MBA2587 Extended Interview: Martin Warner - The Elon Musk of The UK. How to Build and Sell a Business. Make Life Changing Money.

24:17And I think I can sell them at school. And I was a real kind of trader. And he said, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. How many do you want? I said, I want the whole stall. It was at£450. He goes, really? Because you need the whole stall. I said, I think I can sell them all. And, you know, God bless my dad. He gave me the money and I took all of the belts and I sold them all at the school. I was always doing this. And the other one that was embarrassing, because whilst I got this name as this kind of trader at school, it wasn't always positive, right, that people would look at me as a bit odd. And also people would, I like to think of myself as entirely ethical and also a little bit autistic, like I'm a black and white guy, but people looked at me like I was doing something unethical.

24:58And then came the real reminder. I then got into ticket brokering. And in the days of when Michael Jackson and Madonna were really big, I was in London buying the tickets, And I realized that if I bought them quickly, I could hold them and sell them for more money. And this lesson of supply, demand and volume pricing was a real example. Well, I built that to 210 ticket brokers, which we might today call ticket touting. And I was walking around with, you know, 10, 15 ,000 pounds of cash when I was young. And by the way, this was shut down real quick because, first of all, Live Nation and Ticketmaster, these did not exist.

25:36You know, these places, there was no e-commerce, there was no web or anything like that. There was no easy way to get a second-hand market. You had to go and cut. I built this relationship with these shops, particularly in Soho in London. But what I found was dealing with some of the ticket brokers was a humbling experience. You know, taking the tickets from me, pushing me around. And I'm like, oh, I just don't, you know, I don't really want to do this. I want an easier path to entrepreneurship. I'm telling you, I went looking for an easier path. You know, crazy. I love it. We have that in common.

26:08My kind of first entrepreneurial venture was selling my Halloween candy to my schoolmates. And, you know, I had free stock. I used to start trick-or-treating at like, as soon as I got out of school until like midnight and had like bushels of candy. And throughout the year I would, you know, and I would bundle them. I would put like one great candy, like a Snickers with like not so great one with a horrible one for a buck. Cause I got to get rid of that stock. But yeah, I remember vividly, like you said, people would look at me like, what are you doing? You know, like, why don't you just like eat that candy yourself?

26:43Why are you doing that? And to me, I was just like, what are you kidding me? Like I'm making so much money. And as a kid in, you know, whatever I was nine or 10 years old, cash in your pocket is like unheard of. You know, it's just, you feel like incredible. Speaking of cash, some of our listeners might be looking to raise some cash, raise some money. Maybe they are pre-revenue, maybe they have some traction and they're looking to raise some money from maybe an angel investor, maybe a VC fund. What are some pieces of advice you'd give those who are listening that look to raise money? It's a good question.

27:15So we teach this subject. And the first thing I tell people about raising money is that you've got to be able to, first of all, articulate your value proposition. If you can't sell, first of all, the concept in 60 seconds, perhaps you need to refine it or think about it. If you can't describe the value in another 60 seconds, a minute or two, we've got a problem. And then the third thing is it's all about the route to market or go to market. So if you can describe your value and then you can say, here's a path, here's a set of customers, here's the marketing, here's the kind of the roadmap of how we're going to get there.

27:48This kind of story, first of all, investors want to fall in love with the entrepreneur, the ability to solve a problem, and some belief in the business plan. They'll give you some license with the business plan. If they think you've got an awesome business plan, but you're a little quirky, and they may again think you're right. They may say, you know what, I'm going to take this pun. But you need all three. The thing also about investing as a subject, whether it be angels or syndicates or your pitch shows or whatever, or institutional money from ventures, there's a few things to keep in mind. First of all, they're tiered requirements.

28:19They're generally scaled requirements. and so the level and focus or due diligence increases all the time. So does, as you will know from your own experiences, the amount you're going to give away for the company and the level of the punt and the scrutiny changes. So you have to first of all put your feet in their shoes. You have to understand what is the level of information to go and get$100 ,000 or$150 ,000. What are they likely to look for and what are you going to give away for that? It's going to be very different for an angel to, say, a VC. As an ex-VC at JP Morgan, I was astounded by the level of due diligence we would do once we'd gain trust with the entrepreneur.

