Maximizing Marketing, Debunking Myths, and Sharing Hard Truths

The following transcription was from the Bulletproof Youtube channel. Here is the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xO1JA1jxgE&t=7s

Trey Tippit
0:00:00
Both of y'all have kind of mentioned reputation and competition from a Google Alerts standpoint. Reputation I fully understand in the sense that, yeah, you want to see what's said about you. You want to see where your name's popping up. You want to see those types of things. However, the challenge I would throw out there is on competition, because one, it's not competition. Dennis and Nextdoor to you are not competition for you. It's not a zero-sum game. We do not operate in that regard, in which case the thought process and the reason why Google Alert has never appealed to me from that standpoint is it's not actionable. What are you doing if you see it?

Peter Boulden
0:00:36
And… Can I answer that?

Dwight Pecorra
0:00:38
Yeah, go for it.

Peter Boulden
0:00:40
So in the scenario, the hypothetical, where I see a competitor of mine, Trey, and I see their name pop up, and it's associated with some kind of article. I actually have a counter SEO strategy because there is a link that they are there doing and they are getting attribution for that link which is increasing their visibility of their rankings.

Peter Boulden
0:01:00
♪ For this you are my bulletproof ♪ ♪ Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang ♪ ♪ Load it, cock it, name it, shoot it ♪ ♪ Load it, cock it, name it, shoot it ♪ ♪ Load it, cock it, name it, shoot it ♪

Peter Boulden
0:01:14
All right guys, welcome back reunited and just pretty good.

Peter Boulden
0:01:22
It feels so good.

Peter Boulden
0:01:23
Dwight. So good.

Peter Boulden
0:01:25
I'm not trying to take your job as the greatest moderator in the world, but I appreciate the

Peter Boulden
0:01:30
title but but he's taking it.

Trey Tippit
0:01:32
Enjoy it.

Peter Boulden
0:01:33
Unless you've got some very pithy pithy. We ain't got time.

Peter Boulden
0:01:36
I got so much on the agenda that I got a lot of content on that agenda.

Peter Boulden
0:01:39
I mean, I'm not sure we have time for banter. So unless you've got it Dwight, or we can maybe put it in the bin for next time.

Craig Spodak
0:01:47
No, no, no.

Peter Boulden
0:01:47
Go, go, go. Let's go.

Peter Boulden
0:01:48
A lot going on.

Peter Boulden
0:01:49
Lots of going on.

Peter Boulden
0:01:50
Shit's getting crazy in our world. Shit's getting crazy. Sure is. Not, this isn't 10 foot hat shit. I was about to ask. It's not, it's not.

Peter Boulden
0:01:56
I'm not gonna talk.

Peter Boulden
0:01:57
We're gonna actually gonna talk.

Peter Boulden
0:01:58
The first topic we're going to talk is dentistry you assholes

Trey Tippit
0:02:03
it's antlers not no well Reynolds wrap is the sponsor sponsors this podcast brought to you by antlers calm for the horned experience of a lifetime or that doctor up your doctor up your environment are you feeling dejected and lonely you need some horns people are jealous go ahead Pete what's your guys

Peter Boulden
0:02:23
How do you even own these practices?

Trey Tippit
0:02:25
Unbelievable.

Craig Spodak
0:02:26
Other people don't.

Peter Boulden
0:02:27
Yeah.

Trey Tippit
0:02:27
Okay. That's how that is. All right, so we are gonna talk a little,

Peter Boulden
0:02:33
we're gonna talk some dentistry

Peter Boulden
0:02:34
because I know we've gotten off. So I want to talk today about some marketing things and I'm just as equally as interested in the answers you're going to give me as I am, I don't know the answers, therefore I'm asking, because I'm actually genuinely interested. So as we kind of talk about in Bulletproof, a lot of the idea of storytelling marketing really resonates, the idea of video, the idea of just marketing as a whole is always where you're always marketing, all of us. Trey, sometimes you're marketing less and doing less things, varying degrees, right? But we all are very informed about what it takes for our own ecosystem. What is actually working right now for you what's the most effective thing that you've got cooking your practices word-of-mouth okay well let's take let's okay take out the obvious yeah yeah actual work that we're putting in oh I mean look I mean that's a great thing right well and that's the way it should be word-of-mouth if I want to just see like have you noticed a shift in advertising dollars if so is anything working for you. If you don't have data on it, it's fine. I'm hitting you kind of up.

Dwight Pecorra
0:03:40
Well, I'm answering your question, but I'm not answering your question. The reason I said that is because not just because that should be the most important component, but that's actually what's driving what I see is the most successful stuff, which is taking word of mouth, which is great and effective on people interacting in the community. But then if you can extrapolate that, which has been for us, something that I learned years ago, actually at Y'all Summit, and y'all pushed me into video, and that is basically carries the word of mouth much, much further than the actual patient's lips. And that to me is what has kind of extrapolated it and honestly made it a lot cheaper at the same time to do marketing, because we can take that, we can build the story, take the patient's experience and extrapolate and push it through social media.

Peter Boulden
0:04:24
So you're basically saying, A, your first one is literally linear word of mouth, patient to patient in the community. The second thing is word of mouth at scale. Right. Meaning like the testimonial, the story tell, the whatever. Right. I love that. I love that. OK. Are you finding Dwight? I guess what I'm going is this. Let's just say hypothetically or some listing. I mean, I'm having a shitty month or I'm anticipating having a shitty month. What should I be learning, looking at, doing, and just giving us, we're obviously each in geographically specific areas, diverse areas. Our practices are a little bit different. And so I just didn't know if you guys were like, man, what I'm doing right now is crushing it. I'm doing lunch baskets to specialists. I don't know, I'm just looking at what you're doing.

Trey Tippit
0:05:14
Fruit cakes, to be specific.

Peter Boulden
0:05:16
Horns and fruit cakes.

Dwight Pecorra
0:05:18
A little bit of cheese. A little bit of wine.

Peter Boulden
0:05:20
Dwight, that was good. That was very good. Okay, so video. Dwight, when you, or are you only doing video, sorry, are you only doing storytelling, patient testimonials type stuff? You know, I put videos into three buckets, three types of videos, right? So you have educational kind of videos for your practice that usually live on your website on the interior pages. The second one I put it in a bucket of is more branding stuff, more just like no direction, just getting your logo and your name and everything in front of people's face, like the quote unquote impressions. And we all know that on ad platforms, impressions are just the eyeballs that you see on the data, on the analytics. And sometimes it's not, you know, in marketing we're looking for what's the rate of conversion and what's this, but like for instance in billboard marketing you're looking at all you can look at, because you can't really count conversions, unless you have all call tracking, is how many eyeballs are gonna see that billboard every day. So, again, let me finish by, so I have the three buckets of video, educational components, right? Here's a period protect tray. This is what veneers are like geared towards truly educating. Second is just branding. Here we are, here's our location, here's new chairs, here's new whatever we have. Welcome to our location. Welcome to our brand. Welcome to the experience. The third bucket I would put in is being what we're truly speaking about, the storytelling marketing of patient conversions, right? And having an avatar of someone diverse, like meaning someone who was interested, who was petrified of dentistry, right? And maybe it's a sedation story or petrified or struggled with a gap in their tooth, right? So it's all these different stories and avatars because what I do is find that person wherever they are, get them off of zero. So I'm gonna stop talking. Anything you

Trey Tippit
0:07:11
guys want to fill in there in terms of that? Let me add a fourth category to that. There is a component of true social media. It is your team having fun with each other, it's events that you do that y'all are just chronicling, the people working well together, that type of thing. Because in the end, and one of the things that I've started talking a lot about is when everyone starts pitching education. The idea that we're educating patients on certain procedures and this or that is a, it's a fool's errand that we're playing with ourselves that people are actually able to speak the language we speak, download everything we know about it, and be able to truly get them to understand it, walk out the door. And a video is much improved in that because it can be watched over and over again. So they can take it home and do it. But people aren't going back, people are clicking on all of your things because they want to see stuff that's interesting. You want to keep eyeballs on your screen.

Peter Boulden
0:08:07
Interesting or entertaining?

Craig Spodak
0:08:08
Entertaining.

Trey Tippit
0:08:09
Entertaining would probably be a better way to put it. Interesting will last for…

Peter Boulden
0:08:12
Would you agree that there's context for that? Meaning you go to YouTube with the intent of being educated, you go to Facebook with the intent of being wasting time, you go to Instagram with the intent of education, I'm sorry, entertainment, right? Doesn't context matter?

Trey Tippit
0:08:28
Yeah, context matters.

Peter Boulden
0:08:29
Right, so like why can't you make a sweeping generalization that like, oh, you know what works, is like our team having fun and showing that as a one, you know, what am I trying to say, as a silver bullet, so to speak.

