John Corcoran: 10:56
It’s hard when you’re young and you’re trying to establish yourself in some big, much bigger company. Older owner comes in and I mean, it sounds like he wasn’t threatening about it, but you could take it as a threat.
Rich Mulholland: 11:08
He was trying to be a mentor. Basically. The idea was that he felt that it was a race to the bottom. We were never going to make money. And I said to him, but we’re making lots of money. We’re doing really, really well. I mean, I’d bought a stretch limousine. I was living like a twit, and it was because I was using the tools that were available on the day. So I challenged their business model because I didn’t have any of the sunk costs that they had.
John Corcoran: 11:33
But the hard part for you now is 25 years later, you’ve built an infrastructure, a team, a workforce. You’ve bought equipment, offices, things like that. And you’ve got these sunk costs just like they did 25 years ago. This new threat comes in. It’s hard to, you know, disrupt yourself with all those costs. But not to mention to, like, convince the team that you’re going to do it the new disruptive way.
Rich Mulholland: 11:58
Right. And it’s inconceivable that in most industries, it’s inconceivable that almost nobody would admit, would say, our industry will not be disrupted. There will be some exceptions that prove the rule. Right. But for the most part, I think we’re all aware to some degree. And these tools will disrupt the way we’re doing things. So the question is, do you want to be the person pushing against it, or do you want to be the person that’s leading the charge? And the only reason I would rather be the one leading the charge is I figure that if the change is going to happen, by the time it happens, I’d like to be 3 or 4 steps ahead of everybody else.
John Corcoran: 12:34
Yeah. I liken it also to companies that I’ve known of. A lot of companies that have a regional workforce, they hire only people in their little region, and a lot of times they end up paying a lot more than they would otherwise. There’s a limited, you know, workforce labor pool that they have to choose from. And they get frustrated by that. And they refuse to, like, find labor from other parts of the globe. I’ve done the opposite. My team is remote all over the globe, and I’ve seen companies that have come under threat because they’ve only hired local workforce and they end up, you know, not being able to deliver as much of a service because they don’t have as many team members. So I think there’s kind of some similarities there.
Rich Mulholland: 13:19
Well, there’s 100%. And that’s why I say this, this relevant conversation is not limited to AI. There are many, many forces. And, you know, in the book, I challenge the notion of purpose to some degree, because if we start believing that our purpose or we will never, you know, made in America is the the only way that we’ll do things, then if that becomes part of your ethos, then it’s going to hold you back from changing. And the world has moved on since you wrote that. And one of the big lines that I really try to push people as a leader is to tell your staff, put a sign on your door and let the sign on the door say, remember, you’re not telling me that I was wrong. You’re telling me that I am no longer right because our staff can see the world especially. You know, I hire a lot of young people and they can see the world differently to me. But, you know, five years ago, I said that it had to be done this way and I was a different person.
The world was a different world and everything has changed. So don’t worry. Coming to me. You’re not saying, Rich, you were wrong. You know you were absolutely right. Or you could have been right and you know, 2020. But you’re no longer right now. And when you train your staff to be able to communicate that way to you, it gives them permission to to constantly challenge relevance. And that’s why one of the big arguments I make is that, you know, if being relentlessly relevant isn’t one of your core values, one of the behaviors of your business is that we are in a pursuit to be relevant and relevant is the state of being appropriate to the matter at hand? Why would anybody not want to be appropriate to the matter at hand? Which begs the question always what is the matter at hand? And when you start instilling this language in your business. And in fact, for me, again, this was an individual thing. Am I appropriate to the matter at hand and to the world as it is right now? And the areas where I wasn’t, I tried to fix.
John Corcoran: 15:17
Let’s talk about curiosity, because you write about this in the book. You say that curiosity is the key to staying relevant. Talk about you seem like a naturally curious person, but you know, how can leaders and how can teams within a company really embrace this culture of curiosity?