28:59As a business angel, you've either got someone that's excited about the space and they're jumping in quick, or you're going to have to romance this person for a long time. But put your feet in their shoes. Something in common, the third kind of field of thinking, once you've got your feet in their shoes, you have to understand, have they invested before? Or are they going to invest? Are they in a position to invest? So VCs love to have coffee mornings and conversation. Then you find out they're making one investment this year. And actually, it's not in the direct field of where they want. Or there's a conflict.

29:31So have they invested in your field? Are they an active current investor right now? Are there any conflicts? Have you got the right makeup? So they often say, can you find an investing partner that will give you anything more than dumb money? Right. So do they know something about your industry or your business? Are they going to connect you with people? Let me tell you, I've never met an investor that's offered me anything other than money. Right. Now, I may be cynical, but the idea that they're going to connect you to a whole pool of people, the best you'll get is a portfolio. And these guys don't want to talk.

30:02Right. So, you know, they're not going to give you their best developer. Right. You know, just because they're in a book. Right. Right. Or by the way, a whole bunch of customers go, go wear them out of time. and money. It doesn't really happen. But what I do say is go figure out that they're relevant. So one of the things I look for beneath the covers is who's going to do the due diligence? And I placed a question on them. Go ask some smart questions about why they want to invest in this space. Is it of interest? What are they looking for? And you can vet very quickly whether you've got someone that you can have a conversation with.

30:37The hardest thing with investing at the angel or the venture level is that even though they want to talk, Today, we live in a real saturated web, right? There's just too much opportunity. We've had prosperity for too long. And so now I think it's getting harder to have meaningful conversations. So you've got to go and do some of that due diligence. Just to follow up on that, do you agree? Because I have found that whether you're trying to sell your business, whether you're trying to raise capital, that it's so much easier to do it when they're coming to you rather than you going after them. Like I find it that if you're asking the question, like, you know, how do I find investors?

31:13How do I speak to somebody who's looking to raise interest in my company to buy it or, you know, to acquire me? Is that a sign that maybe the time's not right? Maybe you need to add some more value to the business. Maybe you need more traction. So there's a couple of parts. I mean, first of all, you always want people coming to you, right? Yeah. It's human nature. If you were to kind of ask a girl to a dance or whatever, right? I never had that kind of confidence. and I wouldn't want to be, I would want that person to ask me. If I think about business, I would like to know there's a customer that says, I really like what you're doing, or an investor that says, this is a space I'd like to jump on board.

31:47The reality is that those aren't in front of you. Most of the time, that stuff is not happening, right? You've got to go and force the entry a bit. You've got to turn up to the dance. You've got to go to the investor's office, right? Or you've got to talk to partners. And so the question is, how do you do it without being in someone's face? How do you do it without sounding desperate or impetuous? And I think the answer is that the world works on this idea of qualitative measurement or this ability to share a story where someone's going to go and refer it. So social media has become this great engagement.

32:21Although I think social media, I wouldn't call it the toilet of the web or the cloud, but what I do think is there's an opportunity to portray something. I don't mean the shiny side of your life because everyone seems to be happy and no one shows you the bad side of their life. But I think you can talk about your product, your service, what you're going to do for customers. You can show your, like, so if I was to talk about my education company, I'd probably have my candidates talk for me. Talk about, and I would have that even further. Go talk about a problem that's valuable to someone else. Talk about your perspective in that problem.

32:53And then, you know what? Trust that that may come back to you. And by the way, that does. I mean, this has been a great candidate acquisition path for us. So I try to find ways to use the referral model and to try and convey my value without making it look like propaganda or trying to oversell or overpush. With investors, I think the idea is figure out who you want and then draw kind of what I call the four points around them and try and get a referral to them. As you get older, that job gets easier. When I was younger, I had no one. Now, most people in my industry, I know them or I know someone that can at least afford me an opportunity.

