Scott, I'm here with the day, the Google news. And today we're not talking about Google at all. We're talking about growth opportunities, the worst size a company could possibly be. And the art of self delusion here with my buddy, Brent Perkins, Brent. I appreciate being here, man. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thanks. Yeah. You're one of my favorite people that I met at front road dads. Or you were until I met you in person and found that you were taller than me. Yeah, it was an obnoxious thing for you to do. I don't know. It's so funny, man. you don't spend a lot of time when you're I'm six, four. And so I just don't spend time around people that are taller. And it's so jarring. And it reminds me like how people must feel when they're around me. It's just, have this visceral, like, you think you're better than me? Is that what's happening? Yeah. Sometimes. No, it's humbling, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I can't imagine how often you run into it, given that you're. Just standard deviation above. Not what we're here to talk about. You wrote a book. I did. You wrote a book called Paper Cuts, which by the way, I'm just going to share my screen because it's probably the best book cover I think I've ever seen from a self published book. And that's usually my big pet peeve. I've self published both my books and my covers are garbage, but this is like, who did this? Did you really? Yeah, I did it in mid journey when that was all a big big, big thing back in January. I was playing around and that came out and I was like I'm keeping this. Yeah. That's phenomenal. I love that you did that in mid journey too, because now everybody listening or watching is going to fall in love with you. What an amazing tool that is, but I think it's, really compelling. That's the type of thing that would make me stop scrolling. Why is it called the art of self delusion? What about self delusion are we specifically speaking towards here? Yeah. So really this book's about the choice we don't step into daily maybe even higher level would be perspective, Shifting your perspectives, which to do that, you're shifting, you're stepping into choice and the delusion parts, of course, a little bit of play on words to have fun with the book, but I really built a construct that shows inside of the book where. playing off of Einstein's that really this world is an illusion, his statement he made that our interpretation of the illusion is a delusion because, you might walk away, for instance, from this podcast and maybe I was having a bad day and you're like, man, Brent sucked today. And then you talk to me and you're like, Oh, you know what? I didn't see it. He didn't suck. He was just a melancholy because of this happened and this happened and you shift your truth, right? Because truth is yours. And my truth is mine. I argue they're delusions because we can alter them. We can shift them. We can change perspective. We can tweak them. So they're not real because we can choose a different one. But if truth isn't real, it puts us in a position of, and I'm going to accelerate logical sequence that's going through my mind to the end result, which I think is nihilism. It's like, why am I not just running around stealing whatever I want, treating people however, you know what I mean? Like, cause there's no truth. I can make it what I wanted. So where's the objective principle based the confines within which I have to operate. Yeah, I guess, you need to start from the basis that love is the underwriting energy to everything. So there is a core truth. There's like the objective truth and then our delusion sit on top of whatever that might be. What I'm speaking to is our interpretations of our experiences on Earth. I only can experience earth time through my five senses. And the way I smell and like, if you and I are drinking the same glass of wine and eating the same piece of chicken, they taste and smell different to each other than they, I mean, there isn't a truth about how they taste and smell. It just is through our own version of it. It's our interpretation of what that is. And those are our truths because the truth is a fact and a belief. kind of blended together. Oh, I like that. A truth is a fact and a belief blended together. How interesting. That's such an indictment. You know what I mean? Like it, you start to see where truth becomes porous. So what does that mean then? Like, are we, do we need to walk through life questioning everything we believe, or is there, is there a power to this or is it a cautionary tale? No, it's, power because yes, curiosity is arguably the best thing you could walk through life with because there's nothing that's absolute. You walk outside and you can choose to have on brown glasses, blue glasses, red glasses, you get to choose what your lens is and none of them are wrong. How do you want to show up? And if you don't like it, if it's not working, you change it, just shift it. It's always choice. So it's super empowering. I mean, you take it to one, you swing the pendulum one direction and