute. I'll get him. And they put me there. He said, this Kimmins Wilson. And I'm like, hey, I was down at Leonard Peaks, and I want to buy this. What are you going to do with it. And my first inclination was, it's not your business. You want to sell it or not?
- [44:19]
John Gafford
Yeah, right.
- [44:20]
Perry Belcher
Well, let's. Why don't you come down here and we'll ride down and take a look at it? And. And he loved manufacturing. Just turned out he loved manufacturing. I like to manufacture, by the way.
- [44:28]
John Gafford
I love manufacturing.
- [44:30]
Perry Belcher
And that was Kimmins Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inns. And for the next two years, every time I ever had a question about business, I would call Mr. Wilson. He'd be like, yeah, call my man Leonard Peak over here, and he'll do this or call my man Jerry and he'll help you with that. And. And he would call me maybe once a month and say, tell me what's going on. He. He didn't want to do anything. He was in his 80s, I guess, and. But he just loved being around entrepreneurs and somebody that was.
- [45:03]
John Gafford
Kept him alive.
- [45:03]
Perry Belcher
Ambitious. Yeah. And then I met a guy named Robert Wang, who now lives here, who was my. The biggest mentor in my life. He was a billionaire home decor seller, one of. Still one of the biggest in the world. He owns, I don't know, probably 100 companies, a lot of them in Asia. Really great guy, Chinese guy. And he mentored me along a long way and haven't met a lot. I haven't met anybody. I wish I had another mentor right now. I don't really have one right now. I really wish I did. I think the best place in the world to be is to have a mentor and be a mentor.
- [45:38]
John Gafford
Well, I think. Well, I think. I think it's interesting because it goes back to the first thing you said, which was, you know, I don't have the energy I had.
- [45:45]
Perry Belcher
Right.
- [45:45]
John Gafford
And I think you reach a certain age where you see that energy in.
- [45:48]
Perry Belcher
Others, you're less attractive to those people looking for it. I'm looking more for those people now, looking for people to groom up. I'm looking for people to bring up. And I just. Man, I just. The opportunities I'd be willing to give people today are. I would have slit your throat and buried you behind a bush to get. When I was coming up, but nobody seems to want it now it is.
- [46:12]
John Gafford
The world is a strange place.
- [46:14]
Perry Belcher
Very strange.
- [46:15]
John Gafford
And I think Covid really did a number on this country.
- [46:20]
Perry Belcher
I think so.
- [46:21]
John Gafford
I think the level of apathy that runs through everywhere when the number one.
- [46:27]
Perry Belcher
When one of the biggest apps in the App store is an app that wiggles your mouse to pretend that you're working. Yeah, it says a lot about Culture, doesn't it?
- [46:36]
John Gafford
Well, I mean, it used to be. Think about this. It used to be, you know, to have exceptional service In a restaurant 10 years ago, I mean, you. You. It had to be exceptional.
- [46:47]
Perry Belcher
Yeah.
- [46:47]
John Gafford
And now when I go to a restaurant and they just do a good job, I'm like, man, that was great. Now it seems like anybody that is in a business that interacts with the public is trying to do the bare minimum and they just can't wait to turn that pad around that says how much. How much you're going to tip me?
- [47:03]
Perry Belcher
Oh, have you been to. Have you been to Miami lately?
- [47:05]
John Gafford
It's been. I gotta go next month.
- [47:07]
Perry Belcher
Yeah. So Miami. Now here's The Standard Miami 22% stacked on every bill, and at the bottom it says, would you like to Tip an additional 5, 10, or 15% on top of the 22% we automatically stuck on your bill, good, bad or indifferent. I Seriously. So you're looking at 30, 35% premium every time you walk out. If you. If you don't want to feel like an. You're looking at 30, 35 premium. And I'm a guy that'll tip 100%.
- [47:40]
John Gafford
If the experience is right.
- [47:41]
Perry Belcher
If the experience is great, sure. But to get the basic or my favorite is the ones where you walk up to a counter, wait into a line, somebody shoves food in your face and says, how much do you want to tip now?
- [47:56]
John Gafford
My buddy, Josh Haven. I don't know if you know Josh or not Josh. He's a huge ad buyer in L. A. We were with him because I have a house in Newport beach and we were down beach not so long ago. But Josh I love and my son went out to buy something and he came back and he was like, I just got a sandwich this place. And they turned the thing around.
- [48:14]
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- [49:12]
John Gafford
Because I said, how is this this much? And he goes, Well, I tipped 20%. I go, you went to grab a sandwich? And he goes, well, I never know.
- [49:18]
Perry Belcher
What to do an overpriced tip.
- [49:20]
John Gafford
I don't know when to tip or not to tip. And my buddy Josh had my new definition of when to do it. If you're standing up and it's not a bar, you don't tip.
- [49:28]
Perry Belcher
I. If you freaking believe you, that's it.
- [49:30]
John Gafford
I mean, look, if I'm in a bar and you're making me a drink and I'm standing there, I'm happy to tip you. But if I am standing up, my feet are on the ground.
