speaker-0: In 1975, if you were a factory worker paying attention, you had time to become a knowledge worker before the automated assembly line replaced you. But in 1990, you didn't have that luxury. Chris Walker thinks we're in a 1975 moment right now, except the transition isn't from hands to head, it's from knowledge to frequency. Because for 20 years, B2B marketing has paid people for what they knew, frameworks, playbooks, tactics, and certifications. Chris built one of the best brands in that world, Refine Labs. and then sold it and walked away. Because he thinks that what you know is about to become the cheapest thing on the market. AI is going to give it away for free. And so what stays scarce is your frequency, your discernment, your presence, and your ability to align a room where nothing is going your way. This is Real Seekers After Truth.

speaker-1: We are in year three or four of the exact same thing that the knowledge worker today is the factory worker of 1970.

speaker-0: you Chris, great to be speaking with you.

speaker-1: Nick, what's up man? Good to be here.

speaker-0: Great to be speaking and obviously frequency era really excited to speak about that. Really enjoyed reading it and looking forward to getting into that. But before we do, obviously your background six years at Refine built an incredible business based around the lead gen funnel and that whole world. And then you walked away. So what did that look like? What was the moment that you knew that you needed to do that?

speaker-1: So I'll bring it back for a second, okay? ⁓ because in in 2017 was about maybe 16 was the time that I started talking about the idea that B2B marketing was broken. It was very clear that the MQL waterfall was not performing. ⁓ and when I was saying that, the response that I got from 99% of people, including the CEOs I worked with, the CM CMO thought leaders, the agency owners was. This will never work. You can't you have to measure MQLs. The board needs the board needs this. This is how I've built my career. and so the whole point of starting Refine Labs was to challenge and fundamentally change how B2B companies grow through via marketing. But the way I looked at marketing, it was it was marketing and sales. It was basically like how do you generate revenue? and around two 2024. ⁓ I came to the the realization that this isn't a marketing problem. ⁓ and that the trying to solve it through marketing is pointless was my general conclusion. And that the the the real issue that's going on is the the frequency of the companies that is created through the capital stack and then permeates through the leadership team. And then it shows up as symptoms, like marketing having to to argue about MQLs, the metrics that they track, the urgency in the company, ⁓ the lack of creativity on the teams, ⁓ all these things that that actually just show up as symptoms. And so once you identify what the once I identified what the root cause was and realized where where my business was going and what my mission the mission of the business was, ⁓ I'm I'm pumped, right, right. I exited the business. The business still continues. They're doing great. They're making a huge impact. I wish them, I wish them tons of success. ⁓ but for the mission that I had set out to to accomplish, I I came to the conclusion that it was meaningless. ⁓ and that was about the time that I ⁓ detached from from that business.

speaker-0: And that's the seeds of the frequency area. It sounds like we're in that realization at Refine Labs, right? That's where it all started.

speaker-1: Yeah, but when I when I detached, I didn't have the language to explain it. Right. To me, it just felt like this I know this isn't going to work anymore. I didn't know why. ⁓ and then after a couple of years of getting deeper into this and studying a lot of companies and learning about the science and understanding it for myself, I I now I can explain why, right? ⁓ but at the moment it was just like like I I I just I've c come f so far down this road. And I know that it's not leading to where I want to go anymore.

speaker-0: Yeah, got it. And, know, it's interesting the point that you make about language, because you spend quite a bit of time in the book talking about why frequency era is the right terminology and not some of the other alternatives. For people who haven't read the book, how can we kind of summarize the frequency era in a way that they can understand and kind of follow through this conversation?

speaker-1: ⁓ the the premise of the book is that we are going through the third major economic transition in modern history. ⁓ that is driven through starting with the internet, then social media, and now artificial intelligence has made it totally undeniable that the the main source of value that humans hold currently, which for the past fifty years has been the information that you know and how you apply it, ⁓ That information is no longer as valuable as it used to be. ⁓ and we're seeing the symptoms or the changes of that happening right now, which is like you see a new 20% layoff in the public markets every day. Oracle, Salesforce, Coinbase, ⁓ ClickUp, you I could name a hundred of them. So there's all these, you know, 20% layoffs going on, ⁓ which is basically just the effect of the the supply of knowledge work going up. Faster than the demand of it. So we're seeing less jobs in the economy. ⁓ the entry-level job market is the worst it's been in the past 40 years. And the reason is because entry-level jobs are the easiest to automate with artificial intelligence. ⁓ we see ⁓ you know, a mental global mental health crisis that has been rising and no signs of it stopping with 75% of the global workforce reporting ⁓ stress and burnout. ⁓ and all of these effects are are simply demonstrating the idea that this is already happening. That it's already happening, that the the the foundation of what the economy was built on and the rules of the game of how we build our careers and how we live our life are starting to collapse. ⁓ and during the collapse. ⁓ it feels like a personal problem. It feels like I just need to work harder, I just need to get another course, I need to learn more. It's just that one company over there that's struggling, or that one industry that's struggling. But when you zoom out and look at it, it's a structural economic problem. and and so the what the book ⁓ makes the makes the point of is that knowledge is no longer the scarce premium resource that humans have. Economies always organize around a scarce premium resource. It's no longer knowledge and it's moving to frequency. Frequency being not the information that you know and how you process and apply it, but who you are before you start doing the thinking, the leading, the deciding, the connecting, all of that stuff. ⁓ and I'm happy to go deeper into it, but it it ⁓ the historical patterns are very interesting when you think about how these technologies shifts what they do. Is they invite humans to elevate to this new level of capacity that that most of us don't know that we have. And the way that I like to say it is that in 1950, the factory never measured the f the IQ of a factory worker. The factory worker had an IQ. They were capable of using a computer, doing knowledge work, contributing to the economy at a higher level. Simply, the economy didn't need it yet. Therefore, that person or that you know, huge amount of people were never forced or encouraged to develop that capacity that they always had. And so what I'm communicating is that we all have these incredible capacities that we haven't been ⁓ been invited to ⁓ build yet. And this is the opportunity for us too. And it's amazing because it connects the the idea of personal life satisfaction and economic contribution are now fully aligned. That when we do this work, we live a more satisfied, ⁓ fulfilled life and we also contribute to the economy, make more money. and I think that's amazing.

speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, it's your book, so it's no surprise, but that's a brilliant summary of, know, exactly what's covered. There's so much in there that's going to be great to sort of pick up on. something that I found really helpful was this analogy that you used consistently throughout, which was comparing previous era shifts. So sort of agricultural to industrial, industrial to knowledge. And the example that you gave is ⁓ like an industrial era worker working in a manufacturing plant, trying to keep up with automation and stave off the information era. by just working harder, by trying to produce more widgets, like spend longer, as you say, use the strategies of the declining era to try and compete in the new one. Like what do you think that looks like today as we go through this frequency era shift?

speaker-1: Excuse me. So just a little bit of context on on what you had mentioned there, right? So ⁓ in in nineteen seventy, a factory worker had tons of tangible, highly valuable skills that they've developed over 20 years of their career. They're some of the highest paid people in the economy. They're on track for a pension, right? They are valuable in so many different ways. and at that point, The factory started implementing industrial automation. At the beginning, it seems like an ally. It takes away these little pieces of their job. It makes them more efficient. It's unreliable. So they're like, that thing's unreliable. It's never going to take my full job. ⁓ and then as the technology accelerates, it goes from being an ally to being a replacement. And then we start seeing these symptoms of layoffs, less job openings, lower pay, things like that. At the same time that that's happening, a new economy is emerging that we all live in today, known as the information era. And so, as a factory worker or anyone that's gone through one of these transitions, there are traps. And the the premise of the trap is that instead of acknowledging that you are in a declining economy, that and you should move to a new emerging economy that's growing, instead of acknowledging that. You fight harder to be better in a declining economy. Right. And so what that looked like for the factory worker was coming in early, staying late, being more available, working extra shifts, ⁓ learning all the different ideas of the robots, being the best person to use the industrial automation, right? And while they were doing that, they could see the symptoms of the declining economy and they're not building the skills of the future. Right. And so over time, as the amount of factory workers in the economy went from 50% at its peak to now, right now it's seven percent. So in a declining economy, that when they get forced to move because they get laid off or the factory shuts down or something like that, that they are 20 years behind the people that moved. Right. So they they have no tangible skills, no experience, and now they're in a competitive market with no real advantage. So What I'm inviting people to consider is that we are in year three or four of the exact same thing, that the knowledge worker today is the factory worker of 1970. And that the common traps that knowledge workers are falling into are trying to work harder. So, in response to declining returns on effort, the response is to apply more, to answer slacks on Saturday, to put in a couple hours on Sunday, to stay be more available, to you know, have a meeting at nine PM to to work harder. ⁓ that's one of the reasons why we're seeing the burnout and stress set stress statistics where they are. The next one is to learn more. So in response to knowledge becoming less valuable, the response is to learn more, less ⁓ knowledge that is declining in value. So that's not going to work. ⁓ the third one is to get more credentials. So to get an AI certification, to get a mini MBA, to go and get something ⁓ the challenge is that the the credential certifies knowledge that's declining in value. So that's not going to work either. the fourth trap is probably the the one that is ⁓ most deceptive, which is the AI augmented version, meaning that in response to ⁓ this, what we what we do is we ⁓ use AI to produce more and more efficient work while we just continue. So it's like equivalent to The factory worker being the best at at managing the robots in the factory, right? And then the last one is the optimization version. So we see a lot of this and it's very, very seductive because optimization has gotten us very far up to this point when change was slow and and conditions were stable. ⁓ and so that would be productivity hacks, systems, you know, having a cold plunging routine. And so what ⁓ these optimization strategy does. Is it continues to optimize us in a ⁓ the wrong direction, instead of stepping back and saying, Do I need to change my strategy around my life and my economics instead of just trying to to optimize harder? And the reason that the traps exist are because of the social validation and inertia that support them. And so what that means is that the colleges are just telling you that you need to learn more to get another degree, and that's how you're gonna be able to succeed. Corporate cultures still reward and celebrate working harder, ⁓ using AI, which is like getting better at AI as a proof of concept to the fact that you're not needed anymore. That's what's happening with AI and corporate cultures. ⁓ the prefer professional development and personal development industry are selling the idea, and it's a $40 billion industry that you just need a new framework or a new productivity system, and that's what's gonna fix it. and so we have all this inertia which Which ⁓ shows people or or ⁓ creates the illusion for people that what they're doing is the consensus right approach, that like continuing to work harder to be a better knowledge worker is the right thing because everybody else is doing it too. ⁓ and so those are the traps that people are falling in. And and the book creates an invitation to take a step back and say, Is being a better knowledge worker, a sustainable if I'm 30 years old, like even even 50 years old, right? I have fift fifteen minimum years left in my career. Is being a better knowledge worker something that's going to create a sustainable advantage for me? It's just learn learning more going to be something that's going to work. ⁓ and the position the books makes and like it's just not, right? Like AI is accelerating so fast. The capabilities right now from just six months ago are insane. And the curve is showing ⁓ it it it's showing that it looks like the it will be an exponential, like the the progress will not slow down. ⁓ and that's the same that happened with all the agricultural automation and the industrial automation. It moves slowly at the beginning and then it moves rapidly further. ⁓ so that's the response that most people have and ⁓ why it might be a good idea to to challenge that.