you start to get into manifestation and that we create everything. But you swing it the other direction and you get into straight victimhood. This book, the goal of it is to pull people out of victimhood, that anything is possible. You just got to choose. You got to choose your perspective, choose how you show up, choose what you want to believe. I really love that. And I think that the whole concept of life. predicated on and by choice is so empowering. It's also repellent. I think it's a really easy thing to be very afraid of. And we, kind of sell victimhood. Now I saw this really interesting meme. it was so poignant. You know, those memes that capture you and you're just like, God, whoever built this is just won the internet today. But it said something to the effect of like in the twenties, we worshiped the party goer in the thirties. We worship the financier in the forties. We worship the soldier in the fifties. We worshiped the father in the sixties was the rebel in the seventies was the lover in the eight. And I'm making these up, but every decade was marked by, and then now we worship the victim. a contest. It's like who can out victim the other person. And I don't know that I see a, direct line of sight out of that, but maybe this is it. Maybe it's guys like you writing books like this. I don't know the answer to that, Qasim. I see with my kids and social media. Yeah. So easy for them to get into victimhood. Or to, really, and part of that's just a mental model where we're comparing ourselves, right? oh, I don't have what they have. Oh, I don't look like she or he looks on like, I'm not traveling to where they are. We're in our own victimhood storyline. And choice says. No, no, I choose different. I choose not to sit in that place. I choose to not believe what I'm seeing that they're putting on social media is the end all be all of everything. It's not real. Yeah, I love that, that like what you've posited here is victimhood is rooted in comparison, which I've not thought about, but that feels sound to me. That's what I see my kids struggle with. Yeah, dude, it's, I, man, I struggle with it. I, I, I will default into victimhood if I'm not, I probably do it all the time. And I don't even realize it, but if I'm not careful, it's just such an easy place to sit. So, this is definitely the most esoteric conversation we've ever had on this channel. Help me bring it down to, you're talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs and marketers. Yep. Help them take this information and then use it to make money. So this can go in a lot of directions, but I mean, marketing's my background. I've started a bunch of companies. I spent 20 years, you know running businesses with a, you know, marketing angle on it. You know, the last company we took from ground up started, they had 50 engineers and no marketing salespeople. That's why they, brought me into, tell their story, build a brand around it. So really, I think. You know, for the marketing angle, it's about how do we, how do we tell the story in a way that doesn't step into victimhood, which everybody else, is capitalizing on. It's not the long tail battle, right? Victimhood is a short, quick dopamine hit that you're going to get something fast with. If we move back into empowering people, which is what choice is, it's about being empowered. And if we can tell our stories about our products and our offerings in that way. Now we have long tail marketing again, which is part of what I feel like we've stepped out of in the last 10 years. No, you're absolutely right. Everything's been a hundred percent just like impulse by it's on both levels to what we sell the end consumer, but what also marketers sell the business, the thing that I'm giving you, isn't there is no long tail to it. It's just right now it's, it's the sweets without the nutrition and marketing is storytelling. what do you do though, if you're the only market or playing by the rules? So I'm the only market or not falling into the victimhood background narrative timeline. And. Because I'm not using the clickbait, BS, I get left behind in the short term, how do we buttress that person's resolve? It's like being the only guy at the gym, not juicing, or the only kid in class, not cheating. It is and it isn't. You know, you and I were talking about this earlier, which is curiosity. Curiosity doesn't play a role anymore. I don't, I go back to my kids because they're the ones on TikTok all the time. it's less me than them, but. They're not asking other people questions about the other people. It's always just about what can I do? Well, it's so selfish. So starting to get curious, people want to talk about themselves. If we can start to ask questions in the right way and get curious about other people, let their stories come through in our own stories, that's still not happening. We're just pushing stories on people saying, this is my story. You know, it should be appealing to you. It is appealing to you. Now go, go figure out how to duplicate it in your own way versus, hey, what's your story? Let's get back to