Dr. Mark Young (00:06)
Welcome everybody to another edition of CPG insiders. I'm your host, Mark Young with my cohost who's on the other side of the screen if you're watching, but actually just in the office next to me, Justin Gerer. Justin.
Justin Girouard (00:22)
the
fourth wall please don't do that
Dr. Mark Young (00:25)
It's springtime, the weather's getting better. Things are happening. It's an exciting time. I was that strategic coach. We're going to talk about that, man. But I was that coach, and I made a statement. And everybody there said yes. And the statement I made, Justin, was we're now living in a time where every morning I get up excited for what's new and afraid of what will pass me.
Justin Girouard (00:51)
Yes, the world is moving so fast, so fast right now.
Dr. Mark Young (00:56)
I mean, we are now living in the brave new world.
Justin Girouard (01:00)
Truly. Truly.
Dr. Mark Young (01:02)
And
I want to tell people 24 months from now, the America you live in won't look like the one you're in right now.
Justin Girouard (01:11)
Nope. Nope.
Dr. Mark Young (01:12)
And we need to be out in front of it if we ever have a chance of keeping our businesses profitable. And we should probably do some shows on
Justin Girouard (01:22)
Yeah, I think that would be really great. I think not only just talking about what we're seeing, what may be coming, but also what should your mindset be? How should you be thinking about it? How should you be approaching it? Because I think as we've talked many times internally and with our partners, your mindset honestly is everything right now because there is so much opportunity. If you got the right mindset, you can literally almost do anything right now.
Dr. Mark Young (01:50)
The tool you have now isn't what you know how to do. It is your curiosity and your creativeness.
Justin Girouard (01:58)
your imagination. Yes. Yes, we almost have to retrain our minds to be childlike again.
Dr. Mark Young (02:07)
And here's part of the problem, Justin. So when we're talking about AI, AI learns like a human learns. It's got large language models. They function very much like us. So the way that we learn is our unconscious mind is guessing what is the next word I'm going to say. As I'm talking here, your mind is already plugging in what is my next word. And when I say a word that fits
with your paradigm, your brain says, I was right. Let's add that to the database that reinforces my learning. But as we're sitting here talking and things are going by and I just go knock, knock. Okay. All of a sudden, right.
Justin Girouard (02:50)
Yes? Hell yeah.
Dr. Mark Young (02:52)
Your brain just said, what was that? Because that isn't what I guessed was going to be the next word. And you did not guess that was going to be the next word I said.
Justin Girouard (03:03)
Nope, I didn't see that one coming.
Dr. Mark Young (03:05)
So what happens when I yell out knock knock? Now your brain learns novel information. Okay, that novel information might be, okay, dude's kind of a freak and there's no telling what he's gonna yell next. It could be, he really likes knock knock jokes. It could be, huh, he's teaching me what a pattern interrupt is.
Justin Girouard (03:29)
Could be, could be.
Dr. Mark Young (03:31)
which was what I was really doing. But your brain gained new novel data. Well, this is how AI learns. So you'll notice if you have an iPhone and you're typing in a text, you'll notice your iPhone will guess at the next words you're going to type in. Now, that seems like a very convenient feature.
But it's more than a convenient feature, it's the AI guessing and learning.
Justin Girouard (03:57)
Yes. Yes. Well, and on that note, a lot of what we've been talking about and everyone's talking about right now is AI and where is our world going, where's our business going. And so we thought it'd be a great idea to anyone who's in this space probably heard this, which is the 108010 rule.
and how to approach AI. And what that is for those that don't is understanding that our power and our value comes in the first 10%, which is the initial 10 % inputs. The AI will do 80 % of the doing and then we are valued at the last 10%, meaning refining and ensuring that the
output is exactly correct. So these two 10 % this 20 % included beginning in the end, this is the power that we yield. This is going to be our unique value moving forward in this age. And in order to make sure that you have
the best information for that first 10, last 10, you have to have the knowledge, you have to have that intuition, you have to have that ability in order to ensure that you're getting the best outputs, also putting in the best inputs for the tool to do the 80%.
Dr. Mark Young (05:15)
If you think about this, Justin, this is, this is the model of being the boss, being a supervisor. So you're a supervisor and you have a half a dozen employees working for you. So what is your job? Define the task they need to do today. Outline the task, describe what needs to be done. Make sure they understand the parameters of the job. Now send the worker off to do it. When the worker's done.
present me the work and I'm going to fact check it. I'm going to make sure it's right and I'm going to add in whatever I think is missing and now we can go and do this thing.
So the AI is the worker in the middle. So think of the AI as part of your team. It's part of the staff. This is how it works. Now, I was talking about how our brains learn. Our brains learn the same way as these AIs do. And here's why a lot of people are suffering with AI. Our brains learn by guessing what the next item is.
And we guess on the next item based on all of our life experience. And this is why wisdom can't be replaced. is why we should honor older citizens because they have wisdom that you cannot replace.
So, but here's where it becomes a problem. When we think of AI, our brain looks backward to figure out what's the AI going to do for me. The problem is your brain has no history in large compute capabilities, unless that is where you live.
So your brain has no background there. So when you're thinking about AI, you need to stop thinking about your past and your past experiences and just dream of a bigger future.
And don't put limits on it. Dream of a bigger future. What if? Could we do this? Could we do that? Could we do this? Then go explore. Can you do that with AI? You may be surprised what you will find. Now.
Justin Girouard (07:26)
That's what I meant
earlier, we need to be childlike again. We need to get back to be that imagination that we had as children because that is your most powerful asset.
Dr. Mark Young (07:37)
According to Dr. Peter Diamandis, who's a great futurist and a friend, Peter's predicting 47 % of all jobs that exist today will be gone by the year 2030.
That's a disrupting event.
Justin Girouard (07:52)
say the least.
Dr. Mark Young (07:54)
Now, it does not mean we're going to have 47 % unemployment.
But we're going to have 47 % of people who will have a new career choice. And there will be more unemployment. There will be people who will not adapt and will not work. But let me tell you why we're here today. many of these podcasts are based on conversations we had last week.
Justin Girouard (08:05)
Of because of the... Exactly.
Hmm? Yeah?
Dr. Mark Young (08:20)
We,
and if you ever notice that when a new topic comes up, all of a sudden we have four conversations about it in a row with different people, because it's like, everybody wants to know about this this week. Everybody wants to know about that this week. It's always the same conversations. So conversations I've been having this week, Justin, is people asking me.
If knowledge is the key, if knowledge is power, if I need to know more, what are the books I should be reading?
So on this episode, we're going to blast through a lot of books and we'll list them all in the show notes. So don't worry about writing them all down. They'll be in the show notes, but we're to go through a stack of books and let people know what's in them. I think all of these books are available in an audio version or digital version or paperback or hardback. So I'm going to start. I'm going to start us off with the obvious.
The 27 Unbreakable Rules. This is my newest book, number one on Amazon. I'm getting incredible feedback from this. And I'm getting people calling me back, telling me or emailing me, where was this two years ago? This would have saved me a half a million dollars in mistakes.
That's book number one. Book number two. It's called hypnotizing. It's by me also.
Justin Girouard (09:42)
Let's just get them out of the way.
Dr. Mark Young (09:44)
Now, why am I suggesting this book? Because when we look at technology...
We know that how we're going to do things is rapidly changing. So we need to focus on what are the things that won't change.
The things that won't change is people want a better life. They want a better future. They want to find things that are going to make life better. And the triggers that make them decide to buy something doesn't change. The psychology of how you sold somebody something 100 years ago, other than we've become more scientific, is the same today.
I was, and I told you this story before. I remember being in Israel and looking at some uncovered, unearthed cities that were 3000 years old. And you get a tour of what life was like 3000 years ago. And you quickly realize it was just like life today with different technology.
