Return to real: stand out in an AI world

Navid Moazzez: In the age of ai, what if real is our only advantage? We have left. That's what my guest for this AI Creator session we'll dive into. And I have Ryan Levek here We go way back probably like 10 years, and he is been a speaker on a lot of my virtual events and, uh, I've also been a student of his in the past, but he's gonna share kind of what he's been up to.

I'm definitely a reader of his newsletter as well, and he's been doing a lot of cool stuff behind the scenes and, uh, building his personal brand as well. So warm, welcome to this session, Ryan

Ryan Levesque: Navid. It's always great to connect and reconnect with you, and I'm excited to dive in for today's session.

Navid Moazzez: Yeah, definitely.

So Ryan, tell me a little bit about this return to real. You are writing a newsletter right now, kind of under your personal brand. You are obviously been doing ask method and quiz funnels for a very long time, but you're not doing as much of this anymore. So I'm interested to hear a little bit what you've been up to and then you can dive into.

I know you have a prepared a presentation for us as well here.

Ryan Levesque: Yeah. You know, so a great question and I'm super honored to, to be part of this summit here today. Um, uh, a fair warning for anyone watching this right now, two things that I'll say is if anyone's familiar with, uh, the ASK Method and really a lot of the work that I've, uh, put out in the world over the last decade, today's session is gonna be very different.

It's gonna have nothing to do with, uh, quiz funnels or the ask method or surveys or segmentation or anything like that. So, um, that's the first thing. And the second thing is, I know this is an AI theme summit, and, uh, what I'll say is this session that we're about to dive into, maybe a little contrarian, it may be a little unconventional and, uh, it may offer a contradictory or conflicting view from maybe some of the other sessions that are here.

So I'll kind of like set that frame. Mm-hmm. Um, I'll dive in and explain what I say, what return to real. Actually means, and to the question that you posed to kick things off, um, that's really the question that I've been spending a lot of time exploring, which is, in a world of artificial, everything from the food we eat to the content we consume, and especially accelerated with ai, what if real is the only advantage that we have left in business?

So I'll kind of set the frame with that question and um, yeah, man, if you're, if you're good with it, lemme,

Navid Moazzez: before we dive in, just, just the question. If people stick around till the very end, what are they going to get out of this? Like, to kind of tease people a little bit to make them, make them excited about this, to kind of see kind of the contrarian views or maybe even how you are using ai, uh, but also being real with your audience, writing your newsletter every single week and stuff like that.

Ryan Levesque: What I'll say is this, uh, I'm gonna be sharing, uh, three perhaps counterintuitive strategies around how to think about your relationship with AI and how you incorporate them in your business. And I'm gonna take you behind the scenes in our business and show you what we are doing and how I've generated more opportunity in my business in the last three months than the last three years by making three specific shifts.

And I'll show you exactly what those shifts are. We're gonna do a little bit of show and tell, so you can see what I'm doing in my business, how I've amplified and accelerated not only, uh, the work that I'm putting out there in the world, but my personal brand and doing so in a time where I think it's never been more difficult to be the signal.

Amidst the noise, how to stand out. Um, as I shared with a client recently, it's never been easier to get into the game, but it's never been harder to stand out. And I think as Creators, this is what should be at the center of our conversation right now, which is how do we stand out? How do we capture attention, and how do we cultivate in influence in this age of ai?

Navid Moazzez: Yeah, definitely. Ryan, why don't we dive in right away and if I have questions throughout, I'll just, uh, post the questions to, for the audience. But yeah, you have a presentation for like, uh, the next 30, 40 minutes or so I think.

Ryan Levesque: That's perfect. Awesome. Can you see my screen?

Navid Moazzez: Yes, I see it. Let's do it.

Ryan Levesque: Awesome.

So, um, when I was, uh, preparing for the summit, uh, Navid, I wanted to put together a few ideas I think are important to frame this conversation. So I've, I've, I've framed this session, brace for Impact and the return to real. Three colliding forces that are reshaping this post AI world as we know it. And the return to real opportunity that I believe that this presents to us, for those of us who are Creators.

Um, you know, before we dive right in, um, I have a question Naveed for you. This one you can answer. Did you hear about the bombshell AI announcement that literally just came out?

Navid Moazzez: Yes. I, depending on which one. You, depending on which one because there's something Which one? Yeah, I mean, which one? I'm watching a lot of AI news, so that could be anything, man.

But it could be anything.

Ryan Levesque: Well, and, and I, and I, I put this slide in, this is actually a generic slide that I just leave in every week. 'cause there's always something new. There's always a bombshell announcement. Yeah. Um, it could be any number of things, but the one that I'm talking about, um, is actually.

Um, it was a few weeks ago that this came out now, but it's still very, very relevant. And it's a, it's a study that Microsoft came out with. I dunno if you saw this, but yes. Microsoft basically put out a study, um, where they analyzed 200,000 interactions with, uh, their, with copilot, um, to identify how people are actually using AI and the level of satisfaction they're reporting on that.

Meaning if people are using AI to do a task and they're very satisfied, chances are that they don't need a human being to help them with that task. If they're doing a task but they're unsatisfied, then, then chances are AI's not quite ready to do that, that task. And so with that, they were able to extrapolate.

Um, the top 40 professions that are most likely to be replaced and made redundant first. Um, so that's what the study is all about. And, uh, you can see the, the top 40 list right here. Um, and, and what it means for us, for those of us who are Creators. There's, um, you know, there's some interesting news. I'll say it like that.

Um, you know, for those of us who are event hosts and hostesses, so like, uh, virtual summit hosts, um, we're on the chopping block, we're on the list, um, for those of us who are writers and authors, yeah. More bad news. We're, we're, we're on the list. Um, and for those of us who are aspiring models, I know you're a good looking guy, Navid, and, uh, you're jet sitting ways, um, as Navid, the supermodel.

Sorry, man. Uh, uh, your days might be numbered, um, days on numbered, but I, but I, what's that?

Navid Moazzez: Yeah, these are numbers. AI influencers are all the rage. You know, you can replace yourself or replace yourself with like an AI model or something like that. That's actually pretty trendy right now. It's thing are making a lot of money.

It's exactly.

Ryan Levesque: Yeah. Yeah. You know, so I, so I, I share this, I start with this, um, to kind of frame the conversation because on the one hand, a lot of the conversations that I see happening online, especially in the, you know, uh, previously the digital marketing space, entrepreneurial space, marketing space online, um, really centers around AI and technology.

But, but the reality is we actually have to, um, take a step back because there are forces at play right now happening in the world and in the economy that are bigger than that. And, um, what I want to kind of start our conversation with is three colliding forces reshaping the world as we know it. And it's important to understand what these forces are because it's gonna help you frame the way that you think about your business and the way that you think about using AI in your business specifically.

Uh, the first force is an economic force. And, um, uh, the force that I'm talking about here, um, is something that, uh, Ray Dalio and others have written about, and it really has to do with the changing world order that's happening right now as we speak. Now, if you're not familiar with Ray Dalio's work, and he's really the retailer of this idea, there have been scholars that have been written writing about this for the last a hundred plus years.

Um, but there's a pattern that shows up over and over again in society and, um, it represents the rise and fall of, uh, civilizations of world powers. And we've seen this play out over and over again over the last 2000 years. Uh, the rise and fall of the Spanish, the Portuguese Empire, the Spanish Empire, the French Empire, the Dutch Empire, the British Empire.

And most recently the American Empire. And if you look at this curve right here on the right hand side of the screen, what you'll notice is that we're basically here right now. We are at a point in time where there's a, a massive wealth gap that's emerged in the world in the United States and the world at large.

We're actually experiencing the largest wealth gap that most people alive today have ever experienced, meaning we're seeing the greatest concentration of wealth in as few hands as possible. Um, and there's also a massive debt bubble that's emerged right now. Now, why is this relevant? Well, it's relevant because every 80 to 100 years, there's a cycle that plays out in a macroeconomic sense, it's known as the big cycle, the big debt cycle.

And if you kind of do the math, the last time that we experienced this was the Great Depression going into World War II and 80 to 100 years later basically puts us to today, meaning. We're effectively due for what is the right side of the curve on this screen where we experience a, uh, a debt bust, an economic downturn, um, some type of revolution, perhaps a war.

Um, there will be some type of political restructuring, and then a new world order will emerge. Now, the the reality is most people have this sense that, oh, well, this time is different. Like, you know, there are different forces happening in the world. We're not gonna experience this again. But it's a cognitive bias and fallacy because the reason why we tend to think that, um, is because these cycles only happen every eight to 100 a hundred years.

We most, in most people's lives, only experienced this once in our lifetime. So most of us weren't alive during the Great Depression in the 1930s going into the 1940s in World War ii. So we haven't lived through it. So we think. The world that we've experienced is the only world that exists. So this force is sort of latent behind the scenes.

So kind of keep that in the back of your mind. But there's a second force at play, um, that is connected to that and it's an environmental force. And this is something that, um, Nate Hagens has written a lot about in his work around what's called the Great Simplification. Um, basically we are living in a period of time known as the carbon pulse, where effectively we've taken over 3 billion years of carbon sequestered in the ground, and we've found a way to extract it in the form of fossil fuel.

