MTA 1 | Pivot And Change

The only constant is change. We all have to be ready to pivot and meet the challenges of the future if we want to be successful. Our hosts, Amy Honey and Jamie Honey, talk to Josevie Jackson, an inspirational business strategist at Thriving Lifestyles, about the challenges businesses face, keeping your employees happy, and pivoting to meet business needs. Next up, we have author, speaker, and futurist George Chanos discussing the technological singularity and why we need to be ready for the rise of AI. Tune in for more exciting interviews with authors and learn about their books today.

Listen to the podcast here:

Learning To Pivot And Change With Josevie Jackson and George Chanos

We are excited to have you. We’ve got a lot of great books and good deals. We are going to bring on Josevie Jackson. She is an incredible lady. She tours all over the world. She’s an international speaker and author. She has even got something coming up where she is speaking to 400,000 people in India, so we will talk to her about that. Let’s bring her on. She is the author of The Small Business Survival Guide.

Welcome, Josevie. We are so glad to see you here. It’s good to see you.

It’s something good to be seen and be a part of all of the fun that you are having all the time. I see you on your other shows. I’m there buying things all the time. I’m excited and honored that you would choose me to be on your first show. Thank you so much.

I’m super excited that you are here. What made you end up writing this book?

I never even thought I would write a book like this. I have been a serial entrepreneur since I was twenty years old. Over the years, I have done business after business. I own several businesses now. I have experienced what it feels like to fail as well as to succeed in business, so I know the feeling. I know that being an entrepreneur with a small business is like having your own baby.

You watch that business grow and when something happens and your business starts to dive, you get anxious. People get upset and nervous. It’s like if something happens to your kid. You just want the best outcome. In 2020, during Coronavirus, I was speaking with another colleague who helps small businesses build their business credit. She was saying that her business was going super slow because a lot of her clients were going out of business because of COVID.

They were probably afraid to borrow money too.

You’re going to have challenges, and some you’ll win and some you’ll lose. You have to enjoy what you’re doing along the way.

A lot of them couldn’t borrow money. That was why they were using her. They hadn’t built their business credit. They did not want to do all this. I was like, “I will give them a free coaching call. Have them come to me.” She said, “It’s too late for some of them because they have already gone out of business.” With all of the years of experience that I have had in doing so many different businesses and having so many failures and successes, you learn from that.

I literally lay awake that night and thought, “I need to do something to help people, entrepreneurs and small businesses.” That is the lifeblood of the country that we live in. It’s part of the American dream. People come over from other countries and open businesses because you can’t do that everywhere.” I know what it feels like to have a business that fails so I thought, “I need to help people.” That is where this business came from. It came from me staying up in the middle of the night and thinking, “I’ve got to help people.” That was where the book came from and why I wrote the book.

I heard you said you have had a lot of businesses. You have had businesses that worked and failed. What do you enjoy the most?

Obviously, the businesses that worked. Being an entrepreneur gets in your blood. I’m at the point where I’m not afraid of failure because I failed before and I was able to get back up, brush myself off, and try again like Aaliyah’s song, “Dust yourself off and try again.” I’m no longer afraid of failure because I know I’m still going to be okay. For me, it doesn’t matter at this point.

No matter what I do and try, I’m going to give it my all and my best, see what happens, and make the plans for it. I’m not afraid of failure. You are going to fail at some point in some aspect but you don’t have to quit. That is what The Small Business Survival Guide is all about. Stuff is going to happen. You are going to have challenges. Some you will win and some you will lose. You have to enjoy what you are doing along the way.

Based on that, I have your book. If you want to get Josevie’s book, you can grab The Small Business Survival Guide. We also have The Fearless Entrepreneurs and it’s on sale for $0.99. It’s normally $15 but it’s on sale for $0.99, so grab that deal. I have a few that are at $0. They are completely free, so grab those deals. We’ve got entrepreneurial books there for $0, so that’s another great one.

That is a great thing that you’ve got. A lot of the time, working with different entrepreneurs is like, “My only obstacle is money. I’ve got the idea and skills but no money.” Here, you’ve got two books or at least one book that costs $0. Your book talks about how you have to take some action.

What do you think is the number one problem for small businesses?

MTA 1 | Pivot And Change

Small Business Survival Guide: How to Save Money and Thrive During Challenging Times

A negative mindset is the number one obstacle for a small business owner. I wrote an entire chapter about mindset, Chapter 2. On pages 6 and 7 of my book, I talk about the steps that you need to take to overcome that negative mindset. You can’t sell if you are thinking negatively and if you can’t sell, then your business isn’t making any money. I talk about that in this book, but I also talk about a mindset and how we can change our minds and the way we think. Some of us have been programmed for years to think a certain way. I expound about that even more in my book, Thrive and Be Somebody! 11 Steps to Maneuver Life’s Obstacles with Confidence.