They were still married. lived in families. They wanted better things for their kids. They wanted to have food. They wanted to have shelter. They were looking to get ahead. They wanted their kids to have educations. They were dealing with illness. They had to care for their elders. They had to raise their children. It was just the same life done with dirt floors and candles or back then oil lanterns.
So hypnotizing is really about the psychology of selling. How do we get inside people's heads and motivate them? Now keep in mind, Jekyll and Hyde advertising, or Jekyll Hyde Labs advertising, we do not believe in using our communication skills to rip people off.
and if we discover that a client came to us and they're a crooked operation or a bogus operation, we will drop them.
Our job is to use our skills in communication and psychology to help consumers overcome their own cognitive biases and make decisions that will take them to a better future.
Justin Girouard (11:57)
them overcome their fears of change. Yes, 100%.
Dr. Mark Young (11:59)
and take them to a better future. Now,
people will say, well, does a bottle of wine take somebody to a better future? It can. A bottle of wine can be an awesome housewarming gift when you show up to visit people. It can be a great way to spend time with friends. It can also be abused.
Justin Girouard (12:09)
Yeah.
Right. What do we think?
Dr. Mark Young (12:25)
Correct. And we don't actually sell wine. I don't think we have any wine clients at the moment. But we tend to focus on this areas. And I'm going to be honest with you folks and tell you we've turned down 50 THC brands and marijuana brands because it's an area we won't get into. We also turned down any of the vape products.
Because they're not good for people. There's no redeeming quality to, to vaping and the history of no matter which side of the marijuana aisle you are on, the science is pretty clear that the products being used today cause irreversible forms of psychoses and of paranoia. And it significantly increases risk of heart attack.
So that's not us and we wouldn't take cigarettes either. So that's what the next book is. Now, my next book that I want to tell people about is Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
The science of scaling.
Ben Hardy is a brilliant guy. He's so smart. And this book is, I think the best way to tell you this, how to break your entire operation into three levels with the real most important one being setting the floor. Where is your floor? What is the things you won't go below? What are the things you refuse to do?
But the other thing Ben does is he shows you how to use time, not as a fear-based object, but as a tool to accomplish. So I'm going to give folks an example. I say, Justin, what's your goal? And your goal is usually going to be, well, I want to 10x my company in the next 10 years. So I say, OK, if you're going to 10x your company in the next 10 years, what has to change tomorrow for you to do that?
And your answer is probably, I'm on target. We're in pretty good shape.
Justin Girouard (14:24)
Right.
To do 10 years? Yeah, no problem.
Dr. Mark Young (14:27)
Now I say to you, Justin, what has to change tomorrow if you're going to 10X your company in the next 36 months?
Justin Girouard (14:37)
everything.
Dr. Mark Young (14:38)
Now it's anxiety almost, isn't it?
Justin Girouard (14:40)
Hmm?
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Young (14:42)
Now it's all of a sudden, geez, I got two people that I know that I'd have to replace. I've got this other position I'd have to fill. I don't have enough warehousing space. I need more lending. All of a sudden it's like, holy crap, I have to do all these things.
What Dr. Hardy shows is when you constrain yourself into 10x growth in a short window, it forces your brain to throw away all the noise.
and only focus on the signal. Because now I don't have the next six months to deal with that relative on the payroll that really is screwing up a job, but I don't want to deal with it. I got to go deal with it now.
Justin Girouard (15:22)
It forces your mind to focus, right? Because as you talk about 10Xing in 10 years, there could be a hundred different ways to make that happen. But if you're going to do it in three years or two years, all of sudden your mind goes, whoa, there's probably only one way to actually do that.
And so to your point, you focus and you find the actual signal, which is the true pathway to that growth. You get rid of all the other noise that is really just clouding your judgment and getting in the way.
Dr. Mark Young (16:02)
Now go go through the next books. This is called e-commerce brand guide to the galaxy. There are five volumes. Volume one, building a brand that actually converts. Volume two, converting browsers and the buyers.
Number three, how to turn attention into revenue.
Number four, how to scale traffic without burning cash.
Number five, the systems metrics and disciplines behind brands that scale and survive. Now these books are written by Dr. Mark Young, the second. This is my son. He has done a brilliant job of breaking down the entire world of digital marketing.
And think of these books as almost the companion side to the 27 rules.
Now, I want to get back to Dr. Ben Hardy. There are three other books that I would highly recommend written by Dr. Hardy Hardy's a great friend, Dan Sullivan. One of those books is called 10X is Easier Than 2X. And by the way, folks, these are bestselling books. 10X is Easier Than 2X.
Justin Girouard (17:15)
They're amazing.
Dr. Mark Young (17:18)
Another one is called Who Not How.
Justin Girouard (17:21)
for our regular listeners, you've heard us talk about this concept over and over again, but for anybody that's new, it may not have heard it. The whole concept behind who not how is simply this. As entrepreneurs, visionaries, and frankly, most of us type A individuals, right? When we get a task in front of us, it's a new challenge.
Our mind starts with, right, so how do I do this? How can I figure out how to do this? Right? Now, that's the natural reaction. Here's the problem with it, is when you start your business,
That's what you had to do, right? You started it and you had to figure out how to do it because there was nobody else. There's no one else to do it. So you built a business and you built a lifestyle based on just figuring it out. But what happens is if you try to do that at scale, it's impossible.
As you grow, are going to be challenges and phases of your business and life that you simply are not equipped to figure out. So instead of wasting time, money, and energy for you trying to figure out how to do it, the best way to break through is to find the who that knows already how to do it. The who that has spent their life.
building an expertise, building knowledge, building that intuition of how to do those things. So shift your mindset from how do I figure this out to I need to go find the who that knows how to do this.
Dr. Mark Young (19:00)
Right, because if you
try to learn how to do everything, your company growth is going to be very linear because it is limited to your learning capability.
Justin Girouard (19:12)
and your time.
Dr. Mark Young (19:14)
Yep. And if you think about it, when we're talking about disciplines, most disciplines take 10,000 hours. So, okay, well, I need to master accounting. So I guess I'm going to spend the next five years doing accounting so that I can be a master accountant, or I could just go hire a CFO or a CPA. The next book is The Gap and the Gain.
Justin Girouard (19:20)
Right.
another brilliant.
Dr. Mark Young (19:38)
also
by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and by Dan Sullivan.
Justin Girouard (19:44)
It's an amazing concept.
It's a growth concept, psychological concept, right? think of it, and we've all gone through this because it truly is human nature, right? So lot of it, we will set a goal, right? for individuals like us, we set big goals. We don't usually set small ones. We don't know what small ones are. If there's not enough risk, it doesn't scare you. It's not worth being a goal for us. We set these big goals, right? And so then we get started. We've got our plan. We start moving.
we start hitting challenges and we start hitting this, right? Because that's part of it. And so what will happen often is psychologically we have this big goal in front of us and maybe we're only here. And so what we do is we focus on the gap between where we are, we wanna be, as opposed to looking at, how much we gained? We were here and now we're here. Look at all that we've accomplished. Look at where we have gotten to.
And so if we focus on the gap, all we're going to do is keep pushing ourselves down and the goal will be insurmountable and the mountain will get bigger and the gap's always going to be there.
Dr. Mark Young (20:52)
because the gap will always be there.
Here's another way look at it. As entrepreneurs, we're always chasing the horizon. But you can't catch the horizon. Because as entrepreneurs, as soon as we get to that next point that we were looking for, we move the cheese. We move the goalposts.
Justin Girouard (21:05)
impossible.
Always. Always.
Dr. Mark Young (21:18)
So we're always chasing the horizon, but we can't get to the horizon. So what this book is really about teaching you is every once in a while as you're chasing the horizon, you need to stop and turn around and look and see how far you traveled already.
Justin Girouard (21:34)
Appreciate it. Celebrate it.