Trey Tippit
0:08:41
Not a silver bullet, just a fourth category video.

Peter Boulden
0:08:43
As what, social?

Craig Spodak
0:08:44
No, social video.

Trey Tippit
0:08:45
It is social, it is true social video.

Peter Boulden
0:08:47
Okay, so you're saying videos intended only for out in the consumption of social media.

Craig Spodak
0:08:51
Correct.

Dwight Pecorra
0:08:52
You can put it on your website. It's storytelling.

Peter Boulden
0:08:55
It's essentially branding. I think the part of…

Peter Boulden
0:08:57
How would that be a fourth bucket?

Peter Boulden
0:08:58
I think what he's pulling into is…

Trey Tippit
0:09:00
So if you're going to put a branding video out, would you put you talking about documenting a happy hour or some fun thing you did with your team in that branding category?

Peter Boulden
0:09:13
If it was on, for example, again, context matters, it was on the page of careers, right? If it was on the page of team benefit, if it was on that, then I think it's an augment to that. Yes, I would put it on.

Trey Tippit
0:09:25
Okay, so you're using that as a hiring tool.

Peter Boulden
0:09:27
And I would actually use that, Trey, in a paid ad on LinkedIn, potentially, right? And with a specificity to the dental community so that people in my community may see that. Does that make sense?

Dwight Pecorra
0:09:39
So I'm using it for hiring.

Trey Tippit
0:09:40
So you're using it from a hiring standpoint, yes. What I would argue and what I would put forward as an option of doing the exact same thing, that yes, huge benefit for hiring, but if you're showing your team being social, it is also something that will get eyeballs on patients, because in the end, if you're on your own social media, patients don't give a shit about what you're doing. You're a dentist. They're not tied into your stuff like you're tied into your stuff. It's the Etlid fallacy of everyone thinks like you do, but they don't. It's interesting to you, it's interesting to us, and we can track it, but I'm willing to bet that people will watch more video if it's actually fun to watch. Then they see it and the idea, the extrapolation of this and the bucket and the thought process would be if they're watching something fun and they see your team having a fun time and you're doing a bunch of fun stuff or a bunch of events that you put

Peter Boulden
0:10:26
together they go I like those people. Okay I mean Craig would that not be an interpretation of the if Disney were in your hospital kind of thing I mean is

Trey Tippit
0:10:36
that is that kind of in the same vein? Yes so essentially patients have a very poor barometer to tell what is good quality dentistry unfortunately it's it's very unfortunate because we know all know clinical dentists who are fantastic who are going out of business. So the patients go on perceived value, perceived perception of quality. And the one metric that they usually run to is the perception of how well the team gets along. So I would say that a really well thought out video that highlights a great culture is probably gonna move the needle on the, let me go to this dental office meter, faster than a really well crafted, what is a veneer video. That's just my personal feeling. And the great thing about marketing though, is only half of it works, we don't know which half is working, so we're all right in this conversation, in our own biases. Yeah, right. So I would say this too, to preface this, the idea, my mindset of marketing, the end game, the albeit most important metric is eyeballs. How many, it's impressions. That billboard gives you a ton of impressions. If you put a Google ad out and it never gets clicked on, the impressions alone are actually, you're owning that little receipts of real estate during that one little page, that one little glimpse, but it takes it away from someone else and it puts it in their eyeballs. And the thought process of a blurge.

Peter Boulden
0:11:55
Even if there's not imagery attached to that, sorry to interrupt, like even if, so obviously Google ads are just branding from a word perspective. So you're saying even if there's, I love the, if yours is shown, someone else can't be, and therefore you're not paying for that position, even if they don't click on you. But you're saying that even branding from a word recognition, not even a logo or imagery.

Trey Tippit
0:12:15
Correct. You're putting your name in front of them one more time. And when you build large, it's the same concept of building a large patient base by having a hygiene-driven practice. The idea is that, how do you generate internal referral? Well, if you have a huge amount of patients, you will generate just on sheer numbers, much more internal referral from that bigger patient base as long as you are providing the experience that is actually getting people to say, yeah, I like it here and then go tell their friends.

Peter Boulden
0:12:40
I actually really, I actually agree with you, Trey, not in full, but I really do agree with you. I agree it's about the numbers game and it's an impressions game, it's an eyeballs game. Attention is the currency of our lives right now, you know, and everyone is.

Trey Tippit
0:12:56
To the marketing thing, if you don't mind. It's this idea, I look at marketing like a rocket and a payload, and what we're talking about here is trying to deliver a payload. And you can deliver something that's really valuable and that you can get that you want to have a lot of eyeballs see. It's very valuable, it's very promotional, it's good for patients to see it. They'll be attracted to your practice. But it's not compelling. It's more of a message about you. So you have to add a lot of rocket fuel to push that message out, which is in the form of dollar spend and lift. But if you can craft a message that's so compelling via a story or a culture, those tend to lift themselves up. There are people who, when the dancing dentist is one of them, but a poor example, you know, constant team who just made a very compelling TikTok and it won't put him on Ellen DeGeneres. It had nothing to do with his clinical skill. I know him to be a good dentist and all that, but it had nothing to do with it, but it was self-propelling. It had its own fuel source. So I think the perfect marketing message is one that is not as promotional, overtly promotional. We do veneers different because of X, Y, and Z. And again, this is my brain, and you all know how I think. I think very differently. But I don't think it's that X, Y, Z differential, but like a story that is really great. And that's why I think the videography can be generically utilized.

Peter Boulden
0:14:18
So Craig, here's the thing, is that would you not all agree that, we've all think, I think we talked about storytelling, but would you agree that that is almost the hardest thing to craft well? Of course, but once you craft it, it flies on its own. It almost takes, in my impression, right, you can't just say like, hey, here's a camera, here's a thing, we'll create a story. It almost takes choreography.

Trey Tippit
0:14:42
Yeah, it's a movie. I mean, that's why movies are so hard. No one can just, no one just says,

Craig Spodak
0:14:45
hey, I'm doing a summer project, I'm making a movie, a two-hour movie. It's hard, but it taps into the brain to receive the message and promote it. Because it's hard, it's an uncrowded pond. It goes back to what Trey was saying about cheap impressions or just impressions of scale. If you're competing in an area, it's like, shit, video is hard. Look, anyone can create a Google ad and be up and running on a tech standpoint in 8 to 10 minutes with their name, their brand, but it takes a lot more lift, right? More rocket fuel, Craig, to get you on the platform or get competing in a visual imagery standpoint. And I agree, but it's tough and it's daunting and people say, shit, video. Like, these dentists come and talk to me. I actually was in Philadelphia just two days ago and they were, someone was asking me this stuff and I was like, well, let's start here. Does your website even have pictures of you and your team?

Peter Boulden
0:15:39
Like, mm, no, no, no.

Peter Boulden
0:15:41
Stock, stock, stock. Got a description of me. I'm like, hmm, let's start with, let's not start with rocket fuel, let's start with just low-grade diesel. Yeah. And get you, let's get you, let's get you up to speed. You know, back, Craig, back to you, you know, Craig and I just potted, did a pod, potted, we potted. We were talking about kind of, we're big on like cycles, whether that's an investment standpoint or a dentist educational thing or the timeline of a patient. Very linear paths for you to follow. And there may be some things, even with that, like do not jump to Rocket Fuel if you're getting out. Check the box of are your referrals being maxed out? Do you have pictures on your website? Do you have even some raw ass, basic ass, unproduced video on your website? Before you start getting into, well I'm gonna jump into video and go hog wild.

Dwight Pecorra
0:16:26
I think, I think just to add to this, just to kind of pull it all together. Yes, a content is hard in a lot of different ways. In particular, the type of content we're talking about. This is for mature practices that have a foundation, right? I mean, you can't go and be playing these games in these platforms and send them to a crappy website. It's just not going to help anything, right? So there's no doubt about that. Actually, Dwight, this is a great point.

Peter Boulden
0:16:50
It's a very good point. Thank you for bringing that up. And you do see this a lot.

Peter Boulden
0:16:54
All the time. All the time. Because it's easy because my generation or generations back, young generations are all like, oh, it's so easy. I can take a video on my phone and post it on my social media. And then they get directed to some practice website that they bought from the practice that they bought and they never upgraded or put in time into the website. And it's like, I'm not coming in there.

Peter Boulden
0:17:13
Or, or you see, 100%, totally agree with you. Or you see people who increasingly up their ad spend because conversions are not happening. They're not happening because the shitty experience once they land on your landing page, i.e. your website. So of course, so it's not ineffective marketing, it's just, right. And so there's just no, there's no way. Obviously I'm asking the question just for pearls and tips for the people listening. I think it's good fodder. Everyone's interested in marketing and to see some tips. And I think this was pretty good.