What’s interesting business-wise is I was having this conversation and it’s fascinating. For restaurants, I did not know that they were on. I was having a conversation with my daughter and she was telling me how she has seen on Reddit all of these people and entire groups at Wendy’s chains putting a sign on the door and leaving. Entire groups of people are walking out. They are tired of being treated like crap.

The other thing when you work in fast food companies is you can only get your schedule within the week. She was explaining to me that if somebody was like, “Do you want Friday?” She’s like, “I haven’t got my schedule yet.” It changes every week and also keeps you under a minimum of 40 hours a week. They don’t have to pay the benefits and stuff. They have no medical or anything. You are getting this minimum wage, a horribly biased manager that doesn’t know how to manage and low income.

Pretend this is happening to you. There’s one good manager out there who loves the people.

I’m sure there is. She went to a fast-food restaurant here in Las Vegas. She got there and there was a lady at the counter. My daughter was exhausted and wanted a hamburger. The lady was like, “I’m sorry it’s taking so long.” My daughter was like, “It’s fine. I’m listening to a podcast.” The lady was crying and she goes, “We only have two people that know what they are doing here. The rest are all being trained. They are all brand new and no one knows what they are doing. We are behind.”

She was losing it. My daughter saw this poor lady and felt horrible for all this work. In fact, she knew what that was like and tried to comfort her. The lady was like, “Can I give you a shake but we only have vanilla. We are on it.” This is going on in patience. The thing is people have made millionaires from these people and they don’t even give them some benefits. It’s unbelievable.

I had fast food benefits from the university.

Your number one customer has to be your employee. If your employees are happy, they will make your customers happy.

Tell me about that.

I’m not going to name it because it was delicious.

Are you the meat lover’s pizza?

At Domino’s Pizza in ‘96 or something, I was the Domino’s meat-eater. I’ve got one month.

Who would eat that?

I would eat anything, let’s be honest. My flatmate worked for KFC. When he did a night shift, he brought all the chickens and stuff. We were like, “Good idea, Nathan.”

Interestingly, you talked about what some of these bigger companies are doing to their employees. It will end up having the opposite effect on their business. Imagine if you’ve got customers coming in and employees are crying. That is part of the reason why Delta Airlines, and I didn’t write about this in the book. Chapter 3 is focused on your customers. Your number one customer has to be your employee. If your employees are happy, then they are going to make your customers happy because they are happy.

People aren’t stupid. You can look at somebody and you can tell if they are happy and they love what they are doing. How many times have you walked into a business and saw employees smiling, whistling or singing a song? That affects the customer. Especially for small businesses, you have to put the employees first.

MTA 1 | Pivot And Change

Pivot And Change: You watch your business grow, and when something happens and it starts to take a dive, you get anxious. If something happens to your kid, you want the best outcome.

When you walk into a store and people start whistling, is that what you heard? I have seen it happen when I walked into the store, there’s no one whistling.

Sandra said, “An entrepreneur is exciting but I definitely agree with the mindset approach, especially with so many things you need to learn. It can be overwhelming when you are your own CEO, financial officer, tax accountant, social media coordinator, and supply chain officer.” We are trying to wear all these hats.

CEO stands for Chief Everything Officer. She’s here, ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Josevie Jackson herself, the author of The Small Business Survival Guide, which you can get from the carousel down below. We are getting some insight information from the lovely lady who is a formative woman, world-class leader, entrepreneur, and business owner with many hats that she would wear and not change the hat but create an outstanding result for whatever personality under that hat and for what stands there then. We are so excited to know and be able to delve into her mind. If you have a question for her like, “What did you have for breakfast?” That is not the question. Go harder and deeper. What did you have for breakfast?

I had French toast and coffee. I was wondering if I should say that because I was supposed to be doing the 21-day reset with you.

That was a trick question. You’ve got caught. That’s it. Do burpees now.

I’m so excited and eating way more than I have ever eaten. I already dropped 5 pounds. Jamie is down 5 pounds. Jenny has lost a lot. I’m not going to say her weight.

Are you also exercising on this diet or just changing your eating habits?

Businesses that have the creativity and the gumption to take action and put their creative ideas into action are the ones that succeed.

It’s eating the nutritional thing that your body works because it’s always, “We just discovered this, which counters this. They discovered the latest.”

It’s eating every three hours and eating three things. You need protein, carbs, and fat. We have a lot of alarms.

Ironically, my tone to go eat is Kung Fu Panda’s Larger Than Life. Before you wrote the book, there were moments somewhere that predated your new idea, “I want to write a book.” What was the catalyst for that moment if you could think back? Did you think back to, “You are doing phenomenal things. You need to be a writer,” or did you stub your tongue, “I should write a book.”

