Unedited Transcript

Jim Rembach (00:00):

Okay, fast leader leading today. I’m excited because we have somebody on the show today who is going to give us perspectives that are utmost important when we start talking about really not just the future but where we are today. Patrick Schwerdtfeger was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, and as the youngest of four kids, he has two older sisters and a brother. His parents were together throughout his entire lifetime, but now they’ve since passed. As a young child, Patrick can be found exploring and talking to as many different people as possible, always looking to find new perspectives and a new treasure he had not found before. Patrick was never very good at school and in grade school and high school. He had issues and his sisters and brothers were very smart in winning lots of scholarships and awards. Patrick always wanted to learn from the real world and real people operating within the real world and applying.

Jim Rembach (00:55):

That is something that he was able to do when he went into his college years, but he was very happy to finish that. Patrick’s degree is in finance and spent his early career in that field ranging from banking and real estate, but he became self employed in 2002 and learned about marketing and it was that learning process that led him to start teaching others, write books, and eventually develop a career as a professional speaker. Patrick is the author of anarchy inc property in a decentralized world with artificial intelligence blockchain. Also, he is the author of the award winning keynote mastery, the personal journey of a professional speaker as well as marketing shortcuts for the self-employed. Verify your business internet marketing secrets for the self-employed and make yourself useful marketing in the 21st century. He has been featured by the New York times, LA times, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN money, reader’s digest, fortune, Bloomberg business, and the associated press, money magazine, Forbes, and many others. Patrick currently lives in Newport beach, California with his girlfriend Nadia and her son, Luke Patrick Schwerdtfeger. Are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (02:05):

Yeah, I sure am. Jim, I’m thrilled to be with you.

Jim Rembach (02:09):

I’m glad you’re here. Now. I’ve given my Legion a little bit about you, but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (02:17):

Yeah, sure. I mean, boy, I think all of us, probably for the first time in history, we’ve got 7.6 billion people all focused on the same problem. Uh, God certainly has our attention. Uh, the entire world. Everyone is focusing on, on one, uh, one problem, which is the pandemic and the quarantine and the economic collapse. That’s, it’s incredible what they’ve done. Of course, I’m not saying it shouldn’t have been done, but there’s some pretty significant consequences. But, but that is my focus too. So I’ve written five books, but the sixth one is, is just a week and a half away. And it’s, it’s been, it’s about the pandemic and how businesses can survive. So, and, and I need to do this to Jim. It’s, you know, my, my revenue immediately went to zero as a professional speaker. All the events were canceled. So now in the meantime it’s, it’s a, it’s a process of content development and trying to figure out where we stand and how do we navigate the, these, these troubled, troubled times. And now the business is starting to come back. But we all have that responsibility, right? We all have as business people, it is up to us to make sure that we’re relevant and that we’re providing value. And that’s what I’m working on right now.

Jim Rembach (03:24):

Well, and you know, as you’re talking, I start thinking about one of the things that you mentioned in this book and I’m sure that it leaves and continues upon that pathway and journey is that you talk about this getting caught off guard, right? Yeah. All off guard component is really something that if we did take the opportunities to step back and look and review, we may, we can’t necessarily get all of the surprises, but we could be potentially better prepared than many. So many are today. And when you start talking about anarchy, and I think that’s also one of those things that’s going to be very surprising for a lot of organizations. Um, I think we really need to get some insight into what do you mean by anarchy?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (04:09):

Yeah. Well, you know, just to kind of respond to the first part of your question, you know, technology and so many things today are evolving along an exponential curve. And as human beings, we are that that is not, it is counterintuitive. We are hardwired as human beings to think in linear terms. Uh, you know, you see it, you imagine a football quarterback for example, you know, you’re throwing a ball to a guy who’s running, like you can anticipate where that guy is going to be in two or three seconds. Very hard to do that when you’re talking about exponential change, because at the beginning of the whole thing seems insignificant and like it’s, it’s, it’s not even worth paying attention to, but then all of a sudden it turns the corner and all of a sudden it’s going so fast, you can’t keep up anymore.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (04:52):