Dr. Mark Young (21:38)
Now, the next one that I want to touch is another good friend of mine, Gino Wickman and the book Traction. What did you get out of Traction?
Justin Girouard (21:48)
Here's what I learned from traction.
Dr. Mark Young (21:51)
And Gino, by the way,
is the creator of the EOS system, the entrepreneurial operating system, which over 300,000 companies now operate on.
Justin Girouard (21:54)
And the, and the, yep.
system. What traction, and again especially for entrepreneurial organizations, what traction really showed is it shows the challenges and and I'll say complexities of an entrepreneurial driven business and it also shows how
you can function within it successfully, how you can build a business that can scale, that can operate, because that's the biggest thing, right? And I've been here for, it'll be 11 years next month. So I have been working with an entrepreneur and four entrepreneurs and with entrepreneurs for almost 11 years now. And the patterns are all the same.
the entrepreneurs, as Mark mentioned, they're always looking for the horizon. They're going to the next thing. They got the next big idea. And what happens, what can happen for the operators within it can be pure chaos. So what needs to happen is you need to help create a system to which you can actually gain traction for those different goals. So you can operate smoothly so that the entrepreneur can be the best version
of the entrepreneur and then the team can be the best version of the team supporting that entrepreneur and there are very unique systems that need to be in place for that to happen.
Dr. Mark Young (23:25)
Right, the worst thing you can do in an entrepreneurial company is try to install your Harvard MBA management techniques. Because you will kill the golden goose.
Justin Girouard (23:33)
It will not work. It won't work.
There needs to be enough structure that allows for the fluidity of the business.
Dr. Mark Young (23:45)
while freedom for that
entrepreneur.
Justin Girouard (23:47)
Exactly.
need to be, you know, you need to be bamboo. You can't be an oak, right? Your business can't be run like an oak tree that's stuck here for entrepreneurs. won't work. You need to move with the wind and you need to be able to do that. And you need to understand then what are the right seats? What are the right people? What are the right systems? How to communicate all these different things. Interaction does a great job of laying that out to understand what those things are and how to do that to be successful.
So everyone can be successful.
Dr. Mark Young (24:18)
Now here's my next book, which you've not seen yet. The Greater Game. This book is not out yet. This is an advanced copy. This is by Dan Sullivan, strategic coach and John Bowman, another friend of mine. Dan and him wrote this book together. This is your 100x blueprint. So we've been talking 10x is easier than 2x.
Justin Girouard (24:21)
I have not.
10x right.
Dr. Mark Young (24:44)
This is your 100x blueprint for exponential growth.
Is it an arms race? So we did 10X, so let's do 100X.
Justin Girouard (24:51)
you
Dr. Mark Young (24:52)
I have started reading a book and I know the book, I'm in the book. The book is not about, well, let's just grow a hundred times instead of 10 times. The book is about.
changing your mindset and this book is made for people with successful companies
So let me set that right now. If you're a guy trying to get my first million dollars worth of business, it's not your book.
If you're a person, if you're a man or woman and I have a $10 million valued company or a $20 million valued company, this is your book. This is about how to change your mindset from being an operator to being an architect.
It is, isn't it?
Justin Girouard (25:41)
very interesting concept.
Dr. Mark Young (25:43)
But it's for people who have already made it, people who are playing the game and winning. Now it's time to just make a new game.
So instead of now thinking about how do we grow the business, it now becomes how do we architect business models?
Justin Girouard (25:54)
interesting.
Dr. Mark Young (26:04)
that have massive scalability.
Justin Girouard (26:04)
very interesting shit.
That's a cool concept.
Dr. Mark Young (26:08)
It is. 10 X is easier than two X is the growth model for growing company.
This is the growth model for people that have made it already. That's who this book is aimed at.
Justin Girouard (26:16)
That's cool.
That's cool.
Dr. Mark Young (26:20)
Now you had a couple books you wanted to add in here. Which ones are you thinking?
Justin Girouard (26:23)
there's a couple books that I have read and continue to reference. So Byron Sharp. Byron Sharp wrote How Brands Grow and there's actually two volumes of it.
Dr. Mark Young (26:33)
Hmm
Justin Girouard (26:35)
If you want to get a foundational understanding of how to build a business, of how markets work, and some of the just mathematical laws that apply to growing and scaling a brand in a business, read this book, okay?
It is absolutely academic in nature, but I assure you, if you can understand these concepts, you will understand the foundational concept of scaling as Mark talked about earlier as it related to hypnotizing. This is the same thing. These concepts do not change. They don't change. Understanding things like the law of double jeopardy, all of these different rules that are in there, these are rules that are going to change the way you look at your business.
It's going to change the way that you approach building your brand. And again, not from necessarily a marketing perspective. Understanding how to analyze your consumer base and your revenue model and all. It's amazing, amazing stuff. And I'm telling you, read these books. It will change the way you look at your business and the way you approach, especially marketing your business. It will change it.
Dr. Mark Young (27:49)
Now I'm to give people two more books from a wonderful author and a guy that I know. name is Bob Cialdini. And Bob is the master of influence. So his first book was called Influence and that book is 30 years old and is still a bestselling book today. And then his second book was called Pre-Suasion.
Justin Girouard (28:17)
another great book. Of course. Of course. It's great book.
Dr. Mark Young (28:18)
So you read Pre-Sway-Gene also, which is great, wasn't it?
So I highly recommend both of these. Another book, Justin, that I would highly recommend, and he was a guest on this podcast not that long ago, is Primal Intelligence by Dr. Angus Fletcher.
Justin Girouard (28:36)
this book completely changed the way that I looked at the way I think, the way I approach my work here,
psychology of how your mind actually works. If you want to understand storytelling, and I mean effective and the advantage that you have over AI and computers.
Dr. Mark Young (28:57)
and the advantage that you have over computers.
Justin Girouard (29:04)
He breaks down communication and storytelling and the power of our mind and our abilities moving forward in a way that I have never experienced. If you want to truly understand communication and again, our advantage and our place in this new AI future, read this book.
Dr. Mark Young (29:25)
These are books that any one of them can be a life-changing book. So for me, and I know Justin, you're the same way. When I read a book, I want to be a different person at the end of the book. So I can change my personality. It might make a couple of adjustments, but I want my mindset changed. I want to expand.
Justin Girouard (29:49)
Yes.
Dr. Mark Young (29:52)
my capabilities and more importantly expand my view of the world.
Justin Girouard (29:58)
want a new perspective. That's what I crave.
Dr. Mark Young (30:01)
These are all books that will change your life.
and you will now have a different way of looking at things.
Justin Girouard (30:09)
could not agree more. and also was a guest on the show, is Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference.
Dr. Mark Young (30:11)
Any other books for you?
my
goodness. Amazing, amazing guy. Chris is a good friend. Chris was the lead international hostage negotiator for the FBI. And folks he's a blast. He has this New York accent that is just disarming, will change the way you think.
about going into any negotiation.
Justin Girouard (30:43)
And the other thing that I will say is he will change the way that you communicate.
everything that we do is about relationships. I don't care what you do, it's about relationships. And everything that you're going to do at some point will feel and seem like a negotiation. he will completely flip the idea of compromise on its head and show you how evil and how wrong compromise is, how it doesn't serve anyone and how that's the key to not only negotiating but creating
better relationships in everything that you do. It's an amazing book.
Dr. Mark Young (31:19)
And think about Chris's
world. in Chris's world, I'm a bank robber. I'm three bank robbers. just botched a bank robbery. have 15 hostages. And I get on the phone and I say, I want a helicopter. I want a car and a helicopter. And I want it in 30 minutes or I start killing hostages. Okay. So splitting the difference would be how about if you just kill half?
Justin Girouard (31:45)
Right, right. Let's compromise.
Dr. Mark Young (31:48)
Let's meet in the middle. You got 15 hostages. How about if you kill seven, you send eight out?