Jamie, I’m going to tell you something. I wasn’t planning on doing this. These are my books. If you notice the book here. It is my very first book. I wrote a book when I was eight years old and it was published by the State of Illinois. That was the catalyst for me thinking one day I was going to grow up and be an author.

There is an eight-year-old mindset default. One of these is about a speaker, an entrepreneur or a world-class opera.

Jamie and I are shopping together.

I’m going to win.

I want to shop. I’m trying to figure out how I can get some of the free books while I’m doing this. If anybody is out there and they are not downloading the free books, take advantage of it because every time they are giving away stuff, I’m always one of the first ones to get it.

MTA 1 | Pivot And Change

Pivot And Change: People aren’t stupid. You can look at somebody and tell if they are happy and they love what they are doing.

If you are on one of the platforms to get the free book, you’ve got to go to HappyHoneys.com, click Live, and you can find us there. We have some great books but not only that but we’ve also got a couple of free ones. We’ve got The Fearless Entrepreneur for $0.99. Normally, it’s $15. We also have Rich Dad Poor Dad completely for free. We have Three Feet From Gold.

That is one of the factors in Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Josevie, what steps do you offer in the book to help small businesses?

I offer ten steps. Before I offer those steps, I talk about the importance of taking action. All the steps are on the Table of Contents. I talk about managing your mindset, focusing on customers, conducting a SWOT analysis. If you don’t know what SWOT is, it’s focusing on your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. I didn’t make that up. I talk about creating objectives and making a plan.

Years ago, no one would dare go into business without a business plan. People nowadays go start a business and don’t even think about a business plan. If you are already in business, it’s not too late. Start planning what you are going to do. If this threat comes up, be prepared in advance. If you have a month that’s a low month and you know you are barely making the money, come up with something else. I also talk about reducing costs, managing your cashflow, using low-cost marketing, being persistent, creative and pivoting.

In 2020, businesses because of COVID were practically shut down and a lot of them had to pivot. I put some examples in the book of businesses like ExxonMobil. They started producing hand sanitizers. Also, Brooks Brothers. It’s a clothing store and they started making surgical gowns and masks. Also, T3 Expo. Nobody was doing exhibitions or conventions so they took their trade show space and converted it into hospital space.

A business can be creative and can pivot. Just because you are accustomed to doing things one way doesn’t mean that you have to always do them that same way. It’s those businesses who have the creativity and the gumption to be able to take action and put their creative ideas into action are the ones who succeed. If you can pivot, you can weather any storm.

Just because you’re accustomed to doing things one way doesn’t mean that you have to always do them that same way.

Businesses that can pivot can innovate. Those are the innovators. That is where new ideas come out and how we create new products or things. One of the things that Apple did that I thought was so well done was they asked, “What business are you in?” The next question they have to ask is, “What business are you really in?”

Steve Jobs did this an entire day with his team, had gone and come back. He said, “What are we really in?” Someone said, “We are in computers.” He said, “That is not the business we are in.” What they finally came up with, at the end of the day, was that they are in the business of connecting people with their passions, and then they’ve got the iPod. That is what they do. They connect people with music and their friends with the iPhone. They get people with movies and entertainment. They connect people with their passions. That is their whole core underlying what they do with their business.

Dana said, “A business plan is so necessary. I think of it as a reality check. What is it going to take to sustain your why?” It is going to sustain your why and getting connected with that is super important too. If we are not connected with that, we are not going to hold on to the things that we need to hold on to.

Passion is strong energy. Your why is connected to a passion or something that you feel. You are drawn. We always say that in the heart, the soul is there. The last time I checked, my heart was smaller than what it was but it’s still there. That’s important. You are pulling towards stuff and that is energy. It’s a higher frequency overdrive.

If you are uninterested in what you are doing and your energy is low, there’s a higher degree of heart attacks on a Monday morning for people that have a 9:00 to 5:00 job. They are dreading going to work. When you are an entrepreneur, you may work 80 hours a week so you don’t have to work a 40-hour week. Those 80 hours a week are something that you care about, interested in and passionate about. There’s the concept of freedom. I was asked, “What is your hourly wage?” I’m like, “I wouldn’t even know what an hourly wage is anymore.”

It was super funny because he was asking me, “What is my hourly wage?” I go, “$1,000 an hour.” He’s like, “What is it even anymore?” I go, “To give you an idea, they are fighting to get people $15 an hour minimum.” I can’t imagine living like that. Josevie, thank you so much for joining us. How do people reach you if they have any questions?