And that’s really what’s happening right now. And these, these, uh, you know, business leaders and executives, boy, they are smart people. They’ve got the best education in the world, but they’re, they have the, you know, what they call institutional blindness, right? They’re focused on their goals. And so you become blind to what’s happening outside of your field division. And then all of a sudden these exponential technologies come along and, and, and they sneak up on you. And before you know it, they’re going so fast, you can’t catch up anymore. And that, this, the whole that, you know, a lot of my work as a speaker really boils down to disruptive innovation and how do we anticipate it? How do we profit from disruptive innovation? And you really have to coach yourself. I do it. I mean literally every day, and this is my full time gig, is to think, no, what if it was 10 times as powerful as it is today?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (05:37):

Or what, what if it was a hundred times as powerful? Or maybe more importantly, what if this technology costs one 10th of what it costs today? Or 100th of how many of my competitors would use this technology if it would cost one, 100 of what it costs today? Right? And so then you, you can start to think this way a little bit more, but, but your, your, your actual question pointed to the title of the book, anarchy, anarchy, inc. And, and how do we, how do we deal with that? So a lot of the book is about decentralization. And in almost every field, things are decentralizing, right? Decoupling, becoming more tribal. Uh, our, so our, our, our social dynamics, you know, the social media world has created that. The influencer world and information marketers and gurus, everyone’s got their own opinion and it’s getting more and more fractured.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (06:27):

So anarchy to me, I mean, the actual definition of it, it doesn’t mean there’s fighting in the streets. It doesn’t mean we’ve got gun battles in our neighborhoods. But what it does mean is that people aren’t respecting a single authority, right? No one’s, no one’s respecting a single hierarchy that everyone agrees on. So, I mean, there may be the best. The best example today is the media environment. And you’re part of that gym. I mean, you’ve built a following and people follow you and they like your opinion, right? And, and there’s, there’s millions of these people, the influencers. And so we used to have maybe a dozen, uh, media platforms that, you know, 90% of the people got their news from one of these 12 or whatever it was. But today, you know, we literally have millions between blogs and podcasts and YouTube and TV channels and magazines.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (07:19):

My gosh, it’s endless, right? And everyone’s calling everyone else fake news. Like it’s not like there’s only one. It’s not like only the conservative people are calling liberal fake news, or the liberals are calling conservative fake news. Everyone’s calling everyone else fake news. That’s anarchy. Like, we’re already there. So I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll kind of finish my answer with, with the one thing that to me really defines the whole experience, which is the word. We’re increasingly living in a world with multiple realities and multiple versions of the truth. And that that is incredibly important to understand because it means that you have to pick your truth and stand firm and defiant and boldly proclaim your truth to your people. And don’t worry about what everyone else says. Uh, you know, the haters and the people who, cause inevitably there’s going to be, there is no one truth, right?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (08:15):

The alternative facts, they’re everywhere. So you, you can no longer win on the facts. What you have to win on is your confidence in your conviction, in your truth. And there’s, you know, some people love Trump, some people hate Trump. That’s fine. I have no, no dogs in that race. But, but he, but he does model this. He has his truth and he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Uh, and so we can learn from that. Even if you hate as politics, it’s fine with me, but, but he, he’s modeling that every single day, you know, with his, you know, exaggerations or whatever you want to say about his facts. But the bottom line is he doubles down whenever he is challenged and he is in his truth and his followers are more loyal to him than any other politician I can think of. So that’s, that’s a model we can, we can, uh, we can know, we can follow that model in business.

Jim Rembach (09:08):

You know, as you’re talking, and you said a couple of words that I think are critically important here, you know, one is that tribe, you know, elements, you know, one is you know that you can’t, another isn’t, you just can’t please everyone. Uh, and, and so when I started thinking about that from a leadership perspective, when I say start thinking about that from a customer experience perspective, you know, I often see that, you know, people try to are, or they don’t know what their places, they don’t know what their tribe is and they can’t convey that. And so therefore they end up serving no one and providing, you know, a good, good experience to anyone. I mean, it sucks for everyone. So when I, when I start thinking though is that I’m already in this place, I’m already, you know, I have all these potential disruptors coming in.