- [49:37]
Perry Belcher
Right.
- [49:37]
John Gafford
And I'm not tipping.
- [49:38]
Perry Belcher
Right.
- [49:40]
John Gafford
That is my new role, and I love that, because I think that's fair. Yeah, I think that's right, because you can be doing it anywhere. Well, let's talk about this, man. Let's. Let's get into AI, because again, so much of what made you who you are, you know, the AI world is coming for. And we talked about you can either get in front of it and ride it, or you can get swept up. And I think a lot of people are going to get swept up. I think we're already starting to see.
- [50:01]
Perry Belcher
Oh, I think. I think it's a. It's a quiet freight train.
- [50:09]
John Gafford
Well, and I think I get hit up probably once a week from some VA that I used to use for some process or some procedure that we've now completely automated at least once a week. Do you have any more work? I don't know what countries like India, Pakistan, the Philippines. I don't know what those countries are going to do, because I think a big part of their economy is based on US business.
- [50:33]
Perry Belcher
I was just in the Philippines 10 days ago at my. I got about. I used to have 350 people there.
- [50:41]
John Gafford
Yeah, and how many now?
- [50:43]
Perry Belcher
I think we're down to 85. And I used to have 85 in the States, and now I have five. Yeah, my. My sales per employee now are stupid. But I've been building AI tools for almost nine years.
- [51:01]
John Gafford
So how. So, okay, again, because you're the local. You're the local for your business.
- [51:05]
Perry Belcher
I got way ahead of the curve on the surface.
- [51:08]
John Gafford
You saw it coming.
- [51:09]
Perry Belcher
So we use AI a lot now, but we use rpa, mcps, all the stuff that most people aren't using still. You know, it's. It's a shocker, by the way, I speak on AI a lot, right. So I'll go in a room and. And I was at a. I was at a AI copywriters conference. I couldn't believe it. It was an AI copywriters conference in Phoenix. There's about 300 people in the room. I said, how many of you guys. You know, obviously you, you guys are here, you guys are using AI. How many of you are using. How many of you use chat gpd? And everybody's hand goes up. How many use every day? How many of you have a paid account? It was like 25% of the room.
- [51:50]
John Gafford
How do you have a paid $20? How do you not have a paid account?
- [51:53]
Perry Belcher
Paid $20?
- [51:55]
John Gafford
I have Grok. Paid account. I have all of my, all of them.
- [51:57]
Perry Belcher
And I'm $200 account on two or three of them now. You know, all my employees have paid accounts across the board. If one of the things I see people doing is really, really stupid, by the way, is, is learning this stuff yourself and adopting yourself and not tooling your team for it. It's super, super dumb. It's like, I'm gonna hold all this. Oh, I figure this out. I'm not gonna tell anybody. But what was the question? We get. I don't want to get away from your question.
- [52:21]
John Gafford
We talked about the freight train coming.
- [52:22]
Perry Belcher
Yeah, freight trains coming. Clearly. I mean, you're watching companies right now, first time in history, I think, massively laying off while producing massive profits. They're not, they're not going, ooh, profits are slipping. We'll use as a reason to lay off. They're laying off by the thousands. And if you look, I've got some data that's hard to believe, but if you look at Meta, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, they're averaging over a million dollars a year savings per layoff. Now, they weren't paying those people a million dollars. No, what that means is for every person they're replacing, they're replacing with technology.
- [53:12]
John Gafford
That's 10xing what they do.
- [53:14]
Perry Belcher
It's 10xing the output. So those humans, the human in the loop thing, that's going to be the big thing you're gonna see in the next 12 months. Humans in the loop are going to be gone. There is no reason to have a human loop. If you're the human in the loop, guess what? You're the dumbest link in that chain. There's no shit. There's the dumbest link in the chain. The only area for humans in business today really is, like you said, that magic part that Part that is art. That part that is art. I can write copy with AI now when I write Perry copy and AI, it almost always beats Perry copy controls.
- [53:57]
John Gafford
Really?
- [53:57]
Perry Belcher
Yeah, almost always. But it can't necessarily do the pattern recognition to create hooks. AI still doesn't recognize patterns as well because some patterns are not, they're not textable. Right. So AI is still basically reading text. Right. So it can't, if you have a grimace or, or raise your eyebrow that you didn't get something. I get that as a human that automatically registers.
- [54:30]
John Gafford
Yeah, it's not interpreting that.