I’m willing to give away free copies of my book, Thrive and Be Somebody! on my website. You can reach out to me. If you have questions, you can find me on my website at www.ThriveAndBe.com. If you sign right there, you will get a free copy of Thrive and Be Somebody! I hope you all enjoy this book. If you are in business and you have ever had a negative thought or concern about, whether or not you are going to succeed in business, get rid of those thoughts. Get the book, and put a plan into action because you definitely can succeed. It’s the businesses that keep going. Those are the ones who stay in business.

Thank you so much, Josevie. You are awesome. We are going to have you again when your next book Thrive and Be Somebody! comes out.

MTA 1 | Pivot And Change

Pivot And Change: Years ago, no one would dare go into business without a business plan. People nowadays go start a business and they don’t even think about a business plan. If you’re already in business, it’s not too late.

I’m looking forward to it.

I will see you while I’m shopping on your other site. I’m going to go and buy some of these books that you are already offering.

We even got The High Performance Planner on there for 36% off. They are all good prices. Go to HappyHoneys.com and click Live Shopping.

I’m already there. I’m just waiting.

We will see you soon.

Don’t tell Ben because he thinks I’m crazy buying all these books.

We won’t tell him.

If you haven’t looked at something, then you don’t have any idea what it’s all about.

Thank you so much for joining.

Thank you for having me. Thank you, everyone.

We have George Chanos coming on next. He’s going to be joining us very soon. We are going to chat with George Chanos. I am so excited to talk to George. He is an incredible guy. He’s a thought leader. I’m not good with politics so I’m hoping I’m getting this correct. He was the former Attorney General of Nevada. He’s an incredible guy. He’s intelligent. He has written the book, Millennial Samurai, and I love some of the advice that he gives in there. I totally agree with it. Let’s get him on here, chat with him and find out more.

George, welcome.

How are you?

We are good. It’s good to see you.

Thank you.

I’m so excited to have you. Did I get that right, you were the former Attorney General of Nevada?

That’s correct.

In what years?

MTA 1 | Pivot And Change

Pivot And Change: It’s the businesses that keep going that stay in business.

In 2005 and 2006, I was appointed by Governor Guinn to fill a vacancy of the then-Attorney General who became a Federal Judge. I served those two years and decided that politics was way too dysfunctional and toxic to stay in. I went on to have a wonderful life.

You are a blast. We met you several times at our good friend Bill John’s house. Have you done improv with us?

No.

Not yet, you haven’t. I talked to a lady and she said, “I suffered through improv.” We are on a platform that shoots us out to a bunch of platforms but the main platform we are on is Amazon Live. We’ve got a bunch of viewers over there and they are all chatting. We are seeing it in a different place. We’ve got a Carousel. I’m going to pull up your book for the Carousel. You can purchase his book. I believe he is shipping me a couple of copies to give away for free. I don’t have them now so we will give them a future live and promote them again.

I love the way how George’s book has got short little moments for you to be able to grab and read. Ironically, I opened it up at the one that’s love.

I love it too because, in one of the things that I was reading, you recommend learning languages. We are all learning a language. We and our whole household is learning Spanish because I have my grandson living here and we want him to start learning more languages.

That’s one of the best things that you can do to exercise and increase the plasticity of your brain.

Change is coming like a freight train, and it’s going to change the world that we live in.

Do you speak several languages?

No. I wish I did. I have been doing a lot of reading and studying my whole life to exercise my brain. The two things that I regret that I never did was I never learned a second language or a musical instrument. Those are two things that I highly recommend people do.

I did piano when I was younger. There’s an app, it’s awesome and free. A bunch of us are on it. It’s five minutes a day and it’s super fun. It feels like you’re playing a game.

You can learn any language you want. The other thing that your readers should know is that they can download a free copy of the entire book at MillennialSamurai.com. Over 13,000 people have downloaded it so far. I’m trying to give away a million copies.

What was the catalyst for you before you engaged in this project? It’s a beautiful big book. There are a lot of fantastic information in it and some wonderful tidbits. What was the catalyst for you to go, “I’m going to throw this all together for people to benefit?”

In 2012, I had a heart attack and my daughter at the time was fifteen years old. After the heart attack, I was concerned that I might not be here for her. I put my affairs in order through my estate planning. I sat down and began to write a letter to my daughter. In that letter, I was trying to download what I had learned throughout my life and anticipate questions that she might have and would have wanted to ask her father if he had been alive.

It’s because I liked to write, within a month or two, I had over 100 pages in this letter and then I thought, “This is not a letter. This is a book. This ought to be a book. Why don’t I make it into a book and then leave her a book?” That was my first book called Seize Your Destiny: A Roadmap to Success. That essentially was me downloading what I had learned in my years of life on the planet and what I thought she needed to know.

I realized that the 30-year lifespan that I had was very different than the 30 years in the future that she was going to live through her life, so I wanted to know what was going to happen over the 30 next years so that I could advise her about that. I started researching the future and what was going to happen over the 30 next years. That became Millennial Samurai: A Mindset for the 21st Century. What you will find is absolutely extraordinary.