Jim Rembach (09:58):

I have this, you know, customer and our key because now they want things to centralize. They want this, Hey, I got this over here and I didn’t have to pay for it. Like I was just talking to my neighbor who was a trader, you know, back back in the eighties and she said, we used to have to carry paper tickets for our orders and go take them to the trading desk. And I mean how, how many of those people back then ever thought that it would be free training? Right. I mean you just, I mean to think about that is just totally mind boggling.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (10:27):

Well, I mean the like the change is it, I mean you can, there’s a thousand examples where you compare, you know, what we’ve gone through in our lives. I mean it, I’m 49 years old and it is just stunning. Like how much has changed. But the bottom line is we’re going to change more in the next 12 months than we did in the last 12 years. I mean, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I mean we are just getting started and now with the pandemic and quarantine and the fear that’s, that’s really evolving with people. You know, we’re, we’re business leaders. Failure to adapt is failure to exist. I mean you, you need to adapt. Everyone needs to adapt. And if you don’t, someone else is going to come in and take your place. Now that’s also an enormous opportunity for, I mean, change is opportunity, right?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (11:16):

The, the, the whole equation of the successful business is to find a problem and fix it. We haven’t had this many problems in a long time. So, you know, finding a problem is, is easy to do. So, you know, going out there and, and fixing problems and being, being a, you know, a solution you can, heroes will be made as a result of this pandemic. But, but the bottom line is that, that, uh, you know, we, we need to state our truth clearly and defiantly and pick the market that we’re after and stick with it. And that’s, you know, this is a time of bold leadership. This is, there was an Italian economist who back in the 19 I wrote a quote that I forget his name. A very is a lot of people have cited the quote recently and it goes something like this, I probably have it a little bit wrong, but he said the old world is dying.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (12:03):

The new world struggles to be born now is the time of monsters. Uh, 1930s. So you can imagine back in those days, he was probably referring to people like Stalin or Mussolini or Hitler. But, but the bottom line is this is a time of bold leadership because there’s so much change. Like you can picture, for example, 95 blocks or a hundred blocks, right? That’s like your life is of the economy. Your world is a hotter blocks. Normally 95 of them are nailed down. They’re not moving, they’re stationary, and there’s five that are emotion today. It’s exactly the inverse of that. All right? There’s only five that are nailed down. Everything’s in motion. Everything’s changing, right? And it’s very scary. It’s, it causes a lot of anxiety within our population. And certainly people are feeling that I am, they’re not sleeping well. They’re freaking out, right?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (12:52):

The stock market’s plunging so that all these things are our realities. We’re digesting. Uh, but at the same time, it’s, uh, there’s huge opportunity and, and the bold leaders, the people who can step up and envision a better tomorrow, they will gain traction because people are desperate for guidance and desperate for leadership. So that’s why I wrote my next book. I’m like, I have to do it now because people want someone to follow. They want, they’re desperate for solutions and answers. And that’s what you’re doing too. So the more we go out and provide a value and help people, especially the time right now and so much is, is variable and changing, there’s a lot of opportunity.

Jim Rembach (13:32):

Well, and with that, for me, I’d like to take some of those complex, uh, type of concepts and all of that and try to make it something that we can actually, you know, make some movement on you and I, before we actually started recording, we talked about, Hey man, just move right? Don’t, don’t stay in space. Don’t nest. Don’t go onto the rock. You gotta move. I mean, that movement and the whole inertia associated with that is so critically important in the learning opportunity. You know, we talk about, um, uh, Doug Conant who was on the fast leader show, um, former CEO of Campbell soup, you know, talked about, you know, three different types of competency that we have to focus in on. And he actually has a little model that you can evaporate upon. It talks about intelligence. We all know IQ, you know, EEQ which is, I’m certified in emotional intelligence and that’s important.