- [54:31]
Perry Belcher
Yeah, I can't interpret that. And it can't interpret the sarcasm or subtlety or downward tone when you go oh really? You know, it is these. Oh really? It doesn't see. Oh really? It doesn't see that interpretation. So there's a lot of things that it can't pick up that, that are still there. That being said, 80, 90% of the workforce doesn't rely on that. Right. And the more automated things are, the more we try to semi automate things like in a McDonald's or in a. Whatever, the closer and closer people are, are getting to making themselves extinct. And the big mistake I see people making with AI is applying AI lastly in the areas that they should apply it firstly in and maybe not applying it at all. And I think you automate processes for efficiency and productivity, but you really reserve human contact for service. And everybody's trying to take AI and make service out of it. And like this opposite is, you know, they're not thinking with it, they're thinking humanly and servicing with automation. You should be thinking with AI as a thinking partner and advisor. And then once you've made a sale, it needs to be a very humanized and it'd be a very human process in my opinion at that point because you'd. We were trying to get rid of all forms of service. I bought a Tesla, not to elaborate, but I bought a Tesla and I was about to buy another one because they're going to the service fully automated in Texas right now. So I was about to buy another one. So I go in and buy a Tesla the other day. $52,000 or something like you buy it on an app. Takes a couple fair. And, and the, the, the numbers that they were advertising and the numbers that came in the contract were completely different. And I just sent a text and I said, they sent me a thing. Oh, your car's ready to pick up. And I said, well, the numbers are not right in the contract. I'm not going to do it unless you got to get the numbers corrected. Two weeks, your car's ready to pick up where you at. We're going to cancel your yard if you don't pick it up. I've already told you that. There's no human contact. So they didn't get that $52,000. Right. That's stupid. Yeah, that's over. Automating a process, especially a process where you're taking in money, you know, you don't want to automate that process.
- [57:11]
John Gafford
Well, I think, I think one of the issues for companies is, is I think the people that are on the lower end of the socioeconomic economic ladder.
- [57:19]
Perry Belcher
Sure.
- [57:20]
John Gafford
Let's take fast food, for example. Right. You know, I, I'm sorry. I worked fast food as a kid. I mean, I did it, we all did as a kid. Bob, Bob. My kids couldn't get a job there right now because, you know, of course part of that is they want to do breakfast and be open 50 million hours a day. Right? That's fine. But they want to hire adults now to work those jobs. And then the adults that take those jobs go. We can't earn a living wage here. But those jobs were not designed to be a living wage job. It was not. So when you get together through unions or whatever else people do and they try to force these corporations to pay exorbitant prices to what they do, you're putting them in a position where they're like, we have to automate some of this. Which is why you see, oh, they're going to automate all that. You see the kiosk?
- [57:58]
Perry Belcher
Have you seen the one in Fort Worth? The McDonald's in Fort Worth?
- [58:00]
John Gafford
There's nobody there.
- [58:01]
Perry Belcher
One employee.
- [58:03]
John Gafford
So what are the. So what are people going to do?
- [58:05]
Perry Belcher
There'll be a universal basic wage.
- [58:07]
John Gafford
You think we're going to have to get to that.
- [58:08]
Perry Belcher
And I don't think it. I mean, mathematical certainty, you're going to have, you're going to have an adjustment period where best estimates. And it was by 2030, but we were supposed to reach AGI by 2030 and we've already reached AGI. So everything is moving at a much. This is the only general purpose technologies. GPTs are interesting. Then that's not what chat GPT is. That stands for something terminal something. But a GPT is a general purpose technology. There's only been eight of them ever in history, if you're generous. And a lot of people say there's only been five. Right. Fire. So general purpose technology means a technology that affects every human on Earth.
- [58:52]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [58:52]
Perry Belcher
Fire, the wheel, the engine, electricity, the computer, the Internet, and now this. And now this. And really, you're sitting on two.
- [59:05]
John Gafford
And how many of the.
- [59:06]
Perry Belcher
And you look at AI is one.
- [59:08]
John Gafford
But you look at the compression of time, three of those happen in the last hundred years.
- [59:11]
Perry Belcher
Exactly. And what you're. Yeah, we're in the last. And the rest, 30, 12,000 years. Yeah, right. And, and what you're looking at now is two, because everybody's talking about AI, Nobody's talking about humanoid robotics. And that's where all my. That's where 70 of my time goes right now.
- [59:25]
John Gafford
Warehouse.
- [59:26]
Perry Belcher
And everything else is how it's humor. Amazon. I read this article yesterday. Amazon just deployed. Are you ready? It's one millionth robot in a factory, in a warehouse. It has 1 million robots that don't.
- [59:46]
John Gafford
Get sick, don't call out.