MTA 1 | Pivot And Change

Millennial Samurai: A Mindset For The 21st Century

I gave a speech to a group of about 110 people at a luncheon here in Las Vegas. It was talking all about the future and what’s going to happen. If you haven’t looked at something, then you don’t have any idea of what it’s all about. When you start digging into what’s going to happen over the next 10, 15, 20, and 30 years, it is absolutely mind-blowing. It surprised the hell out of me.

I thought I was a pretty well-read guy and I didn’t know any of this stuff. I thought I needed to share that with everyone and make people more prepared for the future. We are living in the most extraordinary period in human history. There is a technological tsunami on the horizon and it is going to change life as we know it over the next 10, 20, and 30 years in ways that none of us can even comprehend.

I talk about it in the book. The book is broken down into 182 chapters that are only 1 to 3 pages each. It covers everything that needs to know about life in the next 30 years. It prepares you for that life, and how to survive and thrive in a technological tsunami. That is why I’m giving it away for free online because I want everyone to know about what’s going to happen. I want them to be prepared, and try to empower other people. If you don’t like reading off of your computer on a digital copy, then you will have to go to Amazon, order the book, and you will get a physical copy.

I love your passion for this. In the very first time I met you, you didn’t know me at all and you were like, “Nice to meet you. Here’s my book.” You gave me your book and it is good. This book is awesome and phenomenal. Your mindset is exactly in alignment with what my husband and I believe as far as what we preach as well, so I was super impressed. A lot of it is common sense stuff but we don’t think about it.

It’s positive sense. Sometimes, we don’t see it too commonly. That is why it’s great to grab George’s book and have a read. You are like Nostradamus telling us, “Go into the future and come back to tell us what’s going to help us,” by flipping through this book. That’s a great offer that you’ve got there for people to get access to this fantastic knowledge. What I like to do is flip and go, “What should I think about and focus on?” It’s like, “Genomics. The future is beyond our ability to comprehend.” I’m going to get a quick read with these nuggets of information for me and understand what that is, “What else do I need?” It’s like, “Prioritize.”

It makes it super easy to read because you can pick it up and read a chapter at a time. I love how you put this book together.

I love all the powerful little quotes with each chapter.

We need to increase awareness in this country and around the world about what’s going on. You can’t be prepared for something that you’re unaware of.

My favorite is Action because I’m all about taking action.

Chapter 80 is Networking, which I love.

I love your mission. It sounds like you want to help people to understand what’s coming. We are at such a different time. I could never have imagined I would have been locked down for two years in a pandemic. That thought never crossed my mind. I had more stupid fears like spiders, especially around Halloween.

There are some modern-day Nostradamuses out there. Ray Kurzweil, who’s the Head of Artificial Intelligence for Google, has been called in a Nostradamus of sorts. Kurzweil tells us that the singularity or moment in time when machine intelligence will eclipse human intelligence is coming by 2029. Theoretical Physicist Stephen Hawking, before he passed away in 2014, said, “That moment in time or singularity that Kurzweil was talking about will be the greatest event in human history. It will be greater than fire, the wheel, or anything man or woman has ever conceived of.”

To have that beyond the immediate horizon and the potential for that happening is pretty remarkable. Kurzweil goes on beyond that and says, “Once we hit the singularity, there will be exponential learning growth of artificial intelligence.” Within several years, artificial intelligence will not be our equal. It will be a billion times more capable than human intelligence and the human mind can’t even comprehend what that means.

Change is coming. It’s coming like a freight train and going to change the world that we live in. It has the potential to create a second Enlightenment, an unprecedented abundance, dystopia, and an end of life as we know it. It’s all a matter of how we handle this technology. It’s like putting a child in a race car. How is it going to perform? The difference is that in this case, the child built the race car. Hopefully, he will know how to drive it as well.

There are over 180 different chapters in it. Is there a couple that is your favorite? If you are going to just read three, you have to get these in there.

I have taken the 182 and narrowed that down to 100 that I call the essentials. I have created these worksheets that people can work with their children that are one page each. They are all of the topics that you can talk to your kids about, they are one page each, and they are called the essentials. If I had to narrow it down to 3 or 4, I would say the Ancient Core Values of Character, Courage, Commitment, and Compassion.

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Pivot And Change: There is a technological tsunami on the horizon, and it will change life as we know it over the next 10 to 30 years in ways that none of us can even comprehend.

Compassion, I have been missing that. For the lack of compassion, I have been seeing in the world in the last few years, I’m floored. I saw it years ago. I was on the internet when there were bulletin board systems and nobody even knew what the internet was. I had friends of mine that worked in the government and they were like, “You’ve got to get a computer. We can build you one because this thing is coming. It’s called the internet. It’s going to be amazing.” The number of trolls we had back then was fairly high but the trolls and what’s happening now is insane.