Rich Mulholland: 15:37
Yeah, I think I think it’s different. I think curiosity is this God particle of relevance. I think that deep down you have to want to to improve and you have to want to learn a different way. And you have to be very, very excited about proving the past version of yourself wrong. And the reason I find that hypothesis exciting is that I want to believe that the best is yet to come. So if the book of my life was written, I, you know, whenever I die, I would really hope that the photograph they chose for the cover is an event that hasn’t happened yet. I want to believe that there’s more to come and that it’s still exciting. And the only way to do that is to be curious about new, better ways of doing things that the younger version of me wasn’t equipped or able to think about. And, and so I get very, very excited when I get new knowledge that the past version of me didn’t have.
But it’s the same thing. You know, when we train somebody to have a keynote, to write a keynote, I always say to them, you, you have to introduce any idea with clarity and curiosity. The person has to be clear about what they’re talking about, but you have to introduce a ripple that they’re curious about. And so the job for us as leaders is to unleash what can my team be curious about this week? What can they go out and be curious about? And the way you make people curious is you find part of their worldview, I think, that they care about. And then you offer them the hint that they may be wrong about something, or they may no longer be right about something, and that becomes an itch that they have to scratch. And that’s how we create this culture of curiosity in our business. But of course, the other thing to do is to hire curious people in the first place.
John Corcoran: 17:20
Yeah. Let’s talk about Neuralink, which is yet another Elon Musk company, but one that doesn’t get as much attention as Tesla and SpaceX and the other ones you write about. It’s a company that is developing brain computer interfaces. Talk about it.
Rich Mulholland: 17:38
Yeah. So I think a lot of people in the book, I talk quite a bit about the difference between Ani, AGI and ASI, artificial narrow intelligence or general intelligence and superintelligence. And like I also go to war with the idea of AI as artificial intelligence. I don’t even worry so much about this singularity, this post-singularity world in which AIS is equipped with all of these. You know, they’re so much smarter than us, because I see that we’re about to go through the second hominid revolution. So the first revolution we had was when we invented speech. Right? So. So we developed a gene that allowed us to communicate via speech.
And that’s what allowed our species, you know, Homo sapiens to emerge as the winners in the original race between humanoid people. And that was the first hormonal revolution. That was incredible. That was one of the most amazing things in the world. We can communicate at 47 bits per second using voice. How amazing is that? If you understand, previously, people could communicate inefficiently at one bit per second and it was just a grunt. So this was a game changer. Now what’s happened is all of that changed with the brain computer interface. Because if you look at, you know, who Nolan Noland Arbaugh is.
John Corcoran: 18:57
Well, you write about him in the book. Yeah.
Rich Mulholland: 18:59
Yeah, yeah. So he’s patient zero. He’s the first person to have the Neuralink chip in his brain. And he can play video games faster than anybody else can because he just thinks, oh, I want to shoot that guy over there. And then the guy’s dead.
John Corcoran: 19:13
And I remember when they announced it and they unveiled it. And, you know, critically, he’s a quadriplegic. Quadriplegic. So he didn’t have use of his arms or hands. And this allowed him to play games and control other things.
Rich Mulholland: 19:27
It’s really simple. I mean, okay, so it’s very, very complex technology that does a really simple thing. Well, there’s a blue chip, a Bluetooth chip in a computer and it maps. It says, okay, so what does your brain do when you want to move your hand or your mouse left and it recognizes the signal that fires off in your brain when you move your mouse left and it maps that to moving a mouse left, what happens? So generally what has to happen is our ball would have to remember, oh, this is what it felt like to move my mouse left and then the mouse would move left on the screen. But the crazy thing happened within weeks. The brain was like, I get it, don’t be stupid. And as soon as he thought about it, the brain just said, okay, well, I’ll trigger the thing that says, move your mouse left. And of course it’s not doing it at the same bit rate. It’s not doing it at the bit rate at which computers operate. And so this shit was happening at the speed of thought.