- [59:48]
Perry Belcher
Do you think that they have a moat that can never be touched by Amazon stock? They can't be com. You, you will never. No one will ever compete with them. No, you just can't. It's an impossibility. They're so far ahead of the game. But I used to play their millionth robot, right? I was consulting years ago, this company, and I keep following it. Enterprise Battery, car batteries. They bought a, they bought a machine, they bought a robot. It was $200,000. And this robot could manufacture as many batteries as a human could a day, but they could run it three shifts. So it got, they got more out of it, right? And it had a lower error rate and all that. And. But it was $200,000. And they put, they put, I think two or three of them in service. And they eventually scrapped the product because it, while it was more efficient and all those things. It was the mat. The money didn't work. The math didn't work. It didn't, it didn't math out. Right. They couldn't scale it fast enough. Get enough robots. They were, they cost too much money. The math. That Robot now is $16,000 and it's faster and it has less air rate. So they're, they're going to be, you know, if you're. I live in Austin, Texas now, and they built a big Tesla plant there. And Austin's up in arms about it because they gave all these tax breaks because employees, all the employees that were going to be hired there. And, and now Elon's saying, look, we're probably gonna. This place can be ran by about 40 people. This 10 million square foot place can be ran by 40 or 50 people in a couple years. So it's just nutty. I think you're, you know, listen, people are going to be displaced. There's just no way around it.
- [61:35]
John Gafford
Okay, So I know you don't fancy yourself an economist, and I don't either, but I think it's pretty obvious. Like my thought process around the living wage provided by the government to everybody is if you give everybody. If I give everybody a widget.
- [61:50]
Perry Belcher
Sure.
- [61:51]
John Gafford
And you didn't have to pay or work for the widget.
- [61:52]
Perry Belcher
Right.
- [61:53]
John Gafford
Isn't that widget worth less so now? So, so how do you, I mean, you're. They're going to have to do a massive tax and transfer on the wealth. Wealthy.
- [62:00]
Perry Belcher
Oh, 100%. It's going to happen.
- [62:03]
John Gafford
So is there, I mean, is the, is this going to kill the free market? Is capitalism dead because of this?
- [62:07]
Perry Belcher
No, it's not going to matter because how. It won't matter. It just won't matter. You'll make so much more money. You know, people move to Puerto Rico to save taxes. I, I giggle at every friend of mine that does that. As you know, I worked real hard to get rich so I can go live in a shitty third world country. I mean, come on, you know, why not just make a whole lot more money and pay the damn taxes? If the, the reason it's going to happen is because if it doesn't happen, you will have total anarchy in the streets. You, when people can't eat, oh, sure, it's okay. You know, you're, you're going to have a giant. You can be Mad Max. Right? And, and so what'll happen? People will get 30, 40,000 bucks a year. It'll be enough money for them to have a roof over their head and some food on the table and a cell phone. Right. And we're, you know, we're spending. Did you know that, that you and I are a little different. But the average person now, I think under 30, 50 of their discretionary income is spent on things that don't exist.
- [63:16]
John Gafford
What do you mean?
- [63:17]
Perry Belcher
Netflix subscription, app subscription, video game subscriptions, cell phone bills. They're spent on digital goods. 50% of discretionary income. People under 30 years old spent on discretion on, on digital goods. So you're going to see a digital economy, and you're going to see the most prosperous economy in the history of mankind.
- [63:41]
John Gafford
This is some dystopian you're talking, this is, this is like.
- [63:44]
Perry Belcher
But it's, it's true. I mean, if you let me give you.
- [63:47]
John Gafford
Because I Lean into human nature. Like we just talked about apathy, right? We just talked about apathy. When you're sitting there and get $40,000, which is just enough to keep a roof over your head. Keep your cell phone on. I mean people, you know you have this.
- [63:58]
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- [64:57]
John Gafford
You have this stereotype of the welfare person. Well now you take half of America and turn them into that.
- [65:02]
Perry Belcher
It's going to be about half.
- [65:03]
John Gafford
You take half America, turn them in that. Where's their drive? Where's their app? Now they're having kids that have no desire to do anything.
- [65:10]
Perry Belcher
Plus people are going to live longer. So you're me storing older people. There's people live a lot longer with. With CRISPR technology and AI and man.
- [65:17]
John Gafford
There's going to be some deep state population control.
- [65:21]
Perry Belcher
It's. It's craziness. But we're going to be so prosperous it's not going to matter what.
- [65:26]
John Gafford
But how many of us.
- [65:28]
Perry Belcher
Some of us. Here's, here's why I, you know you said I'm not an economist. I'm sure as hell not an economy. No, I call myself a redneck behavioralist. That's the way I usually describe myself. But, but I am a student of the economy. And, and here's. Here's one thing I've come up with Perry's theory of the economy that I can explain in one minute.
- [65:47]
John Gafford
Let's have it.
- [65:48]
Perry Belcher
The economy is productivity times population, less consumption. Okay, that's true in your home, in your company, in a country or for the globe. If you look at every country, they have a gdp, gross domestic product. This is how much money they produce. Divide that by the amount of people, right? And then subtract consumption. So if you look at the Chinese for instance, they save about 40 cents of every dollar they produce. Americans save negative 3%.
- [66:32]
John Gafford
Well, yeah, because they have the Discover card.
- [66:34]
Perry Belcher
Because you have credit. Yeah. As long as you give people credit in America, they're going to overspend just 100 of the time.
