Special Guest Expert - James Feldman: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Special Guest Expert - James Feldman: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
What does it take to create a vibrant, thriving life? First, the sad news is that Thoreau was right. Most people are leading quiet lives of desperation, lacking in meaning, fulfillment and vitality. But we choose more. We choose to create extraordinary lives. And the art of vibrant living show entertains you with inspiration, empowerment and education to create your life into a masterpiece. It's time. Let's vibe up. Aloha, y'all. Welcome to the show. I'm Daniel Aaron, your host. And this is the Art of Vibrant Living show. As you know, creating a vibrant, thriving life is not accidental. It takes intention. It takes education, it takes practice. And we are in for such a treat today because my guest, Jim Feldman, is an amazing guy who can contribute to you upping the quality of your life on so many levels. Now, he is a one of my favorite qualities in anyone in which is an essential ingredient for a vibrant, thriving life is learning curiosity. And he is a consummate learner as well as extremely accomplished. To that end, he's written 16 books, done more than 1000 presentations, is a certified public speaker. He created The Shift Happens Empire, I'll call it, which is a beautiful platform for taking what is obvious in the world, which is change is happening all the time. And to that end, he's also one of the world's leading experts right now on AI and ChatGPT specifically specifically also said he's not an expert or a master of it. And beware of anyone that says they are because it's changing so fast that nobody's an expert on it. That said, we're going to extract some real gold from him about what's happening in that world and how we can take advantage of it. So before I say any more, because I could go on and on about his accomplishments, let's bring Jim on, y'all. Welcome to the show. Mr. Jim Feldman.

James Feldman:
Thank you, Daniel. Thank you for having me.

Daniel Aaron:
Uh, it's an honor. It's a pleasure. I'm so excited that we get to have this chat. So before we jump in, because I got about 18 million questions for you, would you just give a quick background for the people that might not know you yet in terms of who you are and how you got to be here at this point?

James Feldman:
Sure. So I started learning business lessons at the age of seven. I went to my mother and I said I'd like an allowance. My mother said, Go talk to your father. I went to my father. I'd like an allowance. Go talk to your mother. The first business lesson was get all the decision makers in the room at the same time. They didn't want to give me any allowance, but they gave me ideas on how I could earn money. Second rule When your customer or your client says your prices are too high or we're not interested, ask them what it would take to use your services to help solve their problem. Let them tell you what the problem is and you can help become the solution because they're going to give you solutions quite often. In the case of my mother and father, they said, go wash the car, go mow the yard, go open up a lemonade stand. Well, the lemonade stand appealed to me. So I went outside and I saw up and down the street lemonade stands for as far as the eye could see, was 100 degrees outside. And I decided that wasn't a good idea. But I thought about it. I went to my mother and I said, Next time you're going shopper shopping to Shoppers World, which is like a precursor to a Sam's or a Costco. I priced out bulk lemonade, bulk sugar, bulk paper cups and bulk Ziploc bags and created Mom's lemonade kit. And I sold them to the mothers at night because I solved the problem. The problem was their kids were running out of lemonade. Mom would have to go to the store just to buy more lemonade mix. I saved her the trip, so I was the solution to their problem. And at the end of the summer I had $351 in the bank. And I have been a serial entrepreneur ever since.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful. All right. Well, so that's that's a concise intro and delivered some great lessons there already. So I'm curious, though, this is a question that I love for myself and something I play with with my own daughter, who's 16 right now. And what do you think is the relationship between what I call vibrant living or having an extraordinary life and entrepreneurship?

James Feldman:
Well, I think entrepreneurs have to understand that failure is the second cousin to success. And when you look at the great successes of the world, Walt Disney and Charles Schulz were basically thrown out of school for doodling. Babe Ruth was the strikeout king the same year that he was the home run king. So it isn't the fact that you wake up one with one idea and it works. You have to be resistant. You have to foster a willingness to experiment, to reiterate, to refine your approach until you get what you want. And that's a very important lesson to learn with AI and ChatGPT.

Daniel Aaron:
All right, Well, you opened up the can of worms. Let's. Let's have a little worm feast, then. I'm with you. So here, here's what what my observation is. And I'll just start with this and then you can clarify here. I'm seeing out in the world, there are people that say, I don't want to get into that stuff. It's it's scary. I don't know. I don't trust it. It doesn't seem real. There are other people that say, wow, that's cool. I have no idea what to do with it. And then, of course, there are a lot of people that are like, well, this is coming. I can fear it. I can get into it. You know, you, like me, are somebody who sees what's happening in the world, dives into it. I love the the phrasing I heard as a label for you called The knowest right. Which to me, along with shift happens says, Hey, things are happening in the world. Let's get with what's happening now. But what would you say just as a starting point to giving us an overview of what is happening with AI and ChatGPT and if people are wise in their vibrant living, what how would they want to be looking at it?