33:31I still want to ensure I can pick that engagement right where we can have a constructive conversation. I don't know about you, Ahmad, but what I do now is I don't want to have a conversation where I'm having to push the agenda. Because if I'm doing that, it's a bit like when they say the first person to speak is losing the negotiation. I think it's always true, but I think more or less you're showing your hand. And so I try to find a smarter way to feel like I'm on a healthy or even kill for a conversation. That's great. I mean, I learned those two things the hard way, which the first one is you got to be in the arena.

34:08You have to be out there. You have to be speaking to people. You have to go to those meetups. You have to go to those conferences. You know, I front loaded that for years. And then eventually you're going to get to the point where you're going to get on the no train, where you're going to start saying no to these opportunities because there's too many of them because you've invested so much time. But you have to be around and meet people so other people can know about you and refer you or talk about you so that when you meet somebody, they already know about you. They may not have met you, but they know about you.

34:34They heard you from somewhere. I learned that throughout time and had some really good mentors. The second thing that you touched on that I learned the hard way was best story wins. Oh, yeah. Best story wins. Every time, yes. So you have to refine your story, your narrative. And the great thing about social media, like I mentioned, is that you can control the narrative. You can create this story around yourself. And you best bet before they get on that call or when they meet you at that cafe, they're going to Google you. They're going to check out your social media. They're going to figure out what your story is.

35:04And it's so interesting. We're in a highly political time right now. But that is true in politics, too. Best story wins. It doesn't even matter what the reality is. It doesn't matter what is actually going to happen or what is going on or what has happened in the past. It's just whatever story that's built around the brand is what really gets remembered and resonates with people. Well, in particular there, that last point you make, certainly in the beginning. So to get started, to get in the door, you know, perception is everything, right? So you can survive on a story to build that first engagement.

35:39I think the question about sustainability and growing a business, it changes, right? Because the rubber meets the road. The product is on the conveyor belt. It gets into the customer's hands, right? They use it. And then that very thing that got you the opening of the door of social media, you get trashed on social media if your product's a load of rubbish. So what you can do is you can create that story, you can get in and get your opportunity to raise money, sell to customers, hire people, all these things that you want to do. And then you have to think about really building a business so that you can start to protect the conveyor belt.

36:14Yeah. For those who are listening or thinking about starting, you know, maybe a tech startup, a web app, a mobile app, something that is going to require skills outside their own. You've built a lot of physical, digital products, whether it's autonomous flight, bought objects, Flix Premier, a lot of tech in there. When you get started with these projects, how much is great talent a part of your equation? How do you find this great talent? How do you even verify if they're able to pull off what you need them to do, especially when they're working on fields that maybe you're not an expert at. Yeah.

36:49You have a knack, Omar, of bundling up the critical elements into a tidy package. And it's often, this is not a tidy conversation, right? So I counted four things that are really important and they are on the same cube. So I think the first one is coming back to the story, right? So people have to be inspired by your vision and they have to be inspired by some level of substance. Perception, as I just said, is not everything. So if they don't believe my background or my capability, or more importantly, they want to take the journey that I'm espousing, then it all ends there. So people have to be inspired.

37:22And now more than ever, with technology providing an unprecedented level of transparency, we have to sell both ways. It's now no longer that you can even just pay someone for a job without inspiring them and making them understand that this is a journey they want to take. This is the first thing. I think the other thing is that, forget getting them with the story. I think your question was more about acquisition. like where do you find them? How do you engage with them? And I think more often than not, really great people, if you're picking someone immediately off the market, we've all done it, I've certainly done it, I continue to do it when necessary, your odds of finding great people are diminished.

37:57Because naturally, the funnel's upside down. So what happens is, you know, the people that are looking between jobs, one or two just happen to be at that moment in time, on a sabbatical or whatever, or maybe got pushed out for the right or wrong reasons, and they happen to be the type of quality you want. But the majority of people on the market probably odds on aren't. So what does that mean? We flip it the other way up. We're going to have to go and pitch. We're going to have to go and poach. We're going to have to go and talk to competitors. We're going to have to get a little ethical is fine, but cunning.