My daughter is dealing with it. I don’t know if you are familiar with the platform, Twitch. On a bunch of servers on there, they are all gamers and there are a ton of different genres. They all did a blackout on Twitch and didn’t stream. They were getting these hate bots. A hate bot comes into your channel and starts spewing all this hate and you end up having to shut down. When you have a stream going, you have to shut your stream down. There are a lot of setups involved and you can’t just jump back on. It doesn’t work like that. They are streams.

The streamers want Twitch to do something more about it. What is happening is they will use a specific name or a certain thing in the name. My daughter recognized it and she will get somebody else that will message her and say, “That is a hate bot. You need to block that right away. She’s like, “If I can see it clearly, they should have some technology to be able to do that.” That is happening on Twitch nowadays.

The platforms need to accept more responsibility for controlling that type of activity. When you read the book, you are going to learn a lot of the things that you need to know about these types of issues. One of the things that you need to know is that your brain is simultaneously your greatest asset, vulnerability and weakness.

Our brains receive eleven million bits of information per second. That has been happening our whole lives and yet, we can only consciously process 15 to 50 bits of information per second. The vast majority of information that enters our minds enter outside of our conscious awareness. We are not even aware of it but it’s there. It is coming in every second of the day and influencing the way we think and makes decisions.

There is an immense vulnerability in the human brain. When you have bots, whether they are hate, mischief, foreign government bots or whatever they are, the ability to potentially influence people is enormous and creates a very significant liability. People don’t understand this but a phone has 100,000 times the computing power that NASA had in 1969. This is technology. Twitter and TikTok are technologies.

What you are experiencing with these devices and technologies is essentially the water on the floor of a pending tsunami. You’ve got a massive amount of a technological tsunami that’s on the horizon and you are just getting a taste of it. What you are describing is a little taste of the technology and the disruption that’s on its way.

People need to understand that it is very much in their self-interest to help the other guy and work together.

Unless you are aware, Sheryl Sandberg is the COO of Facebook, the only female on their Board of Directors, and the former Chief of Staff of Larry Summers, the US Secretary of Treasury. Sandberg says, “You cannot change that which you were unaware of. Once you are aware, you cannot help but change.” We need to increase awareness in this country and around the world about what’s going on. You can’t be prepared for something that you are unaware of. If people are oblivious to these issues, it can’t work out well.

I believe that we need to increase awareness and more people need to be talking about these issues and social media. It has influenced suicide rates among people. In adolescent girls, it has tripled. It is having a profound effect on society so we need to pay attention to these things. On the one hand, this technology can create a second Enlightenment.

If used properly, this technology can educate the world. We don’t need 250,000 teachers teaching Algebra. We could have one teacher who’s a brilliant mathematician teaching everyone Algebra over the internet over Zoom. Why aren’t we making these adjustments and having the greatest minds at Harvard and Stanford teaching all of us? Why are they only teaching a select few? Why aren’t we broadcasting every one of their classes to the planet for free?

I hadn’t even thought about that but here’s the thing. I was a dance teacher when I was young. I started teaching dance at age thirteen. At sixteen years old, I was in a bit of an emotionally abusive environment, left home and had to quit dancing. During the pandemic, I found this website and picked up dancing again. I’m doing ballet, jazz, hip-hop and everything.

What’s so cool about it is I’ve got the technology. We have this big screen up. Right in front of me is my dance studio. It’s a little screen projector. It’s on a big screen. I feel like I’m in the class. I’m taking classes from people that I would only ever dream of being able to take a class from. I love it because I can slow the teacher down, put her on a loop, and watch her from the front to the back. I am learning dance in such a way that I never even thought possible or could be taught that way. The technology is incredible. You are right. Why aren’t we teaching our kids like that?

Why aren’t the greatest scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and teachers teaching everyone? Why aren’t we harnessing technology? Instead, we’ve got people doing tweaking, pranks, the Kardashians, and all the crap that we have on social media. Why aren’t we harnessing this amazing force for change? We have the opportunity to create a Second Enlightenment. We have the ability, the technology and the people. It can absolutely be done. There are so many things that we could do.

What can we do?

Create awareness about this opportunity. Milton Friedman was a Nobel Prize-winning Economist out of the University of Chicago. He won his Nobel Prize for a simple observation, which is that people operate out of self-interest. People do what it is in their self-interest to do. If we explain to people that it is in their self-interest to open their minds and collaborate with others and that opposing viewpoints are assets rather than liabilities that can inform and enlighten us. If people understand that there’s this technological tsunami on the horizon and collaboration is essential, cooperation, collaboration, and compassion are essential elements for our survival as a species.