- [66:41]
John Gafford
I saw, I saw the funniest thing yesterday. I was driving down to the Strip for my daughter last night and I look on the Raiders stadium and I said, I saw they had the, the official debit card of the Raiders. And I thought, that is the, that is the best advertisement I've ever seen. Not credit card. The official debit card of the Raiders. If you know your audience, if you.
- [66:59]
Perry Belcher
Think about robotics and AI, the Civil War, this is my probably, you know, I told you the equal opportunity. Let me offend.
- [67:07]
John Gafford
Yeah, let's go offend them all.
- [67:08]
Perry Belcher
Yeah. So the Civil War, everybody thinks was about beliefs and say slavery had nothing to do with it. It had to do with the fact that the south was kicking the out of the north because it had productivity without consumption. So slaves that were brought here from other countries to work plantations in the south produced, but we're not allowed to consume with very limited consumption. Today they're estimating that in the next 24 months, the average home will have 2.4 humanoid robots in it. They'll do everything you don't want to do. Right. How many factories are going to have humanoid robots in it? Only all of them. So when you, when you can produce a great deal without consumption, right. What do you produce in your business, your business here? If you produce more revenue than you spend in employees and partners, what happens? You create wealth. If you, if you consume more than you produce, you produce debt. If you reduce debt long enough, eventually you go bankrupt. If you, if you produce, you know, more than, than you consume, you throw off profits and eventually profits accumulate to wealth. It's a very simple math. It's very, very simple math, but you're about to have an unlimited amount of productivity for the first time ever in human history. Guess who's building the robots at Tesla.
- [68:45]
John Gafford
Yeah, but is the robots are robots. But is it, but isn't the consumption gonna go down because people won't have the money? With their roof over your head and a cell phone and enough to eat, consumption is going to go through the floor because how can it, how can it maintain?
- [69:00]
Perry Belcher
Because there's consumption going down is good for you and I, I know that it's a really weird thing. It's good for you and I see.
- [69:07]
John Gafford
I'm not thinking about me. I'm Fine.
- [69:09]
Perry Belcher
I'm only thinking about.
- [69:10]
John Gafford
Right. Yeah, yeah. But here's the deal. You know, I got two. I have two kids right, about to head off to college. And I'm thinking, you know, you're trying to guide them in the direction of where, what they need to do. And I've been very clear with my kids since they were little that the number one skill I think they can develop is the ability to look into another human and connect with them on a 100 level. Because all these kids now are just like this.
- [69:32]
Perry Belcher
Something will always need to be sold.
- [69:33]
John Gafford
Yeah. They'll always need that.
- [69:35]
Perry Belcher
And, and they'll always be some human art to that.
- [69:38]
John Gafford
But. But I'm also feeling like that, you know, the fuse is lit on me to create generational wealth for those kids. Just in case things get it crazy.
- [69:47]
Perry Belcher
I. I think we've all, you know, I can tell you exactly what's going to happen in the future.
- [69:52]
John Gafford
Let's. This is it.
- [69:53]
Perry Belcher
Here it is. You ready?
- [69:54]
John Gafford
You heard it here first.
- [69:56]
Perry Belcher
Exactly what's gonna happen?
- [69:57]
John Gafford
Exactly what's gonna happen?
- [69:58]
Perry Belcher
I don't have a clue. And anybody that tells you that they do.
- [70:02]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [70:03]
Perry Belcher
Is full of. Because. Because we've never had technology that builds on technology. We don't know what that feels like. We don't know what's going to happen. I got. You can go down a very deep, dark rabbit hole. I got X dollars right now. And I don't know if the thing is, we've always been able to figure it. Well, you know, if you got $50 million, you're fine, you'll never worry about anything again. But what's the value of $50 million going to be in power.
- [70:29]
John Gafford
Let's play devil's advocate, right? And if I'm king and you know, God willing, one day I will be. Clearly, clearly God. You know, God willing, one day I will be. But no, wouldn't it be easier to mandate to the corporations to say, listen, you've got to have X percentage, you know, for every percentage below this, you go of human workforce to automated workforce, we're going to raise your tax rate base this much.
- [70:52]
Perry Belcher
Sure.
- [70:52]
John Gafford
Wouldn't that be easier than saying everybody gets $40,000?
- [70:56]
Perry Belcher
Sure. All we got to do to do that is to get every other country.
- [71:00]
John Gafford
On the globe to do the same thing.
- [71:01]
Perry Belcher
To do the same thing. Otherwise we'll get eliminated by competition. That sucks, doesn't it?
- [71:07]
John Gafford
Damn globe.
- [71:08]
Perry Belcher
I know, right? That's the thing. If we decide to limit technology in the United States, if we decide to pass laws that Limit what AI and robotics can do. And China and Russia and South Korea don't do that, which they're not going to. Then we, we become a victim of, of you poor tickness. So we're never going to do it.
- [71:28]
John Gafford
Do you think the Chinese have just been taking care of their people on that same level of, of how we're talking about it's going to happen in America for so long, they don't care.
- [71:37]
Perry Belcher
Yeah, sort of. They're a communist country, so they.