38:25Cunning about having conversations. And this starts with that word networking, whether it's LinkedIn, talking to our peers. This means we have to be resourceful. So resourcefulness is really important, and I've done everything. So yes, we've used headhunters, but more often than not, we've got to just talk to the community that we're in. If I'm looking for a film producer for one of my movies, well, we know the network. We talk to people. We listen to who's interested in projects. We may not know their calendar, but we kind of know who we want to talk to, and we'll go and attract them with the vision.

38:56As for the other two points that I picked up on that I think would be relevant, is I try to figure out what's the way to not just engage them, but retain them. So what's the incentive model? Because in the beginning, most people don't have a lot of money, particularly when they're starting out. And they're going to have to look at things that they may not like, like the sweat model, right? Sweat equity. It's an ugly model, right? It's all about the future, not the present. And that's a problem because we live life in the present. If we've got a moonlighting job, which, by the way, moonlighting doesn't even exist now, right?

39:25I mean, if that was the case, I was guilty of it 30 times over. But the reality is, it's hard finding someone saying, look, can you help me at six o 'clock at night when you finish your day job? So you have to think really hard about what's the incentivization. This comes back again to the very first point of are you inspiring them? Do they want to take this journey? And then the last point is, and by the way, the way around that is very simple. And that's that find an opportunity where you can quantitatively figure out how much time can they really give you to solve a particular task? This is really complex, but we've done it.

39:59I've done it with, you know, a half of someone, a third of someone. I've done some crazy things to build that early conundrum, you know, the whole wearing multiple hats part, right? This is an important part of entrepreneurship. We are going to wear different hats. So, yeah, I think that's the main element, the incentivization. I think the other thing I'd say is that when people come on board, you can have all of that. But how do you really know if they're going to do the job, which I think was your last point? And I think the answer is that you give them a test, not just they're buying into your vision, not that they've just got something on paper, and not they're just going to give you time and you're going to find some kind of incentive model for them, but you test them on the calls.

40:40Now, this is easier with developers, right? So we're hiring AI developers for my AI venture right now. We give them a huge coding test. We have a rule that it's an hour and a half to two hours max. That's a long time when you're just going for a job, right? But again, we incentivize them about the future. We tell them about the vision. We want them to be attracted to the cause, but we tell them that if you're going to be attracted to the cause, you've got to solve this problem. We put incentives in the test, meaning what would it mean if you could solve this problem? And so thinking cunningly about how you can test ability is really important.

41:15It takes time. But then business is all about taking time. You can take runs off the clock later, but in the beginning, you're going to spend that time. So testing capability is really important. And we've done that in many different ways. In technology, it's always tests. Often or not, we'll listen to stories. You know, if we're talking about admin functions or sales, yeah, I mean, we can normally vet that through detailed conversation and ask them whether they really did it. And we can test that. But if it's something material, like they're building a product, you've got to get into testing.

41:45Yeah, I would agree. two things I just want to touch on. Totally accurate when it comes to finding great talent and finding somebody who's willing to do something on the side. My first CTO, Webinar Ninja, very complex software, as you can imagine, video streaming, landing page software, email marketing software. There's so much going on. I didn't know what I was getting into, and that's probably why I did it. But I needed a CTO that could help me hire people that understood those technologies and be able to build and be innovative. And I just literally went on Upwork and I filtered for most expensive when it came to engineers.

42:23And I found one of the heads of engineering at Yahoo, who's looking for something to do. And he was pushing papers and he wanted to be part of the startup community and do something exciting. And when he saw, he's like, listen, I can only give you 10 hours, but I can help set up your infrastructure, vet your engineers that are coming in, you know, for him, this is like play. And for me, I was like, I'm getting somebody who's expensive, but I rather pay him 10 hours and pay somebody who's junior 40 hours. And that was big time help. And, uh, that I would, I would endorse that wholeheartedly. Uh, the second point you made is when it came to, you know, just selling that vision and communicating, which is what we talked about earlier, you know, best story wins is, they can work anywhere.

43:07They can earn a buck at any of the jobs they're applying for. And this idea of you're testing them, but they're testing you as well. You're courting them and selling them on the job, which is an amazing reminder, especially with some of your experience working in so many different industries. So I want to talk a little bit about you've built these businesses, you've built this sustainable wealth for yourself. In the big picture, when you look back, how and why did you want to do this? Like in terms of your life, in terms of how it's impacting yourself, your family, your others. Do you have like a feeling of regret of like maybe I didn't need to do all this to feel happy?