And it's powered everything that we experience in life. Everything from you and I being able to be on this session right now to the data centers that, um, power ai. By the way, here's an interesting aside. I just learned that the power usage of data centers across the world, um, requires more power consumption than what every country on planet Earth consumes except for China, the United States, and I believe India.

Meaning if you just tally up the power, the electrical power used by data centers around the world, it's more power than every European country, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, virtually every country on planet Earth. Now, what's the, what's the relevance of that? Well, the relevance, relevance of that is that we are dangerously at, or perhaps past a point of what's known as peak oil, which means that we are extracting less and less fossil fuel from the ground, which these data centers are dependent on, which the way of life that we've come to know is dependent on.

And, um, we're dangerously close to a point in time Navid, where for every unit of energy we, uh, uh, have put into the, uh, into energy extraction, we're spending more energy putting in than the energy we're getting out. In other words, it requires. More than one unit of energy to extract a unit of energy. And, you know, you can just do the math on that.

As a business owner, it's akin to spending more money in your business than you're making in return. Eventually you're gonna go bankrupt. So we're at that point right now environmentally, and then we have a third force that's reshaping the world, which is the existential force that we are forced to confront with ai.

And Y all know Harari has written about this extensively in Homo Deus and Sapiens around in this world where AI can perform many of the tasks that we as human beings have been superior in performing. Where does that leave us? Where do we derive our meaning, our fulfillment? What's our place in the world is, uh, you know, UBI going to be the solution for, uh, us?

Are our robot overlords going to be benevolent and take care of us, or are they gonna harvest our organs? And all the fears and, and, and, and concerns and question marks that show up in people's minds. And it's created sort of like a spectrum of reactions. Everything from irrational optimism that No, no, no, no.

It's all gonna be okay. Don't worry about it. To paralyzing fear and people thinking that the world is gonna end, of course the truth is, is somewhere in the middle, uh, most likely. But with these forces at play, economic, environmental, ex existential, what's happening now is that people are having the sense that we are approaching perhaps a coming collapse of some sort.

That there's gonna be some sort of change. Perhaps it's going to be, uh, accelerated by AI and the disruption that it's gonna show up among white collar workers in certain fields. Um, perhaps, um, there's gonna be some political event that is the spark that lights the fire, and people don't necessarily have the words to express this.

Um, but what's, um, uh, showing up is a sense of uncertainty that exists right now in the world. And I wrote a piece about this, um, months ago, and it generated a response unlike anything that I've ever seen. I mean, across all the social platforms that I posted this and shared this with, um, with my, uh, uh, my audience of email subscribers, um, on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, you name it.

I had literally thousands of people reach out about this very thing with their predictions, their concerns, their fears, their ideas. And, and what I discovered from this process is that I believe that there's a big opportunity that this presents for us as Creators. And the reason is because amidst all the uncertainty in this increasingly digital first, AI first world that we find ourselves in right now, what I've discovered is that what the world is craving is what's real.

And we're gonna talk about what I mean by that and how we can integrate this into our business as Creators. Uh, but first I wanna talk a little bit about the, the string that I started pulling on, how I kind of got to this point, how I, I, I discovered these observations, and it started way back in 2021.

Now, in 2021, um, I was running a, a company called the Ask Method Company, and then a software company called bucket.io. So it was a CEO of two, uh, different businesses. And we decided in 2021 to bring our companies to market, meaning we brought our companies, uh, to sale. So I was working with an investment bank.

Um, we decided to bring our companies to sale to, uh, uh, for a, uh, a financial transaction. And we received, um, a number of offers to buy our company. And the one that we decided to pursue was, um, was with a private equity group known as American Pacific Group, a PG. Um, and it was an all cash offer to buy our business, uh, for, uh, about $70 million.

Now, uh, a PG or American Pacific Group is the company that purchased Alex from MO'S company and they wanted to make an acquisition in our space. And the next company that they targeted after Alex's company was ours. Now we spent about a, uh, a year, um, between getting the business ready for market, um, engaging with the private equity firm to sell the business.

Um, and after a year process, over a million dollars spent in diligence on the part of the buyer, in this case, the private equity group, um, at the 11th hour, the deal fell apart. Now the deal fell apart for a number of reasons. Um, but most notably it fell apart because there was a big shift that happened in the macroeconomic environment.

Um, if you remember, 2021 was met with a lot of exuberance, but in February of 2022, the entire market shifted. This is when Russia invaded the Ukraine. As a result, markets responded. Crypto markets, capital markets. The stock market responded by crashing. In response, uh, the Fed raised interest rates. If you remember, we were in a very low interest rate environment for, uh, a number of years.

Fed raised interest rates, and the net effect was that the m and a market completely dried up. Meaning there was no, no m and a transactions taking place. Uh, virtually every private equity equity firm in the space that we operate in pulled all their deals off the table, including the group we're working with.

They decided to, um, uh, close the, close the deal. And, um, I was left at this point where, um, this was not how the story was supposed to end. Like I thought I'd done everything right. I had, you know, a hundred million dollars in revenue. It was a seven time Inc. 5,000 fastest growing company. Tens of thousands of satisfied customers featured in all these different places.

And it kind of led me to begin questioning everything. And, um, I kind of reflected on the fact that I'd spent 10 years in empire building mode building this company. Did I wanna spend another 10 years? Doing the same thing to wait out this next market cycle and, and, uh, take the company to the next level.

And the thing that stood out to me and, uh, nave, this is what I was mentioning to you before we first, um, uh, jumped on live here, is that, uh, I couldn't help but think about this photo that you see right here. So 2017, these were my two boys, 2024, um, last year. These are my two boys. And, um, they were growing up so fast and I knew that I would, uh, regret, um, sacrificing the last few years that I had with them at home, uh, to be a dad first and foremost, and be present, um, in favor of just being in empire building mode.

So, um, I spent a lot of time reflecting and reading. One of the books that had a big impact on my thinking, which I highly recommend is called Second Mountain by David Brooks. It forced me kind of reflect on the second half of life. You know, I turned 40, so in the second half of my life, what did I want to do with that?

Um. Uh, uh, part of my life. And, uh, so I decided to do something crazy, um, while my kids were at summer camp. Um, I decided to take the summer off from being a CEO and I traveled from Austin, Texas, where we were living at the time, to, uh, the Mad River Valley of Vermont. In the middle of the Green Mountains, uh, to live and work on a regenerative farm.

I actually lived in a tent next to a pond. I was bathing in the pond. I was living in the tent. Um, it was pretty, really, pretty wild. And, uh, while I was there, I asked myself a question. I said, if I had received the money, like if I had exited the business, if I had, you know, received the big chunk of money, what would I have done with the cash?

And the answer was simple. The answer was, I would want to, um, move with my family to live a life immersed in nature and start a family farm together. And then I asked myself another, another question, which was, what the heck's stopping me from doing that now and doing it anyway? And the answer was absolutely nothing.

So, um, while I was in that tent Naveed and I had one bar of service, I texted my wife and I said, let's do the thing that we've been thinking about doing now. At the time, we had thought about maybe putting our house on the market in Austin, Texas and selling the house. So we had lined up a real estate agent, we had photos taken, had video taken, like, just in case, because the real estate market in Austin was, was pretty hot at the time.

So I said, let's do it. I text my wife, she said, okay. Um, we pulled the trigger, I get a text message later that day. And, uh, the house is under contract, same day, uh, all cash, full price offer. And they wanted a 14 day close, meaning we had to be outta the house in 14 days. So, um, I said, okay, well, I packed up my tent and all my stuff.

I fly back from Vermont to, uh, Austin, Texas. We put everything that we own into, uh, storage. And, uh, uh, we sell one of our cars and, uh, we get, um, a one suitcase each for every member of the family. And, uh, we hop in my truck and decide to road trip across America with nothing but a vision and a dream to find and start this farm.

And, uh, we call this in my family, the Grand Adventure. So just to kind of, uh, paint a picture of what, what this looks like. Um, this is my family right here. This is my wife, my two kids. Um, our farm dog blue, um, as you can see here. Yes, she's wearing a dress. Um, this is my family and this is our farm. So after 12 months of bouncing around from Airbnb to Airbnb on this grand adventure, uh, we eventually discovered a place that we wanted to, um, bring back to life.

This is an old hill farm from the 18 hundreds that was sort of forgotten about, and we decided to bring it back to life. And today on the farm in, in the last three years on this journey, we now raise and grow 80% of the food that we eat as a family. Uh, we've planted over 500 fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes, like some of the ones that you see here.

We raise cattle. We raise pigs, uh, we raise chickens. We have 48 beehives on the property. We have, uh, we raise, uh, trout like you can see right here. Uh, we have a production garden that produces most of the, the, the veg that we eat as a family. And you can see here as an example of our daily harvest.

Everything from corn and squash to tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, beans, apples, eggs, you name it. And every morning I wake up and I see this scene that you see right here. Now I, I, I set the stage for this because as I mentioned, the string that I've been pulling would not have happened had I not lifted my life up and had this radical change.

Um, but what I've learned along the way is, uh, the following, that when you change your questions, you change your life. Had I not asked myself that question, what's stopping me from doing this anyway? This never would've happened. And, and Navid, what I'll kind of pause with here and give you an opportunity to reflect on in just a moment, is one of my favorite questions in the world is this one right here.