Trey Tippit
0:17:44
Yeah, one of the things too to add is that I have a lot of friends who own marketing companies and their biggest frustration is they get blamed for poor economic performance of their advertising campaigns not because the phone doesn't ring, but beyond the point of the phone ringing, it's up to the business owner to execute and translate that new interested patient into economics and A great advertising campaign can work and get your phone to ring, but you can still screw it all up You know just by the way you handle it so people by the way you answer the phone or not I'm so I need any of it by the way answer your phone or even when you let's say So the patient experience is paramount and that's why we always say that before you launch an advertising campaign, make sure there's five or seven or 10 boxes checked before that. If you're not calling every patient after every time you give them anesthetic and you're spending money on Google, stop spending money on Google, call the patients. Or if you can't accommodate a new patient for six months and you're spending money, like we've had masterminders say, I need to up my spend. Well, if I call today and try to get a new patient appointment, well, we get cancellations every day, but when can you get me in? Definitely within six months. Stop spending because you're pissing people off. Like, hey, service with a smile. Come on in. We're welcoming new patients and you call and they say, hey, we can't get you in. That pisses somebody off. That brings up an interesting thing I read the other day and I don't remember where I read it, but it was just a phrase that said, marketing is the price you pay for a less than optimal patient experience. So that was cool. Could it be me in our book? I have, no, I'm not kidding. I say marketing is the price you pay just like insurance. You pay for being unremarkable. Insurance is the same thing. And I hate to say it's going to ruffle some feathers saying something like this, but if you've been in practice in a good economic area and you're still in network after blank number of years, it's time to look in the mirror and say, am I really that remarkable? Because I meet patients all the time or people I know, they're not my patients, but I say, where do you go to the dentist? And they can't even begin to describe it. They say things like, you know where the Chipotle is on Linton? Oh yeah, well, it's right by there. I'm like, what's the person's name? Oh my God, I have no idea. What's your hygienist name? I have no idea. Why do you go there? Why do you go to Chipotle? It's easy. That's a commodity. If you're a commodity, especially through the next cycle of economics, which I think is gonna be darker than we're currently in, you're gonna get replaced. So if they can't even remember who you are, that's pretty bad.

Peter Boulden
0:20:20
Because there's nothing making it stick, right?

Trey Tippit
0:20:22
There's no attention to it. There's no affinity to that. And if that person doesn't have, you know, I almost look like a net promoter score, like an NPS score, if they have that low of an NPS score, no amount of advertising will fix that.

Peter Boulden
0:20:35
I want to say one other thing, Dwight, is that I actually talked about the website example. I need to up my marketing spend, I want to land on a shitty website. And I'll be like, my marketing's not working. Same thing happens, let's say you check the box of marketing and then you have a great website and now someone calls and they can't get through or there's a busy signal or there's missed calls or it's the wrong verbage of conversion. It's all these things. And lots of times I hear from marketing companies who clients will complain, the marketing is not working and then they data to the phone calls. It's like, doc, you guys aren't even answering the phone calls we're sending. Like of course this shit's not working. So we went a little tangential.

Trey Tippit
0:21:18
And just in closing, it's just like everything else, guys. It's easier to point the finger away towards somebody else, your advertising. No one, the hard thing is to get your team to answer the phones or to have an amazing patient experience. That's the hardest thing to do. The easy thing is to just click a button and go from 500 to 1000 on your spend or 1000 to 1500.

Peter Boulden
0:21:40
Okay.

Peter Boulden
0:21:40
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:21:40
Closing on this topic.

Peter Boulden
0:21:42
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:21:42
Let me pull this, just close it up. So I think there's such beauty in the fact that yes, a, you need foundational. You need to answer phones. You need to do internal marketing. You need to have a good website. So let's talk to practices that need that next extra, you know, rocket fuel. What we're talking about is showing the experience of what it's like to be in your practice, whether that's patient experience or whether that's the joy of being able to be a part of the team, that kind of scenario. So all that is the storytelling piece. The beauty of that is what Pete said. If you take the time to create the video and then you're taking excerpts because different platforms speak different languages, how you connect with people is different. So video, what's great about it is you can pull it in every which way and people feel connected to your team and they love the idea of coming in and seeing, wow, why are they at dental office? So if you wanna rise above everybody else, why am I looking at your dental office on Facebook, on Instagram, and it looks fun to be there when 99% of dental offices do not look fun being there, which is what Trey was getting at, right? Giving a sense of the story of what goes on there, not just the patient perspective. Or what I really love is my doctors who get on and not only post, which to me, the story is one thing of who they are, not just in the office interacting with the team, but also who they are, their kids, their spouse, like all that is on their page, on their Instagram, plus the educational piece, which for me, education is before and afters. I think if you go deeper than that, it's kind of like, eh, before and afters to me are educational by the way. And I also do this really well, but you humanize yourself by throwing your family in there, by throwing your experiences, what you're doing in the community, all those other components. Those are the doctors that get new patients walk into the practice. They don't come in saying, I want to be a patient at Fort Bend Dental. I want to be Bart Santos' patient. I want to be Dwight D. Picore's patients, I want to be Craig Spodek's, they come in asking for that person because that person is dehumanized and connected to, and B, they know they want to be a part of that

Trey Tippit
0:23:47
person's life. Dwight, what you're speaking to is an entrepreneur, an associate within the practice that's doing extraordinary things to affect their own personal results. Right. So in an environment like mine, there are doctors like Bart and Dr. Liesel and there's others as well, but they post prolifically every day or two. They post a before and after tons of stories. They are starting to get far busier than the doctors that don't post at all. And the doctors that don't post at all, again, finger pointing out, three fingers pointing back, why is this patient getting off? Why is this doctor getting all the new patients? It's ridiculous. This is, I'm like, well, what do you think we should do? Should we redistribute like socialism? You know, if Dr. Barth gets or Dr. Liesel gets 25 or 30, should we give 10 away from her? It's like that joke when you pay a kid like, I'm going to take your A and bring it to a C and give your brother a B, you know? You know, there's a meritocracy at play.

Peter Boulden
0:24:42
And if you had entrepreneurs in your practice though, but you didn't build a foundation where people answer the phone and a good website and all that, it wouldn't matter either.

Dwight Pecorra
0:24:50
So it all falls apart.

Craig Spodak
0:24:51
Yeah, and listen, let's face it, I hear of associates, unfortunately, that are out there working for doctors that don't even pay them. I was aware, my buddy was telling me that this doctor's working, he's doing big numbers, putting up $150,000, $200,000 a month, and the doctor's not paying him, like legit. And they are saying, this is ridiculous, I can't believe they're taking my money. And we've all looked below, under the hood of a lot of PNLs of dental practices and we realize there's very successful dentists, like economically top line successful, they can't afford their bills. So it's not that they're stealing the money, they just don't run the type of operation, they're not the fiduciary to maintain cash flow to be able to pay your associates. So you're hitching your wagon as an entrepreneur, not only to the infrastructure, but to the business practices of the doctor that you work for. And you know, it's funny and I'll end this one little comment. I would suggest for every associate that wants to find a job at a practice, I would ask them to just take, I would ask the owner doctor if they would be willing to show their last bank statement just to see how much money they keep in their bank account. Because in my shopping center, I just leased to a pizza tenant, a pizza store, and it was usual and customary for my property manager to ask to see their bank statement because they're going to be paying $3,000 or $4,000 a month. And they had $300,000 in their bank account and I feel really good about leasing the space to them. In the same way, I would have no objection to saying, here's what I have. What if you go to work for some guy and you can do $100,000 a month and he's got $15,000 in the bank account? How is he going to pay you? You mean if you're looking to go work for someone or somebody like let me see your balance sheet like let me see if it's that. Can I see your last P&L. No one's ever asked me for that. Interesting. I've had to die. You know one of my good buddies or remain nameless but he left the practice to go work for another doctor in Miami and it was a sexy opportunity and we hugged it out and I said listen this is great for you. The guy's driving a Ferrari come two months later. He the doctor is not even paying for his Invisalign cases. The Invisalign starts making him do cash on delivery for his own cases. But the owner doctor's got the Ferrari and the Porsche and the blah, blah, blah. So hey, if you're thinking of working somewhere, make sure you're working for a financially stable institution. You're investing in that practice. No one's ever, has anybody ever, any associate ever asked you that? Never. Any of you guys? Never. Would you be averse to show them your balance sheet to make them feel better?

Peter Boulden
0:27:17
No.