43:47Or was it more of a I'm trying to work towards a goal that maybe you want to share with us? um well first of all i think that no one's no one's actually got any original um observations of this question but i think everyone crosses it at some point and that's the you know was there an opportunity cost to what you were doing right would you and and and there have been many in my life right you know so i've been married a few times i've lived in different countries you know america and london i got three children you know i parented across the atlantic ocean these are big challenges. So when you think about your time and your purpose, you have to first of all value your time because as you get older, you realize actually your ability to use it slows down.

44:35Now, I can say on your podcast, it doesn't really matter because I feel that where I am right now, I can still offer a lot, but I think I don't want to challenge unnecessarily this idea that when we get older, somehow we're still the same person because we're not. So therefore, the value of time is really, really important. So for me, when I traded working hard, you know, business is like oxygen to me, like it's, it's a hobby, like I've really enjoyed to try, I've never took a job that I haven't been motivated. I careful not to use the word passion, because I think it means different things, but curious about a problem that I thought really needed solving.

45:15And then the other side, as I mentioned, at the beginning of the conversation, this idea of this quest for not not just high meaning, but survival, right? I've got to survive. At the same time, I'm doing that for the most important thing. I have a, not even because I became successful, but I have a very narrow field of view, and that's that I focus on my family. We're very busy, we're caught up with life, and it's a very, it's a full-time job, but I've got to also do this full-time job, and I'm getting older. I think this is a very complicated conundrum. Getting in is probably the easier part, But how do you get out and get out in a way that allows you to not make too many sacrifices?

45:54And I've made plenty of trade-offs in my life that, you know, in hindsight, you can always try and make better decisions. But I hope that I made a few that were right along the way. I guess as we get older, we also understand who we are a little bit more and what we want, what we don't want, what we're willing to spend our time on. I know that you have been working on an AI venture recently, and I know AI is a lot of people love it, hate it. Personally, I'm quite bullish on it. Tell me a little bit about why AI is so important and why is it so important to you to use your, you know, the second half of your life to work on it and put into the world?

46:33Well, first of all, back to this higher purpose of meaning that I think that I'm still trying to do my life's best work. So whether it be I wrote a book because I'm busy diarizing my life for my kids. This is one of my big goals. When I was young, it was eight millimeter film and crazy stuff. You know, it wasn't easy, diarize or document your life. Now I want to hopefully be very selective, but pick something that's going to have a profound impact. Well, in my long journey as a tech entrepreneur, I think that AI, not to be duplicity or repetitive, what I think a lot of people have said, but my summary is, and my judgment, is that the most profound effect in technology, in terms particularly on humanity, is happening right now.

47:15It's sped up so fast to the point where speed won't matter. We won't measure speed. In fact, it would be far more important to understand our resourcefulness as a human race and where we are in the process to receive change. And this concept is really important. So my focus in AI is on human productivity. And by the way, most of my life, I've done something in the world of productivity. And what I realized is that when you look at the architecture, not to get too technical, but this concept of taking vertical large language models, in other words, there's going to be a contextual, let's call it real-time database, a language model per industry, sub-industry, discipline and function.

47:56And then we're going to have this thing that it's got a face or a UI and a workflow and a script, and we're going to call that an agent. And it's just going to go and run task for you and whatever. So we're doing that in the world of human productivity. When you think about that, this is a one-way train because this concept, this overused concept of generalized intelligence, this idea that at some point it will speed up so fast that these machines will think faster. And I think that station, we're arriving at it very, very soon. And actually, the journey is whether you get on a one-way train and get there with the first set of people that want to engage in this pace of change and contribute towards what these agents are discovering.

48:36And I think being in front of the agent and let's say doctors, practitioners, other skilled workers, accountants, lawyers, coders, it doesn't matter. What we found as a human race and what AI and what motivates me about AI is that the agent isn't going to go and do this on their own. They're not sentient. They can't see the gray part of the world, right? They're not feeling for us, but we need to be able to receive that information, see how it changes our life or the human condition or the work environment that we're in and contribute further requirements. And I think through this, we can see some of the biggest breakthroughs that we're ever, ever going to see, whether that be solving cancer or looking at issues around aging and whether it be looking at new products and new technologies that can save the environment.