Jim Rembach (14:19):

But then he also talks about functional intelligence. And so the functional intelligence is, Hey, Noel, do you know your market? How well do you know your business? How well do you know it’s all that, how all that, you know, really that tactical components and elements and all of those things. I need all of those things in order to have a tribe that wants to follow me in order to have, you know, commitment and connection and purpose and drive and survivability and adaptability, all that, all that is necessary. But if we talk about, you know, an environment such as this, where there, there’s a problem with the whole functional intelligence, we don’t know what we don’t know. I mean, how do, how do I keep people engaged?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (14:59):

Well, I mean, you know, you pivot every single day. I mean, you, you see, the more you you try, right? Look, I mean, I’ve made more mistakes than anyone I know, but why is that? It’s because I’ve tried more things. Right? And so you, and at the end of the day you’re going to have a batting average. Some things you’re going to try are going to work. Most are not. You know, just, okay. Just this morning, literally this morning I just came back from, from uh, I got a coffee, I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone. He started a pest control business, right? And he’s, he’s booming. He’s out. And he just started a year ago. So brand new is in Boise, Idaho. Anyway, he, and this is classic, this is the way I think, and this is the way all of the people that I, you know, in my close circle, we all really try to think this way.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (15:45):

So, you know, I think business plans are completely useless because you don’t know, like maybe you’re doing 20 steps. The only step you actually have any reliability on is step number one. And you don’t know step number two until you’re finished step number one. Right? And so you have to try, you have to take action. And it’s not about as what I said earlier before we started recording, it’s not like I’m saying, you know, work 18 hours a day like Elon Musk. I have huge respect for Elon Musk, but that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is try something. Anything, get out there and do something. And once you finish step one, step two will present itself to you at that point. So my buddy, uh, he tried like five different marketing strategies and he put money towards all five of them. Four of them failed, one of them worked.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (16:31):

And so then what did he do? He took the money from the other four that were failed and reallocated them to the one that was working and double down on it. He never would have known. Like if you did a best business plan and say, do you have to do this marketing or these five Mark, you don’t know which one’s going to work. And it’s not that some are better strategies than others. It’s that we all have different businesses, different voice, different personalities, different demographics, different markets that we’re serving. So different platforms are going to be, we just don’t know. You don’t know until you try it. And so he tried all five for them, basically failed. Uh, and then one of them really worked very well. So he reallocated funds, doubled down. He adjusted his website to accommodate for that marketing strategy. And he’s booming.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (17:12):

So anything like, yeah, let’s say I try something on, let’s say I do this all the time, right? I record, I have 700 videos on YouTube and six books and you know, so I’m constantly, you know, throwing stuff against the wall and have I, if I got a lot of, you know, like advice out there that turned out to be not true. Yeah, absolutely. You’re, you’ll find tons of it. But the people who, who have come across my content, I think if there is an appreciation that they have, it’s that I keep calibrating and I keep pivoting and I keep learning and I, I’m the first one to say, look, I suggested something you a year ago and I come, it’s wrong. I was wrong. And here’s, here’s why, and here’s what I suggest now. So we all need to do that. Um, but, but, but being willing to try things and being willing to be a bold leader, this is a time of bold.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (18:04):

We need bold leadership and, you know, passion sells, right? Know this, and this is not new. This is 2000 years ago, right? I mean, if you, you know, the passionate politicians are the ones that get votes. The passionate musicians are the ones that sell albums, right? They’re the passionate businesses. Look at Apple. They defiantly support the, the, you know, the rebels and the misfits, right? People love them for that. And so, you know, having conviction and passionate about your beliefs and being willing to go out and try things. Apples tried lots of things that failed. Uh, but they keep trying and they keep coming back. They keep coming back and just going after their goals. People have respect for that and more and more today than ever.

Jim Rembach (18:45):

So as you’re talking, I even started thinking about the book and the way that you’ve broken it down to me and you talk about that step, you know, and making that movement. Um, you know, there’s really six things that you talk about are trends that we need to be aware of, which I think can really assist or aid in that passion building area. Because even if I’m a middle manager, okay, I’m a frontline manager, I still have to, some people may say, well, I don’t, I don’t have to have all that. I don’t need to be bold. Heck no, I’ll get in trouble. Right? All of those things start running through people’s head and they’re very fear based. And then when you have situations that we’re in now, it just magnifies the problem. But I think getting some functional intelligence and understanding and these six core areas will get us a little bit better prepared. So you talk about, you know, costs when costs collapsed, that innovation prize, you talk about AI, artificial intelligence, and the different waves. You’re talking about jobs and job impact. Uh, you talk about blockchain and then you talk about anarchy and then you also talk about demographics and, and so when I start thinking about those, if you could just kind of run through those a little bit to help everybody understand what you’re meaning.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (20:00):