Justin Girouard (31:50)
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Young (31:53)
So in his world, there is no compromise. There cannot be compromise in a hostage situation because the goal of the hostage situation is to bring everyone out alive, including the criminal.
So there's no hostage negotiation. So how does this apply to your life?
Justin Girouard (32:15)
question. Think about it this way and I'll simplify it.
If you're in a marriage, how many times have you compromised on something?
and both parties felt great about it. That everybody won, truly won, actually won, right? And it's the same way in business. It's not likely, right? When you compromise, you're giving something up. Somebody is giving something up that they wanted. And so therefore, moving forward, there is going to be some form of resentment, some form of regret from one or both parties. That's not the fact.
Foundation you want to set for any type of relationship and especially in business, right? So it is about understanding truly how to communicate and find the situation where everybody actually wins Everybody wins and that is possible in every negotiation right our conversation You just need to know and understand the tools and how to discover them because a lot of the times let's be honest, right as people and business or anything else the
first thing that we say that we want, many times actually isn't it. It's just what we think we want at the time.
Dr. Mark Young (33:28)
It's very much discovering
what somebody wants. So let give you an example. Bank robbery. Bank robbers got 15 hostages. There's three bank robbers. We want a car. We want a jet at the airport. We want clear passage to the jet and we want enough fuel to get to Venezuela. Well, the first thing that Chris teaches you is never lie in a negotiation.
So Chris would say, you know, I can't do that.
He doesn't say, well, it's going to take me a long time to get an airplane like you see on TV. Nope. Chris says, you know, I can't do that. But then Chris will follow up with, but what I'm really hearing is you want to get out of this alive.
because otherwise I'd just kill all hostages and kill myself, right? So Chris says, so what I'm really hearing is you want to get out of this alive. Is that right? And you'll get an agreement.
then let me see if I can help you do that.
But notice what he did. He didn't focus on, want a car and an airplane and pilots, which is the demand. He went to the core need was you guys have really stepped in it, haven't you? And it sounds like you want to get out of this alive.
Now he's right, he's at the basic need of survival.
Justin Girouard (34:43)
Yep, yep. And that happens all the time in business, right? You're going to get contract terms or anything,
And that's just, that could have been come from a lawyer, it could be coming from them, it could be what they think that they should be doing here. So if you spend the time to do that discovery work and really understand what the real need and want and desire is, most of the time you will be able to discover that win-win situation. But you need to spend the time to do it and the right communication tools to understand how to get there.
Dr. Mark Young (35:17)
Any other books on your list?
Justin Girouard (35:18)
I
would just say that right now, last, there are two last ones. So one of them is, especially from entrepreneurs and visionaries, there's a book by Bob Schoenfeld called I'm Scattered with Chatter. So if you're like a lot of us, know, visionaries and entrepreneurs and
You're just struggling with keeping that focus, that maintaining that true vision, understanding. You're getting pulled in all these different directions.
everything from ambition to concerns and worries and you're just trying to figure out how do I get a handle on all this? How do I do I get back to who I really am and what I really want and what really matters to me? It's a brilliant book to not only help you understand what is actually happening, but he gives you some incredible tools on how to really figure out what truly matters to you so that you can focus and live a life that's free.
and truly be free.
Dr. Mark Young (36:15)
Now we'll give people one last one and this is less about your business. This is more about the future. If you want to have a clear vision of where the future is going, where AI is going, where vertical takeoff vehicles are going, where longevity, where medicine is going. The book is, We Are As Gods. Okay. Bye bye. friend, Dr. D, D'Amandus.
Justin Girouard (36:37)
That was the last one on my list.
Dr. Mark Young (36:43)
and by Steven Kotler, who is the head of the Human Flow Project and also a bestselling author. And have you gotten into this book yet?
Justin Girouard (36:53)
I'm about two chapters in.
Dr. Mark Young (36:56)
Okay, it's mind blowing, isn't it?
Justin Girouard (36:58)
It's It's just crazy.
Dr. Mark Young (36:59)
So if you
wanna know what the strange new world is going to look like, this is your book.
Justin Girouard (37:03)
100%. 100%.
Yes.
Dr. Mark Young (37:06)
We Are As Gods was a quote that was made. If you get the guy made it, was back in the 70s. And his comment was, we are as gods, so we might as well get good at it.
Justin Girouard (37:11)
Yeah, 60s.
Mm-hmm. Yep, that was when the technologies really took off in the 60s.
Dr. Mark Young (37:19)
And understand
that Peter DeMandis is not, this is not a religious thing. He is not saying we're smarter than God. We've risen above God. That's not what's happening here. What this really means is if we took our technology and could go back in time, 100, 200, 500 years, the people who encounter us would think we were gods.
or that we were, you know, superhuman.
Justin Girouard (37:48)
We are literally creating miracles, miracle events with technology.
Dr. Mark Young (37:53)
Right, because
much of what we have at our fingertips right now are the miracles of the past.
Justin Girouard (38:00)
Yes, yes, yeah, it's an amazing book. I just started it, so I haven't finished it yet, but it's wild.
Dr. Mark Young (38:08)
So folks, there's the list. If you go to the website, we'll list all the books. We can probably put links to all the books, I suppose, but we'll have them all there for you. Here's the last thing I want to tell you.
Justin Girouard (38:14)
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Young (38:23)
These are books that most of these books are.
four to six hour reads.
And that's for just an average reader. If you're a good reader, could consume one, consume them in two hours, but an average reader, four to six hours, you can even get them as an audio book and listen on your way to work. By the way, I listen to an audio book every day on my way in and out of the office.
Justin Girouard (38:49)
Yep, me too.
Dr. Mark Young (38:51)
It allows me to consume a book every week, a week and a half just on my drive.
Books are the cheapest education you will ever get.
You're getting books for five to 20 bucks. And every one of these books we just gave you have a lifetime of experience poured into them.
You're literally getting at sometimes 30 plus years of experience condensed down into these pages.
This is, I'm going to tell you right now, that group of books would be far more life-changing than any semester at any university you could go take.
Justin Girouard (39:38)
degree more.
It is life changing. Just commit the time. All you have to do is commit the time and just decide that frankly you're worth it and what you want is matter. In the future you want matters? Create the knowledge, create the wisdom because you have it here at your fingertips. Go get it.
Dr. Mark Young (40:00)
And if
you want to do it by reading, here's another way to do it. Commit to reading 10 pages a day.
Justin Girouard (40:06)
Yeah, put 20 minutes aside.
Dr. Mark Young (40:09)
So yeah, if 20 minutes, you read 10 pages a day, seven days a week, you will have consumed 13 books on average by the end of the year.
Justin Girouard (40:12)
in 20 minutes.
Amazing.
Dr. Mark Young (40:24)
So as
humans, we always have a tendency to.
overestimate what we can get done today and underestimate what we can do over a long period of time.
So 10 pages a day, and you've got 13 books a year read. Now, double that up with audio books on your way to work. And you're going through 30 books a year, 40 books a year. Cheapest education you will ever have, and the most profound. All right, that's it for today, folks.
If you get the books, go back to Amazon and leave reviews for the authors of the books. Tell them how you liked it, how it impacted you. And that way other people will also see how good these books are.
That's it for me, Justin.
Justin Girouard (41:12)
That's it for me. Thank you so much for your time.
And of course, let us know if there's any books, feel free to reach out to us on cpginsiders.com reach out to us on jandhlabs.com If there's any questions you have or if you ever want to meet with us about your business, we're always willing to. But let us know about books that you read. Maybe there's stuff that we didn't get to, that we didn't talk about. I mean, we'd love to know. What else should we be talking about and what other books should we be reading and should everyone be reading? Engage with us and help us grow.
and expand this growing community.
Dr. Mark Young (41:47)
We'll see you on the next episode of CPG Insiders. Goodbye everybody.