What are you optimizing for? Like in this season of life, in your business, in your life, what are you optimizing for? You know, for me, I was super clear like what I'm optimizing for in this season of life is this photo right here. I wanna suck the marrow out of this season of life. So every business decision, every life decision is built.

Around this that you see right here. Um, I've been a, a, a, a fan of asking questions my entire life. Um, you know, for those familiar with, uh, ask and choose my previous books and that work. Um, these books are really built around the power of questions. And, and as I mentioned, I've been pulling on this string, um, that I'm exploring in my next book and this question that we kind of introduced today's conversation with, which is in a world filled with artificial, everything from the food we eat to the content we consume, what if real is the only advantage left?

So, Navid, I'll, I'll pause here before we go any further. Um, I wanna give you an opportunity to jump in, reflect, and respond. Sure. And then we'll start talking about kind of what this all means and how we can begin applying this philosophy.

Navid Moazzez: No, I think this is really powerful because I, I know, you know, we have known each other for quite some time and you were like in launch mode and you were doing all these things.

I've really followed. Your most of your journey, not all your journey online. You started a few years before me with, uh, you know, your previous companies before you did, uh, you did add the ASK method for so long. But yeah, the, it's really powerful in terms of the health, like living on a farm, eating all your food.

I mean, I'm so much into longevity and health, so really resonates with me, actually a new direction in life. And that's kind of, I'm not having a farm. I wish I could grow all my food when I'm traveling. Actually, that's the most challenging part to, I'm very picky. I'm not, you know, when I'm at hotel right now, I'm staying at a hotel.

I have to tell them, don't cook my food in sea oil. Because, you know, even at five, even five star hotels or five star restaurants, you'd be surprised because it's so cheap. They, they cook with sea dolls. They don't use like, uh, you know, uh, uh, coconut oil or, you know, uh, other, other things. Olive oil and things like that.

They don't do it. So you have to tell them, and I'm really picky with these things, and, but it's, I wish I could have like all like, control all food, like where it's grown and stuff like that. And when I have my own apartments, I, I do go to the organic stores, but like what you are doing, Ryan, it's like the most powerful to have your own farm.

So

Ryan Levesque: you start pulling on the string, it's like all these things, right? You start, that's, that's how I went. I started. Um, it started for me in a big way during COVID when I started cooking for my family more. 'cause all the restaurants that we used to love were clothes. So I had to like start cooking food.

And then I started shopping for ingredients. And you start at the regular grocery store, then you go to Whole Foods to try to get better ingredients and every step along the way, you still have like compromises that you're making. And then I started going to farmer's markets. Then I started going to the actual farms themselves.

And I started realizing that many of the farms were engaging in some of the same practices that are problematic. They're just engaging in these practices closer to my house. Like was that solving anything? So then we started growing some of our own food to the best that we could at our place in, in Austin, Texas, which is very limited both in climate and in the environment.

Um, and then just, you keep going down these, these paths. So it's a, uh, a sidebar that I don't wanna, um, I don't wanna distract us with. But, but the point is like, the fact that you are experiencing this right now, the fact that I'm experiencing this right now and there are millions of people around the world who are feeling the same sense.

There is a craving that exists in the world for what's real. And as entrepreneurs, the way that we should be thinking about this is how do we not only live, but how do we give what the world is craving? Yes, incorporate it in our own lives. But what is the opportunity that this presents to fill the gaping void that exists in the world and to satisfy this craving to give people what they want.

And this requires perhaps a bit of an outside the box contrarian perspective around our focus today, which is how we use ai. So let's, let's continue the conversation. Yeah. And, um, let's, let's, let's pick up kind of where we left off because, uh, what I just shared a moment ago, um, is that with these three colliding forces that, um, uh, exist in the world, uh, today, um, it can feel like this is a singular moment in history.

But the reality is, Navid, we as a species have actually been here before now as a famous quote that's often been attributed to Mark Twain, which is history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. And I spent a lot of time as I pulled the string studying history and the repeating cycles that show up over and over again.

And what I found was that in these periods of, of, uh, highly dynamic periods in history where there's a, a lot of, um, a transition, a lot of turmoil, um, a lot of change, that there is a trend that shows up over and over again. So for historical context, if we look back to the, uh, uh, industrial revolution, the industrialization that took place in the, uh, late 18th, early 19th century, in response to that.

We were greeted with what's known as the romantic movement. This is where we have, you know, this, you know, if you, if, if a thought emerged in your mind, oh, it's such a romantic notion to live on a farm and grow your own food, that's where that phrase comes from. It's also where we have the transcendentalists, which is throw and Emerson, and this idea of returning back to nature.

So the romantic movement was in response to the industrialization and urbanization of the late 17th, early, uh, late 18th, early 19th century. Then a century later, we had the great mechanization of the late 19th, early 20th century, which is where everything started to be made by machines. And in response to this, we had the arts and crafts movement, which was a counter revolutionary movement around making things, um, that are made by hand.

Then in the mid 20th century post-World War ii, we had the degradation of the post-World, uh, post-war world. Um, in response to this, we had the back to the land movement. This is where homesteading. First sort of became, um, a modern movement. So this idea of returning back to the land and moving away from, uh, environmental degradation.

Um, and then the 21st century. Today we have, um, the digitalization of everything, right? We live a life around a screen, and that's led to a digital detox movement, which has shown up in all sorts of different ways. It's shown up as, um, it's shown up as minimalism. It's shown up in some corners as the fire movement, right?

So financial independence retire early. Um, it's shown up in the homesteading movement, the homeschooling, uh, uh, movement, the quiet quitting movement where people are finding ways to opt out of this vortex that we found ourselves in. There are very few people in the world right now who are saying, man, I wish I could spend more time in front of a screen.

I wish I could spend more time glued to my smartphone. Most people look at this thing and they have a love-hate relationship with it, because their livelihood depends on it, but they don't wanna spend every waking moment in a synthetic artificial reality. They want what's real.

Navid Moazzez: So, you know, I, I, I have something to add to this because I've seen some, some interviews with some really, really big Creators on, for example, Instagram, which is a big platform that a lot of people spend crazy amount of time on, or TikTok or something.

I saw an interview with Luke Belmar, I don't know if you've seen him. He's like popping up kind of everywhere, but he basically, he's. Huge. He has like a lot of clipping accounts and stuff like that, and it's like, you know, like Iman Gaze and these people, but they don't spend a lot of time on the platform, but they're feeding the algorithm with their content because they have other people posting for 'em, but they're actually not on the platform as much as you, you might think, which is maybe a good approach.

They're actually scaling the business, but they're not themselves. They're actually out there doing other things. So that's, uh, you know, something to add to this, like, if you are actually a business owner, why do you have, you can have other people posting for you on these platforms, but you are actually out there doing what really matters, maybe connecting with your customers or as you are doing, spending time with your family and kids and, you know, growing your own food and stuff like that.

Ryan Levesque: Yeah, no, it's, uh, it's a, I think there are a million variations on the themes that we're gonna explore here, um, in this, in this session. Um, the, the point that I wanna make by kind of providing a little bit of this historical context is. If each wave of new technology like this, um, and major societal change like we're experiencing right now, has prompted a similar counter movement around authenticity, around simplicity, around connection, with these themes showing up repeatedly over and over again, then it would seem to suggest that there's something about this return to real that resonates deeply within our human nature.

So, so with that in mind and, and in the time that we have here today, what I want to introduce are three ideas to consider from this return to real movement taking shape in the world. And as you think about the work that you do in your business. And the first principle or the first idea that I want to invite you to reflect on is this right here.

The best things in life don't scale. Now, whenever I bring up this idea of returning to real, inevitably there's a question that emerges or an objection that emerges, which is, but does it scale? How do I scale it as if like, that's the, the only way to approach things. But what I would, um, offer you to consider is that the best things in life don't scale.

Like, for example, just talking about food a moment ago, um, if you're eating a dish that needs to be produced for a million different people and it needs to be produced in a kitchen that can serve a million different people, um, that meal is arguably not going to be as excellent, as special, as tasty, as, um, artisanal, as, uh, uh, as memorable, um, as the meal that's cooked in the small kitchen, in small batches.

And, and, and I think that's an important sort of metaphor to think about that which we do in our business now in full transparency. For many, many, many years I was drinking the scale Kool-Aid. I built a very successful technology business, a consulting and training business. And every decision that we were making as a company was, how do we scale this?

How do we scale this? Um, but scaling has a cost, and in some cases it's a cost that can have a very negative impact on your business. And I'll give you a a real practical example of this. So a little over a year ago, um, I was feeling less and less comfortable with the way in which we were putting content out there in the world.

So you mentioned, um, uh, you know, one or two Creators basically, who are amplifying their brand by having other, uh, uh, uh, voices, um, represent their brand and put their work out there in the world. And, um, and that's exactly what we did in our business. Um, and, and I was in feeling increasingly uncomfortable with this.

And so one day I decided to, um, without telling my team, I decided to write an email and, uh, send it out to everyone on our, our email list. And, um, and this is the setup for, I think, which is gonna be a, hopefully a, a, a powerful observation that, um, I'll share with you in a moment. But this is the email that I wrote right here, and I actually have it up.