49:21These things are possible just because of the concatenation of context, the ability to bring data together. And I think the human role, just like in the 90s with automation, when they said, everyone's going to lose their job. Guess what? Unemployment didn't go down. We found other jobs. If humanity, kind of 1.0 was the age of information abundance, the web search, then eventually e-commerce. Remember in that day, everyone said, all this information, what the hell are we going to do? And then when it got to e-commerce, they said, there's going to be no shops on Main Street or on the High Street.

49:54This wasn't true. Yes, there was replacement, but it wasn't true. And I think of the age of information meaning is where we are today. And I think that we're still going to have jobs as long as we lean in and we get on that one-way train. So what motivates me about it is I think we can do our life's best work. We can have information with massive content. So the size of that problem, I think it becomes easier in terms of being able to see the problem, how well we can implement it, I think is that next evolution behind this idea of agents and vertical LLMs, which are going to be in the hundreds and millions.

50:30But what do we do when we get that? And here's the insight for me that was mind blowing. And that's that today, we can already outpace day to day human thinking. So in my company, my agent can already think 10 steps ahead of me, it can wake me up in the morning and say, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you go to office, and you take an Uber, and there's traffic on your route. And because there's traffic on your route, we set your alarm 30 minutes earlier. By the way, we've given you a new route and we've ordered your Uber. I'm asleep. I can't think about that. And it's doing 10 other things for me.

51:05So the question is, what do I do? I have to get in front of that agent to try and help it set those requirements. And I think down the road, the implementation of this collective requirement is a really kind of exciting change to be part of. And it's happening all over the world for AI, not just in my world of productivity. Do you think part of the resistance to embracing AI and seeing it as one of the biggest opportunities that we've ever seen is the idea that as a species, we've been at the top of the food chain. We've been the best. We've been the best at doing certain things for so long. Our pride is being challenged.

51:44Like almost, you know, like the example you gave where, you know, your automation is going through all those tasks you have to do throughout the week, ordering the Uber, making sure that it's accounting for traffic, things that we can't do cognitively because we're human. You know, we can't do or sleeping, you know. So the fact that it actually is outpacing us in a lot of ways or is actually better at certain things than we are. Yeah. Is it a bit confronting for people and it's hard for them to embrace it? That's an excellent question. Pride comes before the fall, right? And ego has no place in the dictionary, right?

52:20And I mean that, and I do mean that in a funny way, but we kind of have to leave or check our pride and ego at the door when we're looking at something that A, doesn't have feelings, it can procreate, right? Unless we want to create another version of it. By the way, AI systems, I didn't live shorter than us. They're not going to live on this earth as long as us because machines, you know, essentially amortize and they erode or corrode quicker. So we still have a big role to play. And today we still turn that switch on and off. And my gut feeling is that in 10, 20 years, we'll still be switching that button on and off.

52:56So I think we have to just accept that the speed part is the scary bit. And I mean, literally, like very, very soon. I don't think it matters. The speed is less important. It's where are we where we can still say, how do we develop practices that are safe, that are regulated when necessary, that are improving people's lives? How do we ensure we use it for a force for good, not evil? These things are really important. And I think if we lean in and are passionate about it, we can perhaps worry less about the fact that we're going to go through this great reset or replacement, right? that, hey, the world's going to end.

53:30I'm doing a presentation for a big known organisation shortly, and one of my slides is the old Star Trek. So we said, it's worse than that, he's dead, Jim. This idea somehow, right, that we're about to have this existential threat. I think that today is you need to put a lot of steps forward in order to reach that kind of conclusion. And I think it's a little bit of scaremongering. I tend to be a little more hopeful and optimistic about the role that I think is still pretty essential. How do you deal with this information force and now we're going to employ all of these great ideas that we never had before and worry less that I've got to be the smartest person in the room.