MTA 1 | Pivot And Change

Pivot And Change: Within several years, artificial intelligence will not be our equal. It will be a billion times more capable than human intelligence, and the human mind doesn’t even have the capacity to comprehend what that means.

If people begin to understand this, then Milton Friedman tells us, “Once they understand it’s in their self-interest, maybe they will stop fighting and start cooperating.” It goes back to awareness. That is why I’m giving away the books online, why I am speaking, and why I’m doing this interview. It’s because I want to get the word out that change is coming and the answer is for us to collaborate together. We will survive, thrive, and could have a glorious future for ourselves, our children, and future generations or we can continue to fight, not collaborate, ignore the plight of our fellow man, and end up in a very bad place.

Once everybody realizes that they will wake up and start taking action, cooperating, and collaborating, that’s what we need and it’s not just me saying this. Look at nature, colonies of bees, ant farms, schools of fish, and flocks of starling. They all collaborate and work together. It’s the path forward and the way that things work out the best. We are profoundly interdependent with one another. We need each other. The fire ants can’t swim. They drown in torrential rains. To avoid drowning, they lock their legs and self-assemble into floating rafts. Together, they survive. Alone, they would perish.

Humans are no different. In working together, we survive and thrive. Being alone, arguing, not cooperating, not collaborating, not being compassionate to one another, and not thinking that I’m my brother’s keeper, that type of mentality is going to harm us all, including those who practice that type of mentality. People need to understand that it is very much in their self-interest to help the other guy, their neighbor and work together.

That’s absolutely true right from the nature of science. I was talking about Charles Darwin, the Theory of Evolution, and the survival of the fittest. In the survival of the fittest, Charles Darwin himself says it’s true if these elements come into play. Collaboration is how nature is more so. There are unique elements where there are wins but it’s the group, the herd or even interspecies working together that could make positive outcomes for all.

Modern science or technology has said, “I’ve got to be better than everyone,” but actually, while working together, the collaboration of businesses, and people linking work together, huge changes can happen. I backpacked through Africa. They had a lot less and yet I saw more things take place and so many more smiles and laughter. The people go, “It doesn’t matter, whether we are different or if you have more money. This is what we are doing. Do you want to be a part of it?” I said, “I want to be a part of it. How can I contribute?” I’m not thinking about opposing teams and fighting.

What Amy and I teach in a lot of our seminars is the concept of, “It doesn’t matter what happened.” We will look at what was wrong and how we can do that. We said that there are millions of bits of information going through the mind. If we are like, “What went wrong?” We could pull that evidence from those millions of bits of memory of what’s wrong. If we go, “How to be better?” From those millions of information, we get this. It’s saying, “How can this be better? What happens now? How can it be better? How can we be better? How can we do it? How can we create these fire ants of happy humans in a technological tsunami?”

Darwin said, “It’s not the strongest or the most intelligent that survive. It’s those most capable of adaptation.” That’s number one. Number two, any CEO at any major company will tell you that teams beat individuals every time. Put together a good team and that team will beat an individual every time. There is even more simple proof.

Look at the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? How many contestants did they have? In all of their shows, you had three lifelines. One was to take a 50/50 split of the answers and you would increase your odds by 50%. The other one was, you could call an expert and would increase your odds by 66% on average over all of the shows. The third one was you could ask the audience. If you ask the audience, the audience was right more than 90% of the time.

There’s a great book called The Wisdom of Crowds. It proves that crowds come up with the best answers, not individuals. If you had a NASA scientist, put a bunch of beans in a jar, and ask the NASA scientist or Albert Einstein, “How many beans are in the jar?” They would come up with a pretty good guess. If you took a thousand normal people and asked them, “How many beans are in the jar?” The average of those people’s guesses would be the winner. It would beat out the Einstein or the NASA scientists.

Your brain is simultaneously your greatest asset, vulnerability, and weakness.

That’s what The Wisdom of Crowds tells us. The power of us working collaboratively is undeniable. It’s documented time and time again through major studies and tremendous volumes of experiences over time. We are profoundly interdependent as human beings. We need each other. We are at our best when we work together in teams.

In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari talks about this and says, “This ability of humans to collaborate at a large scale is what allowed them to move to the top of the food chain.” What allowed us to be the supreme beings on this planet is our ability to collaborate with one another, think ahead and plan. These are the two strengths that humans have over all other animals. All animals collaborate but human beings were able to develop these social fictions that allowed them to collaborate in larger groups.

In the beginning, as cavemen, we could collaborate up to about 100 or 150 people in a tribe and that was pretty much the max. We started developing these social fictions like religions, churches, towns, villages, city-states and nation-states. Those social fictions caused us to be able to trust one another and understand, “Are you an American? I’m an American. Are you from Chicago? I’m from Chicago.”