speaker-0: Yeah. But one of the things that I thought was really exciting is, you know, despite, ⁓ you know, all of the change and all of the challenges is there's sort of a golden opportunity right now, right? You make the point around colleges, universities, institutions, they always take a while to catch up. And so there's this wonderful sort of golden window where you can steal a march. And if you're prepared for this and if you adapt to it quickly, you, as I think you said earlier, you know, you've got potentially a five year, 10 year headstart on it on everyone else who catches up. once the institutions have got there and understood what this new era looks like, right? So I think for people who can get on board with this quickly and be adaptable, and as you say, change their strategy now, there's a huge amount to be gained, correct?

speaker-1: For sure. So it would be it's a it's equivalent to ⁓ the factory worker in nineteen seventy saying, this market is declining, it's not gonna happen today, but eventually automation is going to decline these jobs. I need to develop new skills of the future. And then they go off over the next 20 years and they ⁓ go to school, they get professional experience, they work in an office, they their their children grow up thinking about a whole different way to participate in the economy. And then in 1990, they've developed 20 years of skills and experience, ⁓ versus the factory worker that stays working in a factory and then in nineteen eighty-eight gets laid off and then enters the economy with no tangible skills. Their children grew up in a factory ⁓ type of economic contribution environment and all that different stuff. And then you you see the trajectory of those two people's ⁓ lives shift. Yeah. Now, ⁓ The a couple of key points on this ⁓ is that the first one is that it's not that what you know and everything that you've accomplished up to this point isn't valuable. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm what what the book makes and the the point that it makes is that it's no longer scarce. And when it's not scarce, the pre the economic premium on it goes down. So this isn't a philosophical argument about what you know is no longer useful. What we've seen in all the historical eras is that ever all the capacity that people had built up to that point goes with them into the future. The the people that were worked on farms and that then the farm got automated and they moved to factories. They had endurance. They knew how to manage production. They knew how to work with other people. All of those skills went with them for them to be have an advantage in the new economy. And so It's not that we're just abandoning all the information that we know and all the skills that we've developed up to this point. What it's saying is that there's a there's a new level of capacity that that we need to build, right? That we can build on. ⁓ and the opport the economic opportunity and the historical patterns are very clear. The people that move early recognize the economic shift, start moving to develop the skills of the new economic era, get asymmetric advantages for the rest of their life. Right. And it probably also cascades down to their children and the and their legacy. ⁓ and so I do believe this is the greatest economic and ⁓ economic opportunity of a lifetime. I think that it's confused because most people today, in the media, it's it's the greatest economic opportunity of a lifetime if you figure out how to use AI. Right. And so I'm actually communicating it in a different way. It's this is not an argument to say don't use AI. It's to say where where is the center of human economic value that the economy is going to organize on, build those skills and then how you use AI, the decisions that you make, the people that you lead, the products that you build, everything changes once you develop those underlying capacities.

speaker-0: Yeah, great. And in terms of those underlying capacities, I think you named 12 of them in the book, right? And going back to what you said earlier, they're very deeply around developing what I would say, developing the self, you know, developing things like clarity under pressure and under duress and all those sorts of things. Perhaps could you talk a bit more so people get a flavor as to what those skills are going to look like?