Welcome everybody to another edition of CPG insiders. I'm your host, Mark Young with my cohost who's on the other side of the screen if you're watching, but actually just in the office next to me, Justin Gerer. Justin.
Justin Girouard (00:22)
the
fourth wall please don't do that
Dr. Mark Young (00:25)
It's springtime, the weather's getting better. Things are happening. It's an exciting time. I was that strategic coach. We're going to talk about that, man. But I was that coach, and I made a statement. And everybody there said yes. And the statement I made, Justin, was we're now living in a time where every morning I get up excited for what's new and afraid of what will pass me.
Justin Girouard (00:51)
Yes, the world is moving so fast, so fast right now.
Dr. Mark Young (00:56)
I mean, we are now living in the brave new world.
Justin Girouard (01:00)
Truly. Truly.
Dr. Mark Young (01:02)
And
I want to tell people 24 months from now, the America you live in won't look like the one you're in right now.
Justin Girouard (01:11)
Nope. Nope.
Dr. Mark Young (01:12)
And we need to be out in front of it if we ever have a chance of keeping our businesses profitable. And we should probably do some shows on
Justin Girouard (01:22)
Yeah, I think that would be really great. I think not only just talking about what we're seeing, what may be coming, but also what should your mindset be? How should you be thinking about it? How should you be approaching it? Because I think as we've talked many times internally and with our partners, your mindset honestly is everything right now because there is so much opportunity. If you got the right mindset, you can literally almost do anything right now.
Dr. Mark Young (01:50)
The tool you have now isn't what you know how to do. It is your curiosity and your creativeness.
Justin Girouard (01:58)
your imagination. Yes. Yes, we almost have to retrain our minds to be childlike again.
Dr. Mark Young (02:07)
And here's part of the problem, Justin. So when we're talking about AI, AI learns like a human learns. It's got large language models. They function very much like us. So the way that we learn is our unconscious mind is guessing what is the next word I'm going to say. As I'm talking here, your mind is already plugging in what is my next word. And when I say a word that fits
with your paradigm, your brain says, I was right. Let's add that to the database that reinforces my learning. But as we're sitting here talking and things are going by and I just go knock, knock. Okay. All of a sudden, right.
Justin Girouard (02:50)
Yes? Hell yeah.
Dr. Mark Young (02:52)
Your brain just said, what was that? Because that isn't what I guessed was going to be the next word. And you did not guess that was going to be the next word I said.
Justin Girouard (03:03)
Nope, I didn't see that one coming.
Dr. Mark Young (03:05)
So what happens when I yell out knock knock? Now your brain learns novel information. Okay, that novel information might be, okay, dude's kind of a freak and there's no telling what he's gonna yell next. It could be, he really likes knock knock jokes. It could be, huh, he's teaching me what a pattern interrupt is.
Justin Girouard (03:29)
Could be, could be.
Dr. Mark Young (03:31)
which was what I was really doing. But your brain gained new novel data. Well, this is how AI learns. So you'll notice if you have an iPhone and you're typing in a text, you'll notice your iPhone will guess at the next words you're going to type in. Now, that seems like a very convenient feature.
But it's more than a convenient feature, it's the AI guessing and learning.
Justin Girouard (03:57)
Yes. Yes. Well, and on that note, a lot of what we've been talking about and everyone's talking about right now is AI and where is our world going, where's our business going. And so we thought it'd be a great idea to anyone who's in this space probably heard this, which is the 108010 rule.
and how to approach AI. And what that is for those that don't is understanding that our power and our value comes in the first 10%, which is the initial 10 % inputs. The AI will do 80 % of the doing and then we are valued at the last 10%, meaning refining and ensuring that the
output is exactly correct. So these two 10 % this 20 % included beginning in the end, this is the power that we yield. This is going to be our unique value moving forward in this age. And in order to make sure that you have
the best information for that first 10, last 10, you have to have the knowledge, you have to have that intuition, you have to have that ability in order to ensure that you're getting the best outputs, also putting in the best inputs for the tool to do the 80%.
Dr. Mark Young (05:15)
If you think about this, Justin, this is, this is the model of being the boss, being a supervisor. So you're a supervisor and you have a half a dozen employees working for you. So what is your job? Define the task they need to do today. Outline the task, describe what needs to be done. Make sure they understand the parameters of the job. Now send the worker off to do it. When the worker's done.
present me the work and I'm going to fact check it. I'm going to make sure it's right and I'm going to add in whatever I think is missing and now we can go and do this thing.
So the AI is the worker in the middle. So think of the AI as part of your team. It's part of the staff. This is how it works. Now, I was talking about how our brains learn. Our brains learn the same way as these AIs do. And here's why a lot of people are suffering with AI. Our brains learn by guessing what the next item is.
And we guess on the next item based on all of our life experience. And this is why wisdom can't be replaced. is why we should honor older citizens because they have wisdom that you cannot replace.
So, but here's where it becomes a problem. When we think of AI, our brain looks backward to figure out what's the AI going to do for me. The problem is your brain has no history in large compute capabilities, unless that is where you live.
So your brain has no background there. So when you're thinking about AI, you need to stop thinking about your past and your past experiences and just dream of a bigger future.
And don't put limits on it. Dream of a bigger future. What if? Could we do this? Could we do that? Could we do this? Then go explore. Can you do that with AI? You may be surprised what you will find. Now.
Justin Girouard (07:26)
That's what I meant
earlier, we need to be childlike again. We need to get back to be that imagination that we had as children because that is your most powerful asset.
Dr. Mark Young (07:37)
According to Dr. Peter Diamandis, who's a great futurist and a friend, Peter's predicting 47 % of all jobs that exist today will be gone by the year 2030.
That's a disrupting event.
Justin Girouard (07:52)
say the least.
Dr. Mark Young (07:54)
Now, it does not mean we're going to have 47 % unemployment.
But we're going to have 47 % of people who will have a new career choice. And there will be more unemployment. There will be people who will not adapt and will not work. But let me tell you why we're here today. many of these podcasts are based on conversations we had last week.
Justin Girouard (08:05)
Of because of the... Exactly.
Hmm? Yeah?
Dr. Mark Young (08:20)
We,
and if you ever notice that when a new topic comes up, all of a sudden we have four conversations about it in a row with different people, because it's like, everybody wants to know about this this week. Everybody wants to know about that this week. It's always the same conversations. So conversations I've been having this week, Justin, is people asking me.
If knowledge is the key, if knowledge is power, if I need to know more, what are the books I should be reading?
So on this episode, we're going to blast through a lot of books and we'll list them all in the show notes. So don't worry about writing them all down. They'll be in the show notes, but we're to go through a stack of books and let people know what's in them. I think all of these books are available in an audio version or digital version or paperback or hardback. So I'm going to start. I'm going to start us off with the obvious.
The 27 Unbreakable Rules. This is my newest book, number one on Amazon. I'm getting incredible feedback from this. And I'm getting people calling me back, telling me or emailing me, where was this two years ago? This would have saved me a half a million dollars in mistakes.
That's book number one. Book number two. It's called hypnotizing. It's by me also.
Justin Girouard (09:42)
Let's just get them out of the way.
Dr. Mark Young (09:44)
Now, why am I suggesting this book? Because when we look at technology...
We know that how we're going to do things is rapidly changing. So we need to focus on what are the things that won't change.
The things that won't change is people want a better life. They want a better future. They want to find things that are going to make life better. And the triggers that make them decide to buy something doesn't change. The psychology of how you sold somebody something 100 years ago, other than we've become more scientific, is the same today.
I was, and I told you this story before. I remember being in Israel and looking at some uncovered, unearthed cities that were 3000 years old. And you get a tour of what life was like 3000 years ago. And you quickly realize it was just like life today with different technology.