Yeah. Thank you, Jim, for going through my book. I truly appreciate that. So that the costs, you know, we, we, we just both spoke just a moment ago. Technology is evolving along an exponential curve. So we all kind of know that, you know, that that curve that we’ve all seen a million times where it goes up into the right. And of course that’s what it does. But it’s the inverse of that, which is so important, right? And this way, no one thinks about it. And that is that the cost of any one capability goes down towards zero very, very quickly. Right? More, more quickly than people think. So when I said earlier, I’m like, what if this technology costs one 100th of what it costs today? That happens, right? So the cost of, and in technology, there’s kind of the three big ones, which is data storage, data bandwidth and data processing.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (20:49):

Those are like the three pillars of technology. And the cost curve of those is, is really coming down very, very quickly. So, you know, I mean, there’s a thousand examples, right? I mean, the cost of storing one terabyte of data in the year 2000 was $17,000 today it costs three bucks. Uh, and Amazon web services, I mean there’s, you’ve all heard these, there’s a thousand examples, but the costs are coming down really, really quickly. So like solar panels, for example, uh, solar panels have come down in price 90% in the last five years. It’s come down 99%, 99.7 or something, 99.7% reduction since the 1970s. Like, it is astonishing what’s happening. And so, you know, that’s going to grow, it’s going to continue to grow. And another perfect example right now is this impending automobile revolution, which is going to involve two primary trends. One, one is autonomous driving, but the second is the transition from gas vehicles to electric vehicles and the cost of batteries, which is the, the the most, the most expensive part in an electric vehicle.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (21:59):

By the way, gas vehicles have on average 2000 moving parts. Electric vehicles have less than a hundred. That’s a 95% reduction in parts moving parts of an electric vehicle. So we’re talking about a complete disruption of the automotive supply chain and aftermarket service markets is completely going to change and servicing electric vehicles is much cheaper, but the most expensive part is the battery. And right now it’s coming down in price between 12 and 14% each year. And that’s being driven by the billions and billions and billions of dollars being invested in the technology by people like Tesla and their gigafactories right and Panasonic and so on. So that the cost curve is coming down predictably, like, like they all do everything that’s technology related so the costs come down. So you can map out when an electric vehicle will literally be cheaper. And by the way, this doesn’t even account for the fact that electricity is 90% cheaper than gas on a per mile basis.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (22:55):

So to charge up your electric vehicle costs one 10th what it costs to fill up your tank with gasoline. So a totally, totally different might. So gas vehicles are gone within five years and you can Mark, you can put my name on that because within three years it’s literally got to be cheaper to buy electric vehicles than gas. And by 2025, you know, it’s not like it’s going to be replaced by individuals buying cars. It’s going to be replaced by fleets buying a hundred thousand cars at a time because it’s going to be transport as a service. Um, so anyway, costs are coming down and data is exploding and that’s what’s driving artificial intelligence. We can talk about that. That’s a huge, I mean, that’s affecting one industry after another and it’s guaranteed to just like going back to the 1960s and seventies, people added to everything and you have a lawn mower with electricity, you have a toothbrush with electricity.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (23:49):

I mean, everything has electricity. All of a sudden today it’s, it’s AI. AI is being added to everything. Everything’s going to have AI, uh, you know, and that’s just, that’s, we’re in the middle of that right now. So that’s happening. Blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And that’s, believe me, this, you know, if the wheels come off of the economy, you know, with, with the monetary easing and, and, uh, you know, the central bank and the ECB just money printing a quantitative easing. If the, if the credit based monetary system breaks, I’m not saying it will, but it could. The risk is there and it’s growing. If that happens, the winner will be Bitcoin. Uh, and that’s a decentralized platform, right? But blockchain is, is, is ByDesign decentralized, very similar to the open source movement, by the way. Also a decentralized, very similar between looking at blockchain, uh, opportunities in the future.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (24:43):