speaker-1: Sure, I think before we get in the skill to the skills, it's important to understand the physiology of how the skills actually express. ⁓ because it's an entire entirely different mindset shift around what people would view as skill development for the past 50 years. And so ⁓ the way that it works is that we have ingrained neural pathways in our mind. We the the the accumulation of all those neural pathways we call our frequency, the power of our subconscious foundation. Now, what happens is that automatically, in milliseconds, all the time, our life gets filtered through the neural pathways, it moves into our nervous system, it sets the capacity of our nervous system, and then our nervous system decides where are all the resources in our body gonna go. That they could go to our digestion, to increasing our heart rate, to restoring our body, to our prefrontal cortex. We have a limited amount of resources and where are they gonna go? and When they get distributed, the amount that goes to our prefrontal cortex is how we express these capabilities. ⁓ and those what happens is that ⁓ the capabilities get decided before we start thinking or doing anything in milliseconds. And so that is the big switch. It's that it's building this capacity so that before we even think or do something, we have these capacities expressed. ⁓ examples. We don't choose to think clearly. We don't just if we don't win, we don't just try harder and then we just think clearly, right? We don't try, we don't have we don't think about trusting ourselves. We either do or we don't, and it's decided before we start thinking or doing anything. To we don't we don't like try hard to be creative. We either are or we aren't, right? ⁓ and so that is the the the premise of the book is that we need to work on. Developing the capacities that express before we start thinking or doing anything. And then that ⁓ contributes to how we lead, make decisions, what we work on, how we connect with other humans and everything like that. And so with that physiological foundation, ⁓ which t to me, I just think is an incredible connection of science that dots that people haven't made explicitly before, to my knowledge. ⁓ because it comes from all these different specializations, neuroscience, performance research, cognitive science, psychology, prov ⁓ nervous system research. So it's connecting dots from all these areas ⁓ into a framework that people can actually use to like to make an impact on their life and to to change the way the success they have in in prefer personal and professional life. And so with that foundation. Our life gets filtered through these neural pathways. It sets the capacity of our nervous system. Our nervous system then distributes the resources depending on how many resources we have in our free prefrontal cortex. That determines how consistent and how much demand. So, based on that, ⁓ we experience our life, it gets filtered through all the neural pathways in our in our mind. It sets the capacity of our nervous system, which determines how many resources go to our prefrontal cortex. And based on that, that determines how we express these capacities, how consistently we express them, how much pressure, uncertainty, or demand we can take on before we lose key functions and everything like that. And the key functions are, and you know, on LinkedIn people are like, ⁓ it's just about taste and judgment now, right? And sh like, sure, part of that is what I'm communicating here in the book. But the point is what is the specifics around it? And how do we make it actionable so that people, it's like, How well how do I develop taste? You know what I mean? Like how do I how do I develop judgment? ⁓ in the past, these capacities have been viewed as personality traits. They've been viewed as you're either lucky to have them or you're unlucky not to. And the reality in the ⁓ the reality is that we all have these capacities. It's like our muscle. And it's just how how trained and how expressed and how strong have we developed our muscle, right? So Being a visionary leader is not a personality trait. We all have the capacity to do it. Being creative, the same thing five years ago, or maybe 10 years ago, because everyone told me you'll never make money in music. Art's not going to be successful. Go and study science, right? So I just figured, ⁓ I'm just not that creative. Now, today, after developing these things, I view myself as one of the most creative people out there. And so that's been an experience for me to share with others because we all have it. Now, what are the 12 capacities? ⁓ the twelve capacities are in order clarity. Clarity is the ability to see clearly and to filter information to know what matters. Right. So I'll give you a we'll go through all of them and give examples in in business context so everyone can relate to them because when you say the capacity, people will think that it's a fluffy personality trait. And I'd encourage people to to consider the possibility that these traits are anything but soft skills. They are harder to acquire and they're more economically consequential than the hard skills of the past. And so number one is clarity. ⁓ so in a company, you have a thousand-person company, right? They have all the AI, all the information, access to McKinsey, all these consultants, tons of smart people, and nobody in the company knows what matters. They have all of the information and and lack clarity, right? So clarity is the ability to To filter through infinite information and know what matters. It's a completely different cognitive process than to understand information or to collect information. It happens before we think. Right. So that's a huge element. Number two is emotional sovereignty. Many people will view this as impossible, but I will tell you the truth, which is that this is totally possible for every single human being. To have total Ownership and sovereignty over your emotions, to never feel guilt, anxiety, shame, fear, those types of emotions, because those emotions are driven through our subconscious programs. To never have though the to have full ownership over those emotions mean that your emotions aren't getting in the way of you performing, making decisions, connecting with others or anything ever. Amazing. Number three is equanimity. Meaning to be able to maintain ⁓ true function through uncertainty, ⁓ pressure, demand, or to have to not be reliant on external milestones or achievements in order to feel good. So to have full internal ownership over your experience. What those three do is they allow you to see clearly all the time. So imagine as a as a business owner to be to be driving your car and you can only see 30% of the time. It's like it's not going to work, right? So we have we have many business leaders, and I was one of them five years ago, where I was driving my business and I could only see 30% of the time. And and as the leader of the business, the number one thing that we have ownership of is the decisions that we make. That is the number one influencing factor to the success of our business in our life. And so to be able to see clearly allows us to make make great decisions more consistently. The next level up. ⁓ is what we call the navigational capacity. So now that we can see clearly, now how do we navigate? Right. So the first one is self-trust. ⁓ self-trust is misunderstood. ⁓ self-trust, ⁓ and and the the symptoms of not having full self-trust, maybe this is a good way to have people explain it, is imposter syndrome, second guessing, needing to call someone to no figure out what you should do or what's right for you, having to consult five consultants in order to make a decision. ⁓ those are symptoms of not having full self-trust. ⁓ so self-trust is be taking that clarity and putting it into action, taking it and making decisions for yourself, having full ownership over your own decisions. The second one is discernment. Discernment is an interesting one because it's the ability to discern and tell the difference between what is right for you and what is right in general. Right. And so the what what people used to do is apply. generic best practices and try to just apply it to their situation, especially in business, right? Like Gartner and people build huge businesses off best practices and benchmarks. Now, the difference is that a best practice is basically a past historical average. And that worked fine when conditioned conditions move slowly and you could just take what you did last year and mix it up a little bit and basically do the same thing next year because things didn't change that much. But now that things are changing rapidly, we need to be able to be able to say There's these are the infinite amount of information and possibilities. These are the seven things that matter to me, but these three things were different. I'm gonna take those things out, I'm gonna apply it to my situation, I'm gonna make my own decision. And to be able to move that cognitive function function quickly, right? Exec especially, you know, Fortune 500 executives have have taken six months to make big decisions before, right? Consulting project, talk about it in a board meeting a couple of times and things like that. In six months, the market opportunity is gone. Right. So it's just we're in a different environment now and the conditions require new skills. Right. And the third one is intuition. ⁓ and so intuition can fundamentally can't be replicated by AI because it's based on all the experiences and all the knowledge that you've accumulated in your life, and to create the capacity to be able to access them to know what is right for you, even when it doesn't make sense on paper or logically. Right. I built this business because of my intuition and my ability to trust myself. If I had put it in a spreadsheet, it would have just been like, keep running Refine Labs, bro. You'll make more money that way. Right. And so it's like a product of this book and the work that I'm doing of the things that I'm talking about here, to be able to access our our intuition to navigate what is right for us. And it's shown in science, in high pressure environments like sports, firefighting, medicine, and things like that, that intuition and the it happens before we think, and it is actually the number one driver of outcomes. And so that is a wildly powerful thing. ⁓ not that we're in, you know, dire situations in our in our business every day, ⁓ but that capacity really matters. And as things continue to move more quickly, us being able to navigate for ourselves sets the sets the foundation for the things that come after this. Now, do you want me to go through the next six or do you want to pause and talk about them?

speaker-0: I don't know, man. There's so much in there. mean, it's an incredible amount of research. One thing that I did want to ask you actually, maybe before we move on to the second six, is you mentioned philosophy there, right? And I'm a massive science nerd. So when you started talking about self-determination theory and neuroscience and psychology and all of this was great, but you mentioned that there was no philosophical, I think you might have said earlier, there was no particular philosophical underpinning for the book. Did I have that right?

speaker-1: ⁓ what do you mean?