Peter Boulden
0:27:18
Why? No. No? Yeah, I think you would wear it almost like a badge of honor probably. I would. If you were a good operator, you would say, oh yeah, you want to see it? First off, great question. Second, here it is.

Peter Boulden
0:27:27
Nice.

Peter Boulden
0:27:28
Right. And that's cool. All right, let's pivot. I think that's good for marketing. I know we could spend hours on all the tributaries of. The next thing I have on my sheet is, are you guys using Google Alerts at all? I do. You do, okay. Trey, do you?

Craig Spodak
0:27:45
No.

Peter Boulden
0:27:46
How do you use them, Dwight? Are you looking, let me tell you how I'm using them for myself, then I'll ask. I'm only really using mine from a reputational mitigation or awareness, and competition, do I have. So some set up for.

Peter Boulden
0:27:58
Competition's a biggie, yeah.

Dwight Pecorra
0:27:59
Competition's the big one.

Peter Boulden
0:28:00
So I wanna know when people are talking about me, they're good or bad. And, you know, linkable thing. Not on this is not on social Google alerts does not. They don't, they don't scan through social. It's really just things that are in articles or things like that, lawsuits and things like, you know, it's getting through all that. So using it in for me and my competition, just from a reputational standpoint, security, why is that the same for you?

Dwight Pecorra
0:28:23
Yeah, so my biggie, I think part of our weekly meeting is we do look at some of the Google alerts that come up to competition, specific competition we're staring at and we're concerned about, especially if a doctor has left, some proximity issues or things to that degree. We've been dealing with some of that lately. So that helps, I mean, it gives you that perspective on what they're doing, especially where they're putting their money, what they're pursuing. Ironically, three weeks ago I was looking at some chat GPT stuff and somebody was writing up their words that they wanted for their competitors and they actually put in the prompt to search Google alerts for their top competitors versus Fort Bend Dental for example, blah, blah, blah. And it will outspit what other ads and what other words they're using and they're getting better at and it just kind of spit it out on chat GPT. So I mean, what's interesting is the content's all out there. It's a matter of whether you're using it or not. But I think it's all about reputation here and reputation of others.

Peter Boulden
0:29:21
Yeah, but that GPT, that corpus of data is only until, obviously, you know, until 2021. So it's not, I wouldn't use it as a timely thing. Right, right.

Peter Boulden
0:29:30
That's where we're going with AI is the point is that you can imagine if this is kind of the method by which you track your weekly data on looking at what's coming after you, what's not. Because what's really cool is looking how many of my competitors are actually naming my name to feed off of me.

Peter Boulden
0:29:46
We've got a whole AI section, don't crush my,

Trey Tippit
0:29:48
don't crush my, I have that too.

Peter Boulden
0:29:49
Well no, I'm talking on top of Google Alerts, right? So that's what I'm talking about, is people are using also my brand. It's like when the really big furniture shop shows up and you see other furniture spots pop up right around it, it's like, okay, well I'm going to feed off of what they don't take in.

Trey Tippit
0:30:03
Guys, let me crowd source an issue. Can I crowd source an issue real quick? So we've got a couple competitors in our area that actually just buy the name, my name, Spodak. They don't even put dental.

Peter Boulden
0:30:14
So we have to, and it's pretty cool like on, I mean cool enough for them. Wait, wait, wait, Craig, explain this a little bit. We'll unpack this. Okay.

Peter Boulden
0:30:23
They hide it on Google.

Trey Tippit
0:30:24
So if you go to Google and just put in Spodek, not Spodek Dental or Spodek Dentistry, but it'll be like, you know, there's one like, I don't want to name their name and give them oxygen, but in my area and patients call them and they don't answer the phone. You know, they just say dental office. And I've had patients telling me that they go all the way there to realize, oh shit, I'm not in the right spot.

Peter Boulden
0:30:45
So they are buying, they're bidding on your keyword.

Trey Tippit
0:30:49
Yeah, so we had to, so my marketing team had to put, like when you Google Spodak, they had to put the actual Spodak dental on it. Because on mobile, you could see sometimes that it's fine print, you could just see a number. So if you do it on mobile, you can see that, which is interesting.

Peter Boulden
0:31:03
So this is, you get to a size, and this is, I mean, I've been having to do this for a long time, meaning I have to protect my name by running ads against my name.

Trey Tippit
0:31:14
Yeah, that's what we have to do.

Peter Boulden
0:31:16
Right, that's what you're trying to say and it sucks because you're paying for clicks defensively, right? And it's a branding thing, like Trey's saying. And honestly, in my ads, I'm like, this is the authentic one, accept no imitation, shit like that, right? Because people are trying to piggyback on the goodwill that you built. And so, Greg, as much as I hate to say it, I think it's a badge of honor that someone's trying to, people want to be you.

Trey Tippit
0:31:42
But there's no, there's nothing. That's commonplace with success. But there's nothing that can be done

Trey Tippit
0:31:47
in a crowdsourcing.

Peter Boulden
0:31:48
There's nothing that can be done.

Dwight Pecorra
0:31:50
There's nothing that can be done.

Craig Spodak
0:31:51
You cannot risk this to Google.

Peter Boulden
0:31:52
It's fair game. It's fair game. It's not against the bylaws. And the reason it's showing up, you said it even happens when they type in Spodek.

Trey Tippit
0:32:00
Yeah, not even the dental because dental could be.

Peter Boulden
0:32:02
That's not true. They're not actually doing that. Let me tell you what's happening. They're doing a gen… So there's three ways. When you go into Google ad platform, there's three ways you can modify the specificity of the keywords. If you don't put quotes around the keyword phrase, if it's just you type in Spodak dental, your ad will show up. That ad will show up whether they type Spodak or they type dental group. If any of the three words in that pops up. And so the person making the ads is just unsophisticated and they're paying for the Spodak. Now, if they were to put that in quotes or quotes, which is a phrase match, great. And brackets, which is an exact match, means it has to be exactly like that in that same order. So they just don't know that they're being comprehensive. They're just being sloppy, quite honestly. Okay. Got it. So it's not as intentional. It's not like, hey, let's put the last name Smodac. They're not doing it like that. So let's circle back to the Google Alerts.

Trey Tippit
0:32:59
Let me ask something about Google Alerts. Let me throw a challenge out there to you. Both of y'all have kind of mentioned reputation and competition from a Google Alerts standpoint. Reputation I fully understand in the sense that, yeah, you wanna see what's said about you. You wanna see where your name's popping up. You wanna see those types of things. However, the challenge I would throw out there is on competition, because one, it's not competition. Dennis and Nextdoor to you are not competition for you. It's not a zero-sum game. We do not operate in that environment. So there's enough pie to go around in that regard, in which case, the thought process and the reason why Google Alert has never appealed to me from that standpoint is it's not actionable. What are you doing if you see it?

Peter Boulden
0:33:38
Let me tell you.

Dwight Pecorra
0:33:39
Can I answer that?

Craig Spodak
0:33:40
Yeah, go for it.

Peter Boulden
0:33:41
In the scenario, the hypothetical where I see a competitor of mine, Trey, and I see their name pop up, and it's associated with some kind of article, I actually have a counter SEO strategy because there is a link that they are there doing, and they are getting attribution for that link, which is increasing their visibility of their rankings. So now I know, okay, that's a, that's a place that they're getting at, they're getting a link, which is the currency of Google. And can I get one there too, to essentially make it zero sum. If I get one there and they get one there, there, there's no advantage. They get one there and I don't get one there. They have an advantage. So it's a counter link building SEO strategy as well as just takes for me, Trey, it takes Kate. If I start seeing a bunch of them happening all at once for a competitor, I know that something has happened. Meaning, they've hired someone, there's a PR agency, there's a cadence, there's some kind of attack that's going on, and I don't mean to say that dentistry is war, but I want to be informed of this. Not that it's going to change anything I'm going to do, but it might, so continue with your second point.

Trey Tippit
0:34:45
So that's fair. That's the big issue that I have with it from the standpoint of, if it's competition, the vast majority of people are doing nothing with that. It's not actually. You should watch it, maybe out of interest of who's doing that, but that idea also, you know, I mean, that's also kind of pitching to the fact that, and granted, you and I differ on this and from some of the stuff we've said in the past, but to me, it's not a zero-sum game. I can set up next door to you and build a huge practice, and I won't hurt your practice at all.

Peter Boulden
0:35:11
I'm just talking zero-sum in the context what I would example that is.

Dwight Pecorra
0:35:14
That one thing, yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:35:15
And actually that would be the objective for me is to make it zero sum, but that they have no SEO upside. Okay, so this is good. This is good, I like it.