James Feldman:
Well, you hear a lot of people saying, you know, if I do that, it's going to take my job. Chatgpt and AI is not going to take your job. But your competitor who's using ChatGPT and AI is going to take your job because they are using these tools. So you can ignore it. You can wait for the train to leave the station or you could get on board. My warning is that the train is moving so fast that when it stops in the station, you better get on. I heard someone say recently, you know, if somebody offers you a ticket to the moon, don't complain about which seats you're in. Just get on board. And that's the same thing with ChatGPT. I Jasper being Watson, whichever format you try to play with, it is an amazing tool. But it's like fire. Fire can cook your food. Fire can heat your house and fire can burn you. So be very careful. And the first thing I would say to everyone listening is trust but verify, because ChatGPT and everyone else that's out there doesn't check their own work. That's your job. It doesn't make the decisions for you. It gives you alternatives. It gives you things to think about. But what's between your ears is still more powerful today than anything else that's out there. But what it has done is it's allowed to turbo charge your brain to come up with things quicker, smoother, faster, point you in directions that you hadn't thought of, and leverage your wisdom to make more money, save time, and in fact be a better problem solver.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful. Yeah, I'm with you on that. So, I mean, to me, it's in some ways it's like it's the same standard business advice, which is it's great to delegate, it's great to have assistance, but you can never abdicate responsibility. So what would you say in terms of with using chat GPT What's if somebody is new to the conversation? And we're definitely going to go deeper because I know you get a lot of experience, but if somebody is new to the conversation, maybe hasn't even started to use it, what would you say in terms of how to start and how to get into it?

James Feldman:
So let's focus on just chat. Gpt And the reason I'm focusing on that is because that's got the greatest number of users. They reached a million users in five days. It took Netflix three and a half years to get the same number. That's not to say that you shouldn't look at or consider the other ones that are out there, but we don't have enough time to go into everything. So let's just say with chat GPT. So ChatGPT has two versions. It has a 3.5 version which is free and a chat version four, which is $20 a month. Pay the $20 a month. The difference is night and day. You have all kinds of tools and accessories. And let's face it, OpenAI, like any other company, has invested in this business, and they're trying to recapture some of their money. At $20 a month. You can't hire an assistant. It doesn't take breaks. It doesn't ask for health insurance. It doesn't complain. It's available 24 over seven. It's the smartest assistant you're ever going to hire. It speaks 39 languages, has got all of these tips and tools at its beck and call as long as you trust but verify. So the short and the long answer is pay the 20 bucks, sign up for it and get on board the train.

Daniel Aaron:
Perfect. Yeah, I'm with you. And like, for me, one of the best features I've found with it so far is simply asking questions like one of my favorite ways of using it. And I'm a total novice with it still. But one of my favorite ways of using it is just to say. What else should I be thinking about? This is what I want to do, right? Whether it's create an email or design a landing page or think about different ways of looking at my business. This is what I want to do. What else should I be thinking about? You know? And questions to me are one of the keys to life from that basic concept of ask a better question, get a better answer, use the brain in an intelligent way. So how do you use ChatGPT in terms of questioning and getting different perspectives?