speaker-0: Well, so I used to be quite into philosophy and there's a 1930s, 1950s philosopher called Heidegger. And he was ⁓ what was called an existential phenomenologist, right? And he spoke a lot about the human condition and what it means to be human and what it means to develop the self. And what he spoke about in the 1950s, as we were moving towards, you know, that manufacturing age and ultimately into the information era, is that human beings were starting to be looked more and more as sort of servants. as resources ready to be deployed and optimized and trained in a way that he viewed as distinctly non-human and against who we actually are as individuals. And so as I'm reading your book and as I'm listening to you talk through those capabilities there, those skills, it's a very like Heideggerian view of the world. And so I wondered if that was a reference point or whether you guys have just arrived at a very similar place through totally different routes. it sounds like the latter.

speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, never heard of the guy, to be honest. so ⁓ to to ground this, like I I see what I'm talking about as equivalent to going to high school and college, right? To developing these capacities of the future are equivalent to going to high school and college. Or these capacities are equivalent to trying to become in top one percent health or being a professional athlete, right? As a as a ⁓ entrepreneur or executive. We are a a top one percent contributor of the economy. Right. In the past, the way to be a top one percent tr contributor was to follow best practices, learn a lot of information and things like that. What I'm saying is over the future we have new top one percent contributor capacities, and these capacities are trained in a different way and expressed in a different way. ⁓ so to and and yeah. Go.

speaker-0: Sorry. And so from, my interpretation of it, it is about developing sort of more intrinsic capabilities that you have as a human being rather than external certifications, right? So it's internal qualities that you have that you're developing yourself as a person rather than sort of stuff that's external. That's, that's broadly right. Isn't that

speaker-1: Broadly. Yes. Yeah. ⁓ no, it's pretty good. Yeah.

speaker-0: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Nice. That was the thing that I wanted to ask, but please carry on. It'd be great to great to do the seconds.

speaker-1: Cool, because then they start getting pretty good. Yeah. So the next tier up is known as the generative capacities. So now that we can see clearly and we trust ourselves, now we can actually we can create. and so the three generative capacities are creativity. ⁓ creativity is massively important when AI can make a thousand average blogs, a thousand average movies, a million average social media posts that ⁓ the value of new ideas, create cre true creativity and things like that is going to go through the roof. ⁓ and so that one is huge because ⁓ creativity and the way that it matters most in the new era is coming up with fundamentally new ideas. Right. So AI is great at taking what's already been made and making new combinations of existing things, right? But I know because this book has a ton of new ideas. I asked it what nervous system capacity meant. It gave me a terrible, totally incorrect definition. I made tons of new ideas in this book and AI was totally unhelpful. And so in order to to come up with totally new ideas and creativity, one of the main things is to be able to reduce our fear of judgment. And our fear of judgment happens before we start thinking. We don't tr we don't try or think about that, right? So creativity matters a ton. The next one is deep human connection. And so a majority of human connection up to this point, specifically in professional environments, has been not deep human connection, what I'll call transactional ⁓ connection. ⁓ so there's two layers of human connection. We have transactional, which is information delivery, staying top of mind, ⁓ things like that. That part can be fully automated by by AI, and AI will do it a million times better than a human right away. And so For sales professionals, for ⁓ customer support reps, for those types of things, that transactional layer is being automated, and that is wildly obvious. And so what will happen is that deep human connection, the the inverse of that will go through the roof. That is the ability to build trust, the ability to think long term, for that person to know that you have their best interests in mind and different things like that. And the funny thing is, it's ironic, but A majority of corporate cultures today do not incentivize deep human connection from their people to the market at all. It's all transactional. And so over time, that will become a significant disadvantage for companies that operate that way. Deep human connection. And the third one is vision. ⁓ and so vision is to be be able to see a future that doesn't exist right now and to be able to organize resources in order to move that way. It is a Totally different cognitive function than optimizing the direction you're already going. It's about finding having a vision for a new thing and then figuring out what needs to be true and working backwards. ⁓ and so that one is super powerful to create new, new ideas, new businesses that people that make an impact for, you know, yourself, your family, your team, society. And so those three are the generative capacities. And then lastly, we have ⁓ the expressive capacities, which are the last three. And these ones are interesting because ⁓ they they are just simply once you have all these underlying foundations that you just show up this way. So it's not a skill that you learn, it's not something that you try to do. ⁓ and those three are autonomy, adaptability, and intentionality, right? So, you know, I hear a lot like you can. Go on Instagram or you can go on ⁓ LinkedIn and just get a post. Just be authentic, right? Just do it. It's that easy, right? It just it just doesn't work that way. ⁓ and so ⁓ autonomy is the ability to govern yourself, to have and so think about it as conditions are changing so much, right? That the idea of asking a bunch of people what you should do and things like that, imagine that you're sailing in the ocean, right? You're going somewhere that no one's ever gone before. You can't you can't look back to the boats behind you and say, where you know, where should I go? You have to have a compass in the autonomy to be able to make the decisions and pave the way for yourself. That is a massive underrated skill that is be increasing an economic premium. So autonomy. Adaptability is also one, which is it's different than resilience. Resilience is being knocked off track and being able to get back on track. ⁓ adaptability is a totally different function where getting knocked off track is part of the process. You don't, you don't, you don't get destabilized. And to know that as conditions are changing, to be able to say, okay, I'm moved in this direction, conditions changed, I'll follow my compass, I'll move in a different direction. ⁓ that level of adaptability is wildly powerful because of how fast conditions are changing in the economy and in just life. And then lastly, we have intentionality. Intentionality is Designing every element of your life based on what you want, not what society has told you, not what someone else said that you should do, not what an influencer told you to do, based on what you want for your life. Right. So a couple of examples here. You're a senior leader and and you basically hate your job, right? But you make four hundred K and you think it's what you're supposed to do, and you run away to a meditation retreat every ninety days to try to try to cope with, you know, a job you don't like. An intentional person would leave immediately. They would say, I I trust myself. I have clarity that this isn't right for me. I want to design my life in an own way. I know I can, I'll be able to figure it out. I'm leaving this job immediately. Right. Same thing for relationships, same thing with cities, same thing for houses, same thing for friends, same thing for work, right? So ⁓ this idea over time is that we've been given a a map as as ⁓ professionals and even in your personal life about what we should do. Right. And so intentionality is taking back the power to say it's no, it's not what I should do, it's what I want to do. ⁓ and so I think that one is also wildly powerful. And again, none of those things you choose to do. You just when you trust yourself, when you see clearly, when you have emotional sovereignty, when you have vision, discernment, you just express that way. It's just how you show up. ⁓ and so when you package all of those things together, what I'm saying is. The most valuable people in the economy moving forward are the people that express those capacities. Right. It's not about how much you know. So I think that like I think when you when you put it that way, it's like, ⁓ duh, right? Like I've actually never said it that way before, but it's like, ⁓ yeah, like the people that do that express that way are are obviously going to be the most valuable.