Peter Boulden
0:35:28
I think in general, it's exciting to think that there's a whole other level, right? I mean, if you think about it, the vast majority of people are playing offensive marketing. They don't even know that there is a defensive marketing, but there is at some point. And at some point in time, you just have to realize you also have to think about protecting yourself. And I think that's great. And I think before you get to that level and you're like, great, I now know that when I am proud and effective in my community, I also have to realize that there's also that other backside of it, which is protecting what we've built. Protect the house. And I think this is exactly a good way to say, hey, give me some alerts, give me an idea where we're going.

Peter Boulden
0:36:04
It's just a cool quick pearl that like, look, I like to throw in some things like that. I agree. Okay, we are moving right along with just, so we are now gonna move into some AI advancements. And I had someone come up this weekend, like, or this, is it this weekend? What day is it? Yes, this weekend at Dental Nachos event. And a couple guys come up and like, man, I really like the AI. First off, I didn't know how popular Bulletproof was. I mean, I knew it, but like, live in our own little bubble of like, our own summits and our own podcasts and our own friends and people glad, you know. Just shocks me how much, A, how much appreciation they're for and how much people listen to it. It's awesome, because people are like, man, it really helped me in this scenario. Second thing is that I get the two people came up. There were two people that came up and spoke about AI. And he was like, I really love that. And they were younger. So I really dig in how you are kind of kind of tiptoeing around this a lot and talking about a lot of the changes. So I want to talk about some of the advancements that's going on. And look, a year in AI. I'm sorry. Let me try this again. A week in AI is is is everything changes. Honestly, I keep setting apart time to keep educating myself, guys, and the shit I'm learning 10 days ago is becoming almost like old news. And it's tough, like different than crypto. Crypto, when I learned about it, it was more of a building, right? Because it was set in code. This is like, you don't know what you don't know if you don't know that you're gonna know. You know, like our slide in the presentation. So have you guys heard, obviously we've all heard of chat GPT, okay. Trey, I'm going to ask you specifically. All right. Have you heard of auto GPT?

Peter Boulden
0:37:43
I have.

Peter Boulden
0:37:43
Awesome. Have you heard of auto GPT in God mode?

Craig Spodak
0:37:46
I have not.

Peter Boulden
0:37:47
Okay. All right. Ready guys? It's so if you don't know what auto GPT is, right? So here we have, it was launched, open AI launched, GPT 3 and 3.5, now 4.

Craig Spodak
0:37:57
Okay.

Peter Boulden
0:37:57
And in every, I think we've shown this on the podcast where basically it's not a it's not just a little bit better it's hundreds of time every version is a hundred times better than the preceding version it's not a thousand so the ultimate thing that people are scared about in AI is a term do you guys know what we're talking about AGI see you all I think I'm am I boring all you guys because you might go go go go and if I'm boring you, we put some on the other podcast. Am I getting too intelligent for you?

Dwight Pecorra
0:38:30
No, no.

Peter Boulden
0:38:32
I can tell I'm just an old man. It's so entertaining. Are you kidding?

Trey Tippit
0:38:36
Phil Landry.

Peter Boulden
0:38:38
Alright.

Trey Tippit
0:38:39
You're going to drive him to all.

Dwight Pecorra
0:38:40
…PT in God mode. I mean, instead of having to ask it to do one specific task at a time, give it an objective, a goal you were trying to achieve, and then it would figure out the task required to reach that goal, and then replicate itself into multiple workers that then go out and perform those tasks for you. It would need access to the internet and the ability to search, done. A long and short term memory, done. The brain power of GPT-4, done. The ability to save stuff to your hard drive, done.

Peter Boulden
0:39:08
A voice so that it could actually speak back to you, done.

Dwight Pecorra
0:39:11
Enter Torin, aka Torin Chulino. Torin's created a project called AutoGPT that makes GPT-4 autonomous, able to act on its own suggestions, and another step closer to AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence. Let's have a look at the demo, then we'll attempt to set this up on our local PC. The first thing to notice is Torin has put this baby in continuous mode, aka…

Peter Boulden
0:39:34
Okay, I'll stop it there.

Trey Tippit
0:39:36
This is what Elon's worried about, right?

Peter Boulden
0:39:38
Oh, you just got interested, huh, Jerry?

Trey Tippit
0:39:40
Well, I'm in that little video. I'm just listening to you droning on about this. Well, I have to set it up. This pixel kind of collaborates, which we call a quanton.

Peter Boulden
0:39:50
You know what? I don't even know how I do a podcast.

Peter Boulden
0:39:53
I'm such a simpleton.

Peter Boulden
0:39:54
I can't even.

Trey Tippit
0:39:55
Keep going. Keep going.

Peter Boulden
0:39:57
Keep going.

Dwight Pecorra
0:39:58
Okay, now we're at least getting.

Peter Boulden
0:39:59
We're not talking about vision and freaking hugging.

Trey Tippit
0:40:01
I love it.

Peter Boulden
0:40:02
I love it.

Trey Tippit
0:40:03
Technology's weird.

Peter Boulden
0:40:04
Robots have no emotions.

Dwight Pecorra
0:40:05
This is why he's struggling.

Craig Spodak
0:40:06
He loves it.

Craig Spodak
0:40:07
He's like, finally I'll be relevant. He keeps trying to hug him.

Craig Spodak
0:40:11
He's like, they won't hug me right back.

Peter Boulden
0:40:14
Oh my God.

Trey Tippit
0:40:14
You know what? Go ahead.

Peter Boulden
0:40:16
So, NGI is coming. You guys want to do a pod on feelings

Trey Tippit
0:40:19
and hugging and holding hands?

Craig Spodak
0:40:20
Oh, keep going.

Trey Tippit
0:40:21
Keep going. This is good.

Peter Boulden
0:40:23
Keep going. All right. So, now you've sucked the wind out of my sails, but I'm going to keep going. Your wind was sucked out long before that.

Craig Spodak
0:40:28
Keep going.

Trey Tippit
0:40:29
Go for it. Keep going.

Trey Tippit
0:40:31
I want to know. So what is Auto GPT?

Peter Boulden
0:40:33
I just explained it with the video. No, but what land this, that video for us?

Trey Tippit
0:40:39
What does this mean?

Peter Boulden
0:40:40
What land it? Talking. Is that it's one step closer to AGI, right? Which is just general intelligence, autonomous general intelligence, which is what Elon is scared about.

Peter Boulden
0:40:51
And so.

Peter Boulden
0:40:51
That guy's scared, I'm scared too, because he's smart. Okay, but look, definitely, and he definitely is more interested in technology than you.

Peter Boulden
0:40:59
He's probably like with me,

Peter Boulden
0:41:00
me and him are right together.

Peter Boulden
0:41:01
More logical, yeah.

Trey Tippit
0:41:03
He was gonna be a lot more fun.

Peter Boulden
0:41:05
So what people are scared about, and this is just, and that's why I'm saying put it in continuous mode, which is that God mode, is because you can set up parameters. So instead of getting on with chat GPT, like we all know, we've all played with it, we've all been mesmerized. Craig, I did the demo with you live. It's great. But it doesn't remember your conversation from past. You can't build on the conversation unless you're telling it to build on itself. The next thing is it's very input A, output B. This is, I want the result of the following and it's actually going to create action from that. And so putting it in continuous mode means it will loop, loop, loop and keep solving and attacking other, attacking other GPTs, not attacking, but coordinating other GPTs to act on it, act with it in order to solve the solution. So that's where, that's where the danger comes in when you put on a continuous thing and it's going to solve things at whatever cost. So Dwight, back to your, back to where you were talking specifically about SEO, I've seen some stuff lately that is going to blow shit away, right? I'm actually even trying to do our own language learning, LLM, language learning model here at my company with the data set of systems and processes that we have so that new people, if they onboard in our company and they don't know how to do something, they can chat with the most well-versed and experienced trainer of all time. The one that I trained on my custom data set. So it's things like this, Craig, that you're smiling and you get bored about and you hear me rambling on. I'm bored, I just too many jokes.

Trey Tippit
0:42:38
But guess what?

Peter Boulden
0:42:39
My head's up out of the damn sand and I'm thinking about. I know.

Trey Tippit
0:42:42
It's going to be amazing that you have a four-step protocol to design a Sarah crown while auto GPT is hacking the Russian nuke system to deploy nukes to Malaysia like like overnight so that The next I mean isn't it a bigger thing isn't it isn't it a massive problem? I mean obviously we're talking about the utility of it But I mean to the point that these smart people are scared of it doesn't it mean that it's a race to a problem?

Peter Boulden
0:43:08
As well. I mean what I think about that is irrelevant I'm not in any situation to control either from a regulatory standpoint or anything. The toothpaste is out of the bottle. Innovation is gonna continue.