They were still married. lived in families. They wanted better things for their kids. They wanted to have food. They wanted to have shelter. They were looking to get ahead. They wanted their kids to have educations. They were dealing with illness. They had to care for their elders. They had to raise their children. It was just the same life done with dirt floors and candles or back then oil lanterns.
So hypnotizing is really about the psychology of selling. How do we get inside people's heads and motivate them? Now keep in mind, Jekyll and Hyde advertising, or Jekyll Hyde Labs advertising, we do not believe in using our communication skills to rip people off.
and if we discover that a client came to us and they're a crooked operation or a bogus operation, we will drop them.
Our job is to use our skills in communication and psychology to help consumers overcome their own cognitive biases and make decisions that will take them to a better future.
Justin Girouard (11:57)
them overcome their fears of change. Yes, 100%.
Dr. Mark Young (11:59)
and take them to a better future. Now,
people will say, well, does a bottle of wine take somebody to a better future? It can. A bottle of wine can be an awesome housewarming gift when you show up to visit people. It can be a great way to spend time with friends. It can also be abused.
Justin Girouard (12:09)
Yeah.
Right. What do we think?
Dr. Mark Young (12:25)
Correct. And we don't actually sell wine. I don't think we have any wine clients at the moment. But we tend to focus on this areas. And I'm going to be honest with you folks and tell you we've turned down 50 THC brands and marijuana brands because it's an area we won't get into. We also turned down any of the vape products.
Because they're not good for people. There's no redeeming quality to, to vaping and the history of no matter which side of the marijuana aisle you are on, the science is pretty clear that the products being used today cause irreversible forms of psychoses and of paranoia. And it significantly increases risk of heart attack.
So that's not us and we wouldn't take cigarettes either. So that's what the next book is. Now, my next book that I want to tell people about is Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
The science of scaling.
Ben Hardy is a brilliant guy. He's so smart. And this book is, I think the best way to tell you this, how to break your entire operation into three levels with the real most important one being setting the floor. Where is your floor? What is the things you won't go below? What are the things you refuse to do?
But the other thing Ben does is he shows you how to use time, not as a fear-based object, but as a tool to accomplish. So I'm going to give folks an example. I say, Justin, what's your goal? And your goal is usually going to be, well, I want to 10x my company in the next 10 years. So I say, OK, if you're going to 10x your company in the next 10 years, what has to change tomorrow for you to do that?
And your answer is probably, I'm on target. We're in pretty good shape.
Justin Girouard (14:24)
Right.
To do 10 years? Yeah, no problem.
Dr. Mark Young (14:27)
Now I say to you, Justin, what has to change tomorrow if you're going to 10X your company in the next 36 months?
Justin Girouard (14:37)
everything.
Dr. Mark Young (14:38)
Now it's anxiety almost, isn't it?
Justin Girouard (14:40)
Hmm?
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Young (14:42)
Now it's all of a sudden, geez, I got two people that I know that I'd have to replace. I've got this other position I'd have to fill. I don't have enough warehousing space. I need more lending. All of a sudden it's like, holy crap, I have to do all these things.
What Dr. Hardy shows is when you constrain yourself into 10x growth in a short window, it forces your brain to throw away all the noise.
and only focus on the signal. Because now I don't have the next six months to deal with that relative on the payroll that really is screwing up a job, but I don't want to deal with it. I got to go deal with it now.
Justin Girouard (15:22)
It forces your mind to focus, right? Because as you talk about 10Xing in 10 years, there could be a hundred different ways to make that happen. But if you're going to do it in three years or two years, all of sudden your mind goes, whoa, there's probably only one way to actually do that.
And so to your point, you focus and you find the actual signal, which is the true pathway to that growth. You get rid of all the other noise that is really just clouding your judgment and getting in the way.
Dr. Mark Young (16:02)
Now go go through the next books. This is called e-commerce brand guide to the galaxy. There are five volumes. Volume one, building a brand that actually converts. Volume two, converting browsers and the buyers.
Number three, how to turn attention into revenue.
Number four, how to scale traffic without burning cash.
Number five, the systems metrics and disciplines behind brands that scale and survive. Now these books are written by Dr. Mark Young, the second. This is my son. He has done a brilliant job of breaking down the entire world of digital marketing.
And think of these books as almost the companion side to the 27 rules.
Now, I want to get back to Dr. Ben Hardy. There are three other books that I would highly recommend written by Dr. Hardy Hardy's a great friend, Dan Sullivan. One of those books is called 10X is Easier Than 2X. And by the way, folks, these are bestselling books. 10X is Easier Than 2X.
Justin Girouard (17:15)
They're amazing.
Dr. Mark Young (17:18)
Another one is called Who Not How.
Justin Girouard (17:21)
for our regular listeners, you've heard us talk about this concept over and over again, but for anybody that's new, it may not have heard it. The whole concept behind who not how is simply this. As entrepreneurs, visionaries, and frankly, most of us type A individuals, right? When we get a task in front of us, it's a new challenge.
Our mind starts with, right, so how do I do this? How can I figure out how to do this? Right? Now, that's the natural reaction. Here's the problem with it, is when you start your business,
That's what you had to do, right? You started it and you had to figure out how to do it because there was nobody else. There's no one else to do it. So you built a business and you built a lifestyle based on just figuring it out. But what happens is if you try to do that at scale, it's impossible.
As you grow, are going to be challenges and phases of your business and life that you simply are not equipped to figure out. So instead of wasting time, money, and energy for you trying to figure out how to do it, the best way to break through is to find the who that knows already how to do it. The who that has spent their life.
building an expertise, building knowledge, building that intuition of how to do those things. So shift your mindset from how do I figure this out to I need to go find the who that knows how to do this.
Dr. Mark Young (19:00)
Right, because if you
try to learn how to do everything, your company growth is going to be very linear because it is limited to your learning capability.
Justin Girouard (19:12)
and your time.
Dr. Mark Young (19:14)
Yep. And if you think about it, when we're talking about disciplines, most disciplines take 10,000 hours. So, okay, well, I need to master accounting. So I guess I'm going to spend the next five years doing accounting so that I can be a master accountant, or I could just go hire a CFO or a CPA. The next book is The Gap and the Gain.
Justin Girouard (19:20)
Right.
another brilliant.
Dr. Mark Young (19:38)
also
by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and by Dan Sullivan.
Justin Girouard (19:44)
It's an amazing concept.
It's a growth concept, psychological concept, right? think of it, and we've all gone through this because it truly is human nature, right? So lot of it, we will set a goal, right? for individuals like us, we set big goals. We don't usually set small ones. We don't know what small ones are. If there's not enough risk, it doesn't scare you. It's not worth being a goal for us. We set these big goals, right? And so then we get started. We've got our plan. We start moving.
we start hitting challenges and we start hitting this, right? Because that's part of it. And so what will happen often is psychologically we have this big goal in front of us and maybe we're only here. And so what we do is we focus on the gap between where we are, we wanna be, as opposed to looking at, how much we gained? We were here and now we're here. Look at all that we've accomplished. Look at where we have gotten to.
And so if we focus on the gap, all we're going to do is keep pushing ourselves down and the goal will be insurmountable and the mountain will get bigger and the gap's always going to be there.
Dr. Mark Young (20:52)
because the gap will always be there.
Here's another way look at it. As entrepreneurs, we're always chasing the horizon. But you can't catch the horizon. Because as entrepreneurs, as soon as we get to that next point that we were looking for, we move the cheese. We move the goalposts.
Justin Girouard (21:05)
impossible.
Always. Always.
Dr. Mark Young (21:18)
So we're always chasing the horizon, but we can't get to the horizon. So what this book is really about teaching you is every once in a while as you're chasing the horizon, you need to stop and turn around and look and see how far you traveled already.
Justin Girouard (21:34)
Appreciate it. Celebrate it.