- [71:39]
John Gafford
Yeah, yeah, that's what, how this works.
- [71:41]
Perry Belcher
But we, and the last thing we should be worried about is China. China's a boogeyman. That doesn't matter. It really is. It's a boogeyman. That doesn't matter.
- [71:47]
John Gafford
Well, I had, I had the guy.
- [71:48]
Perry Belcher
That many countries China's invaded in its history.
- [71:52]
John Gafford
No, I don't think. Right.
- [71:53]
Perry Belcher
None.
- [71:54]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [71:54]
Perry Belcher
They don't have any interest in it.
- [71:55]
John Gafford
No.
- [71:55]
Perry Belcher
They just won't be left alone. Let them do. They don't be left alone. Do their thing.
- [71:58]
John Gafford
Well, I had Michael Barnard, the guy that was Tim Currell played in the Big Short, actual character he was on a couple months ago. And I asked him, you know, if in this tariff war, if we settle with everybody except for China, are we in a, Are we in a trade war? He's no, absolutely not. Because you settle everybody else. I don't care about China.
- [72:18]
Perry Belcher
I, I'm. Trump's reciprocal tariffs kind of makes sense. If you're, if you're, if Thailand's going to tariff us, you know, 100 on American cars, why shouldn't we terrace them 100?
- [72:31]
John Gafford
You don't go to Europe and see Fords rolling around.
- [72:33]
Perry Belcher
Right. You know, you, you. That makes kind of, that kind of sort of makes sense. There's trade imbalances and, and the challenge is all these questions are really complicated questions that are, you know, we try to come up with kindergarten answers for. Because they're understandable. Trump's great at that, by the way. Yeah, we just build a wall.
- [72:54]
John Gafford
Yeah. You know, I got bummed from a news segment the other day because I was sitting there waiting to go live on this news segment in New York. And I'm watching the feed as I'm sitting there and I see me and it pops up from the cabinet and, you know, big, beautiful planes, you know, big this. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm going to get bumped. He's. There's no way this is going to be showing. Sure. The producer comes on, she's like, yeah, we're going to have to bump you up. Yeah, I know. All right, well, let's finish this off.
- [73:14]
Perry Belcher
Sure.
- [73:15]
John Gafford
With. I started doing this with Oral McManus. It is a lightning round of questions.
- [73:19]
Perry Belcher
Sure.
- [73:20]
John Gafford
Written by chat GPT. I did not prepare these. Chat GPT did. Based on your lightning round questions that. Here we go. Ready?
- [73:26]
Perry Belcher
She looked 18.
- [73:27]
John Gafford
Here we go.
- [73:28]
Perry Belcher
That's the answer to the first one.
- [73:29]
John Gafford
The thoughts and views of Perry Belcher are not necessarily reflected by the thoughts of views of escaping the drift. Got to throw the disclaimer on there. Here we go. Ready? Number one. AI or human? Who writes better copy?
- [73:41]
Perry Belcher
AI.
- [73:41]
John Gafford
Brick and mortar or virtual event?
- [73:45]
Perry Belcher
Brick and mortar.
- [73:46]
John Gafford
Best marketing metric. Nobody tracks.
- [73:53]
Perry Belcher
Oh, gosh. Best market. Nobody tracks is hard because a lot of people track a lot of things. I don't know.
- [74:07]
John Gafford
I'm going to lean back into the answer you gave earlier when you were talking about looking for the growth within that sector. I've never heard that.
- [74:14]
Perry Belcher
Yeah.
- [74:14]
John Gafford
Looking for those trends and then analyzing what the growth potential growth is.
- [74:18]
Perry Belcher
I wouldn't see that as a marketing metric, but.
- [74:19]
John Gafford
But, you know, in the overall bounce rate, for one.
- [74:23]
Perry Belcher
People don't pay attention to bounce.
- [74:24]
John Gafford
Bounce rate. Okay, There you go. Most overrated marketing tool.
- [74:30]
Perry Belcher
Funnel builders. Funnel tools.
- [74:32]
John Gafford
Okay. Funnels or traffic volume?
- [74:34]
Perry Belcher
Traffic volume.
- [74:35]
John Gafford
Free List builders. Dead or still alive?
- [74:42]
Perry Belcher
Alive.
- [74:43]
John Gafford
Spam or squeeze. Which tactic still works?
- [74:46]
Perry Belcher
Squeeze.
- [74:46]
John Gafford
Copywriting. Secret weapon.
- [74:51]
Perry Belcher
Go. Negative.
- [74:53]
John Gafford
Automation Job or. We already talked about this. Job saver or soul sucker?
- [74:58]
Perry Belcher
Oh, automation is a job saver.
- [75:00]
John Gafford
Yeah. Worst headline mistake you still see every day?
- [75:06]
Perry Belcher
Not. Not telling people. What's in it for me?
- [75:08]
John Gafford
Okay. Email sequence or solo ad?