what's unique about you. And let's ask more questions. We're not asking enough questions. So there's, there's a way to capitalize on the dopamine hit. But do it through curiosity, just showing up. It's being present without being selfishly present. I'm turning the lens around on the, the, the narrative. I really like that too, which is instead of telling you about my quick hitter story, I turn it around and try to figure out what about you? Cause that's what everybody wants to talk about, right? Like that's, that's, we go back to Dale Carnegie now. And people are most interested in themselves, and I don't think I lost on try to figuring out how to use these platforms, and we know enough about them now it's time to go back to some of the old school basics that works, but using the new school platforms. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of. Bill Gates has that quote automation applied to an inefficient system just amplifies the inefficiency. And I think the echo chamber that is the social media model has amplified the wrong message. And we all know it, but we're on this runaway train and we can't, we have yet to stop it. And then here we are. So somebody wanted to read this book. It's not launched yet, right? We're in pre launch phase. It goes live August 10th, August 10th. And they can get an ebook, soft copy audio. And you're doing the audio yourself. Yeah, which is great. I love it when authors read their own work and then you especially because just because you're so fired up about this I think that'd be, really cool to hear. And it's called paper cuts, the art of self delusion. It's by Brent Perkins so August 10, make sure to you can pre order the book right now on Amazon. you can pre order the book. From your website, you can on Amazon or you can just go follow along@papercutssuck.com. I love that. Paper cuts suck.com. And then you also do you do some consulting ad hoc, right, Brett? I do, kind of find that sweet spot in the five to $20 million companies that that have maybe grown too quickly or They've been to product focused or been to something focused need a kind of a holistic look to see how do we how do we keep the wheels on in a, healthy way. So, and you've been the CEO of two eight figure businesses that look like nine figure businesses because you're a marketer which is exactly what people should be doing. And we were talking about this before we hit record, but that, that. That five to 10, I think into 20 million. I've always felt like when I watch those organizations, they start to kind of hit their stride, but that five to 10 is such an abysmal place to be. It's the worst size. You have all the big problems. Without any of the big solutions yet. Yeah. Can't really afford to invest big money into, into anything that really works from a systemization standpoint. Right. Yeah. Well, and you're always lopsided too. You're usually really good at one thing, you know, be it the product or the fulfillment or the sales, but then everything else kind of sucks. Generally, I think, and tell me if this has been your experience is because you're built around one, person, one wizard. I would say in general, that's, true. And that wizard is usually a really good one trick pony. Yeah. That's funny. So my agency solutions eight, I think we're the best Google ads in the world, but it's only because my business partner is the best Google ads guy in the world. And now we've hired really well. I've got a phenomenal team, but you know, that's, I think we'd be really well defined as a one trick pony. And we got, you know, we're sub 10 million gross revenue, but approaching. And I don't think we could get to 20 just running Google Ads, or maybe that's a limiting belief. I think we'd have to branch out to other channels or, you know, go a little deeper on the, customer journey. So where do you start with a business like that? Like, you're my consultant. I hired you today. Where do we begin? Start with people. It always starts with people. Do you have the right people in the right places? So the first, that's the first way you can sink your ship. You're either overspending or you're underspending or you're not empowering them. That's, that's your biggest asset right there. Yeah. Do you do those personality profiles? You know, I've done a lot of them. The one, if there is one, my favorite is the culture index because it it gets out of just personality. It starts to get into kind of innately. How do you show up and then how do you modify your, it's behavior based. So what behavior do you show up with at work? And what behavior do you show up with innately in life and how are you modifying your behavior to show up at work and then it shows kind of do you have the fortitude or the energy bank to be able to modify what you need to do? So, for instance, I suck at details, right? I am a hard charging, hit the gas, get shit done type of guy from like a I can think five years out. I can see the big picture, but you want me to go fill out forms and do details and I'm horrible. But at work, I know I have to do some of that stuff. So