That type of social arrangement allowed humans to collaborate in the millions. Animals don’t collaborate in the millions but humans do, and they do when they are tied together by a social fiction. When we all say, “We are all Americans. We are in this together,” we rise to the occasion as we did in World War II, 9/11 or any situation.

Another interesting thing is that it’s in our nature. You have a disaster like 9/11 or a natural disaster like Katrina and people come together. They don’t ask if the guy that they are pulling out of the lake is Black, White, Christian, Jewish or whatever he is. They just help him and pull him out of the lake. That’s our inherent nature. In a crisis, this shows itself. When we are not in crisis, then somehow we lose sight of this and start to worry about ourselves. What people need to understand is it’s not about you, your guns, your feelings on race or abortion. It’s about all of us.

Take your feelings, put them on the back burner, and start thinking about humanity. Start thinking about all of us, all 335 million Americans, and all 7.5 billion people on the planet. That’s the mindset that we need to cultivate. The way we cultivate that is we create awareness that the tsunami is coming. If you think it’s bad, wait until automation eliminates 50% of the jobs, and then you are going to have a situation.

Get out ahead of it, start working with each other, talking about the issues, and thinking about how we can harness technology to move the entire planet and the country forward and to lift all boats. Start thinking in those terms, about your place in society and how you can be a contributing part of a bigger and better future.

I could talk to you forever. We would love to have you back again at some point if that would be possible. This is a brilliant conversation and I absolutely love where you are taking this and how you are thinking about it. I do think that it’s very important but we are going to spin this wheel for Josevie Jackson’s book. We are going to keep pushing your book, George. Thank you so much. Is there a way that they can contact you if they have any questions?

MTA 1 | Pivot And Change

Pivot And Change: We will survive, thrive, and could have a glorious future for ourselves, our children, and future generations, or we can continue to fight, not collaborate, ignore the plight of our fellow man, and end up in a very bad place.

You can reach me at GJChanos. My email is GJChanos@Gmail.com. Feel free to put it up and let people know they can reach out to me. They can also find me on social media under @GeorgeJChanos. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. They can connect with me there. I am constantly putting out information in an attempt to try to empower people.

You are a source of some wonderful and well-thought-out information that is eloquently and clearly presented in such a way a novice can also be aware of information that they were not aware of before.

Thank you so much, George.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing your time with us. I hope you’ve got all the information, knowledge, awareness, ideas and free books.

Thank you so much.

Important Links:

About George J. Chanos

MTA 1 | Pivot And ChangeGeorge J. Chanos, Esq. served as Nevada’s thirty-first Attorney General. He administered Nevada’s Department of Justice and acted as the state’s chief legal officer and advisor. While serving as Nevada’s Attorney General, he successfully argued (9/0) the case of Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U.S. 406 (2007) before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Prior to serving as Nevada’s Attorney General, Mr. Chanos had a distinguished legal career representing individual and corporate clients on all matters relating to the growth and management of their businesses. He is an author, speaker and business consultant. He has served on numerous boards, both civic and corporate and for the last ten years has served as Chairman of Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop Inc., a rapidly growing one-hundred-plus-unit QSR franchise whose Millennial owners—his partners—he continues to advise and mentor.

Mr. Chanos is a father and an uncle. His daughter, Alexandra, is currently attending the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and his nephew, David, is a graduate of San Diego State University. They are both Millennials and are the inspiration for this book. For more information on the subjects covered in this book and on related topics, visit GeorgeJChanos.com and MillennialSamurai.com.

About Josevie Jackson

MTA 1 | Pivot And ChangeAfter only one month of becoming a full-time professional real estate agent, Josevie landed her first property listing. It received 2 offers in less than 12 hours of being posted on the MLS; – AND it sold for more than the appraised value!!

Josevie utilizes the expert strategies for successfully selling homes as featured in Forbes magazine. In addition, Josevie puts her dynamic personality, and drive for success to work for YOU. Your success is her success.

Josevie grew up in a small, Midwestern town in IL. She was raised by a single-mother part time and the other half of the time by her paternal grandparents. She was surrounded by examples who all had an extremely hard work ethic. Her mother worked as a postal worker in extreme weather and was also one of the first female cable installers in the US. Josevie’s grandparents owned real estate investments, an ice cream shop and other small businesses. She received her first introduction into “owning your own business” by helping them -at an early age.

While Josevie has had more than one successful run in the corporate world, she achieves the most satisfaction working to benefit her clients. With her God-given talents and know-how, she quickly becomes an expert at whatever she decides to do. By aligning herself with the #1 Real Estate Agency in AZ, she has ensured her success in real estate as well.

She has a soft spot for the under-dog and works hard to negotiate in her clients favor. Her life-goal is to make a positive & lasting impact on the lives of others.