speaker-0: Yeah. And the thing that's interesting, particularly as you're talking through the last one there, Chris, is around the compounding effect of these different capabilities, because that intentionality point builds on the judgment and the clarity and the self-trust in order to actually go and execute on that and to go and leave the 400 grand job, because you know it's the wrong thing for you. And so it's great sort of how these things sort of all reference and actually there's a benefit to the interrelationship between them, right? It's like you can't just have one, you've got to have a package.

speaker-1: They are they are definitely not developed all at once and they're definitely not developed linearly. ⁓ and so the the way that we've broken it out in four layers, it's like it's hard to trust yourself all the time if you if you can't see clearly and you get disrupted by anxiety and guilt in your emotions. It's hard to trust yourself, right? Exactly. It's hard to to be adaptable if you don't have discernment and self trust. Right. And so they do they do build on each other. ⁓ in in that way. but they're definitely it's not like you just go to first grade and you learn clarity, right? And then you go to second grade and you it's so they're developed ⁓ nonlinearly.

speaker-0: Yeah. And the thing that I loved and I can't remember where it comes through is the point that you make around the shift. And we kind of touched on it before from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation, because a lot of the things I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that is kind of encoded in those 12 capabilities come from like an intrinsic position around like working out what's right for you and what motivates you versus, you know, the information area, which is all extrinsic. Is that, is that a fair way to think about it?

speaker-1: ⁓ I think the best way to ⁓ to think about so I I grew up I was born nineteen eighty nine, right? So I grew up in the nineties and two thousands and you know, probably some whether you're born in the eighty or two thousand in that type of range, ⁓ you know, we had we had ⁓ T V, right? There were and then eventually you started to have social media when you were young and and magazines and the news and things like that. And it's it's just it's just gotten worse now with social media for people that are younger. ⁓ But the point is that we are conditioned into external motivators and drivers. We are conditioned to believe that we need to have that nice car, to buy a nice house, to wear a nice suit, to get a nice watch, to date a pretty girl or a have a, you know, jacked husband or whatever, right? So we're conditioned to that if we just accumulate these things around us, that we'll be happy and and that'll make us successful. ⁓ And the research is very, very clear around this. People that have external drivers have lower life satisfaction and make worse decisions over time. ⁓ and so a majority of us, without us even realizing it, our underlying behavior and intentions are to prove, accumulate, impress, or avoid failure. ⁓ and so those are the main ex external drivers. ⁓ That's not what you would say consciously about why you're doing something, but underneath it automatically your behavior is driven in that direction. And in order to change it, it requires intentional training over a significant period of time. Just like getting strong doesn't happen overnight. You don't just like read a book and you're like, ⁓ my gosh, now I'm a top one percent athlete. So it's it's the same thing. ⁓ and so what what ⁓ what the book is suggesting is that ⁓ Now, with this economic shift, it is it is driving in alignment to internal drivers. ⁓ and internal drivers meaning that our success and and ⁓ fulfillment is derived from the expression and development of our own capacity. That as we develop more ⁓ power within ourselves, we express that through creativity, how we impact others, how we show up and how we feel every day. That is the true North Star driver of success and fulfillment. It is shown through science that people that have those drivers do have significantly higher life satisfaction. This is not a new idea. This was div has div been around for thousands of years. ⁓ and so what happens is that when the economy rewards clarity, self-trust, adaptability, vision, the development of internal capacities. That more people get driven to develop internal capacities which aligns with life satisfaction. And so I think that is a that's the first time in mod in modern history that this has ever occurred. I think that is amazing. and I and ⁓ so yeah, like up until this point, right, in a corporate environment, doing some of these things have been considered a personal development side quest. Right. Like you go pay for the meditation retreat, right? If you want to go do ayahuasca, don't tell me about it. I don't want to know about that, right? I don't indone ayahuasca, by the way. but it's been a personal development side quest, is what it's been viewed as. Now, what's happening is that personal and professional development are converging. That the development of the person is also the most economically relevant development that that can happen. I think that is. amazing and it will definitely be a major shift in corporate world. ⁓ because before these types of things have been not expensive ⁓ and not valued.

speaker-0: Great to have that run through of sort of how this is all fitting together, but to bring it back to marketing, Chris, I suspect I may have a guess at the answer, but are there sort of three particular capabilities or internal drivers that you think that B2B marketers particularly would do well to develop right now, or is it you got to develop the whole stack?