Dr. Mark Young (21:38)
Now, the next one that I want to touch is another good friend of mine, Gino Wickman and the book Traction. What did you get out of Traction?
Justin Girouard (21:48)
Here's what I learned from traction.
Dr. Mark Young (21:51)
And Gino, by the way,
is the creator of the EOS system, the entrepreneurial operating system, which over 300,000 companies now operate on.
Justin Girouard (21:54)
And the, and the, yep.
system. What traction, and again especially for entrepreneurial organizations, what traction really showed is it shows the challenges and and I'll say complexities of an entrepreneurial driven business and it also shows how
you can function within it successfully, how you can build a business that can scale, that can operate, because that's the biggest thing, right? And I've been here for, it'll be 11 years next month. So I have been working with an entrepreneur and four entrepreneurs and with entrepreneurs for almost 11 years now. And the patterns are all the same.
the entrepreneurs, as Mark mentioned, they're always looking for the horizon. They're going to the next thing. They got the next big idea. And what happens, what can happen for the operators within it can be pure chaos. So what needs to happen is you need to help create a system to which you can actually gain traction for those different goals. So you can operate smoothly so that the entrepreneur can be the best version
of the entrepreneur and then the team can be the best version of the team supporting that entrepreneur and there are very unique systems that need to be in place for that to happen.
Dr. Mark Young (23:25)
Right, the worst thing you can do in an entrepreneurial company is try to install your Harvard MBA management techniques. Because you will kill the golden goose.
Justin Girouard (23:33)
It will not work. It won't work.
There needs to be enough structure that allows for the fluidity of the business.
Dr. Mark Young (23:45)
while freedom for that
entrepreneur.
Justin Girouard (23:47)
Exactly.
need to be, you know, you need to be bamboo. You can't be an oak, right? Your business can't be run like an oak tree that's stuck here for entrepreneurs. won't work. You need to move with the wind and you need to be able to do that. And you need to understand then what are the right seats? What are the right people? What are the right systems? How to communicate all these different things. Interaction does a great job of laying that out to understand what those things are and how to do that to be successful.
So everyone can be successful.
Dr. Mark Young (24:18)
Now here's my next book, which you've not seen yet. The Greater Game. This book is not out yet. This is an advanced copy. This is by Dan Sullivan, strategic coach and John Bowman, another friend of mine. Dan and him wrote this book together. This is your 100x blueprint. So we've been talking 10x is easier than 2x.
Justin Girouard (24:21)
I have not.
10x right.
Dr. Mark Young (24:44)
This is your 100x blueprint for exponential growth.
Is it an arms race? So we did 10X, so let's do 100X.
Justin Girouard (24:51)
you
Dr. Mark Young (24:52)
I have started reading a book and I know the book, I'm in the book. The book is not about, well, let's just grow a hundred times instead of 10 times. The book is about.
changing your mindset and this book is made for people with successful companies
So let me set that right now. If you're a guy trying to get my first million dollars worth of business, it's not your book.
If you're a person, if you're a man or woman and I have a $10 million valued company or a $20 million valued company, this is your book. This is about how to change your mindset from being an operator to being an architect.
It is, isn't it?
Justin Girouard (25:41)
very interesting concept.
Dr. Mark Young (25:43)
But it's for people who have already made it, people who are playing the game and winning. Now it's time to just make a new game.
So instead of now thinking about how do we grow the business, it now becomes how do we architect business models?
Justin Girouard (25:54)
interesting.
Dr. Mark Young (26:04)
that have massive scalability.
Justin Girouard (26:04)
very interesting shit.
That's a cool concept.
Dr. Mark Young (26:08)
It is. 10 X is easier than two X is the growth model for growing company.
This is the growth model for people that have made it already. That's who this book is aimed at.
Justin Girouard (26:16)
That's cool.
That's cool.
Dr. Mark Young (26:20)
Now you had a couple books you wanted to add in here. Which ones are you thinking?
Justin Girouard (26:23)
there's a couple books that I have read and continue to reference. So Byron Sharp. Byron Sharp wrote How Brands Grow and there's actually two volumes of it.
Dr. Mark Young (26:33)
Hmm
Justin Girouard (26:35)
If you want to get a foundational understanding of how to build a business, of how markets work, and some of the just mathematical laws that apply to growing and scaling a brand in a business, read this book, okay?
It is absolutely academic in nature, but I assure you, if you can understand these concepts, you will understand the foundational concept of scaling as Mark talked about earlier as it related to hypnotizing. This is the same thing. These concepts do not change. They don't change. Understanding things like the law of double jeopardy, all of these different rules that are in there, these are rules that are going to change the way you look at your business.
It's going to change the way that you approach building your brand. And again, not from necessarily a marketing perspective. Understanding how to analyze your consumer base and your revenue model and all. It's amazing, amazing stuff. And I'm telling you, read these books. It will change the way you look at your business and the way you approach, especially marketing your business. It will change it.
Dr. Mark Young (27:49)
Now I'm to give people two more books from a wonderful author and a guy that I know. name is Bob Cialdini. And Bob is the master of influence. So his first book was called Influence and that book is 30 years old and is still a bestselling book today. And then his second book was called Pre-Suasion.
Justin Girouard (28:17)
another great book. Of course. Of course. It's great book.
Dr. Mark Young (28:18)
So you read Pre-Sway-Gene also, which is great, wasn't it?
So I highly recommend both of these. Another book, Justin, that I would highly recommend, and he was a guest on this podcast not that long ago, is Primal Intelligence by Dr. Angus Fletcher.
Justin Girouard (28:36)
this book completely changed the way that I looked at the way I think, the way I approach my work here,
psychology of how your mind actually works. If you want to understand storytelling, and I mean effective and the advantage that you have over AI and computers.
Dr. Mark Young (28:57)
and the advantage that you have over computers.
Justin Girouard (29:04)
He breaks down communication and storytelling and the power of our mind and our abilities moving forward in a way that I have never experienced. If you want to truly understand communication and again, our advantage and our place in this new AI future, read this book.
Dr. Mark Young (29:25)
These are books that any one of them can be a life-changing book. So for me, and I know Justin, you're the same way. When I read a book, I want to be a different person at the end of the book. So I can change my personality. It might make a couple of adjustments, but I want my mindset changed. I want to expand.
Justin Girouard (29:49)
Yes.
Dr. Mark Young (29:52)
my capabilities and more importantly expand my view of the world.
Justin Girouard (29:58)
want a new perspective. That's what I crave.
Dr. Mark Young (30:01)
These are all books that will change your life.
and you will now have a different way of looking at things.
Justin Girouard (30:09)
could not agree more. and also was a guest on the show, is Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference.
Dr. Mark Young (30:11)
Any other books for you?
my
goodness. Amazing, amazing guy. Chris is a good friend. Chris was the lead international hostage negotiator for the FBI. And folks he's a blast. He has this New York accent that is just disarming, will change the way you think.
about going into any negotiation.
Justin Girouard (30:43)
And the other thing that I will say is he will change the way that you communicate.
everything that we do is about relationships. I don't care what you do, it's about relationships. And everything that you're going to do at some point will feel and seem like a negotiation. he will completely flip the idea of compromise on its head and show you how evil and how wrong compromise is, how it doesn't serve anyone and how that's the key to not only negotiating but creating
better relationships in everything that you do. It's an amazing book.
Dr. Mark Young (31:19)
And think about Chris's
world. in Chris's world, I'm a bank robber. I'm three bank robbers. just botched a bank robbery. have 15 hostages. And I get on the phone and I say, I want a helicopter. I want a car and a helicopter. And I want it in 30 minutes or I start killing hostages. Okay. So splitting the difference would be how about if you just kill half?
Justin Girouard (31:45)
Right, right. Let's compromise.
Dr. Mark Young (31:48)
Let's meet in the middle. You got 15 hostages. How about if you kill seven, you send eight out?