- [75:13]
Perry Belcher
We need a solo ad to get people into the email sequence, so those are hard. It's a hard one to separate.
- [75:18]
John Gafford
Okay. Funniest marketing fail you've ever seen. Live.
- [75:22]
Perry Belcher
Oh, gosh. I don't think about the fail so much. The marketing fails as much I see. Probably Jaguar.
- [75:33]
John Gafford
Okay. Oh, God. That was bad, wasn't it? That was. That was a colossal.
- [75:36]
Perry Belcher
Jaguar and Bud Light.
- [75:38]
John Gafford
Yeah, both. Take your pick. That was pretty bad. Failure.
- [75:40]
Perry Belcher
They should get the turd award.
- [75:41]
John Gafford
Yep. One book every marketer should throw away.
- [75:46]
Perry Belcher
Oh, my God. 100 of them. Think and grow rich.
- [75:53]
John Gafford
Okay. Fake it till you make it. True or false.
- [75:56]
Perry Belcher
Yeah, true.
- [75:57]
John Gafford
Conversion killers. Modals or pop ups?
- [76:02]
Perry Belcher
Pop ups.
- [76:03]
John Gafford
Okay. Chatbots or live human chat bots? One question people keep asking you on podcasts that you wish they would stop up.
- [76:12]
Perry Belcher
What's next?
- [76:14]
John Gafford
And there it is.
- [76:15]
Perry Belcher
Yeah.
- [76:16]
John Gafford
Perry, man, thank you so much. That was a fascinating conversation. Hopefully you got a lot out of that. Look, man, if you listen to that, the biggest takeaways for me are the clock is ticking, the time is now. You better get on it and go fast because the robots are coming for all of us.
- [76:35]
Perry Belcher
Yeah, dude. And you. You just gotta block out sometimes. Block out a little bit.
- [76:39]
John Gafford
We didn't get to that. You know what?
- [76:41]
Perry Belcher
Block out a little bit of time every day to study.
- [76:43]
John Gafford
We didn't even get to. I want to talk about that so much. And you know what? I'm going to bring this back out. We're not. We're not going away.
- [76:48]
Perry Belcher
All right.
- [76:49]
John Gafford
We're going to continue going. Because I really want to talk about something you said in my office earlier, which was you had a little bit of a health scare.
- [76:55]
Perry Belcher
Yeah.
- [76:55]
John Gafford
And we don't have to get in details about what it was, but you said something about. And I thought this was so clutch. And we never got to it. Talk about that. About what you did.
- [77:05]
Perry Belcher
Noise. You know, we. Number one, I spend a lot of time studying. I feel like my job with my. My students in my group when I have. For the people that I mentor to. And it's a small part of my business is mentorship. But I do do it. It. I'm a researcher. You. You probably are too.
- [77:21]
John Gafford
Yeah.
- [77:22]
Perry Belcher
You're researching what's working, vetting to see what's working and then passing that along and also pass along what doesn't work to people. Right. But you got to invest some time to learn this stuff and. And dude, YouTube University will teach you a lot. Don't go out and buy a bunch of. From gurus and all that. They're usually. It's usually. And they're behind the curb anyway. Don't buy books. Anybody buys books on AI right now is just stupid a book. By the time the book's published, the. The data is dead.
- [77:48]
John Gafford
But do buy my book Escaping the Drift, which is coming out November 11th. Not about AI. Not about AI at all. Keep going.
- [77:54]
Perry Belcher
But YouTube University is amazing to people. You learn a lot and they're. They're really rising this stuff up. That works. But. But eliminating the noise out of your life, I think is the biggest thing for me. John asked, do you know John Asroth? Sure.
- [78:07]
John Gafford
He was here three weeks ago.
- [78:09]
Perry Belcher
I love John and John during COVID I didn't do covet well. I didn't pivot in Covid well. And. And a lot. I've always been really ahead of the curve. Always been the guy skating to the puck and I didn't do it well. And John called me one day, asked me for some help on something, and he said, you okay? And I said, yeah, I'm okay. He said, you don't sound like Perry. Isn't he? Maybe I'm depressed a little bit. And he gave me the best piece of advice anybody's ever given me about how to function in life is, I want you to take a piece of paper when you get the call, sit somewhere for two hours. You don't have to do this, but you can't do anything else. Write on that. That. That pad, everything, one item on the line that you don't want in your life. Because he's like, what do you want? I'm like, I don't know. I got, you know, got this. Got money. I got big house card. It's just kind of hollow, right? Do you know there are people that. Therapists for exits for people who have exits. That's a big industry. It. It. Because people sell it, build a company for 20 years, they sell it, get a big lick of money, and all of a sudden they find themselves depressed, which is crazy, right?
- [79:13]
John Gafford
Because the check. The check is a dopamine head, right?
- [79:15]
Perry Belcher
And then you're like.
- [79:16]
John Gafford
Fades away.