Peter Boulden
0:43:18
I agree.

Dwight Pecorra
0:43:19
We are in a wigging.

Trey Tippit
0:43:20
It's not going so fast though as well.

Peter Boulden
0:43:21
This is what people said.

Peter Boulden
0:43:22
Shutting it down in the US only prevents you from competing in the arms race.

Dwight Pecorra
0:43:26
That's it.

Peter Boulden
0:43:27
Well, that's, and that's also a comment about crypto, but we're gonna go there. I figured. But the point here, I think, is that most people at the prior inception of the internet had these same types of freak out, Oh, how am I computer going to communicate with the other without being linked, blah, blah. And right now we're talking about, we're not talking about a 10 X of what that experience was jumping into the internet. We're talking about a multiple and it's exponential multiple because what you're talking about is that things are going to be able to innovate on their own without. The necessity of someone integrating, starting the process and hitting the button and pulling up the keyboard and being like, click, that's the point. And I think that where we end up is the fear, but the process in between people like me, I'm sure Pete's at home thinking, I'm like, with all due respect, how many people do I really need to run a business when I can get some of these processes running?

Peter Boulden
0:44:22
And you look at-

Dwight Pecorra
0:44:22
That's what Elon did, bud.

Peter Boulden
0:44:23
Yeah, you look at these venture capital firms, you look at these heavy entrepreneurs, all of them, they're all holding cash because they know that the money that they could have invested to do a startup used to be $500 million to a billion, right? And now it's maybe $200,000 to $500,000. Why? Because it takes one programmer who's now extrapolated into 20 to 50 to 100 to be able to do this work. So clearly we're talking about exponential growth over the next five to 10 years that I don't think people are even going to understand or comprehend. How is this going to impact our business? I think dramatically. I think a lot of the meetings that I take on the weekly, especially in marketing, especially in strategy, a lot of those things are going to be accelerated. And I think that's going to make it a little interesting.

Peter Boulden
0:45:11
For me, it doesn't disrupt the practice. Meaning our job isn't because you're looking to put people out of a job, right? Dwight but what Craig and I are talking about this patient experience lecture We're doing an AACD it's GPT is actually on there and AI is on there because guess what when you free someone up from menial Job, let's just say or wrote jobs of just like going from a to C to D to D, right? Free some people up in that they might potentially have more time to focus on the way the patient feels, as opposed to, I gotta get this shit done. Sign the clipboard, ma'am, sit down in the waiting room.

Peter Boulden
0:45:42
Patient-facing individuals are incredibly important to the healthcare model and the human-to-human interaction. The question is, can I use the same number of people I use right now to run a 12 to $15 million annual operation to run a 30 or a 40 or $50 million operation? There's a high probability that over the next few years that's how it's going to exponentially grow.

Peter Boulden
0:46:03
Trey, you wanna comment on this?

Peter Boulden
0:46:05
Yeah, I mean, I fully agree with that.

Peter Boulden
0:46:07
There's a point at which you can't squeeze more juice

Trey Tippit
0:46:08
out of how you run a dental practice. And the next step that you have is how do you get the people more productive? The same amount of people doing twice the work. And what Dwight touched on is exactly right. Once you start automating processes and having something like auto GPT solving problems, doing things like that on its own. And where that can fit into anything that we do. I think you're talking about, like you said, 10, 20, 50, 50 X in terms of productivity of a single individual, given in a certain situation.

Peter Boulden
0:46:39
So here's a cool tweet. And I had a good conversation with this over the weekend with someone. So this talks about the disruption. So JP, sorry, Goldman Sachs put out this from a global economics analyst. Basically, where do they see AI kind of disrupting things as a thing? And as predicted, we I think we've even talked about this, like legal, legal jobs are at like 46 percent, like the probability of just massive, massive disruption. And so I kind of looked at this chart and it was interesting. And of course, my mind's going, where's the dentist? And Shakeru, there's no dentist on this chart She's like just like when we fill out those applications and shit like professional and it's like it just says health care like really So I I highlighted because like dentistry is still a very physical job and so look at way down on the chart where the Percentage of possibly being disrupted is in the fours and one percent is something where there's manual labor going on, right? Physical stuff, installation, maintenance, and repair. No, we want to put ourselves on a bigger pedestal, but isn't it great in this instance that we are not agnosticating about police law or diagnoses, and that's how we make our money. Going back to the first thing we talked about in Cabo, remember when I asked you guys, on the percentage of where you think the money flows based on the job you do. I've been playing this for a long time, building it up. But isn't it cool that you potentially fall into the bucket of the repair man, if you would, right? Because that is the least thing that's going to be disrupted. Robots and AI are not coming to go install shit in your house, nor are they going to install crowns in your mouth for a long time. And for the first time, I'm happy to be in the repair and bucket.

Peter Boulden
0:48:21
Oh yeah. Manual labor bucket is a great bucket.

Trey Tippit
0:48:26
It's good for your back, but it's good for your future.

Peter Boulden
0:48:29
That's right.

Trey Tippit
0:48:30
What's that? It's not great for your back, but it's great for your future. Well, Genesys is not great for your back. We definitely love it. That's what I'm saying, manual labor. It's all, I mean, we just lift small things, but the brick layers are almost our category

Peter Boulden
0:48:41
too.

Peter Boulden
0:48:42
I know we never released that podcast on AI from Cabo because my boy Craig fell asleep in it, but we should one day at least relisten to it and laugh about it.

Trey Tippit
0:48:51
Over a few beers.

Trey Tippit
0:48:52
Probably back in Cabo. No, he said a lot of, Dwight, I thought I felt like I was flowing then. I felt like I was doing really well. You guys made fun of me. Maybe it was the tequila.

Dwight Pecorra
0:49:04
I was laughing my ass off.

Trey Tippit
0:49:06
I enjoyed every bit of it.

Peter Boulden
0:49:08
We all stopped. We had to stop talking because Craig was snoring

Trey Tippit
0:49:12
and I was laughing. You moved my microphone away from my snoring mouth

Peter Boulden
0:49:14
So Craig you were as uninterested back then as you are now shocker. No. No, I think it's really freaking cool I think it's really yeah, I really do so I just have nothing no podcast is complete without talking a little crypto Dude seriously You know I can just eject you from this whole screen right not most movie listen I invited you to speak at a CD so the least you could do well go to you have to at least as a founder of bulletproof

Peter Boulden
0:49:49
I reject I resent that comment I'm gonna take a wall gander and guess that Peter you actually have the PowerPoint presentation for this thing on your computer Oh shocker yeah shocker. I think you should put the AI and the good crypto talk right in the middle just to describe

Peter Boulden
0:50:08
it.

Peter Boulden
0:50:09
Oh, I did not.

Trey Tippit
0:50:10
I was too specific on what we spoke about. So let's talk crypto.

Peter Boulden
0:50:12
All right. No, we're not going to talk it. You ready for my next video?

Trey Tippit
0:50:15
Well, no, I want to.

Dwight Pecorra
0:50:16
Crypto is dead in America.

Peter Boulden
0:50:17
It is dead in America.

Peter Boulden
0:50:18
Crypto is dead in America.

Dwight Pecorra
0:50:19
I mean, now you had Gensler. You had Gensler even blaming the banking crisis on crypto. So they've the United States authorities have firmly pointed their guns at crypto. scapegoat or was it a fuck around find out moment for crypto in your mind, or a little bit of both? I don't know. I think that they were probably the ones that were the most threatening to the establishment. Okay. And they were the ones that in fairness to the regulators did push the boundaries more than any other sector of the startup economy. And yes, so now they're paying the price for that. The bill has come due for them. Sachs, is it a fuck around, find out moment? Is it protecting the American dollar somewhere

Peter Boulden
0:51:00
in between or incompetence on regulators part?

Peter Boulden
0:51:04
The more I think about it, the more I think it's probably not a coincidence that you're seeing all these concerns about de-dollarization at the same time they're cracking down on crypto. So look, there were a bunch of crypto companies that might have done shady things,

Trey Tippit
0:51:15
but I think we all agree that Coinbase was not one of them.

Trey Tippit
0:51:17
Okay. Craig, are you interested in this?

Peter Boulden
0:51:20
Well, we talked about this already, but yeah, I am interested. I mean, it wouldn't have been interesting. No, this was on just the latest All In. We talked about it yesterday, the day before we talked about this. I said, hey, what do you think of that? And you told me, and it was valid. Yeah, but us having conversations in person isn't the same as a podcast. No, I agree.

Trey Tippit
0:51:40
It needs to be talked about. And you told me how you felt about Chamath and all that. And that was very, it was very poignant.