You can compare it to open source maybe about 10 years, 15 years ahead. So you can model open source to see what’s going to happen with blockchain, but likely a lot of similar things. Uh, and then the anarchy is, is what we discussed earlier is anarchy is, is a function of decentralization. The two are synonyms to me almost. Uh, so as decentralization grows, this feeling of anarchy also grows. And, and, and this tribal nature where there’s multiple versions of the truth that that all is, is stemming from, uh, from decentralization, which is enabled by technology, including blockchain. And the last thing, demographics is kind of a different topic. If you want to dig into that, we certainly can, but, but the technology piece is, is really the driving force behind all of this. And leaders have to learn that you can’t, like what you said earlier, Jim, you hit the nail on the head. You can’t please all people. You have to pick your truth and, and, and stand defiantly in your truth. And that’s what’s going to the moderate voices get drowned out. They disappear in the noise a so and so that unfortunately it leads to a more polarized society. So there’s a lot of downsides and I absolutely see those downsides, but it’s a reality. And so leaders have to get used to that and understand that dynamic.

Jim Rembach (26:04):

So as you’re talking, I start even thinking about all these six different factors and for me and, and my, my heart has always been in that employee experience and that customer experience. And I, and I in my industry in the contact center space, customer experience space, they’ve talked so much about AI in the context center. Um, I’m actually working on a webinar series with the pace association on AI in the contact center and that customer perspective of AI. And so the whole adoption piece, um, what different verticals, you know, can get and receive the most benefit from using AI because it varies. We have all of these different types of emotional connection, you know, which is kind of what you’re talking about and try picking my Lang emotional connection, all of that. So how you even talked about the different perspectives and deployments can be quite different. But if, if I’m looking at these six elements in six items and I’m focusing specifically on the customer, where do you see really the biggest impact?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (27:03):

Well, I mean, w what you said a second ago struck me. It’s funny, I like when I’m speaking, you have ideas when you speak at the same goes in reverse. But you know, we’re, we’re all different. We’re all increasingly different. Uh, and even now, like we see, so let me, let me start with an example because I have a friend of mine who, uh, is, he has one of the leading platforms in the medicinal marijuana space, which is not my thing, but, but whatever. It’s growing space of course. And he’s the host of a, of a, like a video series which they’re selling. Uh, so, you know, they done series one and series two and now they’re series three. Anyway, he goes down to a studio here in Los Angeles area on a regular basis to record these videos. And he does literally hundreds of videos that catered to an audience at different levels of engagement.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (27:58):

So you do an initial campaign, people either engage with it or they don’t. So all of a sudden that one group is split into two. And so now you’re going to do, the second level of your marketing is going to go to two different groups, right? And each one of those is going to either respond to what you sent them or not. So they split into two and then they split it into two and they split into two. And before you know it, you literally have dozens and dozens of different markets, segmented groups, which are at different levels of your marketing and conversion funnel, right? So people talk about following the customer journey, this is what they’re talking about. Like, and I, it bothers me sometimes when people say following the customer your journey, because people listen to that. They don’t understand like what’s the implication?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (28:40):

The implication is market segmentation at the extreme and, and, and creating a marketing funnel that follows people through their level. So, and I see this in, in the, the, the thing that, you know, on Instagram or Facebook or, or, or, uh, I mean there’s tech talk, my gosh, they’re everywhere. These different things that are being marketed to me and, and I follow it because it’s so intuitive. Like I feel like in having like a one to one conversation with this company that I’m saying something to them, they’re saying it back to me and it makes perfect sense based on what I just said. So there’s this intuitive logic and the user experience, right? How logical does this progression seem to me? And that’s what we have to learn how to do it. You know, these exclusions. So you do one marketing campaign, it splits into two.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (29:33):

So now you’re going to exclude this group and only market to this one and have a custom message and then that’s going to get into two based on what happens. And so now you’re going to exclude one half of that and do the other. And so a good friend of mine does this sort of marketing for some really big brands, uh, really incredible campaigns that, like I said, that end up with dozens if not hundreds of different custom messages going to individuals. And it’s all about exclusions and data and following that data. Now artificial intelligence can, uh, look at the people who ended up in a particular spot in your funnel and going back to the original group and trying to understand what characteristics of those people have and then trying to extrapolate and testing, uh, with a broader audience. So you get these things like in, in, in Facebook or Google the, I do a lot of advertising with Google and you can target similar audiences, right?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (30:31):