Now, now, the hypothesis I make in the book is, do you believe that if that technology exists and this is Mark one, and iterates at the speed and the technology iterates, and I juxtapose it with the idea that we’ve. Now there’s research in Osaka in which they’ve now been able to scan your brain and figure out what you’re dreaming with like 50% accuracy. And so the marrying of these two technologies together, this will allow people to communicate complex ideas at the speed of thought. So last night, I watched the television show Rogue Heroes about the formation of the SAS. If I wanted to communicate to you how I felt, you know, in the finale, I could just think it to you and my brain computer interface would connect to my computer, which would go to the internet, to your computer, which would go to your brain computer interface.
And you’d be like, wow, that’s amazing. Now the question is, if this technology is that powerful, will we let the quadriplegics have it alone? And the answer to that question is absolutely no. So once this technology is so good, everybody will have it. And so what will happen is we’ll exist and we will become augmented. It will be an augmented intelligence because it will no longer be just us. It will be us plus AI, and it will change what it means to be human. And I choose to be a future optimist always, because we have history on our side to prove it. And I’m pretty optimistic that that will be a very, very exciting time that will allow us to solve very, very, very cool problems.
John Corcoran: 21:48
Well, it’s, you know, it sounds scary, like science fiction, but it’s just along the lines of speeding things up. Right? Because we can communicate with a computer right now, all day long. We do. Right? We type things out, or we speak to Siri or Alexa or whatever, and we tell it what we want, and then it gets communicated to the computer. So this will just be a direct connection that allows it to happen faster. What are some of the ways that, you know, we talk about quadriplegics, but I guess it’ll mean, it could be typing something or it could be designing a website or designing a program. I guess anything that we do with a computer now we’ll just be able to achieve faster with the brain computer interface.
Rich Mulholland: 22:28
Right. So, so. And that’s exactly what it will be at the beginning. But it’ll also be interesting because. So I also talk about the fact that everyone talks about general intelligence. But it’s funny because we actually don’t require general intelligence. What we require is a connected intelligence. I don’t need everything to know how to do everything I need. I’m very, very happy that my car is able to just drive itself. And I’m very, very happy that I don’t know how to check my spelling. And I’m very, very happy that my chess computer knows how to play chess. And it would be amazing if they were just able to interface with each other. So when they needed to know how to play chess, they would be able to do that. So we don’t we don’t need more islands and better boats. We don’t need one thing that does everything. And in fact, funnily enough, that’s exactly what deep sea. You know, I wrote about this in October. This is what the Deep Sea offers. It basically is a pool of experts and it says we don’t need everything to be thinking about this right now. We only need the, you know, the chess machine to think about it. So it turns everything else off and just the chess machine works. And that’s why it’s so efficient. And so that’s kind of what’s going to happen now with our brain being connected. And, you know, the inefficiency.
If I had to write AI and type it onto my computer right now, in the distance between the time it takes for me to type A and the time it takes for me to type I, my computer has basically got so bored it’s turned itself off. It’s going to pick the kids up from school. It made itself some lunch. It had a sandwich, a little meditation, a hot tub, and it popped back in. Just between those two key strikes. We are so frustratingly slow for a computer it doesn’t know what. It literally turns itself off between key strikes because we’re so inefficient now, we’re able to operate at the efficiency level, or we will be able to operate at the Operator. The efficiency level of the computer. Now that’s exciting. But what’s really exciting to me is when I can communicate at megabits. Thought size information, packets of information to you like this. So everything I want to say in this podcast, I can communicate to you in a millisecond and you’ll understand and internalize it. It’s like The Matrix.
John Corcoran: 24:44
It’s funny. It’ll be like if we want to design a website that’s for an interior design company, then it’ll all pop out in seconds. It’s an analogy that’s coming up for me is like the idea of like, dial up internet from 25 years ago versus today. Back then, it was revolutionary. Now we think about dialing up the internet and it’s just slow as molasses to think back on how slowly that happened. And yet, like, what’s commonplace today is just instantaneous. You’re halfway across the globe from me, and we’re having this conversation in real time, which is, you know, was mind boggling 25 years ago today, it’s commonplace.
Rich Mulholland: 25:22
Absolutely. And it’s just that at orders of magnitude faster and more efficiently. But what I also think it will do is it’s an infrastructure inversion. So it’s a change of the way that we believe that this will change what it means to be human. And some people say this is a bad thing. But, you know, if humans if the universe was a 24 hour day, humans, you know, dinosaurs were around for five minutes. Humans have been around for one second.