Peter Boulden
0:51:45
I want to ask Trey and Dwight, how does that land on you when you hear that or heard that?

Peter Boulden
0:51:50
The impact that this is in alignment with de-dollarization? Yes, I think the establishment is massive and the battle is going to be heavy. And I think it's the natural tendency of anti-establishmentism. That's the whole point is we want to stay in power until we unearth another power that supersedes our power. That's just the nature of the process. And there's nothing more important to anybody who's been elected into office right now, but to establish the world currency of the US dollar and keep it in power. That is literally the most important thing they can do right now. So by nature, do I think that that is an anti-american dream and anti-american growth and that that's pushing Entrepreneurship in the next stage. It's like saying we want to push the internet out of the United States and let the rest of the World tackle the internet here. We're just going to stay to our you know wire-to-wire networks because we can control it Well, that's also called North Korea and China right we know what that's like we know what that impact creates that society So I think it's the same with crypto. If you want my blunt opinion, I think we've always been the country in which we welcomed entrepreneurship, growth, and opportunity. And if we kick this out through the basis of establishing the dollar and stabilizing it, as opposed to allowing both markets to grow and play themselves out, I think that's the whole purpose of our institution of the United States. That was why we were created through independence. So I struggle with the idea that the establishment is being old graybeards that are pushing this away because they're disinterested in snoring through it when in reality we're going to have to get into this no matter

Trey Tippit
0:53:26
what. By the way I resent the gray and the snoring analogy because I feel like

Peter Boulden
0:53:30
that was directed towards me. He hasn't seen your full-grown beard Santa. It was targeted.

Dwight Pecorra
0:53:34
You saw this coming a mile away.

Trey Tippit
0:53:39
Very interesting that we think about that and how damaging that would be. Wait, you saw this coming a mile away? You can't not see something like this happening as you edit the joke. When you have a challenge to the powers that be, it doesn't happen without a fight. There will always be the fight to retain power. And yes, you want to increase and run down that path and say, yeah, we'll be replaced to the next power. But that's only as long as the same power is now belongs to the same person. It's great, but we need to control that too. So you're not gonna, I mean, you can look in virtually every long-term established industry and see this type of thing. It's like what they said, what Gandhi said, right?

Peter Boulden
0:54:21
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, the phase we're in right now, and then you win. And that's happened, I mean, I've been in crypto involved in a long time, and there really was a, I've been involved in the ignorant, where they ignore you phase, they're involved in the laugh you phase, ha ha ha, it went down, it's going to $3,000, right? And so now it's seeing this like, this truth of like the fight, because it's truly an alternative now, which is crazy. I disagree, I disagree emphatically with Chamath. Obviously I have a confirmation of bias with this. I think it's weird that he's said that it's gonna go to 200K and now all of a sudden he's saying it's dead because of regulatory environment. I think he's probably got a big short associated with it, but that's my own hypothesis.

Peter Boulden
0:55:07
Can I correct, not standing up for him, but I think one comment that he's making is he's noting the impact of that. He talked about this also in extreme hyperbole with regards to, and this is where I agree with kind of shouting out the hyperbole because I think it's important, where he shouts it out with regards to immigration issues, right? Because in my opinion, the crypto thing, both and every party out there has gotten it wrong, right? I think both and every party got the immigration factor wrong, right? They were in absolute extremes, right? We slew entrepreneurship down in our country to a crawl because of our immigration policy. We had, I had doctors with multiple degrees that I knew couldn't get into the country anymore. I mean, at the end of the day, we didn't know what we were doing, right? And there are areas of extreme in politics, right, that will end up affecting all of our society, and not to mention our economy, until the people from the inside rise up and that is what can happen here that will not happen in other countries aka I'm going to Cuba this week right what do you think that's going to look like right I'm going to go spend some time in the 80s down there right now for the weekend see what Havana is like right it's a time warp because it's frozen in time because people locked it in I'll be in Argentina later this no it's because there were embargoes set, Dwight, and they couldn't get shit. Well, yes. And so the extreme, but they wanted to…

Peter Boulden
0:56:30
It's not good on purpose.

Peter Boulden
0:56:31
Well, that's true, but it's also a sense of politics, right? Do we allow things to grow from within or do we control it all, right? I mean if I go and if I was a Cuban trying to open a dental practice, I can't even own my own building. All buildings are owned by the government, right?

Peter Boulden
0:56:45
Here's the consensus in the space, just so you know, about this, this, and not that I'm the spokesperson for the report you are in Dennis this does not prevent no one's gives a shit about what you must and and honestly no one cares that I'll say two things here this is not prevent or cause a massive crash in crypto right crypto is worldwide and also let me say something he might have been talking about crypto there is a big distinction a growing distinction between crypto, everything, ETH and beyond, and Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not crypto. It's already been declared not crypto. It's one of the reasons that I actually got rid of some other coins that could have been a security. So anyway, all right. That's, you know, honestly, guys, I really just want to inspect my new technology of taking a video and importing it in. I think it's cool. How many times on this pod did I blow it and be like, here's a screen share, and you guys were like, we can't hear. So I cracked the code, I dug into the technology, I figured it out, did the hard work, Craig.

Trey Tippit
0:57:46
Hey, Peter, just before you jump off the crypto thing, how, you know, you said first they laugh at you and blah, blah, blah, and then you win. How do you win if the government really does, if the US government really wants to crack down on it? How does a crypto holder win?

Peter Boulden
0:58:02
Yeah, you know, but I don't know how the winning happens, but you know, Dwight, maybe you're not completely wrong. I know you said that funny. I mean, I'm not saying there's gonna be a war, but either it's going to be a flight away from the US, right, Bahamas, you know, other companies, other countries will become more powerful because of it. And the US-

Trey Tippit
0:58:21
That bill that was passed, or that's trying to be passed about, you know, banning TikTok, but it turned into the restrict act.

Peter Boulden
0:58:27
Right. Right.

Trey Tippit
0:58:28
Like if you really, you know, get into that bill, it's not just let's ban TikTok bill. It's a bill to declare third parties as enemies of the state. And there's a lot of nuance. It was a reach, right? You're saying it's a reach, but I see how it could potentially intertwine with the crypto. With crypto, like the Patriot Act. Remember when that was done, right?

Peter Boulden
0:58:48
It was just like everything was whatever we say it to be because of Patriot Act.

Trey Tippit
0:58:53
Right. You could say that Bitcoin is an enemy of the dollar and it's not too far of a conclusion to draw that could be considered a hostile entity of some sort. So I'm just saying how

Peter Boulden
0:59:07
it could wind up going there. Absolutely. Right. All these things could happen. It's never going to be shut down, right, because it's just whack-a-mole, right? You shut it down in the US and immediately it goes, it pops up somewhere else. Greg, I agree with you. So I don't know, I don't know what happens, but I do know that there's a big distinction between BTC and crypto and an amazing amount of government regulators and Congress people own BTC. Of course. It would stun you. So now they have selfish interest in protecting that at least. Yeah, but are you still as positive about it, more positive? If you go back amongst the timeline that you've had where you've always been interested in it, are you more positive about it today than you have ever been or are you concerned?

Trey Tippit
0:59:59
I mean, what's in your mind?

Peter Boulden
1:00:01
I'm concerned, right? I mean, look, government's a very powerful thing. I mean, I'm not saying that it's not a big deal, you know, but I think to just make a draconian thing is like, oh, we ban this. What they're going to do is they're going to find some outliers, right? Some FTXs, and they're going to make examples of those. And the Security Exchange Commission, the SEC, is going to come out and drop the hammer on some and make things legit securities that are actually trading as commodities. Does that then trigger the mark to market taxation of that if it becomes a security requirement? That's unrealized gains you're saying? Yeah.

Trey Tippit
1:00:34
Maybe. I don't know. That was what was told to me back in March.

Peter Boulden
1:00:37
There's also a statute of limitations, right? Some of this stuff has been in effect for so long that it's going to be hard to go back, right? So there's a lot going on with that, obviously.

Trey Tippit
1:00:45
There's just a lot going on in general. By the way, not to go down another rabbit hole, but what was that I saw on Joe Rogan just, you know, tweeted something about like the Department of Space. I didn't even know we had a Department of Space. I think he said that the, I'm sorry.

Peter Boulden
1:01:00
Isn't that NASA?

Trey Tippit
1:01:01
No, it's not NASA. It's like some sort of obscure U.S. government department, and I'm recalling it as the Department of Space, but I could be wrong, essentially said, Earth is going to be likely having to defend itself from extraterrestrial.

Trey Tippit
1:01:17
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trey Tippit
1:01:18
Holy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And other news, it's going to be snowing in Milwaukee.