So you have one group that you’re targeting, but you can target a similar audience. Well, that’s similar audience. That is machine learning right there because the platform will look for similar people, send the advertisement out to them, see if those people engage or not. And then it’s learning what people always say, what’s the difference between analytics and artificial intelligence? Because a lot of what we’re talking about is just good, good algorithms, right? That’s all it really is. So what’s the dividing line? Well, there’s generally two, two things that people look at. Number one is is that it’s replicating some sort of human level comprehension, right? Which is obvious, but the second is that it has the ability to learn. And so that’s what you always have to ask yourself, does this, does this part of the, the the, the technology learn from, it’s from it, from more data and these similar audiences, they absolutely do.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (31:24):

So they, they run it to people they think are similar. They see who engages and who doesn’t. And so that now they’ve learned something, Oh this, this, these groups that didn’t work here but it did work here. So they may refine it a little bit more. That’s why when you’re doing advertising campaigns, like you have to let it run for a few weeks, right? Two, three, four weeks, a month or two and let it learn and it’s going to cost you money. There’s no question it’s going to cost you money. But like with a Facebook pixel for example, you can put a Facebook pixel on your website, Facebook will track that and they will learn. That platform will learn about your audience. You have to spend a little bit of money to give it that ability to learn. And then you can, you know, part two, part three, part four are much more profitable than part one because it’s learning along the way.

Jim Rembach (32:10):

And as you’re talking, I started thinking about, you know, really the differentiating factor is being able to balance all of the human intelligence and the emotional intelligence, the functional intelligence, all of that. And you know what you’re learning about, you know, all of these possible technologies, so you can do things that only the extraordinary and exceptional do. Now you can sit back here and say, well, that’s just too darn, or I’m not smart enough for that. Or something along those lines and self-sabotage. But what would you tell people in order to take a step?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (32:49):

I mean, it’s those last two steps. Last two words or three words. Take the next step. I mean, you gotta you gotta throw something against the wall, right? That’s what I, that’s what I, what I meet mean in my mind. That’s what I’m thinking. What I’m saying. Let the advertising campaign run for awhile. Like the functional intelligence [inaudible] those are your tactics, right? Those are, those are your, is your specific how to, and I love that stuff, right? That’s like what I, I live on that either take action, try something, do something right. That’s your functional intelligence. But the bottom line is you don’t go in having that functional intelligence. You learn it as you go, right? And so you start a campaign and then, and then you have to learn from it, right? And you have to try it and keep going. And that’s why, you know, how many different things can you try?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (33:36):

So people talk about innovation and that’s a huge part of my work. Uh, and innovation can really be boiled down to one concept, or let’s say two words, which is budgeting failure. You have to budget failure. W w because innovation implies that you’re trying something new. No, you haven’t done it before. So if you’re Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, that guy is incredibly brilliant. Whether you like him or not, he’s brilliant. And he says, I mean, so many quotes from him. It’s endless, but one of them is so simple. If you know it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment because you already know what’s going to work. Like if you, if you’re going to try something, it means you’re trying something. You don’t know if it’s going to work or not, which means it might not, which means you’re going to lose money, right? The amount of money you spent on that experiment, you’re going to lose that money, right?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (34:26):

So if you’re, if you want to be innovative and you have to be right, remember, failure to adapt is failure to exist. So we have to, we have to try new things. We have to innovate, which means you need a budget for that. So let’s say you have a million bucks or a hundred thousand, right? It doesn’t matter what it is. Let’s say a hundred thousand, right? If do you want to blow all that money on one experiment and do a big huge experiment? Or do you want to take that money and split it up into 10 small experiments, right? Or is the, what’s the minimum viable product? What’s the easiest, simplest, cheapest way to test an idea, right? People think you have to develop a product to test it, but that’s not true. You can create specs and you can market a product that doesn’t even exist just to see if the marketing works, right?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (35:13):