John Corcoran: 25:48
Yeah.
Rich Mulholland: 25:48
You know, at that scale, like, we do not get to say that we’re the fully baked cake. Like any human who turns around says, oh, well, you’re going to change what it means to be human. I bloody hope so. We are at the primary school level of human evolution, right? And maybe in the book, I kind of say if we’re going to be generous, we can say we’re just graduating as adults. We’ve done the pre-work. Now we’re about to find out where the cool stuff starts. Yeah. And yes, it’s going to change everything, but it was. We’re not supposed to be protectors of the current state of humanity. We’re supposed to be curators of the future of humanity.
John Corcoran: 26:24
I know we’re almost out of time, so that’s a good point to kind of end on, but any final thoughts on what is next for humanity? Any you know, further things we should be on the lookout for?
Rich Mulholland: 26:38
No, I think that the most important thing is that we are ready and we’re excited and optimistic about the changes that will happen and that we want to understand that we need to become part of the change. This idea of revolution is gone, like we’re in a state of constant evolution, and we need to be allowing our businesses to be more fluid, to evolve more, to change more and to embrace, to go on the offense rather than defense.
John Corcoran: 27:09
And before we wrap up, tell me about too many robots. So this is a really interesting concept. You have a new company that is doing fractional AI management for companies.
Rich Mulholland: 27:21
Yeah. So I used to have a sales management fractional business and I really loved the model. I think it’s very, very cool. People want something of a high quality but they don’t want to, you know, pay for it all the time. And I realized that the same thing with AI is that people want there’s too many robots, so we can’t have one expert. AI doesn’t solve a single problem in our business. So we thought, well, what if we put together a pool of people that are not experts? And in fact, we’re very, very big on that. We go to our clients and say, anybody who calls himself an expert, they’re operating at a different level to you. You don’t want to get taught to swim by Michael Phelps.
We are 2 or 3 steps ahead of you, but there’s a team of us and we’re trying to solve all different things. And our job is to say we did something yesterday that we’ll tell you about today, that you can do tomorrow, and to help our customers think. And we basically sit in their businesses for one day a week, essentially like a normal fractional business, and we try to help change their businesses relationship with AI out of the novelty space and into the utility space, because what we’re all using it for is cool, interesting, novelty, do things faster functions, and what we’re not doing is using it for proper do things, better functions. And that’s what we want to get people to.
John Corcoran: 28:37
And I love the way you name things too. You know, there are dragons, too many robots. I mean, seriously, like maybe you haven’t started a branding or a naming firm, but that is in your future. This has been great. Relentless relevance. Be a threat to the future before the future becomes a threat to you. To many, robots is the name of the new company. Where can people go to learn more about you and everything that you do?
Rich Mulholland: 28:58
Well, it’s funny because I wanted to ask you first. And before we end, I had just been working with my team earlier today, and we were saying that we believe that one of the best ways to do this is to host a podcast on this topic. And we mean, you talk about naming rights. Naming conventions. We’re brainstorming just earlier today. You know how we should do that. What we should do. And I actually, you know, would be remiss, I wanted to throw back to you about some. Thoughts on do you think like, do you think that this is a good strategy for us? Is it that kind of. Thing we should do? My worry is that I don’t want it to just be guest after guest after guest for us. And I’m not sure what the format is.
John Corcoran: 29:43
Yeah. You know, I always say that, you know, I’ve met people like that. Wait years and years. And I asked them, why don’t you do a podcast? And they say, well, I had this idea. And, you know, that didn’t work. And then I, you know, try to find the perfect idea. And meanwhile. Years go by and they miss out on all the benefits like this of having a conversation. Right. You know. Meeting people and using it for networking purposes and business development all in different ways. You can use it. And so I say just get started. You don’t have to have the perfect idea. And it can always evolve and change. My podcast has evolved and changed for me, and it hasn’t been the same static thing for a long period of time.