Justin Girouard (31:50)
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Young (31:53)
So in his world, there is no compromise. There cannot be compromise in a hostage situation because the goal of the hostage situation is to bring everyone out alive, including the criminal.
So there's no hostage negotiation. So how does this apply to your life?
Justin Girouard (32:15)
question. Think about it this way and I'll simplify it.
If you're in a marriage, how many times have you compromised on something?
and both parties felt great about it. That everybody won, truly won, actually won, right? And it's the same way in business. It's not likely, right? When you compromise, you're giving something up. Somebody is giving something up that they wanted. And so therefore, moving forward, there is going to be some form of resentment, some form of regret from one or both parties. That's not the fact.
Foundation you want to set for any type of relationship and especially in business, right? So it is about understanding truly how to communicate and find the situation where everybody actually wins Everybody wins and that is possible in every negotiation right our conversation You just need to know and understand the tools and how to discover them because a lot of the times let's be honest, right as people and business or anything else the
first thing that we say that we want, many times actually isn't it. It's just what we think we want at the time.
Dr. Mark Young (33:28)
It's very much discovering
what somebody wants. So let give you an example. Bank robbery. Bank robbers got 15 hostages. There's three bank robbers. We want a car. We want a jet at the airport. We want clear passage to the jet and we want enough fuel to get to Venezuela. Well, the first thing that Chris teaches you is never lie in a negotiation.
So Chris would say, you know, I can't do that.
He doesn't say, well, it's going to take me a long time to get an airplane like you see on TV. Nope. Chris says, you know, I can't do that. But then Chris will follow up with, but what I'm really hearing is you want to get out of this alive.
because otherwise I'd just kill all hostages and kill myself, right? So Chris says, so what I'm really hearing is you want to get out of this alive. Is that right? And you'll get an agreement.
then let me see if I can help you do that.
But notice what he did. He didn't focus on, want a car and an airplane and pilots, which is the demand. He went to the core need was you guys have really stepped in it, haven't you? And it sounds like you want to get out of this alive.
Now he's right, he's at the basic need of survival.
Justin Girouard (34:43)
Yep, yep. And that happens all the time in business, right? You're going to get contract terms or anything,
And that's just, that could have been come from a lawyer, it could be coming from them, it could be what they think that they should be doing here. So if you spend the time to do that discovery work and really understand what the real need and want and desire is, most of the time you will be able to discover that win-win situation. But you need to spend the time to do it and the right communication tools to understand how to get there.
Dr. Mark Young (35:17)
Any other books on your list?
Justin Girouard (35:18)
I
would just say that right now, last, there are two last ones. So one of them is, especially from entrepreneurs and visionaries, there's a book by Bob Schoenfeld called I'm Scattered with Chatter. So if you're like a lot of us, know, visionaries and entrepreneurs and
You're just struggling with keeping that focus, that maintaining that true vision, understanding. You're getting pulled in all these different directions.
everything from ambition to concerns and worries and you're just trying to figure out how do I get a handle on all this? How do I do I get back to who I really am and what I really want and what really matters to me? It's a brilliant book to not only help you understand what is actually happening, but he gives you some incredible tools on how to really figure out what truly matters to you so that you can focus and live a life that's free.
and truly be free.
Dr. Mark Young (36:15)
Now we'll give people one last one and this is less about your business. This is more about the future. If you want to have a clear vision of where the future is going, where AI is going, where vertical takeoff vehicles are going, where longevity, where medicine is going. The book is, We Are As Gods. Okay. Bye bye. friend, Dr. D, D'Amandus.
Justin Girouard (36:37)
That was the last one on my list.
Dr. Mark Young (36:43)
and by Steven Kotler, who is the head of the Human Flow Project and also a bestselling author. And have you gotten into this book yet?
Justin Girouard (36:53)
I'm about two chapters in.
Dr. Mark Young (36:56)
Okay, it's mind blowing, isn't it?
Justin Girouard (36:58)
It's It's just crazy.
Dr. Mark Young (36:59)
So if you
wanna know what the strange new world is going to look like, this is your book.
Justin Girouard (37:03)
100%. 100%.
Yes.
Dr. Mark Young (37:06)
We Are As Gods was a quote that was made. If you get the guy made it, was back in the 70s. And his comment was, we are as gods, so we might as well get good at it.
Justin Girouard (37:11)
Yeah, 60s.
Mm-hmm. Yep, that was when the technologies really took off in the 60s.
Dr. Mark Young (37:19)
And understand
that Peter DeMandis is not, this is not a religious thing. He is not saying we're smarter than God. We've risen above God. That's not what's happening here. What this really means is if we took our technology and could go back in time, 100, 200, 500 years, the people who encounter us would think we were gods.
or that we were, you know, superhuman.
Justin Girouard (37:48)
We are literally creating miracles, miracle events with technology.
Dr. Mark Young (37:53)
Right, because
much of what we have at our fingertips right now are the miracles of the past.
Justin Girouard (38:00)
Yes, yes, yeah, it's an amazing book. I just started it, so I haven't finished it yet, but it's wild.
Dr. Mark Young (38:08)
So folks, there's the list. If you go to the website, we'll list all the books. We can probably put links to all the books, I suppose, but we'll have them all there for you. Here's the last thing I want to tell you.
Justin Girouard (38:14)
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Young (38:23)
These are books that most of these books are.
four to six hour reads.
And that's for just an average reader. If you're a good reader, could consume one, consume them in two hours, but an average reader, four to six hours, you can even get them as an audio book and listen on your way to work. By the way, I listen to an audio book every day on my way in and out of the office.
Justin Girouard (38:49)
Yep, me too.
Dr. Mark Young (38:51)
It allows me to consume a book every week, a week and a half just on my drive.
Books are the cheapest education you will ever get.
You're getting books for five to 20 bucks. And every one of these books we just gave you have a lifetime of experience poured into them.
You're literally getting at sometimes 30 plus years of experience condensed down into these pages.
This is, I'm going to tell you right now, that group of books would be far more life-changing than any semester at any university you could go take.
Justin Girouard (39:38)
degree more.
It is life changing. Just commit the time. All you have to do is commit the time and just decide that frankly you're worth it and what you want is matter. In the future you want matters? Create the knowledge, create the wisdom because you have it here at your fingertips. Go get it.
Dr. Mark Young (40:00)
And if
you want to do it by reading, here's another way to do it. Commit to reading 10 pages a day.
Justin Girouard (40:06)
Yeah, put 20 minutes aside.
Dr. Mark Young (40:09)
So yeah, if 20 minutes, you read 10 pages a day, seven days a week, you will have consumed 13 books on average by the end of the year.
Justin Girouard (40:12)
in 20 minutes.
Amazing.
Dr. Mark Young (40:24)
So as
humans, we always have a tendency to.
overestimate what we can get done today and underestimate what we can do over a long period of time.
So 10 pages a day, and you've got 13 books a year read. Now, double that up with audio books on your way to work. And you're going through 30 books a year, 40 books a year. Cheapest education you will ever have, and the most profound. All right, that's it for today, folks.
If you get the books, go back to Amazon and leave reviews for the authors of the books. Tell them how you liked it, how it impacted you. And that way other people will also see how good these books are.
That's it for me, Justin.
Justin Girouard (41:12)
That's it for me. Thank you so much for your time.
And of course, let us know if there's any books, feel free to reach out to us on cpginsiders.com reach out to us on jandhlabs.com If there's any questions you have or if you ever want to meet with us about your business, we're always willing to. But let us know about books that you read. Maybe there's stuff that we didn't get to, that we didn't talk about. I mean, we'd love to know. What else should we be talking about and what other books should we be reading and should everyone be reading? Engage with us and help us grow.
and expand this growing community.
Dr. Mark Young (41:47)
We'll see you on the next episode of CPG Insiders. Goodbye everybody.