speaker-1: to me it's the the whole the whole stack, right? and so it's it's it's like Clarity and emotional sovereignty are not like the the sexiest capabilities, right? Creativity, vision, adaptability, those are the ones. But it's like if you can't run a 5K, you're not going to run a marathon. And so it's like developing the underlying capacities so that that to be able to express those higher level capacities consistently. Now, what I will say about B2B marketeurs or leaders ⁓ is that The number one thing that you can do today is choose choose a company intentionally. and I think up to this point, and this is, you know, how how I went about my early career, ⁓ is that you want to work at the the coolest company, the company that gives you the most stock options, the one that's the fastest growing, the so it's externally driven stuff. and the reality is that a lot of those companies are very low frequency companies. ⁓ And what happens when you work at a low frequency company is that all these capacities get suppressed. Right. So yeah, now you're you're stressed, you're working you're operating in urgency all the time, you're in Zoom meetings all the time, you don't feel you think you're gonna lose your job or you think that someone's gonna judge you. So you don't feel safe to take risks or be creative or be innovative. ⁓ and so all of these capacities get suppressed. And no and no matter how much you try to train them. Being in that environment and not leaving will suppress the capacities. ⁓ and so I can see we can see it in our our data, right? This isn't this isn't a a ⁓ a smart business thing for me to say, but it in the data it's very clear ⁓ from our own encoded about 700 customers so far. If you work at a VC backed company or ⁓ a tech company that has that type of capital, you either churn off encoded after 30 days or you quit the job. There's no in between. And so

speaker-0: great data point. Hey, that's like huge, huge validation for

speaker-1: Because they're completely it's a completely conflicting ⁓ methodology. You know what I mean? So it's like you c you you can't do both. And so that's been a very interesting insight. overall. ⁓ so it's like I think that choosing the environment where you you can devel one that they value these things, where you have the environment that that cultivates and develops this capacity within you because the environment that you're in and the people that you're around will Will largely determine how much you can express. Over time, as you develop them, you'll become more aware of it. And then you will leave places that suppress your capacity. But at the beginning, you're not really that aware of how much it's holding you back. ⁓ to be able to select that with ⁓ intentionality. ⁓ and then lastly, to be able to, it's really just the recognition that, you know. Learning more, getting another course, working harder is not what's going to get me to where I wanna go anymore. That I need a fundamentally different strategy of how I'm gonna develop the skills of the future.

speaker-0: Yeah, so I guess in simple terms, like the most, the biggest piece of advice for Marxists or I guess for anyone in any role is put yourself in a context where you can develop these skills and take yourself out of one where they're going to be suppressed. Right. That's the, that's the, the simple sum.

speaker-1: Right. To me that that's the the the simplest, most straightforward way to to ⁓ go about it. Yeah.

speaker-0: It makes a ton of sense. You can't develop these things in the wrong environment, right? It's just not going to happen. Yeah. And so with frequency as the new scarce resource, do you have a view on what say a marketing org will look like in the future? You know, we've got a place where everyone's got those capabilities and we're operating on the right frequency. Do you have a view as to what that might look like? Radically different, I imagine, to what we have today.

speaker-1: Indeed. Yeah. So ⁓ the so the short answer is I I don't know. but the book casts a vision of some things that are already becoming very clear within the professional world. ⁓ number one is that hierarchies are collapsing. That is obvious, right? When knowledge is no longer like accumulating a bunch of people because they have knowledge in their brain and how they process it, when AI can do all of that, you no longer need this big hierarchy of people. So we're already seeing middle management layers collapsing. Senior leaders being more in the work, working with AI tools, working with the team. So that's already in process and will continue to happen, right? The 20% layoff is just the beginning. This is not the end, right? So what's going to happen is that companies will slowly, like it seems fast, but it's actually happening slowly, slowly break down their organization and then start building back up for the frequency era. They don't, they don't think that they're doing it that they don't consciously say they're doing that, but that's what's happening right now. So I'd expect. The company that did 20% layoffs this year to do another 10, 15, 20 next year, and then maybe another 10 that that year, break their company down by 50% and then build back forward. ⁓ so hierarchies will definitely collapse. The amount of overall knowledge work jobs in the economy will continue to decline, just like so right now it's about 65% of the people that participate in the economy do a knowledge work job. I would not be surprised if in 10 10 years that's cut in half down to 30, 35%. ⁓ a big point in the book, and this is not, I'm not fear-mongering anyone, it's that, it's that one area of work goes down and another one emerges, right? So it's not like everyone's going to not have a job. It's that the people that develop the future skills of the economy will get paid a premium for it. so ⁓ I would expect ⁓ smaller teams. There's another thing the book talks about, which is higher individual sovereignty, meaning that the people that Have these capacities, will be able to selectively choose or reject who they want to work with. They'll have a mil a hundred opportunities to choose from. ⁓ they will go in, they'll work for the amount of time that it's needed, that it works, and then they'll leave and they'll get paid a premium for that contribution. And they will have historically up to this point, and even right now, for many people, is how they view it. They view it that the company has more power than the individual. And I'm viewing that in the future. The individuals that develop these skills will have significantly more power than the company. Which I think is amazing for individuals. That's amazing.

speaker-0: agree. I think, you know, one thing I wanted to say is, that for me, it's such a positive message that comes through the book, all of the things we've spoken about sort of the development of the self in my language, the sort of sovereignty of the individual over the company, these are all these are all wonderful things, right? The journey may be messy, and it may be difficult, and it may be uncomfortable at times. But there's a huge first mover advantage and the promise of what's on the other side is huge, right? For the

speaker-1: Yep. And so the the to get it tangible, ⁓ the it the advice to the marketer is pr not very different than the advice that I was giving in 2019 to the marketer. Choose the right choose the right company. Yes. Think like an entrepreneur, not a marketing manager. Think like you're the business owner, right? Develop the skills to be a business owner in the future, to have full sovereignty over your life. And I wasn't talking about this much, but develop the capacities within yourself. ⁓ develop the skills of the future and to use AI augmentation and those things that you're doing that save you three hours a day. So now you can successfully operate your job in five hours. Instead of overworking and just doing twice as much and working ten hours a day, take those extra three hours and start developing the capacities of the future.