54:10But I do think it's a genuine concern that people are like, do I fit in anymore? Am I relevant? And can I still have a good idea when it's being fed at me at light speed? How do I summarise all of this? But guess what? The one thing about technology is to become successful It's a great leverer. It's a great leverer or summarization. For it to be useful, that's the job of technology, if we are going to apply it, to summarize it so that people that still have these skills can still provide requirements. One thing I say to my kids is that in the world of social media, they're only too willing to throw the rule book out the window.

54:48What are the principles of selling? Oh, we don't need that. How do you market a product? I can figure that out with YouTube. You know, all of a sudden, these disciplines have disappeared and kids become really bullish about what they think they can achieve. And they have good reason to because technology is so good. But actually, I think that the skills that we've evolved are still going to be applied as we kind of figure out our future. Let's talk a little bit about how this is going to impact wealth, because I think it's one of the biggest opportunities that we've ever seen. I'd rather be somebody who's lower income in 2024 than a monarch 300 years ago.

55:26I'll take penicillin and the internet. Right, right, right. But this is another huge leap, I believe, in innovation, in creation. And I do believe it's going to create massive wealth creation opportunities where, for all intents and purposes, we are all going to feel wealthy. We're all going to feel that our needs and our wants are taken care of in a lot of ways. What are some of the financial opportunities do you think we're going to see with this next boom? This is another great question. So if we think of financial reward as something that has the effect of financial currency, in other words, we don't necessarily need, well, no one, cash right now is not that great to us, right?

56:10But if we can think about the value of that cash, so can we offer, not everlasting, but can we offer a greater level of prosperity to people? Can we have them work less and spend longer with their families? So could we think smarter by using these AI systems and only go to work two days a week? Could we devote more time? Could we develop a culture of helping mankind or helping other people at the same time? Because we now have that richness. I think you know him, or he was on your, is it Ramit Sethi who talks about living a rich life? Your rich life. When I think of that, I don't think in terms of money.

56:46I think about the choices we make. And I think AI presents that similar equation. We can create a lot of wealth in terms of value by being able to help each other, by having more time on the clock, being able to use our time more wisely. That's kind of very cool. But to the question of economic currency itself, like can we create a unit of currency that's going to be better than what we've seen before? Well, I think I'm willing to bet on the prospect of better ideas than the prospect of failing ideas or the idea that somehow some bad thing's going to happen because we've now got this technology and we've got these great ideas.

57:25But by the way, there's this massive consequence. I don't know. Robots destroying the world, which is a crazy one to be thinking about, even though robotics are absolutely going to be on our roads in the next few years. You're doing jobs that humans don't want to do. This is happening today. But I tend to think that AI is going to create an enormous amount of conditions for ideas to be implemented. And it's at the idea level, we already know as entrepreneurs, that products and services get created. So our ability to widen the filter and be at this right place at the right time to see an idea that could take flight, I think is absolutely possible.

58:02And here's the thing. I think those earlier building blocks for skills or the discovery of those insights will become a lot, lot easier. So the ability to create an economic currency, to be able to see other bridges in industries to other new products and services is going to be there for everyone. That level of prosperity, I don't know what the order of magnitude. I thought about it, but I just don't know the answer. But I think it's profound. It's significant. And the idea that people can collaborate a lot easier with these ideas and find other ways to deliver work is this idea. I make the point to say it's not just about economic currency.

58:39I think it's about wealth in terms of if you give me back time, it's more valuable to me personally than money. And I think AI is going to be able to do that as well. Martin, that's such a great point. And as we kind of come close to our time, one of the things I really enjoyed about our first conversation in this one is not only are you knowledgeable, experience. experience you know you know your stuff but you generally care about helping other people you care about getting this information out there making people comfortable with what's ahead and i want to ask you a little bit about how much of that is intentional how much of that is there is there something behind that where it's like you want to give something that no one gave you or is it something that you want to pass on because of your legacy a lot of people do this on the surface and just so they look good but i do feel like this is coming from somewhere like you're compelled to do this.