I'll, I'll read just a, a few words for a minute. Um, I, I titled the email an Embarrassing Confession, and it goes like this. As I sit here writing this, I have an embarrassing confession to make. It's been a minute since I myself have actually sat down and typed an email like you to you like this personally myself, with my own two hands.

In fact, my confession to you is this. Virtually every email that we've sent as a company with my name signed to it, with a few exceptions, was actually not written by me. But instead was written by one of our in-house writers, or more recently with the help of ai. And this has been true for the last seven years.

Now, while I know this may not come as a surprise to everybody, you might be wondering, why the heck am I telling you this? Well, because this is something that's bothered me for some time, and I'm finally in a place to share it. Now, just to be clear, yes, there was a time and place where every email that was my name attached to it was personally written by me.

But as our business grew and as it became more complex, as we focused on scaling, we developed a system to bring in new writers and have them study my voice, everything written by me, and to aim, to replicate that voice, that tone, that style, and that became our model. But over time, especially in the last few years, I started feeling more and more that the tone and the content of what we were putting out felt less and less authentic, less and less like it was something that would ever come from me, and it started to have the flavor.

Of watered down orange juice from a can instead of the freshly squeezed sunda brunch variety straight from the source. So what's this all got to do with you and what's the lesson? Well, I think there are many to take away, but here's one to wrap with. Let me ask you a question. Can you feel the difference between this email right here and the sea of regurgitated ai plum that we're all drowning in right now?

Can you feel that this was written by a real human being with a real beating heart? Can you feel it exactly? Your audience wants to feel your beating heart to? And people can tell the difference. People can tell the difference between the freshly squeezed Sunday brunch version of you that comes straight from the source and the watered down AI version that comes from a can.

So I wrote this piece. I had no idea what I was gonna do with it. But the response I received was overwhelming. And then I proceeded by doing the same thing every single week. Now, for 60 something weeks in a row, well write a personal handwritten note from me. Oftentimes these emails are two to 4,000 words.

No team of writers, no ai, no chat, GBT, real, raw, vulnerable, written personally by hand, with damning admissions, lessons learned, mistakes made cited with considerable research in the process. And I'll tell you this, I went from sending 20 emails a week in our company to one email per week. And in the last three months, I've seen more opportunity come my way than the last three years.

And the reason for that is that the best things in life don't scale. So the question to reflect on here is this, what are you willing to do in your work, in your business that is unscalable? Precisely because it doesn't scale, because I believe that which is unscalable may be the last competitive moat that we have in business today.

So Navid, I'll pause there, give you an opportunity to share any thoughts or reflections that show up before we move on to big idea number two. Um, but I know this is gonna be controversial in, uh, summit focused on AI and focused on scaling everything. Um, no matter what the cost.

Navid Moazzez: Yeah, I mean, I actually read that email.

I am, I mean, I have seen your launches for the longest times and you were, your business was very launch focused and you had kind of the emails, you kind of circle through a bunch of emails. They were very similar. You know, you could tell kind of, I mean that it's a lot of marketers. It's not just you. A lot of markets, myself included, were doing that.

But I, I think. What I like with your new approach or this, I think that's the approach I like when it's more storytelling focus and you share your own thoughts and ideas. And I think yes, you can get help from AI for certain things, but I think just telling AI to write an email like that is not gonna be the same.

You, of course, you can train, uh, like have a cloud project or you know, even, uh, ChatGPT bt you can have a project or something like that. It's, it's for sure possible, but I think just sitting down and hand handwriting an email like that, I mean, that's, that's pretty powerful, honestly. And that's gonna come out and you can obviously, uh, get it to, you know, proofread it and improve it with AI and stuff like that to see it's all good, but like, it's your ideas.

It's not someone else's or it's not AI that came up with it. And I think that's very powerful.

Ryan Levesque: Totally. And we'll talk about this a little bit in more detail. I'll kind of do a little bit of show and tell on what this can look like. And how we are using ai. Like I'm not an advocate for being a Luddite or putting yourself, you know, writing emails with quill pens and using carrier pigeons to send them out.

Like, I'm a proponent of technology, but, but it needs to be used in the right place. I think there's this sense that I need to ai everything in my business in order to keep up. One of the newsletters that I just wrote, um, was around, uh, what I call the AI hype bubble. And right now there's a recent study that just came out that MIT produced that effectively 95% of AI projects at the enterprise level are failing.

Meaning they're not producing a return on investment, they're not increasing revenue. And it's because there is, I think, this, uh, euphoria around ai, which just shows up with every new piece of technology. That, that we just need to AI everything. And people kind of go on the crazy train. They think, all right, I'm gonna, we're not gonna have any human beings in our company.

You're just gonna interact with an AI voice robot. And you know, people are gonna, uh, uh, uh, uh, accept that. I can tell you this outside, the AI obsessed circle of digital marketers and technologists, most of the world, um, is, is, is over the sheen and shine of AI generated everything. They don't want it like the regular people in the world, the mass market of consumers.

They don't want it. It's, it's, it's the ai, uh, obsessed digital marketers and the kind of echo chamber that we find ourselves in, um, where this is, uh, met with a tremendous amount of, uh, excitement and enthusiasm. Um, but if you go on the street and talk to 10 regular people, there's not a lot of love for this right now.

So I think that's important to expose yourself to these different audiences, to have a plurality of mm-hmm. Of different perspectives. But, but, uh, you can dive into, I don't wanna,

Navid Moazzez: as we go in here, I go here, Ryan, we can dive into some ideas I've seen, like Gary Vaynerchuk talks about maybe in the future. I mean, he's pretty certain about it when he's, he's talking about it in the future.

Like our grand grandchildren, they're going to basically date AI girlfriends and all this. I mean, it's already happening right now. I mean, God bless these men, but it's already happening. Like it, so it's, it's pretty interesting where we are going, and especially with the loneliness that's going on, and I, I think definitely has a point there.

And he might, uh. Yeah, problem or whatever you are gonna say. I think it's a problem and people are doing that. I, I, for sure. I'm not someone who would ever do that, but I'm, I'm not gonna say that people are growing up today. They might actually do that, but because they are exposed to this so early, so

Ryan Levesque: I mean, well, there's a great, great quote that speaks to this.

Um, if you've read Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the, uh, universe, a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, um, he has something, I've just pulled it up on my phone, um, which I think is brilliant. And this ex, this speaks to exactly what you're describing right now, and it's this, I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reaction to technologies.

Uh, number one, anything that is in the world when you are born is normal and ordinary, and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

Navid Moazzez: Exactly.

Ryan Levesque: Number two, anything that's invented between when you're 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it. But number three.

Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things. And I think that's really underscoring, I think many people's relationship with this. Like for people who are born today, they're gonna be born into a world where, uh, uh, AI has been in existence their entire life. It's normal people who are in their fifties, sixties, seventies today.

This is new territory. This is beyond the natural order of things. So to your point of, you know, Gary v's advocation, that, you know, at some point, you know, people will be marrying, you know, AI entities, whether it's a humanoid robot from figure AI or um, Tesla, or you know, Boston Dynamics, or it's an actual computer, you know, digital entity that you carry around in your pocket in the form of a phone.

Yes, at some point there will be debates around, uh, marital rights associated with non-human entities. Right. Can you, you know, can you, uh, uh, pass along your wealth in a trust to a digital entity that's not biological in the same way that, you know, we have, um, all sorts of debates here today. Um, but, but I think that's, um, what the, the, the message that I want to share with that is I'm always reminded that our audiences age with us, meaning my audience today, now that I'm in my forties, is a very different audience than when I started in the digital space in my twenties.

Like, I am attracting a, a, an audience that is, uh, uh, closer in age to me, or oftentimes older versus when I was in my early twenties, I attracted a much younger audience. And this is true for every brand. Brands go through cycles, clothing brands go through cycles. Think about it, like it's very rare that a clothing brand is timeless forever.

There are a few exceptions, right? There are a few notable exceptions to this, but for the most part, um, if you are an actor, if you are a, a clothing brand, if you are a food product, there's a lifecycle. And we joke about it, right? It's like, think about the food that your grandmother used to feed you as a kid and used to think, oh, this stuff is so old.

Like, where did she come up with this? And it's, um, it's because, uh, brands age, um, with the Creators and the consumers associated with that brand age as well. Um, all right, so, uh, I wanna get to the three bag big ideas and the limited time that we have because I know we've got limited time here today.

Second big idea is this transform competitors into collaborators. So, um, I spend a lot of time, a lot of my days are spent. Immersed in nature. We're on over 140 acres here on our farm. Um, I shared some of the photos a little bit earlier and, uh, um, last year I was walking through one of our meadows that you see right here with the, um, Black-Eyed Susan's and the, uh, queen Ann's lace, the white flowers you see in the background.

And it was on this walk that I stumbled upon the two flowers that you see right here. Now, if you're not familiar, if you're not a, a botanist or if you're not a florist, what you're looking at right here on the left hand side is yellow golden rod. On the right hand side is purple Astor. And when I stumbled upon these flowers, I kind of had this, this moment of, uh, excitement, a eureka moment, um, because I remember reading about.

These two flowers in Robin Wall. Kim's book, braiding Sweetgrass. Now, if you're not familiar, this by the way, is a, uh, Robin Wall. Kimer is a, is a writer who writes about indigenous biological wisdom that shows up, um, when you are immersed in nature. And, um, the lessons that we can pull from this and, um, the, the lesson behind this is as follows.

Um, yellow, golden Rod and Purple Astor are technically competitors in nature. They are competing for pollinator attention, so they're both competing for the honeybees, um, but due to evolutionary biology. What's fascinating is that this color combination that you see right here, purple and yellow together activates the photoreceptors in HoneyBee's eyes in such a way that they are attracted to that combination such that both of these species get more pollinators by working together, by collaborating instead of competing.

With one another. And, and when I saw this, when I saw this in nature, as I was walking by one of our ponds, I had this flash of inspiration. And the flash of inspiration was, look, a few years ago, I had brought my company to market to sell to a financial buyer. We were pursuing private equity, but one thing I didn't consider was selling to a strategic buyer.

And I had this crazy idea where I said, what if I were to reach out to my single biggest competitor in business and see if he might be open to some type of collaboration? So that's exactly what I did. I reached out to Daniel Priestley. Now, Daniel Priestley, um, had been a competitor of mine for many, many years.

In fact, we'd run very similar businesses. He was based in the uk, I was based in the us. Um, he built a software product for building quizzes and assessments and surveys. I built a software product for building quizzes, assessments, and surveys. And so we kept a bit of professional distance away from one another.

Now, I opened this conversation by telling the story of how a deal fell apart, but, um, after I reached out to Daniel with a, uh, proposition where I said, I've got a crazy idea, if instead of competing with each other head to head, what if we were to work together? What if this was like Ironman and Captain America and Avengers Uniting and we decide to collaborate instead of compete?

Well, within months after that initial conversation, a new deal came together, and last year I sold my software company bucket.io to my single biggest competitor score app. And in this acquisition, we've now become close collaborators, close friends, close colleagues, which never would've happened, I don't believe.

Had I not been inspired by this moment? So I share this with you because in this age of ai, there's something I think that's forgotten, which is perhaps biological wisdom is more important than artificial intelligence. And the lessons that we can learn from leaning into our biology and what makes us human can be more powerful than chasing the latest AI trend.

So the question that I want to invite you to reflect on if you're, um, thinking about this right now is as follows, who do you perceive today to be a major competitor of yours who could actually become an unexpected collaborator? And I wanna invite you to think of who that person is or who that company is.

Imagine them in your brain. And the first one that shows up that you're rejecting in your mind is probably the one that most needs to be considered. Perhaps it's someone that you've. Shied away from that. You've created some professional distance around, perhaps it's the, the, the, the last business or, uh, individual that you could imagine yourself collaborating with.

Well, that's exactly what was true for me. But by opening my, my mind to this possibility, it opened my mind and, um, my business to a whole new future. That brings us to the third big idea that I want to, uh, wrap with, and then we'll, we'll have time for some discussion and do a bit of a deeper dive. And it's this right here in this post AI world optimize for oxytocin over dopamine.

What do I mean by that? Well, we live in a world where, as far as neurotransmitters go, dopamine gets all the headlines. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of desire. We've heard about dopamine loops with, you know, different apps that use a specific shade of red to keep us coming back for more with the alerts that we have on our phone, right?

Hacking the dopamine, uh, cycle in our brain. But the reality is this, if we look at the world here today, um, we're living in a world where the default state of the world is a default state of distrust. In fact, uh, as measured by the Edelman Trust Barometer, which is an organization that's measured the state of trust, the level of trust in the world for the last 25 years, since the year 2000, it's gonna be no surprise that today we are living in, uh, uh, the least amount of trust.

We're experiencing the lowest level of trust than we ever have, uh, lived through. Um, in the study that's been measured for the last 25 years now, there's no surprises there. There's nothing new there. But what's new, what's changed is this right here. We've lost our trust in our own ability to discern what's real.

With deep fake technology, with deep fake ai, we can no longer trust if the influencer, the Creator that we are, uh, uh, seeing or hearing online, is it really them or is it some deep fake avatar that they created? Can I even trust that what they're saying is real? Is it somebody else? Is it a bad actor that's co-opted their identity and is pushing some content out that may they may not have even authorized themselves?

So, quick lesson on neurotransmitters to kind of underscore this point. So I mentioned dopamine, the, um, neurotransmitter of desire. Many people are familiar with this. Oxytocin often is categorized as the do as the neurotransmitter of love, but it's also the neurotransmitter of trust, meaning that oxytocin is elicited when we have a sense of trust and connection with an individual.

Now, I would argue that many of the modern maladies that we face, like the loneliness epidemic and um, the related challenges that we face are representative of a global oxytocin deficit. Meaning despite the fact that we live in the most connected time in history, most people feel more disconnected than ever.

So what's the answer? What's the opportunity for those of us who are Creators to fill this void? Well, I'll wrap with one final story that I think will underscore this point. Um, and it goes like this. Um, there were, uh, a few months ago I was experiencing, uh, what I can only describe as a low, like it was an emotional low.

Um, I was having a real hard time. I didn't want to talk to my wife. I didn't wanna talk to my kids. I just wanted to be alone. And I couldn't snap myself out of it like it was going on for days. I just could not snap myself out of it. It was a, a form of micro depression that I'd never experienced before.

And so I decided to, what I described, trust the contrarian voice in my heart. I just decided to trust what I was feeling, my instincts at that moment. And for whatever reason, my in instincts were, uh, to walk out into our fields and to be with our herd of cattle. I don't know where this showed up. It was just what showed up in my life.

And when I was out there, I got down on one knee, like the photo that you see right here, and I, I had this flood of emotion that just all came to me, and I just started crying. I got down on one knee and I just started crying uncontrollably. And, uh, eventually one of our cows, a heifer, a yearling, like the one that you see right here, came up to me and it was a, it was a heifer who had never come up to me before.

She was one of the shy ones. And her name ironically is Athena, the goddess of wisdom. And, and in her wisdom, she, she could tell that something was wrong with me. 'cause she had never done this to me before. And as I'm crying there, my hands in my head, uh, she came up to me and rubbed her nose on my face, and then she started rubbing her neck.

And then she started rubbing her head. And then before I knew it, I was covered in all sorts of cow boogers, like all over my face and my head. And it felt like I was hit with slimer from the Ghostbusters movies, and it was absolutely disgusting. Um, but in that moment I went from crying to laughing. I just started laughing at how ridiculous I must have looked in that moment.

And, and it snapped me out of the experience. Now when this happened, I rushed home to my office and I decided to write a piece. And the piece that I wrote, as you can see here on the screen, um, it's something I titled The Oscillation Between Self-Loathing and Self-Love. And I'll read a an excerpt from this here today, fresh from the morning hike, reflecting on the nature of life.

I sit here typing this with some raw and vulnerable thoughts to share. If you've ever experienced feelings of worthlessness, transient or otherwise, if you've ever felt like a failure. If you've ever had everything figured out, only to have everything fall apart temporarily or otherwise, if you've ever found yourself slipping in the gap versus the gain.

And if you've ever oscillated between self-loathing and self-love, understand that somewhere within somewhere in the middle sits acceptance. And if you ever feel like you're struggling with feelings of not measuring up, of not being enough, of feeling that your own self-worth is tied to the value of your accomplishments, and if you ever find yourself talk and introspection slipping into questions like, what's wrong with me?

Instead of questions like, what can I learn from this? Understand that it's okay. Understand that you are not alone, and understand that this is part of the full spectrum of human existence, and that what you are doing when you stop hiding from what you're hiding from, when you stop running, from what you're running, from when you stop distracting yourself by being so busy all the time.

Is giving yourself the opportunity to slow down, take a moment to reflect and actually feel what's real. Now, I share this because for people to trust you, they need to see three things. They need to see your heart, your humor, and your humanity. So in this world of distrust that we live in here today as Creators, the question that I wanna leave you with is this.

How might you share more of your heart, your humor, your humanity, to establish a deeper level of connection and trust with your audience? So to bring this part of the conversation to a close before we kind of transition into discussion, and the rest of the time that we have, the three big ideas that I want to invite you to reflect on throughout this summit and for this conversation here today are as follows, number one.

The best things in life don't scale. What is your source of truth, piece of content that you can put out into the world that comes from you, from your head, from your heart, not from ai? Number two, collaboration is more important than competition. And this comes down to building a strategic content ecosystem that you can build a web of relationships that allow you to put your voice out there in the world and expand your reach.

And number three, optimize for oxytocin over dopamine. Remember these three words, heart humor, humanity. So that's just a start to many of the ideas that are explored in my forthcoming book, return To Real, which you can learn more about and join the pre-launch interest list at return to real book.com.

And, uh, Naveed, I think it's a great time for us to maybe, um, jump into conversation and I'm absolutely open to doing a bit more show and tell to show what this can look like on a practical level in a business like yours and ours.

Navid Moazzez: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this was a great, uh, kinda introduction to this topic, but I, I think there's, there's a lot to explore here because returning to real and having like your source of truth, I mean, for you it's the email newsletter.

You are handwriting or writing every single week and it's, you said it's like 4,000 words and it's a lot of re research I've seen. I mean, I, I try to read it most weeks and it's actually really, really in depth and I think more Creators, I think, I mean, to have an email is still very powerful to have an email newsletter.

I think anyone should build their email list, so I think that's. For me as well. I might use AI for certain things in the process, but to actually have your own ideas in an email, I think that's also for me, something that's very powerful for our AI Creator newsletter and also for my personal newsletter, which may more explore my kind of personal size with longevity and health and.

Obviously what I'm doing in business, but also kind of interviews or sessions like this. I mean, that's, uh, not something I would really outsource to ai. I mean, it would be, I mean, maybe it is possible, but I think I like to do this kind of work and then, uh, amplifying myself with ai like this show notes or kind of the, obviously the transcripts.

There's a lot of things AI can do that I don't really like to do, and AI actually is actually really good at it. So I think that's kind of stuff. I mean, YouTube descriptions and. Help with hooks and stuff like that. I think AI is really good with these kind of things. So I wanted to kind of explore this a little bit with you and then maybe get into what you mentioned about deep fakes and maybe cloning yourself and kind of your approach to this whole movement, which is, I've got a very strong,

Ryan Levesque: I got a very strong view on that.

It may be unpopular, but uh, I'm not afraid to, uh,

Navid Moazzez: put it out there. It's interesting though, because I, I think you should, uh, you should disclose if it's ai Yeah, I think you should disclose it. And I think Annex Singal, he's grown his YouTube channel to like 500 k and I think you can tell sometimes his ai, obviously you can tell, but he's always, he's really up upfront about it.

And he's growing his YouTube channel really quickly. And I think Julian McCoy as well has grown her YouTube channel really, really fast and they are using Hagen and 11 laps and all these kind of things to do it. And I think this technology is getting pretty good, and even now it's getting better and better, I think.

And you can tell sometimes, and I think some people can tell, obviously you and I, we probably can't tell, but some people like, you know, if they're older, maybe they can't tell us easily and they think actually it's real sometimes, and that's maybe dangerous. Um, well let's, let's talk

Ryan Levesque: about that one since that one's, um, uh, kind of showing up first here.

Here's my perspective. I, I, I am a, you and I agree on disclosure over deep fake. That is something I, I believe very strongly about. And I, and I think what we, we will see that there's, there's a good chance that what we'll start to see in the coming years is that. Like a privacy policy. We as business owners will be required to have some type of AI disclosure statement.

And, and I think every business gets to decide for themselves how they want to use ai, provided that we have the consumer's interest at heart. Meaning, I think any technology that we use that is designed to fool or trick consumers into thinking that it's a human being on the other end of the, uh, interaction when it's really ai.

Like for example, you pick up the phone and you know, Hey, hey, Navid, how are you? And then it's actually not Navid or I'm text messaging you and it's not really you and it's not disclosed that it's your AI assistant, number one. I think that's, um, there's a, there's a moral and ethical argument there, but just pragmatically speaking, I think it's bad business because here's the thing, what happens once people figure out that they've been fooled?

Ray Edwards has this brilliant quote that I've always had in my, in my mind, which is, um, uh, peop And people think that the worst thing that can happen to them in business is that they lose money. Um, but what's worse than losing money, um, is looking foolish. But what's worse than looking foolish is feeling fool.

If you make someone feel foolish, like they've been fooled into thinking that something is fake, that is a negative emotional reaction that they will never forget and they will associate with your brand forever. So yes, you might be able to, in the short term, trick someone into thinking that it's, uh, a human when it's not.

Um, but in the long term, you're eroding any sort of trust and brand equity that you have with that consumer. So if you're gonna use ai, if you're gonna create like an AI avatar, fine. Now at the same time, I personally think that that's a bad move. I think that it's a Pandora's box that people are gonna wish that they had never opened.

And I already see it, and I just wrote about this recently, that there are already people who are, are basically almost saying that I wish I had a Control Z or a Command Z undo button for everything I've done with the AI content that I've released over the last 12 to 24 months. Because once it's out there in the world.

And you've become known as someone who sometimes uses a, an avatar to create your stuff. Sometimes it's actually you, we don't know who to trust. Is it the real, you know, uh, on is it the real naveed? Is it the real Ryan, or was it, you know, some AI proxy? I, I can never quite tell what I'm actually getting.

So if you take a stand and say everything that you read that comes from me, yes, it might have some AI support. You know, AI research, AI is a developmental editor, AI, to help me proofread it. That in my opinion is totally fine and reasonable. But when it's AI generated, right? The philosophy I live by is 10 80 10.

The first 10% of any AI assisted project needs to come from your brain, your heart, the middle, 80%. Okay? But then at the end, you've gotta come back and you've gotta make it yours again. If you're just putting it out there in the world without actually looking at something, then I think it erodes trust. And the last thing I'll say on this before I get off my soapbox is like.

The most important thing that nobody should be able to take away from any of us is our voice, like in history, like having a voice, being able to voice your opinion, being able to express yourself. That is the most important, most precious thing that we all have. So why would you willingly abdicate your voice to a third four party force or piece of technology that you're just basically giving up and you're saying, you know what, I'm gonna let AI or this technology speak for me on my behalf?

I think it's not only dangerous, I think it's bad business, and I think it's a, a moment in time that many people are gonna look back with regret in the same way that we've looked back with regret, letting kids, uh, uh, have unabashed access to smartphones and social media fine. Um, smoking cigarettes, uh, uh, without any regard to our health.

Fine. Uh, drinking pregnant mothers drinking while pregnant, fine. There are these moments in history where we rush to try something without understanding the true side effects of it all, and I think it makes a little bit of sense to, to maybe reflect on it and ask. Um, yes, there is a lot of euphoria and hype and a sense of fomo to catch up with everybody else.

Um, but is it best to be on the cutting edge? Or maybe I should be on the bleeding edge. Maybe I should wait a moment before I just jump into this with, uh, with both, both feet forward and maybe reflect on what the second and third order effects of what this might be in my business. So anyways, that is purely my point of view.

I know it may be controversial. I know it may be, uh, in conflict with, with, with much of, um, the views in this summit. Um, but I offer this as a perspective to at least. Consider, at least reflect upon, um, when we make decisions in our business. So I'll, I'll jump off my soapbox.

Navid Moazzez: Yeah, no, it's a absolutely valid stance and I, I think I somewhat agree to certain things here because I would never, for example, if I have my personal YouTube channel where I share more my approach to health and things like that and kind of how I'm growing my business, different things like that, I would probably not have an AI talk there.

It would like be me like doing that. And the same with my personal Instagram or my personal Facebook, whatever, but I might create like a virtual influencer to promote my brand or even myself have an AI to do that. But it's clear, it's not, it's AI to do that. Or like the same when we have, I, I know like Hagen can do that.

There's some different platforms now coming out like Delphi, where you can actually have your entire knowledge base. And a lot of big experts are on these platforms now. And actually that can be a help to your customers and, and students. But it's clear, it's ai, it's not like it's disclosure.

Ryan Levesque: Yeah.

Navid Moazzez: Yes.

Ryan Levesque: Yeah. That's disclosure. That's my approach. Yeah, totally. Um, so, so that's the first piece. Um, second piece is, uh, the source of truth. So I'm a big believer. Three, three ideas that I'll, um, that I'll touch on here today in the limited time that we have before we wrap. So, first is source, a source of truth, piece of content.

The second is a strategic content ecosystem, and the third is a category of one business. Okay. So what does that mean? Source of truth, content. I believe that, um, the way that we differentiate ourselves as Creators is that you need to have a way to regularly produce a source of truth, piece of content.

And ideally, that comes every single week. What that means is this is a, a, a kernel of truth that comes from your head, your heart in whatever content format is most natural for you. But this is not something that you say, Hey, ai, come up with something and I'm just gonna attach my name to it. This has to be an original thought.

It has to be true thought leadership in your space. It has to be you connecting the dots in a way that maybe nobody else has quite connected the dots because you've got unique, overlapping domain knowledge and expertise. Like for me, I live on a farm. I raise and grow my own food and I can draw connections between that and the digital world that we live in, because I'm actually living this.

I'm eating and breathing this right now. Uh, Navid, you travel, you've traveled to what, like a hundred different countries. You've traveled more than almost anybody that I know. And you spend all this time living in all these really cool places. You can connect the travel that you're experiencing, um, in a way that I never could because it would be me like writing about it from third party experience.

Yes, I've traveled, but not to the extent that that, that you have. So we all have these ways that we experience the world that give us this unique perspective. So, um, what I mean by source of truth is a regular piece of content that comes out. And the reason for this is, um, you need a certain, what I call creative fecundity, to cut through the noise.

What that means is you need to be both original and prolific. You need both. And if you study like Adam Grant's work, he wrote a book called Originals. And one of the things that I really took away from that book is if you study Mozart, Picasso, uh, Einstein, all the greatest thinkers, the greatest artists, the greatest Creators, um, they all have created two to three orders of magnitude of more stuff than the stuff we know them for.

Like Picasso has done something like 13,000 drawings and thousands and thousands of paintings, and he has like less than a hundred of them that are in museums. Like of 13,000 paintings, less than a hundred, fewer than a hundred of them are actually museum worthy. So 99.9% of the work that he's done has been forgotten.

And that's been true forever. So for those of us who think, oh, I'm just gonna produce a few things and maybe it's gonna work in my experience, you need that creative fecundity to get the ideas out. You also wanna produce a source of truth, piece of content in a format that is natural for you. So me, I'm a writer.

So I write a weekly newsletter, two to 4,000 words. I devote an entire day of my week. That's right. I like block off all meetings, nothing else on Fridays. Every week I sit down, I have no meanings, no distractions, and that's where I do my deep work. So it requires making a trade off, making a sacrifice. Now I gladly do it because it's, uh, it's, it's something I think that's incredibly transformative to yourself to help refine your own thinking and your own ideas.

But more importantly, people can tell the difference. People can absolutely tell the difference, and they'll tell me, there's said, there's something unique about what it is that you do. It's not unique, it's just the fact that it's really coming from me. It's not a, a, a writer that I've had just, you know, Hey, here are a few ideas.

Make an article on this. Or, you know, pumping in a few things into chat, GPT and saying, turn, turn this into an email. It's me actually sitting down. And writing in this unique way. So, um, source of truth content is at the center of what I call a described as a strategic content ecosystem. So I'll show you what this looks like and I'll show like a, an example or two in the time that we have.

So I think this will be really helpful to kind of take the, the, the theory and the concepts that we introduced and make it, um, something that's actually real. So this is my strategic content ecosystem that you see right here on the screen. Um, and I'll kind of build it up so you can, um, kind of understand what it is that I'm doing.

So every week I have a source of truth, piece of content, which is what you see right here. It's the digital contrarian. It's a newsletter that I write. Um, it's two to 4,000 words. It takes 15 to 30 minutes to consume over the course of the year. Um, it represents about 150,000 words of content, which just to put it in, you know, a currency that we can all understand.

That's the equivalent of three books. So if some were to read every email that I write, it would be akin to reading three books, three books worth of ideas that I've put out there in the world. Um, then I, uh, produce a roughly quarterly, uh, uh, town hall event, which is where I'll do a workshop or a State of the union address that's coming from me.

It's live, it's in the moment, it's real. Um, that then is produced into a long form piece of content. I can just take the, the words that I've said, transcribe it, clean it up, and that can be made into almost like a mini book, like what you see right here, the great sea change and going analog. Um, and then I have a, a book that I'm working on that you can, uh, that I mentioned called The Return to Real.

Um, and that's extra long form. That's, you know, 50,000 words, that's five to six hours of content. Um, and then I have organic posting that I sh, that I post, um, on a, um, you know, a few times a week. And this is short form content. This is just, you know, typical social media stuff that you see right here. Now what I do is I take this original source of truth content that I actually write myself.

And then using the power of ai, we syndicate this across different platforms. So one email that I write each week gets transformed into everything I'm about to show you right here. First and foremost, it gets transformed into written content. We syndicate the written content into places like Substack.

I've got a substack that I, uh, syndicate my content to, uh, medium. Uh, I have a LinkedIn newsletter that I syndicate my content to and more. Mm-hmm. Um, then we transform it into audio. I read in the form of an audio essay, what I write each week. So the words that I've written, I just like, I'm, you know, having a conversation right now.

I read them to camera, and that allows me to transform it into a, an audio podcast, uh, a YouTube video that goes live, um, and an ebook se uh, an audiobook series. Um, so it all starts with this one piece that I describe right here, this, um, digital contrarian. Um, another important concept that I think is important to uh, point out, um, is that, um, you wanna have a primary channel of focus.

So what is your most important native channel? Because it's unrealistic unless you're spending all day, every day creating YouTube native content, Instagram native content, LinkedIn native content, substack native content, medium native content, iTunes or po. Uh, apple Podcast, native content, Spotify native content.

They're just too many platforms, so you have to prioritize. What's your primary channel of focus? For me, it's email. The reason for that is even in 2025, an email list of customers is still far more valuable than a social media audience of followers. It just is. I see it time and time again. I, every once in a while I'll, um, I'll support a launch.

I'll, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll send an email mentioning something and I'll do one little mention at the bottom of an email and I'll drive more, uh, uh, visitors, more buyers, more customers via that than someone that has a much bigger following than I do. But the relationship is very shallow. I have a very deep relationship with my audience because of this.

Okay, so you look at this right here, and I'll just kind of take you into what this, um, uh, looks like for real to kind of, um, uh, make it, uh, you know, feel real. So let me share this window and I will show this right here. This one, okay. All right, I'm gonna take you through a series of tabs. So this is, this is just my website.

Um, you know, there's nothing, you know, terribly, um, unique about what I'm doing right here. But on my website, you'll see here I have all of my past archive issues of the digital contrarian. So this is the first place where I put my source of truth, piece of content. So the one that, um, recently wrote, uh, the AI bubble bursting that you see right here.

Um, and you can see what this looks like. You know, it's, it's well researched. It's, um, you know, it's tied to my personal life. Um, there are multiple ideas that are intersecting on this, but this is kind of what it looks like right here. And then what I do is, uh, I, my team does this. I don't do this myself, but, um, my team will take that and then we syndicate these to a LinkedIn newsletter, like you can see right here.

So, um, you know, here's, uh, an example of one. We take this, we syndicate this to LinkedIn. Um, we started this from scratch a few weeks ago. Um, already have over a thousand subscribers to this. These are. Um, largely different subscribers than the ones that I have that, that over the a hundred thousand people that subscribe to my, my email list.

Then I do the same thing with Substack, um, and we syndicate it over to Substack. Then we take each issue that you can see, like you see right here, and we translate it into a, uh, podcast that goes, uh, on Spotify, it goes on Apple. Um, then we take the video of this and, um, let's see if I can do this without making it too problematic.

This is me reading the, uh, the newsletter that I'm saying. So every week I put this out there, um, into, uh, into the world, and you can see some of our videos here. Um, then what I do is, well, my, again, my team does this, but we'll take the PA piece of content and you can see like this one right here, if I can make this bigger.

Uh, that's not the best view. Lemme just zoom it in. Um, and uh, for those who are not a subscriber, we'll invite people to subscribe. So this one right here, you can see I spent two days with 40 bestselling authors who sold a million copies of their books. Each. I took 21 pages of handwritten notes. Do you want the full breakdown of my biggest takeaways and lessons learned from being in this room?

Comment with the word quotes. And I have hundreds of people who are commenting on this. I

Navid Moazzez: saw this post actually, and I mean, you, you did repurpose this to different platforms too. So, I mean, what's a really valuable's It platforms

Ryan Levesque: doing the same thing on LinkedIn. So I'll take a, a piece of content like this and we'll make it into a, uh, a carousel, like the ones that you see right here.

So, you know, here's a, here's a carousel and let's see if I can, um, okay. It's just, it's not allowing me, uh. Uh, for some reason I'm having an issue on the, I've had this issue. Ryan, as we

Navid Moazzez: go, as we go on here, what, uh, AI tools do you use or your team to, uh, turn this into different pieces of content? I mean, I mean, do you use ChatGPT, BT, I guess other, other platforms?

Anything you'd like to share, but uh Yeah. You are using?

Ryan Levesque: Yeah. So, um, what I'll say is this, um, we have, um, we use, um, uh, five platforms in our business. So, uh, for different tasks, um, we use, uh, ChatGPT, PT. No surprises there. We use Claude, uh, we use Claude for a lot of our data analysis and building dashboards and analyzing the performance of, um, these results.

Um, we use gr uh, quite extensively for analyzing, for example, why did this video get 10 times the engagement, 10 times the views? Then, uh, an average video. What was it about this video that did that? Um, we will use Gemini for a lot of, um, uh, you know, for anything that has an SEO component to it. Like we're trying to optimize titles and trying to optimize content.

We'll use Gemini, um, and then we use Manus as well. And oftentimes what we'll do is we'll pose a problem. So we might want to do like a, a, a post-mortem analysis on something and we'll say, what was it about this piece of content that was different perhaps in the, like, on a YouTube video? What was it about the thumbnail?

What was it about the title? What was it about the, uh, you know, Gemini study, YouTube studio to identify the, um, engagement graph on this video? And what is your hypothesis as to why we had a better stick rate on this video versus an average video? So we'll use those platforms. One of the ways that we combine them is we use po.

So we use a tool called po. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Many you're familiar with it, um, which allow us to build these models that we can then interact with it So we'll, we'll create this kind of piece of work. Um, we'll build it in po PO allows you to switch from one model to the next so you can, you know, switch from one to the next.

Um, and then we'll take, for example, we, we have a format where we'll take a source of truth, piece of content that I personally wrote myself. And then we'll say, Hey, can you summarize this into, you know, five bullet points that will serve as a Facebook post? So what it does, it'll take the original source of truth, piece of content that I've written.

It'll extract that, that's the middle 80%. And then I, with my team, will come back at the end of it and we'll do the 10% at the end we'll say. Okay. Thank you very much. That's good. And then we'll make some tweaks to make sure that it, you know, it doesn't do any weird hallucination stuff or contrast sentences or m dashes or any of the annoying, you know, ai, you know, just, I, I hate the way, uh, just some AI writing, you know, sounds and feels and tastes.

I know many, many of us feel the same way. Um, so I just make sure that that's all removed from it. And then once I'm happy with it, then um, uh, we publish it out in the world. Mm-hmm. So, um, you know, we use ai, I'll also use AI for research on a lot of the pieces that I write. So I might say I'm looking for a study that, um, explores how oxytocin and storytelling oxytocin is elicited when you tell stories.

Can you give me the original PNAS academic study that, um, identifies this? So I'll get that study. Then I might have five studies. I'll read them myself, and then I'll decide which one that I wanna cite in the newsletter, and then I'll cite that. Um, so like, that's an example as a, as a, as a research tool that I might put out there.

Sometimes I'll use AI for just like little tactical things where I'll say something like, um, I feel like this sentence is a bit clunky. Can you help me? Maybe smooth it out so it's not, um, you know, I just, I just feel like I can't quite articulate it, right. This is what I'm trying to say. This is what, what, what I'm saying.

I don't think I'm using the, the best word for this. Can you help me with that? And I'll get something back and I'll say, oh, that's not quite right, but you gave me an idea and then I'll massage it from there. So, um, you know, I use AI as a thought partner, as a research partner, as a developmental editor, as a data analysis tool.

Um, but what I'm not using AI for is two things. One, source of truth content. So that's why I advocate, preserve the human core in your business and what makes you unique. Um, and number two, for any client in, uh, client facing interaction, and this is a big one. So anything that interacts specifically with a client, we are not using AI to interface with them.

Now we do have a, uh, Delphi like knowledge base that people can interact with, but it's very explicit. It's you, you know, interact with the AI knowledge base to get your answers. It's not like a a, a chat bot that you think it's a human or a customer service agent. When someone emails us that you think you're talking to, you know, a real person on my team, like Kimberly, and it's actually just a computer that you're talking to.

Um, anytime that we use AI in a, uh, uh, in a way like that, it's highly disclosed and any client interfacing experience, we're, we're using that as an opportunity to inject humanity into the business because that's what people want. People don't wanna interact with a, with a robot, by and large, they want to act, interact with a, with a, with a human.

So, um, is it just a very pragmatic, um, way to respond to market forces and, and what, um, what the market wants?

Navid Moazzez: No, I really like, I mean this, I mean it's very thought out and I think people should, uh, have a similar way. Basically you have a source of truth, content, whatever. It could be a video, it could be anything for you.

It's the email every week. But something else I wanted to share, like in terms of amplifying yourself, like, you know, when I'm doing this virtual events and stuff like that, what's taking me a long time is to obviously research speakers. Yeah. I know some like you, Stu McLaren, other people have had on my virtual, uh, virtual events before.

But now with these MCPs in Claude and even connectors in ChatGPT, I can basically connect that to Notion and get an insane database of speakers or potential speakers. Is it perfect? Not really. It's not always perfect in the way the speakers I would go for. Right. But it's pretty close and they can basically, uh.

Have them in different categories and stuff like that. That's all automatic in just a few minutes. So for these type of tasks, wow, it's amazing kind of, it's kind of a little bit like an agent, mini agent, I guess, because you're basically telling it, Hey, do this, and it's doing it for me. And it's definitely no setup.

It's not like needed n8n. It's like directly in ChatGPT or Claude, you can do this. I think Claude is a little bit better, to be honest. ChatGPT refused sometimes. But yeah, that's kind of one of the use cases I'm having a lot of fun with. So, yeah.

Ryan Levesque: Very cool. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a wild frontier right now and you know, it's, things are changing so fast, the quality of output and results are changing so fast.

And at the same time, I can't help but wonder if we are starting to, uh, uh, butt up against a bit of a ceiling. Like, I think GPT five was a perfect example of this, where we had really high expectations of like what was coming next and Altman hyped it, that it was gonna be, you know, uh, you know, three steps away from a GI.

And then I think everyone's frustrated with the performance of, of GT five. So you know what's going. Is that a, is that an OpenAI thing? Is it a, um, you know, is it like the, the, the, the, the kind of like the theoretical science behind how these AI, large language model AI models are working right now that we've, we've kind of, but up against.

Um, but um, you know, so, so I think on the one hand it's like amazing, but for those of us who are at the cutting edge right now, there's definitely a gap between the promise. Even age agentic AI is the same way. It's like the promise of agentic AI is great, but as soon as you have too many nodes and too many steps in the process, it starts to break down.

So like, theoretically it's great. Like, yeah, I have this agent that does all these steps, but if, um, you know, if, if it breaks down, you know, every third or fourth time that you run it and then you, you're constant, it's like fixing the washing machine or the, or the.

Navid Moazzez: Your credits run out or something like that.

I mean, you, yeah, you just want your APIs.

Ryan Levesque: Every time you wash clothes, you've gotta like adjust the, you know, the machine and fix it. Well, sometimes it's just easier to stand by the machine or just wash the clothes yourself. And I think that's a little bit of what we're experiencing right now. So on the one hand it's like, okay, we'll work out these kinks.

The bugs will be worked out. Market forces will solve this. But on the other hand, you know, for those of us who are old enough, there are similar feelings with the first.com boom. Whereas like the internet's gonna take over everything. Like, everything is gonna be on the internet. Like, and, and, and even to this day, there's still things that we do that we prefer to do in person and it's taken a lot longer.

Than maybe the predictions in 1999 led us to believe that we were gonna experience. And I think there's a little bit of that happening right now where it's like, yes, the truth is in the tension, it's in the middle. AI offers a lot of promise. AI is also like a universal term that's used to describe everything we're talking about, generative ai, agentic ai, um, humanoid robots.

It's just ai. It's like just this, this new kind of catchall term. So I think that's also dangerous. Like we use AI to describe all of it, but it, we're talking about three or four different things here that, that use the same label that causes some challenges. Um, and, um, and then yeah, there's this feeling of needing to just like, stay on top of it, which is, uh, I think stressing out a lot of people that people feel like it's moving so fast.

Like I just, I just, I'm done like, just, I just wanna unplug. I just wanna forget about all of it 'cause it's too much to keep up with. Um, so these are just realistic challenges that we're living in right now. And, um, every single one presents an opportunity. Yeah, that's what I got, man. I hope it's been helpful.

Navid Moazzez: Yeah, we're starting to wrap up this session. I mean, this is really, really valuable. And, uh, do you have any final pieces of wisdom, any tips if people want to get started with AI or maybe take things to the next level? And I mean, we have talked a lot about returning to real, so it's like the source of truth and stuff like that.

But anything else you'd like to share as we wrap this one up?

Ryan Levesque: Well, we talked about, um, you know, source of truth, content, um, heart humor, humanity, optimized for oxytocin, um, over dopamine. Focus on the unscalable aspects of your business. The things that you do that are not scalable are the same things that your competitors are not gonna be willing to do precisely because they don't scale.

And this is what gives you the opportunity to stand out. Um, the thing I maybe wrap with is that the most important thing that you build is a category of one business. Meaning there is, if you're not building a category of one business, meaning a business where you effectively can be the only option, it's not a business worth building because it will be commoditized.

And if you're trying to build a business where technology is your greatest differentiator, um, technology is no longer remote. Like we live in a world now with, and you've mentioned some of the technology. I, you can go to any website online today and basically replicate that website with a few clicks.

Like you don't even need to have access to special technology. Um, so you have to ask yourself, what is it that other people can't replicate? It's your lived experience. It's your true personal story. It's injecting your beliefs, your opinions, because at the end of the day, um, despite the fact that, um, we have computers that can play chess better than any human on planet Earth, and it's been true for the last 25 years, what we know is that humans enjoy watching other humans play chess against one another.

There's an element that people enjoy experiencing the views, the opinions, the emotions of an actual real life human being. And no matter how good the AI technology gets, it's akin to watching a movie that's created with CGI. CGI is great. There's so much great CGI, but when you watch a CGI movie, there's something that leaves you kind of empty versus when you watch a movie with real human beings in it and real emotion and real connection, um, that's what's captivating.

So I would encourage you to lean into that. Use AI as your perimeter, but keep your human core at the center of everything that you do in your business.

Navid Moazzez: And where's the best place to connect More with you, Ryan.

Ryan Levesque: Yeah, so if you go to, um, if you wanna check out the book, returntorealbook.com gets you on the wait list to be notified when that's released.

Um, and in the meantime, if you go to thedigitalcontrarian.com, I write a personal handwritten email every single week in the form of a newsletter. Uh, many people have told me that, uh, it's better than most of the paid stuff that they subscribe to. And, uh, some people write to me that it's the thing that they look forward to receiving every single week more than anything else.

So, um, I'd invite you to join me, join the conversation, thedigitalcontrarian.com And uh, it's been an honor and a pleasure to connect here today in the session.

Navid Moazzez: Yeah, and I can vouch for that. Ryan's newsletter is pretty damn good, so definitely I'll drop a link in the description so you can go and check it out.

And, Return to Real when his book is out. I'm sure you'll know about it as well. So thanks so much, Ryan, for coming on here.

Ryan Levesque: Thanks a lot, Navid. It's been a pleasure.