So I would say, don’t worry about trying to find the perfect idea. And I kind of liken it to restaurants. You ever see, like a restaurant open that’s too unique of an idea. And yet meanwhile, like the Italian place, the Thai place, you know, the burger place and the pizza place are thriving and doing really well. There’s a reason why they do well is because that format works, and there’s a reason why interview podcasts work well is because that format works. So, you know, sometimes I see people that are like, okay, here’s the idea. There’s going to be six of us in a room and we’re going to throw out one idea and then someone’s going to come up with it. It’s like it’s overcomplicating it. You know, just like just go have a conversation with one person.
Rich Mulholland: 31:01
So what we’d wanted to do, our CEO Tamara went forth so TMR and our URL is too many robots like WTF which is also tmrw wtf? So tomorrow, what the fuck? And her name is Tamara went forth tmrw wtf? And so what we wanted to do is we wanted to do an interview podcast where it was, you know, the guys and Tamara having a conversation. So it would constantly be a proper dialogue, but it just felt a little bit quirky and silly and maybe we’re putting too much into it. So maybe we should just.
John Corcoran: 31:32
Say, I say try it. The only thing I say is like scheduling multiple different people isn’t 50% harder. It’s like 300% harder. So what kills a podcast a lot of times is like just scheduling it. You know, just like trying to get that person in your schedules to line up and you’ve got other things to do. And so then it just dies off. So it might have been a good idea, but it just doesn’t happen because of the complexity involved in coordinating all those things. Whereas like coordinating just two people, my schedule and your schedule, we’re nine hours apart. That was hard enough as it is, right? You know, look how hard that was. It took us months to get it scheduled. Right? So.
Rich Mulholland: 32:08
You know, we’re both in you and we’re chatting before the show about, you know, workshops that we both do. You were telling me that you’ve done a podcast at a workshop in Seattle for the EO chapter, which is wonderful. I know the guys there. Well. Is this the kind of stuff you tell them about?
John Corcoran: 32:23
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, a lot of times these things are what hold people up. You know, I’ve been, you know, blessed to have amazing conversations with so many people. And you talk about it in the EO world. I’ve interviewed Verne Harnish twice, I’ve interviewed Warren Rustin, I’ve interviewed yourself, I’ve, you know, interviewed all these iconic entrepreneurs just using it, you know, one conversation at a time. And so a lot of times people like to overcomplicate it or they spend too much time focusing on the wrong thing. So a lot of times, you know, that’s what we covered in the workshop, was just distilling it down to its most important elements.
Rich Mulholland: 33:00
Yeah. I’ve often thought that one of the most exciting things about a podcast, even if you never wanted to release it, you’ve got a very good reason to meet people for sure. I’ve met so many people that have reached out to me and said, hey, I’d love to have you on our podcast. This is what I’m trying to do. It’s what I’m trying to achieve. And generally it’s if they just said to me, I’d like to meet you for a coffee, it may have been a no.
John Corcoran: 33:19
But once you’re on an island in between England and Ireland. So you’re not going to, you know, when are you in the same city? Right. There’s that. And also like, yeah, you do this calculus like is it worth my time? Is this person worth my time? Whereas like if you’re recording it and you’re publishing it, you’re like, well, you know, at least it’s published and it’s on the internet and I’m getting exposure.
Rich Mulholland: 33:39
So, to bring this back to relentless relevance, this is exactly what I’m talking about, is the state of being appropriate to the matter at hand. So things like podcasts exist as a very, very good medium for relevance, because there is a relevant reason for you to engage with somebody, for me to engage with you, there’s a nice quid pro quo that happens. And of course, because of the very nature of the medium, you know, we’re chatting today talking about Deep Seek that came out on Monday. And look, I know sometimes the shows take a while to go out, but there’s a medium that allows for high stage relevance in a big way. And I just think it’s very, very yeah, it’s I think that too many people are thinking about this as if they’re too late to get started. Yeah, I just don’t believe it. I think yesterday would have been easier, but tomorrow will be harder.