- [79:17]
Perry Belcher
Yeah. So. So I think I was going through that, but he said, write down everything you don't want in your life. And I swear to God, I did it. It. And he said, now, once you start drawing lines through the easy stuff, and then you got to start drawing through the lines through the hard stuff. I broke up with a girlfriend. I moved to another city. I did. I did a bunch of stuff that. Because I. It wasn't about what I wanted, it was about what I didn't want. And the reason I think that that works is what you want in life, what your goals are, your dreams are. It's always very fuzzy. It's almost never crystal in focus. That's the reason they say vision boards work, and I think they do that. If you can see it, it. You can usually achieve it in your mind's eye or in reality, but most people can't see what their idea of success or happiness or whatever is. But they damn sure know crystal clear what they don't want. And if you just start eliminating noise out of your life, all of a sudden what you want will come into focus. And like I said, I had a little health scare. And it was like, no imminent anything, but it was like, it made me think. And I. If you want to do an experiment, it's kind of fun. Look up your Average age expectancy, how long you expected to live. By mortality chart, subtract out the amount of days you've already lived.
- [80:29]
John Gafford
Somebody got left, right?
- [80:30]
Perry Belcher
How many you got left? And ask yourself this question every single day. What am I willing to trade that day for? What am I willing to trade today for? And I try to do that every single day. And it's really helped me eliminate. Just if it's not, you know, I got this cone that's going where I want to go, and if it's outside that cone, it doesn't exist to me. Yeah.
- [80:53]
John Gafford
If it's not, hell yeah, it's hell no.
- [80:55]
Perry Belcher
Oh, yeah. If you did. Somebody joked, how many. How many hours a day do you think Tiger woods spends practicing his basketball shot? The answer is zero. Right. He's concentrated on being the greatest and greatest golfer in the world. He was, anyway. But you know what I'm saying, You, you, you just concentrate on being great at what you're already great at. You'll have far more success from it. But get all the other noise and bullshit out of your life, because we love to get distracted into those things because it gives us the reason. It gives us a buy from going and doing that thing that may be a little tougher or swallowing that frog that we don't necessarily want to swallow.
- [81:32]
John Gafford
Yeah. I was watching a clip the other day of somebody that was talking about decision making, and they were talking about, you know, if I. If I can't decide, the answer is no, though. And if I have two choices, one of two choices, and they're very similar, I will always choose the one that is harder in the short term.
- [81:47]
Perry Belcher
Yeah.
- [81:47]
John Gafford
Because it almost always pays off.
- [81:49]
Perry Belcher
Almost always better off. Yeah.
- [81:50]
John Gafford
Yeah. Same thinking. All right, well, dude, if they want to find you, how do they find you, Perry?
- [81:53]
Perry Belcher
Go to AI Morning Club. Yeah, Morning Club.com. every morning at 30 minutes, I do a little thing on AI. Talk about what's going on, what's moving there. It doesn't cost a penny. Anybody can show up, wants to show up. It's kind of fun. That's. That's really it. Right now. I don't really have a lot of stuff for sale or any of that stuff. I don't do. I don't do much of the. The.
- [82:13]
John Gafford
Because you're rich.
- [82:14]
Perry Belcher
The teaching stuff anymore. You know why I keep teaching, though?
- [82:17]
John Gafford
Because it keeps you young.
- [82:18]
Perry Belcher
Keeps me sharp.
- [82:19]
John Gafford
It does.
- [82:19]
Perry Belcher
I have. I'm. I'm responsible. You know, I got a little group of people that, That I mentioned, and I'm responsible to them if I didn't have anybody to be responsible to. Yeah, I'd probably a blubbering idiot sitting somewhere in a rocket chair going, you know, my oatmeal's cool.
- [82:33]
John Gafford
You know about the old days.
- [82:34]
Perry Belcher
Yeah, this the old days. So I love having somebody to be responsible for and I don't really like to charge for that stuff anymore because just, just so. It's just so much fun to. I get on that thing every morning, eight o' clock in the morning and you know, four or five hundred people show up. I'm like, hey, guess what? Guess what I learned yesterday. And then other people will say what they learned. And then we go on about our day. It's about 30 minutes and it's kind of fun.
- [82:55]
John Gafford
I love that. All right, dude. Well, man, I appreciate you coming by. You're welcome anytime you're.
- [83:00]
Perry Belcher
Thanks. I appreciate it.
- [83:00]
John Gafford
Come through.
- [83:01]
Perry Belcher
Take care.
- [83:01]
John Gafford
So man, if you listen to this again, dude, you better get on it. The time is now. The robots are coming. I would do exactly what he said today. I would start by writing out on that sheet exactly the things you don't want. As soon as we jump off here, I'm going to do a. I'm going to go straight in there and make a piece of content about what he just said because I think that's incredible advice because the if you're not in charge of your life, you're drifting along with the currents and that's everything that this show and I and Perry I'm again. We'll see you next week. What's up everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escaping the drift.com. you can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review. Give us a share. Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.
- [83:58]
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