speaker-0: Yeah. Exciting. Very exciting. And to hit you with a, with a hypothetical, imagine you're an ABM leader, a large company, right? And you've had a tough Q1, let's say, and Q2 is not looking good. You've got the CRO breathing down your back. I think I already know the answer to this one as well. And you've just read your book. You've just read the frequency era. Like, what do you do? What's your, what's your suggestion?

speaker-1: Leave.

speaker-0: Yes. Good. I'm learning. It's the yeah. Yeah, that's wonderful. Nice.

speaker-1: Just like Yeah, and on the on the ⁓ on the like ABM motion, if we want to go there, ⁓ it's just like the the the ability to build an account that's going to be a million, ten million dollar customer, right? If you're not anthropic or have some foundational major technological advantage, if you're just like a a you know, most of the normal software AI hybrid type companies that The way that you build those accounts is through trust and connection and long-term thinking. and that so running a couple ABM ads and then sending a bunch of cold emails and hoping this account magically becomes a million dollar customer just makes no sense. Maybe it did in 2021 when every company was overspending by, you know, five X their budget and money was free. But the the the path to success on that in the future is incredibly different than how it's worked in the past. ⁓ and generally in in whoever's leading ABM at a company has no control at that of that the sentiment. Right. So what I'm the point is to to find leaders and companies with the appropriate capital stack and the right values so that your skills can develop and thrive.

speaker-0: Yeah. that's where you need that.

speaker-1: You're just swimming upstream. And that's what a majority of marketers are doing. A majority of of people that work in companies today are swimming upstream. Their the values that they have are misaligned with the values of the capital and the leaders. And and it's not that the leadership values are misaligned. It's that the capital forces the leaders to be misaligned. and so if you're just swimming upstream, that's why it feels hard, why you feel stressed, why you have the Sunday scaries, why you need to run away to a meditation retreat or whatever people do. ⁓ and so the the the the real thing is to look at the situation and say, This isn't the right environment for me.

speaker-0: And that's the point you make about thinking like an entrepreneur, which is like, do I believe in the direction that we're taking? Do I believe in kind of the North star that we've got and the decisions that we're making that are going to get us there? Right. Because that's how you end up not swimming against the stream, but swimming, swimming with the stream. You've got to pick the stream that is aligned with how you see the world. Right.

speaker-1: Yeah. And do I have the the capacity and the self-trust to say if this isn't working for me, then I will figure it out. I can leave whenever I want and I'm a totally capable, talented human being. Whether I start my own company, find ⁓ align people, or whatever ⁓ whatever I do, I can figure it out. I don't need to subject myself to these environments. And I think that the s the sentiment is, ⁓ like ⁓ it's just like A majority of people think it's just part of the gig, right? It's just part my job sucking and me being stressed and me not liking it is just part of making two hundred K a year. And what I'm saying is it just doesn't need to be like that. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-0: Yeah. And there's a huge amount to be gained by, throwing that away. Basically is the key, right? So the show is named Real Seekers After Truth. What thing would you recommend that every real seeker stop doing and one that they should start?

speaker-1: So I think one thing that people could start is to ⁓ is to start to measure and get an understanding of the physiological markers of the of the state and capacity of your nervous system. Go and get an EEG done. Go and get measure your HRV heart rate variability on a daily basis. Go and get a blood test, measure your cortisol, your hormones, things like that. Those indicators are an expression of the power of your nervous system. ⁓ you can see, you can go and and rank them. They have the little charts. Are you in range? Are you out of range? What percentile do you fall in? ⁓ to understand that, because ⁓ you can't you can't fake that type of stuff. It's not like a subjective test, like, ⁓ I feel good today, so everything's good. By getting those things and understanding them ⁓ is is. Going to be the the exact measurement is not there yet, but in the future, that will be equivalent to measuring your IQ is the is the power and capacity of your nervous system of the future. So starting to understand that and being able to measure it and then putting different changes in your life, like doing this training, changing your ⁓ environment, your you know, habits, things like that can make a significant increase on those things. And then you will express more of these capabilities. So I think ha That is a great grounded way to do it because this is not mystical. This is very physiological and very scientifically driven. ⁓ so I'd say, I'd say that. ⁓ and then on the on the stop side, ⁓ I would I would invite people to consider at least acknowledging and deciding for themselves: do I want to stop falling into all the traps of being a better knowledge worker? To acknowledge, am I Is my response to this trying to learn more, work harder, get more credentials, optimize harder, or get an AI augmented version of being a knowledge worker? Am I falling into these traps and to decide are are these really the best strategy for me right now? Right. This is not an argument to say don't learn or don't use AI. I've made that point and I like to make it clear as much as possible. It's to, it's to make the decision around what is the primary method of my development. And the point that the book is making and that I think has been made very clear on this podcast for a variety of economic reasons is that the primary method of our development needs to shift from loading information into our conscious mind and shift to developing the capacities of our nervous system so that we express capabilities before we start thinking, doing or or leading anything. ⁓ and so when we shift that primary method of development, then Learning more become secondary. Work ethic become secondary and things like that. It's not to don't do them. It's just not the thing that's going to get you the asymmetric returns of the past.

speaker-0: Yeah, about shifting strategy, right? In terms of how we're thinking about development. Well, look, Chris, we've covered a huge amount of ground in a relatively short amount of time. Brilliant talking to you. I love the book. I would recommend it to frankly, anyone and everyone, but particularly if you're interested in sort of economics, personal development, technology, I think it's a, it's a riveting read. So thank you for the book first and foremost, but also thank you for your time. Brilliant speaking. I really enjoyed the chat.

speaker-1: Thanks, man. Great to be here. Appreciate it.

speaker-0: Cheers, Chris.