59:27Where's that coming from? So I think a lot about this because I want it to be in my kids. I can't give it to them. They've got to find it themselves. But I remember my dad and my late father saying to me that the best thing you can probably give is be compassionate, be empathetic. And kindness is something that you can't just expect, but you can demonstrate it. And these sound really simple, but the amount of people over the years I've often picked up on, I wish we could have delivered that more compassionately. Or I wish you could have understood my circumstances. So if you talk to any of my staff, the one thing that I think they would credit me for is that I care about their conditions.

1:00:04I care about what they're going through. I care about their circumstances in their life. I care about my fellow people. And that sounds like something that you could just say, but I can't tell you, I just mean it. For me, it's just in me. I think it's why I enjoy teaching. I like to help people. When I hear the humbling reviews, I can't tell you a bad one that I've had. And I think that's not about the advice I give. I think it's about the fact that it's warm, it's welcoming. I deeply care. I don't want to live in a society where when I was younger, I was all about skills. I was a binary person.

1:00:39I was young. I didn't understand. I wanted to reach out, but I was a bit of an introvert. I think my mother thought I was a little autistic as a kid because I didn't talk. He took me a while to blossom, but I really cared. My dad helped me find the lens to kind of be the person that I want to be. And I don't really have any real motivation behind the fact that I think that I can live a better life and I can be a better father and a better husband. And I can hopefully be of interest to people that can be relevant to people. And I will tell you something else that I do it with humor, right? Life is too serious.

1:01:14And I try my best with my team to, I'm not saying I'm David Brent out of the office or whatever. I'm not seeking this weird, weird comedy is the rule of everything. But I try to show that everyone's human, that making mistakes is fine and that no one's better than anyone else. I love flat structures. I love to be challenged. I love to pursue ideas. I teach people I don't really love, I don't really want too many assumptions because I'm pretty certain it'll be a path I'm going to end up where I don't want to be. And I do that and deliver it in a compassionate way. And I like to think that I would be happy if I go and find those kind of people.

1:01:50to work with. Martin, it's such a pleasure getting to know you, having this chat today. If you're ever in Sydney, dinner's on me, man. We'll definitely meet up in person sometime soon. Either side. I really appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. I'm in the UK or the US sometime soon. So it'd be great to meet in person and have a meal together. But thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, sharing your experience, sharing your perspectives. I know there's so much more for you to share. So we'll be mentioning and a little bit after our conversation wraps up where people can learn more about you and your work.

1:02:23But thanks again, Martin. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. I've really enjoyed it, Amar. And I look forward to catching up with you soon. Take care, brother. Love this conversation with Martin. Such a giving person for an accomplished human being. There's so many people I've met along the way through this podcast, through my own journey in entrepreneurship that have accomplished big things, made millions and millions of dollars, but they're rarely as in touch with what we're doing every day with building businesses, with trying to build value and grow our businesses as Martin is. He's just down to earth, really knows his stuff, but at the same time still cares, which is really, really nice to see.

1:03:00One of the things we talked about at the end of the episode was AI and how AI can really improve your life. He gave this example of AI booking an Uber for him while he's sleeping, checking the traffic, making sure that the Uber is booked in time, checking out you know, what time his flight is by going into his inbox. If you're wondering what tool does that? Well, it's his tool. It's his innovation. It's his business. It's called Warp Speed. And you could check it out. Let me go to the browser here so you could see. And the website is iamwarpspeed.com. That's the letter I am warpspeed.com. And you could check out what he's doing, what he's building, really allowing AI to make us more productive, to give us more time for our life, for our families, for our hobbies.

1:03:48Remember those hobbies? So it's really interesting what he's doing now with AI. So check it out if you're curious, if you want to stay ahead of the curve, if you want to optimize a little bit more of your time. Listen, if you like these extended conversations that we have once a month and you want more of them along with the lessons that we deliver three days a week, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast right now, whether you're listening to the podcast on Apple or Spotify or any other player, or you're watching the podcast on YouTube, subscribe so you get all the updates and our next episodes automatically.

1:04:22If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to click the description below and check out all the notes and all the links that we share, including that website, Warp Speed, I am Warp Speed dot com so that you can check it out and you can expand upon what we discussed today in the conversation. Thanks so much for listening to the$100 RBA show. I'll check you in the next one. I'll see you then. Take care. .