Craig Spodak
1:01:23
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
1:01:24
Other news, we're going to have to fight aliens soon. Yeah. And GPTs. And GPTs.

Trey Tippit
1:01:29
So, Liv, when you talk about all this stuff, like the government can't do this, and like, we just saw what the government can do. Like, in Australia, which is not that different of a society than ours. You were literally locked away when you had COVID or if you were a truck driver in Canada, you actually had your personal bank account seized. Like these things like, you know, set the high watermark. And even though many, many years ago, probably more than a decade ago, someone decided to take a bomb in their shoe when they were walking on a plane. Now, every single one of us for the last decade has had to take off our shoes. Once public policy gets put into place, it doesn't typically get unwound. So there's been moves that have been made that are like, wow, that's interesting. So I don't think that, you know, one day waking up to a coinbase saying, hey, this is illegal and blah, blah, blah, and you can't access this money. I don't think that that crazy. I don't think that causes the civil war that you think. I think most people are totally dopamine out sitting distracted on a television. I'm surprised there hasn't been civil war already. And when you drop the thing that I'm trying to say about the government like hey we're gonna have to defend ourselves from aliens and no one's even talking about that. It's like this dystopian crazy world. There's so much going on. Yeah. Nothing about the Ukraine war. Nothing. The fact that eight Ukrainians die for each Russian that dies. Holy smokes. We're being defeated by eight to one. And when a Russian dies, it's a soldier typically because he's there on foreign territory. When a Ukrainian dies, the eight that die, are they soldiers? Are they civilians? No one's even talking about that. So it's just, it's a very interesting time. I really feel like, I feel like we're in a Twilight Zone, but I mean, you know, just, just wanted to bring that up.

Peter Boulden
1:03:17
I think the guys just bigger picture guys. I mean, what are you going to do? You're going to watch it happen and go from there. When, when I say civil war, you have to understand, I mean, the same reason that they're trying to kick it out or block it or choke it, as we call it is the same reason that they're eventually, if we hand the one option to the rest of the world, to have a decentralized currency that could compete with the dollar. They take that on, that's where the crisis comes in. That's when all of a sudden-

Trey Tippit
1:03:44
It was up in the dollar already with BRICS. You got so many countries decided to go off the dollar. So I mean, the fact that the US wouldn't lean into Bitcoin and make it, you know, open it up to Bitcoin, that would be powerful. That would extend our dominance. We've had the luxury of having the world's reserve currency.

Peter Boulden
1:04:01
Until it's not, being a debt to GDP ratio of 123% right now, until it's not.

Peter Boulden
1:04:07
Well, we're better than others, so I know our debt to GDP sucks, but it's a lot better

Trey Tippit
1:04:12
than France and Germany and Argentina.

Peter Boulden
1:04:14
Correct, but we're comparing ourselves to a decentralized currency. We're not comparing ourselves to French francs. That's what we're talking about, and that's where I think the impact of the test.

Trey Tippit
1:04:23
Very good on both accounts, actually.

Trey Tippit
1:04:24
All right, guys, we'll wrap it right X call your patients at the every appointment I think that's what I take away from this podcast That was a takeaway and defend yourself for aliens there. Yeah, they'll be fine. Call them when you see them Hopefully they have good teeth that you may be aliens have rotty teeth and we just this will be Could you imagine if that was your job if you were the

Peter Boulden
1:04:44
Secretary of the Department of Space and you're responsible to interact with other individuals outside of Earth, what do you do all day?

Peter Boulden
1:04:54
You hang out with them all.

Trey Tippit
1:04:55
They're going to come over here with an olive branch most likely, and we're going to nuke them immediately because they're such fricking…

Trey Tippit
1:05:01
Olive branch.

Dwight Pecorra
1:05:02
…walk around with that tinfoil hat.

Peter Boulden
1:05:04
Have you ever heard of the Office of Space Affairs?

Peter Boulden
1:05:07
My favorite is if they do show up on Earth and they walk out with trying to pay their way in with Bitcoin that's when we know.

Peter Boulden
1:05:19
Dwight, good. I like it. That was a good… Alright guys, enjoyed it. We are right in an hour long format podcast. That's who we are. We do not cut these up and chop them up and bake and sizzle. Whoever does that is an idiot. Idiot. We would never do that. We've never done that.

Trey Tippit
1:05:41
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
1:05:42
Only done it for Dallas. We've done it multiple times.

Craig Spodak
1:05:44
Idiot.

Trey Tippit
1:05:45
We just did it twice. Yeah.

Trey Tippit
1:05:47
That's idiotic.

Craig Spodak
1:05:48
We just do it.

Peter Boulden
1:05:49
We occasionally do it. More than two.

Peter Boulden
1:05:51
You're gamifying it.

Trey Tippit
1:05:52
You're just trying to get more downloads. Come on, people like it.

Craig Spodak
1:05:54
Drop a comment.

Peter Boulden
1:05:55
Come on. Oh, and you know what?

Craig Spodak
1:05:57
You know what's been a little anemic, Greg?

Trey Tippit
1:05:58
What's that, reviews?

Peter Boulden
1:05:59
Humor?

Craig Spodak
1:06:00
Yeah. Exactly. Who said that?

Trey Tippit
1:06:03
Who said humor? I agree, who said that? It was so Bruce.

Dwight Pecorra
1:06:08
Alright, you know what?

Trey Tippit
1:06:11
I'm going to spend an hour with you motherfuckers, can you focus off a little bit? I'm going to go doomsday prep, I don't know about you all.

Peter Boulden
1:06:18
I mean, you know what? Just so you guys know, I'm like J Cal I press Research better background than J Cal you see that I tell him back. I've been in videos I found videos I downloaded them videos. I prepared content for you guys to us to have banter on you're seeing Yeah, I felt like a Sears Roebuck fan looks like he's in like an Isis hostage video no Craig That was I was at SpaceX dude. No. He was he was in a he was in a he was in a yeah

Peter Boulden
1:06:52
He was watching the one again. He was here and he was here in Texas

Peter Boulden
1:06:55
SpaceX I don't look at his back look at his Dude SpaceX. I'm sure has a zoom rooms. No, no No, wait that video little huts like in the middle isn't he was in by house because see the whole house a seat does

Trey Tippit
1:07:07
Trade open. I assure you he was in Texas. So he had plenty of tacos. You're good

Peter Boulden
1:07:10
But I assure you Craig did zero research to find out what was actually going on.

Peter Boulden
1:07:17
So on that note.

Trey Tippit
1:07:18
I listen to this stuff. I'll see you tomorrow in Dallas, God willing with the weather. And if I don't do it, take my position and crush it. Or Dwight, how far are you from Dallas?

Peter Boulden
1:07:29
I can go up there before I go to Cuba. Okay.

Peter Boulden
1:07:32
Five hours.

Peter Boulden
1:07:32
Yes, Dallas is far from Houston, it's five hours.

Craig Spodak
1:07:35
Quick trip.

Peter Boulden
1:07:35
Everyone thinks Dallas and Houston are like right across from each other. Like, hey, we're in Twin Cities. Right down the street, Twin Cities.

Trey Tippit
1:07:42
Isn't it? Yeah, it's like Minneapolis, St. Paul, right?

Craig Spodak
1:07:46
Isn't it?

Trey Tippit
1:07:47
Aren't they hyphenated?

Peter Boulden
1:07:49
It's right there, six hours away, five hours away.

Trey Tippit
1:07:51
Same shit, that's walkable. All right, guys, nice to see your faces.

Craig Spodak
1:07:55
Yeah.

Trey Tippit
1:07:55
Your background is stunning. What's that little thing on the left side of your desk, Pete? Is that a gavel?

Dwight Pecorra
1:08:00
What is this?

Peter Boulden
1:08:00
No, it's a floating light bulb because I'm full of fricking ideas.

Trey Tippit
1:08:06
Love your background though, it's very nice. Very large and spacious.

Peter Boulden
1:08:10
Oh, you're on the space thing?

Trey Tippit
1:08:11
It's very Tron.

Peter Boulden
1:08:12
It's very Tron.

Peter Boulden
1:08:13
All right, it's very Tron.

Peter Boulden
1:08:14
Did you say Tron?

Peter Boulden
1:08:14
Tron, yeah.

Craig Spodak
1:08:15
I love Tron.

Peter Boulden
1:08:16
I said Tron.

Peter Boulden
1:08:18
All right guys, love you besties.

Trey Tippit
1:08:18
Later everybody, nice to see you boys.

Craig Spodak
1:08:20
Later guys, take care.

Peter Boulden
1:08:22
♪ Who did they show me on the back? ♪ ♪ Who did they show me on the back? ♪ We're the best, we're the best.

Transcribed with Cockatoo