And if it works, you can develop the product. If it doesn’t, you can forget the idea. So always think like, what’s this? What’s the cheapest, simplest, quickest way to try something new? You know, in Silicon Valley, I lived in the Bay area for 18 years and the venture capital world, they’re all in. You’ve heard this before, they’re all about fail. Fast forward, fail forward, and iterate towards success. Fail fast, fail, learn from it, and iterate towards success. You don’t know. Step two until you finished step one. So this is, I mean, you know, I don’t mean to be repetitive at all, Jen. I promise, but, but to me it always circles around to this one concept, which is go out and try something and learn and don’t have this, the arrogance to think that you know how it’s going to turn out. Like I’ve tried so many things that I find this is, this is going to work and I can’t tell you this. I’m like a professional failure. Like I, that’s what I do. I fail like repeatedly over and over and over again. And so I find these little things where it actually did work and then I iterate and I keep going built on that. But the amount of failures are

Jim Rembach (36:20):

staggering along the way. Well, I have to tell you, you did actually do a lot of things very successfully on this interview because we ask about an important quote you shared that you taught, we’d lock and ask about hump stories. You did that. I mean you led your way all the way to where we are right now. We have a couple of other books coming up and we want to make sure that we stay engaged with those. Uh, and as far as you making an impact on the world and helping us being more prepared so that we are not blindsided if something that all of the fast lead leader Legion wishes you the very best on. Now before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

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Patrick Schwerdtfeger (37:48):

Boils down to what we just discussed. What’s the easiest, simplest, fastest way to try something. Because if you don’t have a lot of time, we all have 24 hours in a day. You got to pack as many experiments into that time as possible.

Jim Rembach (37:59):

And what is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (38:02):

Try something. Go out and do something. Anything. Anything small. Take a step in the direction of your goals, even when it comes to manifesting and visualization and the law of attraction. What do they say? Take a step in the direction of your goals. Step two will reveal itself when you’re finished. Step one.

Jim Rembach (38:19):

And what is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (38:23):

Um, persistence. I mean versus again, I failed so much and most of the people who, who I know and who know me, if they went through the things I went through, they just give up. They can’t take the ego hit. I’ve slapped in the face more times than I can count, but I keep success is not about how many times you’re hit, it’s about how many times you get up afterwards.

Jim Rembach (38:43):

And what would be one of your, or what is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (38:48):

Uh, data. I always follow the data. I mean, and I know that’s not probably not the answer you’re looking for, but I find data in everything I do and I try to follow the data because I’ve, I have learned that I, my intuition, my gut feel is almost never right at the beginning.

Jim Rembach (39:05):

And what would be one book that you’d recommend to our Legion? It could be for any genre course. We’re going to put a link to a anarchy on your shown up page as well.

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (39:12):

Yeah. You know, I mean I’ll, I might, I’m just going to go with the tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell. 16% right? How do you get to 16% it’s not about 80% it’s not about a hundred it’s not about 50 how do you get to 16% that’s the tipping point. Once you get there, the rest takes care of itself.

Jim Rembach (39:30):

Okay. Fast leader Legion. You can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/patrick-schwerdtfeger. But here just do Patrick and your search bar and you’ll be able to find it. Okay, Patrick, this is my last question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you can take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you, but you can’t take it all. You can only take one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (39:55):

and why? You know, boy, that’s actually a really good question. I think just communication, community learning to communicate as, as, as, as effectively as I can. That’s the one thing that, you know, I’ve had recurring nightmares my whole life that I lose my voice. Why? Because my voice and my ability to communicate is communication skills and more than ever with the young people who are spending so much time on their computers. If you can learn to communicate effectively with people one on one or one to many, uh, that is the best paying skill on earth, politicians, salespeople, it’s all the same. It all boils down to

Jim Rembach (40:29):

communication. Patrick, I had fun with you today. Can you please share with our fast leader Legion how they can connect with you?

Patrick Schwerdtfeger (40:35):

Yeah, sure. So my last name is a doozy. Uh, but the easiest way to find my website is actually just go to http://bookpatrick.com/ http://bookpatrick.com/ and it will forward to my website. Uh, and it’s all about speaking and such, but it’ll give you an idea of the, of, of how I spend my time and how I earn my living.

Jim Rembach (40:53):

Patrick Schwerdtfeger. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom of fast leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump.