#179 - Will Hughes on Copy Culture In The Digital Space, Creative Thinking And The Opposite Approach

Speaker A: It's the thought process that matters, right? It's having in, um, your tool bag the ability to think about a solution on how to solve a problem in your business today or how to achieve a big aggressive goal. And thinking about the inverse, right? Think about the opposite solution that could give you a large competitive advantage.

Speaker B: We're on a mission. We're going to find and uncover the smartest, most successful entrepreneurs on the planet. Explore their highs, their lows, and how they ultimately mastered the game. Martin. I'm Martin Cook and I'm excited to welcome you to the Smarter Destiny podcast. I'm grateful for you and your time. Now let's level up together. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Smarter Destiny podcast. Today we are joined by my friend, Will Hughes. This was a difficult interview to arrange because Will is a little bit of an enigma. He is the superpower behind many, many CEOs, many, many successful brands. He's the legend that you haven't heard of. Let me explain. So for a long time now, Will has been an entrepreneur and VP of, uh, growth across big companies. Companies ranging from sort of 20 million revenue on the small side to billions. Now, throughout this time, Will got really, really, really good at helping those companies, these grow and scale fast through slightly unconventional, untraditional methods. And over that time, Will has honed in this superpower and really got it nailed. And the way he helps these massive brands get even more massiver. I'm inventing words for effect here, folks, is by thinking differently. We're talking Steve Jobs, we're talking these crazy eccentric types who just always seem to be ahead of the game. They have the big ideas that other brands then end up copying badly over many years because they miss a point. Will has somehow managed to distill this into a methodology that he now teaches his students, and he now shares at

Speaker A: the speed that he wishes to share

Speaker B: it frankly online to select groups of people that he will allow to listen to it. So it is an absolute honor today to have Will on the show where Will is going to teach us a little bit about how to think differently. He's going to inspire us because in his words, and I'm butchering this quote a little bit, but in his words, he said, your competitors can copy what you're doing, but they can't copy your game changing ideas that take you to the next level. They can't keep up if you're having these over and over and over by thinking differently. That's what we're going to learn about today. I'M so excited. I've known Will now for months. I have deployed this stuff in my own business. I've seen Will speak at conferences and then be mobbed afterwards by the crowd. He is the legitimate item. So without further ado, let's welcome him to the stage. Will, how's it going?

Speaker A: I feel like a beetle. Thanks man.

Speaker B: That's a hell of a musician kind right like that rather than the sort of and Ted, I kind, I assume. Yeah, a little bit. Okay, cool. So whereabouts are you right now, Will?

Speaker A: San, uh, Diego. I grew up in Washington D.C. just moved to San Diego a couple years ago and moved for the weather. Weather and the lifestyle. It's beautiful.

Speaker B: Uh, San Diego is definitely one of my favorite places in the world. Lovely. Although we've got a little bit of sun here in the uk so I can't complain even though it's still cold and I am definitely complaining about that. Right. The way we like to do things on this show Will, is we like to go back to go forward. Every entrepreneur of the 170, 180 something entrepreneurs we've had on this show and all of the dozens of entrepreneurs I've spoken to aside have some sort of origin story. They have a point in their timeline, shall we say, an early part of their timeline where they were just different, they were weird, they were a freak, they were just different to everybody else in a really good way. Right. Because entrepreneurs, we are different, we are weird. And so uh, you're not going to be the first one on this show that hasn't got a story. Well, you're not going to disappoint me. But if you've got a story in mind, could you take us back to that time and tell us, paint a word picture of your early, ah, entrepreneurial prowess.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I mean I was always one of those kids that was working. Um, I started mowing lawns at age 10 I think. And mowing not just like the neighbor's lawns. I went to the commercial properties nearby. We had a pool up the street and it was very, very large, uh, you know, grassy areas that I was cutting uh, every single week from the age of 10 on. I um, had a newspaper out. I was getting up at 5am before in middle school, I was riding my bike a mile away at 5am before school every day to deliver papers. I'd come back, take a 20 minute nap, then go off to school. So I was just always one of those kids that was, always wanted to earn money and always wanted to work. So I had that built into me. And then as I was working some of these jobs, I worked at a gas station, you know, waiter, that kind of stuff. I was always looking for, for better ways to uh, make money. And it was just became a genuine interest of mine to have these conversations with my friends and I gravitate towards those who are also entrepreneurial. Um, and so just, it, just it. I've had that, you know, since childhood. So just always working hard, always looking for opportunities. I think what really bit hard for me in this, you know, digital age is, um, I saw a few opportunities in the affiliate space going back into the early mid 2000s and launched, uh, a couple affiliate sites that did really, really well unexpectedly. And that was really my first step out of the corporate world to uh, working as a, as a solopreneur. So, uh, always looking for opportunities and um, find them in a number of different ways. I love it.

Speaker B: I love that too. And there was a, there was a quote there. You said better ways of making money. And I don't know if that was deliberate, but I love that because it isn't ways to make money, it's better ways to make money. Innovating the way in which you make money. Innovating the way in which you convince your prospects to become customers at scale differently, a better way to do it. I love that. And it's such a different subtle difference to the, to the sort of, uh, cliche entrepreneur if you like. But it's so important. It's had such a dramatic impact with Newbrew deploying these better ways of making money that we've developed together through our conversations and going through your teachings as a, as a dedicated disciple that I have been. And so I think that's such a good segue. Um, I promise the audience today that you're going to help us think differently. You're going to inspire us to do things differently, to make money in a better way. Will, what have you got for us? What we're going to learn?

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. So what I like to teach is creative thinking as a competitive advantage. And so I create these frameworks for how to scale up companies really quickly. And that includes scaling companies. You know, as, as I was the vice president of growth, I've scaled two companies to over 100 million in revenue. And so I teach this in a masterclass. How to think differently, how to think creatively, how to find insights that everyone else misses, how to find the insights and unlock your brain to the things that you're actually blind to. And so I'M coming today with a case study which we can jump into now that I'm actually going to walk you through. It's the first time you're seeing it. I know you've seen most of my content, but I'm going to walk you through this for the first time and same for the audience. And it's the first time I've ever done this case study publicly. Um, so it's all new content. And uh, this will give people an idea of how they can think differently about their business and actually have an actionable step. So, uh, if that's, if that's good, we can jump right in.

Speaker B: That's good. And I would say to the audience, now would be a really good time to grab a pen. If something like scaling a brand like Organifi, you may have heard of them, from 18 million to a hundred million plus run rate in a very short space of time. What was it, 18 months? 18 months. If some, if that kind of rapid scale excites you, then you're listening to the right person, you're in the right room. So as I said, grab a pen, let's go through this.

Speaker A: Yes, let's jump into it. So what I like to teach are these case studies of people who have seen the world differently, um, and had some big outsized returns. And I like to find how they did it differently. And then I'll show you how you can pull this down into our businesses and you. It's, it's good for any business. But I tend to work in digital businesses and with DTC brands. So it's going to be most relevant, the anecdotes will be most relevant to those type of founders. And the person we're going to highlight today is a gentleman named Franklin Leonard, who started the Hollywood Blacklist. And so, uh, he started this Blacklist back in 2005 when he was working at a studio as a script reader. And I don't know what that exact job title is, but he reads scripts all day long, all day long, looking for quality scripts to come along. And he passed the good ones along to his bosses and the bad ones get rejected. And so the Blacklist is a collection of some of the most successful movies that were ever produced that were born out of the rejections from all the major studios. And so his goal in this job as a script reader was to find more high quality scripts in a more efficient manner. Right. He's sitting there all day long reading script after script. These things are 100 pages, 200 pages all day long. So he's looking for a more efficient manner to find the good stuff. And the genius is he found a creative solution that was in the trash bin of all the major studios. So back in 2005, there was about 12 movie studios like Universal, MGM and so on. And he was looking for the scripts that they were rejecting. Right. Thinking differently. And here's what the problem was. The studios were making decisions on what scripts to produce or to Greenlight, often for the wrong reasons. And so what were the reasons they were green lighting or funding movies? They'd be reasons like the following. Um, if a script comes in with a star actor attached to it, right? Like if a random script comes in and there's no star attached to it, that's one thing. And if another script comes in and Brad Pitt wants to do that movie, obviously that's something completely different. Um, or which genre is the script in? Right. Some genres make more money. Um, some genres make less. Do they think this script might do well overseas? Right. Can we take it outside the US and make more money? And then lastly, is there a natural sequel to this movie?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: If this movie does well, we want to make a follow up movie and make more money. And so these were some of the criteria these studios were using to greenlight or to fund these films. And the problem was they were missing out on the best possible scripts thinking in this way. So what Franklin wanted to know is what were the favorite script that his fellow screen readers, again, I apologize, I don't remember that title. But these screen readers at the other studios, um, had rejected what were the favorite scripts they were rejecting. And so he took an anonymous survey of 75 of his buddies at other studios and just asked them to give him a list of the 10 favorite screenplays that they had passed on over the last 12 months. And here's the result of what he come up with and what the Blacklist has built itself into. Since the founding of the blacklist, over 400 of these scripts that were rejected by all the major studios have now been made into movies. 300 of those scripts have now been nominated for an Academy award. That's a 75 hit rate. It's showing you the quality of these scripts that were rejected by the major studios. 54 of these movies actually won an Academy Award, and four of the last ten best pictures came from the Blacklist. So these movies never would have seen the light of day if not for the Blacklist. And those four movies were Slumdog Millionaire, the King's Speech, Spotlight and Argo. Right. So these Movies only exist. They were rejected by all 12 studios. And they only exist because they made it onto that blacklist. So in cum, over 440 scripts have been produced and the combined gross revenue is over $30 billion. Now here's the hero idea or anecdote behind this. Harvard Business School did a study of the blacklist. And what they found was movies from the blacklist generated 90% more revenue in the box office than non listed films with a similar budget. So not only were they missing these quality movies that were winning Oscars, 375% of them nominated, right. They were missing the ones that were making more money. And not just more money, a lot more, 90% more money because they were using the wrong criteria. They were thinking incorrectly about how to greenlight these films. They've been evaluating what films to fund incorrectly for the last 100 freaking years. Like that's a holy shit moment. They earn 90% more money and they've been evaluating films incorrectly. And so what people listening need to understand is that we all think in thought patterns. And these thought patterns serve us really well, uh, to think efficiently. It's the way our brains learn how to shortcut getting to a solution as quickly as possible. And when we face something in our business that we have seen something somewhat similar in the past, we're going to get to a solution faster because we've seen something similar before. So it serves us well to think in these thought patterns. But these thought patterns are the antithesis of creative thinking. It's a massive blind spot. Amplifying that effect is when you go work at a big company like a film studio or a Fortune 500 or whatever, we all get into groupthink, right? They tell you this is the way we've been successful in the past and this is the way you're gonna think into the future. So we're getting a double blind effect here, right? We're limited by our thought patterns and we're limited by the thinking of the organization that we're working for. So to think creatively, to think differently, you need to break free of these thought patterns. And so what I teach, um, what I teach my students is these, how to approach solving problems in your business today. So any problem that might come up today, you know, Martin, you and I talked, it's going back a couple months ago, but talking about subscription programs, it was something you were working on back at the time. So it might just be something like that, you know, what's, what are you working on in your business today? Something sort of, you Know, in the medium range of, of importance or impact of, of, um, you know, like a subscription program versus what are your big aggressive revenue goals? What are you trying to achieve in the coming 12 months? And so I teach people to approach solving these problems and goals from different angles, altitudes and directions, right? So if you can think differently from different angles, altitudes and directions, you can get the outsize returns. And this is what Leonard was doing, right, at the Hollywood blacklist. He was thinking about these, his approach differently from everyone else. He was doing the inverse or the reverse of what everyone else was doing, and he was getting these big outsized returns. He's doing the opposite. He's getting a big win, right? So my goal is to teach people to see what you don't and what your competitors can't by giving you a framework, by giving you a step by step. And this is one of those steps, right? We want to be able to look and look at things from different directions. Look at the inverse or the reverse approach, right? Thinking differently about how to scale a business up to nine figures and beyond. So let's do a couple small additional examples. Besides the blacklist, who else took the inverse approach and crushed with it? You know, how about the Yahoo to Google and Now Google to ChatGPT example, right? So back in the 90s, Yahoo was the most trafficked website in the world. They were doing 125 billion. Well, they were 125 billion in market value, uh, back then. And if we remember the Yahoo website, you know, it's very, very busy, right? There's probably 30 things you can click on without even having to scroll. You know, there was email, there's banner ads, there's news, all kinds of things. Plus it's a directory, plus it's a search engine. And then Google comes along with its very sleek design, very focused, only one thing you can do, type into the box. And Google just ran over Yahoo like a freight train by taking the opposite approach. And where are things today? Google's got 85% market share, while Yahoo is at 3%. Back when they started, back when I started this anecdote, Yahoo was 125 billion valuation. They sold for just 5 billion to Verizon a couple years ago. Currently, Google's worth a trillion in revenue. So taking the opposite approach, looking at the inverse angle, can have a huge competitive advantage. And Google had better be careful because it's unfolding right, you know, before our eyes right now with ChatGPT and these AI, uh, the various AI. But like, I typed into Google, what are the best things to do in New York City. And of course I'm going to get a laundry list of articles and ads and um, blog posts that I can read about things to do in New York City of varying quality. And it might take me 20 or 30 minutes to click through those links. Right. To find what I'm looking for. Versus you throw into ChatGPT. And it just gave me a list of 10 things. And the list was actually excellent. You know, go to the Statue of Liberty, go to Central Park. It gave me some restaurant recommendations. It told me to go see the 911 memorial. It was very well done. And so just thinking through what is the opposite approach that can give you a competitive advantage. Creative thinking as a competitive advantage. So I'm always looking for what's the inverse or the reverse. And I'll do one last example. Um, most people probably haven't heard of this unless they live in New York, which is the new, uh, startup company that's just killing it. It's called Blank Street Coffee. And so Blank Street Coffee is taking a different approach to the coffee shop versus the big guys. Right? It's the oppos it of what Starbucks is doing. They're going really small. So there's really small footprint of these retail spaces. And they're making really high quality coffee in a really efficient manner. So their footprint for most of their retail stores is about 350 square feet, which is tiny compared to Starbucks, which is like 1500 to 2000 square feet. And what's the Starbucks model? They want you to come in and hang out in their living room and drink coffee all day. Versus these stores are tiny. There's nowhere to sit at all. And sometimes they're even these, they're kind of like the taco truck, but they're tiny little trucks. They're not even big trucks. And so the idea is get really good quality coffee and move on with your day. Um, and so lastly, they've automated most, uh, of the coffee making process with machines. So they're making it cheaper. They're paying their employees more than Starbucks is. They're getting high quality talent. They're paying their employees 28 bucks an hour, which is way over minimum wage and higher than Starbucks. And the net of this is they're producing really good quality coffee that's 25% less expensive than Starbucks. So this company, Blank Street Coffee, are growing really fast. They've raised $80 million, they've opened 40 stores. And here's what we need to know. These stores become profitable within 30 days like, holy shit, what retail store have you ever, ever heard of that becomes profitable within 30 days? They are taking the opposite approach as the big standing incumbent, and they are kicking ass. So Scott Galloway, you might be familiar with, he's a professor at NYU and he's got a couple podcasts. He says when something is successful, everyone piles in, right? This is my, what my rant is about, copy culture. I hate that everyone just copies everybody else. But that's what his point here is, that everyone piles in and this creates the opportunity for someone else to come in and take the opposite approach, the inverse approach. So the way to innovate is to think differently. And if you ask me, how do I think differently? I've got lots of ways, but this is one example, right? Think in different directions. Think of the inverse approach. And I just had a big win for me over the last, um, couple of months that's still unfolding, taking this approach in my business, right? So what I teach is this Liquid Mind masterclass. It's a program on business creativity and innovation. And I was thinking about how I could market my business through education, but I want to do it differently than ever the way everyone else was doing it. And so I think about how people get in front of their target audience. And for me, that would be founders and CEOs of, you know, D2C brands and E commerce companies and the like. And I actually, excuse me. I actually came up with a really big win, a really creative idea by applying this inverse technique. And I'm not going to share it here today. It's a future case study I'm working on. Um, so I'll reveal that coming up. But I did take the inverse approach of what everyone else might be thinking of. How do you get in front of a, ah, hundred or five hundred or a thousand founders in any one shot? And so I'm not, uh, while I do speak at conferences, this is this technique or this strategy I've come up with is not speaking at conferences, it's not speaking at masterminds, it's not being on podcasts. I've come up with something completely different from that that is killing it. And so I'll leave that as a tease for a future case study that I'm working on. Um, you know, if that interests you, it's, it's one that I'll be rolling out with. But what I want people to take away from this is doing, taking. It's the thought process that matters, right? It's having in your tool bag the ability to Think about a solution on how to solve a problem in your business today or how to achieve a big aggressive goal. And thinking about the inverse, right, think about the opposite solution that could give you a large competitive advantage. And so I offer um, these case studies. If anyone's interested, you just go to my website or you can just email me, we'll put it in the show notes and um, you know, you can sign up for my distribution list and I produce these case studies, you know, a couple a month. But it's just, you know, on my website you can go to the liquidmindmasterclass.com join and just put in your email address and you'll be on the distribution list for these case studies that I produce. So does that resonate with, with you? Like I know you've seen my content go deeper, but hopefully that connected with you.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And not to uh, um, quite the opposite to add to what you're saying. Anybody that knows me will know that one of these sentences I love to hate the most, if you make, if that makes sense to you, is as a justification for a course of action, someone saying, we've always done it that way. I fucking hate that sentence, folks. And anybody that knows me knows that as well because that, ah, when you're, when you're applying the Liquid Mind methodology, even when you're just applying the inverse sort of looking at it like, like what does the opposite of this look like? It is a red flag or a green light or a ginormous opportunity to go. This needs disrupting. There is a different way to do this that is better because they've uh, done it this same way for such a long time and there's so much more technology, so much more knowledge, so much more resource, so much more opportunity that has come in in that time that this is, this is ripe. And one of, one of the examples, um, that I love to give which, which you know folks, I'm ripping this from Rory Sutherland, who is an og, but imagine if you were coming in to take on Coca Cola, you were launching a beverage brand to take on Coca Cola, right? And so you go, right, okay, so how am I going to beat Coca Cola? Uh, perhaps, perhaps I'm going to make something that's more delicious, tastes better. Or perhaps I'm going to come in and make something that's cheaper, right? So better value for money. Or perhaps I'm going to go with larger serving sizes, right? Same, same price, but more for your money. Well, there was a brand that came into the space and they decided, right, we're actually going to make a more disgusting drink. We're going to serve it in smaller containers and we're going to charge more for it. Crazy, right? In fact, they did use uh, a testing of this particular drink and the people testing it were like, pretty angry. They really hated it. They were like, why are you giving me this disgusting drink? To try. And this brand has taken a sizable chunk of market share from Coca Cola. And this brand is called Red Bull. Smaller containers, more expensive, less well tasting. And so I knew that case study and then Will and I started getting chatting and it was just like, wow, this is, this is a, you know, we are completely aligned in our way of thinking here. Ah. And just like the Blacklist there. Wow. 90, 90% additional revenue. And um, we're talking about movies where what, the average revenues already in the hundreds of millions or something. So 90% more than that just from thinking differently.

Speaker A: Crazy.

Speaker B: It's just nuts to me. So, um, we rushed over that. Where can. Because I actually hadn't seen even the screenshot there of your, of your website on the slide. So. Liquidmindmasterclass.com yeah, that's the website.

Speaker A: And if they want to get on the email distribution list for those case studies, just it, there's a. I do videos. So it's a video case study, but it's just forward slash join. And um, uh, you can just plug in your information there.

Speaker B: I just think this is brilliant. And um, you'll never know. Even these case studies themselves have value. I mean, they're inspirational in terms of, you know, showing you that actually it's not, it's not bullshit, right? It's not, um, it's not rubbish. It's not like a fluke, you know, oh, here's, you know, another example, Another example. Another example of someone crushing by thinking it different, thinking differently. It's, it's not just inspiration. It's also something whereby when you're thinking differently, you begin to sort of channel things you've learned in the past. Jeff Hoffman calls it infosponging. He, he just studies in the morning. He'll, he'll just learn something that's nothing to do with his core business and he'll just deliberately learn something new. And on, um, one day he learned about how supermarkets, um, market and sell fruit which decays and you know, is, is, is only ripe for a certain amount of time and um, you know, before that it's not good enough to sell and after that no one wants it. And how they sort of structure the pricing and the presentation according to that. And then he learned on another day, seemingly tens and tens of days later, about how the airlines at the time were struggling and often were taking off with many, many empty seats on the airline, unsold seats. And he linked those two things together and went well, hang on. If I can apply the superdology methodology, supermarket methodology to selling rotten fruit or fruit before it becomes rotten, to the airline industry and have a flexible pricing system whereby they sell the seats even just before they turn bad. I, uh, e. When the door shuts and they can no longer sell the, sell the seats on that airplane anymore. And that was the early stages of how Priceline was, was born. And I believe that was a billion dollar company, is a billion dollar company. And um, he thought differently there he was linking things together. And so these case studies are, are inspiring but they're also quite possibly the info sponge you're looking for, um, for when you're approaching this really big problem that you may well solve from thinking differently. So LiquidMindMasterclass join, um, or LiquidMindMasterclass.com join um, I highly recommend you check it out. Is there anything else you want to add, Will?

Speaker A: Yeah. So it was interesting. I liked your anecdote of just um, you know, you hate that uh, everyone's doing it because it's the same way it's always been done. I actually go deep than that. Well, not deeper. I take another direction on that as well, which is I rail against copy culture in the digital space. Right. So my biggest problem working in digital marketing is that there are very few originals or innovators out there. Everyone is just ripping everyone else off.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And so we talked about the example of uh, the conversation you and I had about subscription programs. If someone's going to launch a new subscription program and 99 out of 100 times they're going to go find a company that they know is doing well or a brand that is aspirational to them and they're going to just rip them off. It's the efficient thing to do. But if everyone is copying everyone else, it becomes this cycle of zero innovation. There's just a complete lack of originality, complete lack of innovation that drives me crazy. And here's where it all leads to. If everyone is copying everyone else, there becomes oversaturation in the market of that exact thing. So whether it's a new video format, right? Like we all love vidtao, but if everyone's copying the best winning video format, then every video looks the same. If we all use the same kind of pop up on our website, then it all becomes the same and it becomes banner blindness, right? The, it dilutes the impact to the consumer because we're all copying everyone else and we're all presenting the same damn thing. So copy culture is a race to the bottom. And what I'm after is I want people to be able to take an original approach. I want them to become innovators because that's what you can't copy, right? They can see some of the things that I do. You'll be able to see, you know, you'll be able to find and potentially copy, but you can't copy my process. And if I'm innovating on all the leverage points of a business, good luck catching up to me or a guy like you, Martin, who's sharp and understands this methodology. Like, um, you know, what I like to instill is I want to make people innovators and then instill these cultures of creativity, which is the opposite of what was going on in Hollywood in that example. Right. And so I'm after, yeah, I mean, I'm never going to be successful in killing off copy culture, but I just can't stand that everyone just knocks everyone off and puts no original thought into it. So that's what I'm trying to teach is how to become an innovator.

Speaker B: For a long time I've, uh, A little part of me's died inside. Every time I hear someone with influence recommending a spy tool. It's always recommended, you know, very responsibility, use it to inspire your thinking or whatever. But we know what's happening really. And the thing is, when you copy others, you don't realize it, but you're kind of subscribing to being copied yourself, right? Like if you found something quite easy to copy and then you copy it, uh, you're quite easy to copy yourself, right. And the sort of next sort of parasite will come on and start copying you. And the inverse is true. When you innovate and you create something that's actually really difficult, it becomes really difficult for people to copy you. I'll give you an example with nubru. So nubru, ours is a nootropic that's delivered in a liquid supplement, right? So it's a powder you mix with, with water. It tastes delicious. So it tastes delicious and is effective.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And the, and the industry, um, has historically been pills for a long time. Well, one of our largest affiliate partners actually partnered with us when they could have partnered with any brand, really. They're a master of their game. Because they were fed up of having their ads ripped off. And then those affiliates ripping off their ads would then find the same affiliate network for the same offer, run the same ads to the same offer and get the same result. And so their offers were dying really, really quickly. And so what they loved about Newbrew was that we'd innovated and so they could make these amazing ads. Really talking about the uh, science with Newbrew and the process and the unique, um, you know, the uniqueness of it. And now other affiliates, they can't rip that ad off because they haven't got a product they can push that ad at. And they didn't have access to become a partner uh, of nubru anyway.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So they're not able to sell it. And so that innovation has helped not only us at nubrew, but it's helped like our partners working with us. And so um, it's such an important thing to do. I actually had a little win today, Will, and I know you and I share our wins, um, when uh, when we apply this, this different way of thinking and um, so a little bit of background, um, I have this really, really, really powerful piece of software called Ethic which is a post purchase, um, upsell driven, high converting, high AOV AI machine learning, powered checkout experience that you can run um, in a headless way to get higher conversion rates and um, higher average order values. And we've got this absolute dynamite killer motherfucker, blow out the water feature coming on this which is just gonna be an absolute game changer. And so I was talking to m, my development team and they understand it and all this. And I was quoted three months, three months. I have to wait for this, this feature to come out. It's a killer feature. I'd probably wait three years for it. But three months is still a long time. And a lot of things can happen now, today. And this is quite important to the process that today I went to the gym and I removed myself from work. I wasn't really thinking about work, I was just going through things, right. It's, it's the sort of phenomena of the ideas that come to you when you're showering. And I came up with a way to shorten that development timeline to what will be maybe a month, maybe five weeks. Now it's not the finished, I'm not creating voodoo or anything, it's not the finished thing. But I've developed, I've came up with a way to be able to get a, the, the benefit and the functionality that I want from this new feature in four to five weeks rather than three months through. Thinking differently and things like that are just. It happens so often now.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it's crazy. It's awesome. It's impossible to keep up with, especially when you're applying it to the levers of growth, um, in your business. I've talked for forever about the 1% secret and the compounding effect of improving all these different areas of your business and Life by just 1 1% and how they all compound together to get massive, massive rates of returns. But I've written a book on it. Literally. Now imagine getting those improvements more consistently, more often, more predictably, um, and way more than 1%. That's kind of what we're, we're talking about here. So liquidmindmasterclass.com go over there. I don't get any commission, man. We should have sorted that out before the call. I don't get any commission. Guys. I'm recommending this authentically. I'm joking here about even the suggestion of commission here, because, um, I'm recommending this authentically. And if you get a chance to get, uh, in front of Will, when he does make a rare appearance in public, speaking from someone stage, I really highly recommend wherever it is that you get in that stage and you grab him afterwards, boom. Right, so at this point, Will, we like to mix it up? Uh, we change pace, we change gears, we go into the rapid fire question round. I ask the questions quickly, you answer at the speed of your choosing. How does that sound? Are you up for it?

Speaker A: Let's go. Sounds good.

Speaker B: Are you two thumbs up for it?

Speaker A: Let's go, baby.

Speaker B: Boom. There's my 300th and something thumb there. Right there on this show. Right? Who is a great leader, whether alive or dead, and why?

Speaker A: Um, well, someone I look up to tremendously in the business world is Brian Chesky. So the founder of Airbnb. I think he's just, he's someone who's incredibly intelligent, incredibly thoughtful and creative. Right. The business they built is mind blowing to begin with. You know, there was a really funny anecdote that when they were trying to raise money for the first time for Airbnb, that the investors said, uh, I hope this isn't the only idea you guys are working on, because this idea sucks. The idea of strangers sleeping on your couch. But the fact that he has turned that into a mega unicorn. I think he's on the list of the top 100 richest people now. He's at 10 billion in personal net worth. So he's had all that success, but the way he thinks about business, the way he navigates turbulent waters. I heard him talking about layoffs that they had to do over Covid and how, like people probably remember this when they laid off a substantial number of their team over Covid. Um, they pulled together the resumes of all their staff that was being laid off and marketed it. The company was marketing them to the world to hire our people, that our people are badass. It's just a bad situation for us today. And they were helping place those talented people into new companies. I think he's very thoughtful, very smart, very creative guy. So, Brian Chesky, I think that's amazing.

Speaker B: And I bet a lot of them came back just when they started hiring again, when the world reopened as well, out of that loyalty. Amazing. How do you evaluate a good business deal?

Speaker A: Ah, from the perspective of who I might consult with or work with or acquisitions.

Speaker B: What's your decision process for deciding whether it's a good, good business deal for you or for everybody, depending on your process?

Speaker A: Um, I mean, look, first and foremost for me, it's always about the founder or the person. Um, you know, the product, the service has to matter and has to connect with me for me to even have interest. Like, I've, I've walked away from some very good opportunities to either consult or be a partner in the business. That just didn't light me up. It just was, it's a great business. It didn't align with me, but for me, it always starts with a founder. Do I have a connection to the founder? Do I think they're smart? Do I think they have talent? Um, I like it when people think differently from me. And I'll give you another tip of something I like and something I'm working through now, working, uh, on now as well, is I love when someone can change my mind. Right? So we can't all be so ridiculously egocentric that we think we're right all the time. But as founders, we often think that way. Right? And it's really great when you got someone who can change the way that you are thinking about something. Even a long held belief. It doesn't necessarily have to be business, but when I come across those people, those are the kind of people I want to be in business with. And so I kind of start with the, uh, who's the person bringing me the opportunity?

Speaker B: Nice. I like that. And what you said there about as well, people that challenge you, no one likes it. Well, I don't like a yes man, but Often you end up surrounded by them, particularly as you, you know, when you're, when you're the leader and so on and the people around you are aware that you could fire them, I suppose. Right. So there's a balance, there's an imbalance there. Um, but often the best ideas are actually, they're not the idea you first came up with, they're not the idea that the person that challenged you came up with. But it's a hybrid of those two. It's a battered and bruised, thrown about idea by design. And that will be the best, best one. And so, um, yeah, so incredibly important. I like that, like, um, sort of actively sort of, you know, little tick in the, in the mental box when you come up with someone who's managed to do the incredible feat of changing your mind.

Speaker A: It's, there's two sides of the coin, right? You've got to be open to having your mind changed and then someone who can actually convince you that you're wrong. Uh, so it's, it's both. But I, I really appreciate it when I see someone who can, uh, open my mind. Um, you know, it's kind of what I, it's my whole, my whole thing, man. Think differently, right?

Speaker B: How do you identify a good business partner?

Speaker A: I feel like that's going to give you, leave you the same answer. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's someone that lights me up. It's someone who's got vision, it's someone who's intelligent and it's someone who can honestly change my mind, who can, who can, um, look at the world differently than I'm looking at it ideally. Um, they've got a skill set that I don't. Right. I've got lots of strengths as a marketer and I've got lots of weaknesses as a marketer. I'm not a talented copywriter. Um, I'm not a talented coder. I'm not a coder at all. Uh, I'm terrible when it comes to tech. I'm tech one to one. Even though I've managed very large teams in the corporate environment. Um, I know enough to not get bullshitted. Um, but I couldn't code a single thing. Um, couldn't even personally drop a pixel on the site other than like a, you know, a click funnel. I could probably do that. That's about it. Um, so looking for skills might have that I don't. Um, but again, I'd start with the personality, the vision. Um, and can they change my mind? Beautiful.

Speaker B: What's one interesting fact about you that not many people would know?

Speaker A: Um, interesting fact. I used to do 24 hour mountain bike racing. That was fun. So Buddy, uh, of mine used to be mountain bike, uh, just for fun. And, um, he talked me into doing some races. It's, you know, turned into some long, longer distance races. And then, uh, we ended up doing a 24 hour. We did several, actually. Moab, Utah. Uh, we did one in West Virginia. But, um, they're the crazy. How many laps can you do in 24 hours up and over a ski mountain in the summer? You know, that kind of stuff. We're in Moab, Utah. How many laps can you take? It was. It's both stupid and amazing all at the same time. I absolutely love it, but I like to push myself to my limits. Um, kind of a similar story. I ran a marathon once, or I've run a couple, but not a lot of them. And somewhere around mile 23 or 4, I'm like, this is the worst feeling ever in the world. I never want to feel this pain ever again. And when I finished the race, I had this awful feeling for 60 seconds and that feeling started to subside and I started to recover. And the minute that pain went away, the very first thought was, I need to run another marathon. I need that feeling of pain again.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So I don't know what that says about me. M. But I enjoy these challenges, um, both from a physical standpoint of pushing myself. And it gets me into that mental zone where I can, you know, honestly think creatively and about, uh, different things. Usually more on the personal side in those moments. But, um, yeah, I really enjoy, uh, sort of the adventure activities.

Speaker B: Nice. What daily routines do you have, whether morning or evening, that have helped make you successful? Um, including.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I, you know, I, I wake up every morning, um, at the same time. Like, I do have a routine bed. I go to bed at the same time, I wake up at the same time. Definitely a believer in this circadian rhythms. Um, I eat meals largely at the same times. Um, I take any decisions out of that. I always have, typically have the same breakfast, uh, and lunch always. And just always got that cook so I don't have to think about it. And then I'll be more creative or interesting around the, the dinner. Um, I work out every morning. Um, and then it's been my life's goal. We kind of talked about this at the top, to move to San Diego. Um, and so every morning I take a walk at the beach after the gym. Um, it's just like a 10 minute walk, but just to get my mind. Um, you know, I have a little bit of appreciation for living in San Diego and the fact that I can walk next to the ocean every morning and also kind of get geared up and dialed up for the day with high energy. The way you kind of approach this podcast. Right. Just get myself really motivated. So strap it on my mindset as well.

Speaker B: Beautiful. What book or books change your mindset or life.

Speaker A: Okay. Books. Uh, so I read a lot. I'm sure, you know, lots of. I'm sure everyone listening to this is probably, uh, you know, reads a ton of stuff. I listen to more books these days than I, than I actually sit down and read. But I consume a whole lot of them. I'd say a couple uh, recently that come to mind. Um, I really enjoyed learning about nlp. So neuro linguistic programming, um, both from a personal standpoint and a marketing perspective. As long as you're not using it for evil. So there's a book called I think it's the Essential Guide to nlp. So um, there's several I've read but I think that's the one I enjoyed the most. And then the books from Michael Singer, a little more on the Buddhism, um, you know, Zen side of things, meditation side of things. But he's both a, you know, he's definitely all in. Do you know Michael Singer? Singer?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I think so.

Speaker A: Yeah. So he's got several books. Uh, the Untethered Soul, um, Surrender Experiment. But he was, he's a very crunchy, live off the land kind of uh, Zen Buddhist type of person. But yet he built one of the largest companies that I forget what it sold for, but it might have been 500 million or a billion. Like he built a massive organization following these principles of Buddhism Buddhism, which is really interesting. It's not a business book but it's much more on the personal development side. But he's very insightful and he takes these sort of woo woo Buddhism concepts from 2000 years ago and he makes them very useful and practical in daily life today. So I really enjoy Michael Singer's work. He's got a couple good books out there, but Untethered Soul is probably my favorite.

Speaker B: Nice. What advice would you give your younger self

Speaker A: to? My younger self? Um, definitely learn a language. I love to travel internationally and I've not learned a language and it's such an Achilles heel. Um, I really wish I learned to code. It's a weak spot. So personal side, learn a Language. Because I love to travel. Professional side. I wish I'd learned to code, because

Speaker B: if I could learn a language.

Speaker A: Yeah, right. Learn a language. If I could learn to code. I, I think I, I think it's the, the biggest missing tool on my, in my arsenal for a marketer. Um, yeah.

Speaker B: Language.

Speaker A: Uh, learning languages.

Speaker B: Learning languages. Nice. And then it brings us to the final question. What makes you happiest?

Speaker A: Makes me happiest. Um, a couple answers there. So, absolutely love to travel. Been, um, exploring internationally for the last couple years now that my kids are older. Um, I got two kids in college, um, so I'm free now to travel a little more. And so I've been going overseas four to five times a year, which I absolutely love. Um, similarly love spending time with my kids. Um, one's athlete, um, you know, college athletes. I love to go watch his games. Um, the other lives here in San Diego and we spend a lot of time together. And actually, I'm going to go meet him. He's traveling overseas right now. So we're going to travel through Europe together. So combining two of those things, um, and then lastly, like, you know, I kind of fell into all this backwards with, um, the master class I teach. But I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction in helping my friends achieve their business goals, achieve the freedom that they want in their life. Like, one thing that happened to me, I definitely got institutionalized, right? Stealing a line from the great movie, um, Shawshank Redemption, right? I got institutionalized into the corporate world. At one point in my life, I, um, was relying on a corporate paycheck. I was relying on others for my living. And I never felt comfortable. I always felt like I was just always anxious. I always had this feeling of unease in my body about someone else holding my destiny in their hand. Um, and when I was able to break free of that in my life, which I've been able to do several times, but, you know, I've been out of the corporate world for several years now with no intention of going back. Um, I love helping my friends, um, achieve their goals, um, in business so that they can have the same freedom, um, and not have to go back. So even entrepreneurs have a lot of that unease in their body as well. A lot of anxiety about, you know, one day we're killing it, the next day we're not, or one day our trajectory straight up, and the next day it's flat or going down. Um, a lot of roller coaster rides here. And so I really enjoy helping people, um, reach the level of success that they want in the business side, which obviously unlocks the personal side for themselves. So really enjoy that.

Speaker B: Amazing. A phenomenal answer. Uh, different to what many would might have expected, but that was a little bit of a theme today. Thinking Differently Will, thank you so much for being an incredible guest on the Smart Destiny podcast. Those of you who are inspired and intrigued or a little bit curious again, liquidmindmasterclass.com join if you fancy it. And um, yeah, you won't be disappointed. Will, it's been an absolute treat to get you on the show today. You're, uh, as I said in the introduction, a secret weapon, uh, behind many brands. And now you're more directly inspiring brands at a larger scale to think differently and to grow rapidly. I love you for it. This has been an incredible show. Thank you so much for being on the Smart Desi podcast.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Great to see you as always.

Speaker B: Hey there you, you incredibly good looking human. Thanks so much for listening. If you had a good time today and would like more good times in the future, please hit that subscribe button and leave a heartwarming review. I read them all and it will go a long way to help others out there. Benefit from all the teachings of this show. And if you want to get in touch or otherwise learn more about me, head to martincook.co.uk or smarterdestiny.com I really appreciate you. You're an incredible human. Until next time, keep crushing.