John Corcoran: 34:27
Every industry is like that, you know, like it’s always hardest when you start. You’re always looking at people that are further ahead of you and you’re like, why should I do it? But I mean, I would do my podcast even if no one was listening. You know, it’s worth it for me. I love the conversations, you know, and I love the people I get to meet. I love people listening to it too, but it’s worth it for me even if no one is listening. So. And then the other. The final point I’ll make is that talk about relevance. I’ve kind of given up on introducing myself. I love making introductions. I love connecting to people that I think should meet each other. But as you get further along in your career, busy people are too busy for an introduction .
If you just try and introduce two people there, especially after COVID, they’re like, wait a second, is that person trying to sell me? Like, why is this? Why am I being introduced? This person I don’t have time to get to know you. And so they won’t do it. So I’ve just kind of given up on making those introductions, no matter how much I feel like they really should know one another, they could click. There’s so many things they have in common, but if one of them has a podcast, it makes it so much easier. So why not be that person? Because then it makes you more dependent on the other person having a podcast, there’s like 100, maybe there’s 50,000 active podcasts in the world. There’s 8 billion people on the planet. So like if you’re the one with the podcast, you can connect with a billion people on the planet. If you’re just waiting for one of those 50,000 people to be willing to interview you on the podcast, that’s a very small pool of people that you are going to be networking with.
Rich Mulholland: 35:48
Totally. And it’s you know, it’s funny because there can be two strategies that work simultaneously. You can simultaneously have a podcast guesting strategy and a podcast hosting strategy.
John Corcoran: 35:59
Absolutely.
Rich Mulholland: 35:59
You don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Yeah, yeah yeah.
John Corcoran: 36:03
Yeah for sure. I mean, when I started my podcast, I really got started being on other podcasts to see, like, how do I feel about this? And I was nervous in the beginning. In fact, last night I was talking to another EO member who’s a client of ours who was talking about being on her first few podcasts, and she was nervous about it and everything but excited at the same time. And there’s so many skills that it practices, you know, telling your story, telling relevant stories, relating to other people, public speaking, all those are those are great experiences for people. Thank you Rich for bringing that up.
Rich Mulholland: 36:36
One last thing on that. Just because you mentioned public speaking. So a lot of the speakers that we train, we tell them to try and guest on people’s podcasts. And the reason is, if it forces them often what will happen is when you deliver to an audience, the feedback loop is slow. So after a talk, people come up and there’s a peak and theory so they don’t remember everything you said, and they’ll ask you a question about the one thing. But when you’re doing it, when you’re basically because often what will happen. Some of the material that I’ve covered today obviously is material that’s from my, my, my keynote on the topic because, you know, it’s what comes close to mind. And so now though, I get an instant feedback loop on the content. So I presented something just now. And then you’d say to me, oh, how does this relate to?
And I thought, oh, well, I hadn’t ever thought about it that way. So it kind of took me back. So I had to think about it, process it. But now I understand as a speaker where the gaps are between what’s inside my head and what I want inside my audience’s head. Because, you know, as a host, you act as a buffer for the audience, right? That’s what you’re trying to do, if you’re trying to make sure that everything that’s coming out of my mouth will get processed well enough so that your audience can parse it. Yeah. And that is another huge value. And it’s why, again, why I say to people, if you are I mean, absolutely have a podcast. But if you’re trying to grow your reputation at all. Guest on as many podcasts as you can as well. I like both sides of it.
John Corcoran: 38:02
Yeah. I mean, you know, 25 years ago it was so hard to get media attention. You had to be in big publications. You know, there weren’t many of them. And now there’s so many different, you know, channels where you can get publicity. So we’ll wrap it up. Rich. Appreciate you bringing that up. And so final thoughts they can go to check you out. Where.
Rich Mulholland: 38:22
Yeah. You can go to get Rich AF. To learn more about me in the book. Sign up for the newsletter to find out when it comes out in March and April. Tmr@WTF for Too Many Robots and I need msnglnk.com for presentation related stuff.
John Corcoran: 38:39
Awesome. Rich, thanks so much.
Rich Mulholland: 38:41
Thanks, John.
Outro: 38:44
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.