like my profile at work shows that I can get details done to like call it a 30 percent level. But it's enough. It's enough for me to get the job done, but on my profile, like my natural profile, I'm 0 percent that's interesting. Those behavioral pieces are what I always want to know, because I want to know, hey, what's easy for somebody? What's natural? How do they show up in a way where it's like, this feels great. I love coming to work because it's just easy versus Oh, it's so I'm pulling teeth. I'm like, I don't, I can't wait. It's five o'clock. Cool. I'm out. we don't want that. I think we did. I'm looking at culture index now. I don't remember if this was it I've done five or six in my entrepreneurial career, where you bring in the consultant, you pay them a whole bunch of money, and then they go test everybody and they come back and they have the recommendations. I remember one gentleman in particular, who was great at this. He tested my entire team and I had one young lady who worked for me. He was the worst employee I've ever had in my entire life. And I thought it was me or because she on paper looked so good. She came from a really trusted referral source. It was a niche specific need. I'm trying to veil her identity here. and I had nobody else. And so I was desperate to make her work. And so in my mind, I was like, it's me, it's the situation, it's this, it's that. And then he went and he did, I don't know if it was culture index or not, but tested everybody. And he came back and he said, you know, who is Sally? And I'm like, why do you ask? And he's like, cause she does not belong Here at all. And he was able to just spot it like instantly. And that was so empowering to hear and to feel like, Oh, thank God. Yeah. But it's hard when you're inside of it to know that. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting too, is, is those employees, they may be lying to themselves, but they know too, something empowering about sitting down, you know, and I imagine you do this because I know you want to know you're just a great, a great guy and a great manager, a great boss, but to be able to tell somebody, Hey. You're amazing at this piece, whatever it is. We don't have that here. I need to help you find this because when you land in this, you're going to love life. You're going to love showing, you're going to love waking up, putting your clothes on and going to work every day. I imagine you don't. And I don't want that for you. And I don't want that for me. Yeah. I'm going to go back and listen to this recording because it was really well stated. I don't know that I am good at those conversations anymore. I think I used to be. I got a little jaded Brent, so I need to come back to the empathy that you just gave me. Where can people connect with you? Really paper cuts suck, gets you into that's your sandpit. Yeah. That's my sandpit. That'll launch you into wherever we're lots of other things. So it's a great place to start. You know, I realized the paper cuts book is, a little esoteric, but what, what it can do mostly. I mean, speaking from, I wrote it for myself, you know, ex CEO who will probably be a CEO again, one day, how do you show up your best in a way where you trust yourself so you don't have to question decisions you're making? Like, that's what the power of this book is, is how do you step into choice and integrity and learn how to love and trust you because then you show up for your business in a way that you've, you've probably never showed up before. I really love that. I love the esoteric conversations too. I want to have more of these because. You know, it's the difference in, I just shot a video on this and nobody watched it, which made me mad. But, are you familiar with Stephen Covey's Personality Ethic versus Character Ethic? Yeah. So, this is Character Ethic discussion. All the other videos I shoot are Personality Ethic discussion, but that's what people want to watch. This is what I want to talk about. So, I'm going to go figure out how to slowly evolve. The conversation Brant, I appreciate you being here, man. I appreciate you just being every time we connect, I take something away from that. That's not pandering by the way. I really mean it every time you're on a call, even when you're quiet, like you'll pipe up and say one thing and I'll be like, well, that made the call for me. So. That's my feedback for you today. If you're watching or listening, go to papercutssuck. com Pre order the e book. If you catch this after August 10th, you can buy the e book, the print version. I buy print of everything, by the way, because I like writing in books now. Which I know is sacrilegious, but it helps with my retention. You can listen listen to our boy Brent Perkins support an author. If you want some consulting, it sounds like he's an assassin. And I imagine they can connect with you by going to 3xbold. com. The number, the paper cuts suck there too. Yeah. Okay. All roads lead back to paper cuts up. Cool. I shoot a video every day. Like comment, subscribe. I love y'all. I'll talk to you later. Peace.