James Feldman:
So the first thing that I do with ChatGPT is I gave it a name, I gave it a name. So it has a personality and I talk to it like it's the assistant sitting next to me. Now, let's suppose that you hired this really bright assistant. You've still got to train it. You've still got to help educate that assistant on how you think, how you'd like your answers returned. What kind of research backup you expect. So you say all that to ChatGPT. And so when you say asking questions, the questions are referred to as prompts. Prompts a prompt is a question. The more detailed, the prompt, the more detailed the response. And I've discovered that the more emotional you make, the prompt, the more focused the response. So I'll say to my assistant, who, by the way, I named Mr. Spock because Mr. Spock was the ubiquitous, logical, unemotional individual in Star Trek, that was always the go to person. So I say, Mr. Spock. I'm thinking about a podcast and the podcast is going to be put out there where there's thousands and thousands of podcasts. What would make my podcast unique and who do you suggest is my target audience, and what day of the week do you think would be the best day and what time during that day would you suggest and how long should the podcast be? Should it be active, passive, interactive? So let's start with that and I'd like you to give me the bullet points in the hierarchy of needs versus solutions. And I hit the button and all of a sudden ChatGPT almost instantaneously starts writing. Now go down the list and I go, Wow, number four is interesting. So I'll copy number four and I'll put it back into the prompt. And I'm saying using above number four, reiterate the question, please expand it and give me examples of what you're talking about. That's the way you would talk to an assistant if the assistant came to you and said, Here's all my research and through it on your desk and you'd say to the research assistant, Well, what were your conclusions? Well, you didn't ask me for conclusions. I haven't read any of this. So help train your assistant to read and understand the information that they're giving you and then refine it and start the laser. You've all heard about sales funnel. You know, you sort of bring it down. That's really what you're doing with the prompt. You start here and you just kind of bring it down into that laser focus.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, that's beautiful. This is a strange analogy. I'm curious if this will make any sense to you. Years ago, when I first discovered that TV was is different now than it was when I was a kid, that they upped the quality with television. I heard about this show called House MD. And because I was a long time fan of Sherlock Holmes and all those stories and I learned that House MD was based on that. I was like, All right, I'll check it out. And I checked out the show. And for those who don't know the show, House MD is a doctor and he's like the most brilliant diagnostician ever. And he brings and you're nodding. You know the show. I do. Yeah. Okay. So he brings together and I'll just continue a little bit for those who might not have seen it, but he brings together a team of assistants and basically he gets them together and says, okay, we've got this really big problem. Let's talk about it, everybody. And he asks them questions. And, you know, what I saw from it is 99% of his process is just to get a dialog going, just to get them to prompt him with different ideas and different ways of thinking about it. And for me, since I've been playing with ChatGPT, that feels like a lot of what it is. When I reach a point where I'm like, I don't know what else to do. I don't know how else to think about this. Then I go over to my assistant who, thanks to your advice, I have named SS meaning strategy stage right? I say, Hey SS, this is what I've got so far. What am I missing? Can you analyze this for me? What else should I look at? And invariably I get jumping off points of what else I can consider, what else I can do. Does that make what do you think of that in terms of an analogy?

James Feldman:
Again, if you're using it like an assistant, it's a perfect analogy. Sometimes I will actually say, Hey, Mr. Spock, help me craft the questions because I'm not getting the responses I'm looking for. So what am I saying wrong to you? And once again, it comes back and basically says, Hey, dummy, I told you how to do this. You're not doing it. Follow my directions. And while we make light of that, remember ChatGPT and all the AI is based on language. And right now, the more focused your language, the clearer your language, the clearer your prompt, the better the responses. But if you don't get what you want going in, ask it again. Now, one of the things that most people don't know is when you open up ChatGPT on the left side, there's a big black border and somewhere on there it's going to be the email that you use to sign up. When you click on it, it lets you open up a couple of menus and one of them is customize your instructions. And the first question is, tell me about you. Write your own profile and it gives you a very generous 1500 words. Now, I've heard people that have gone into ChatGPT and say, You write the bio now you got to remember that until two weeks ago, ChatGPT was not connected to the Internet. It's only the last couple of weeks that it actually can search the Internet. So prior to that, it's whatever you had written, what was on the Internet prior to 2021, which may not have been current. So people got very frustrated and said, well, ChatGPT is not so smart. I'm not going to use it anymore. Well, but achieved what told you from the beginning it couldn't search the Internet. So that's number one. Come up with your profile. Number two says, How would you like for me to answer you? And so I put in things like, Don't tell me you're an AI. Don't tell me you're a robot. Don't tell me you're not an attorney. Tell me the answers. Be as specific as possible. Give me the research backup. And if you don't understand my question, ask me.

James Feldman:
And I want the long version, not the short version. I can always edit down. I can't add on. And so one of my mantras is customers do not default up. So when you go into the BMW dealership, they show you the 700 series first. Well, it's only $190,000. Oh, geez, I can't afford that. Well, what do you want to get rid of? What do you want to take away? It's not going the other way, saying, well, this car is $100,000. Did you want air conditioning? That's extra. Did you want a sunroof? That's extra. That's extra because you don't do that. It's like going to a buffet. Smart people to go to a buffet, walk the buffet line first. They don't start filling up their plate. Then they become very, very strategic in their thinking so that they're tactical in their approach. They go for the shrimp and the sushi and the expensive stuff rather than filling up on the breads and the pizzas which they can get anywhere. And that's the same thing with ChatGPT and your assistant. Go high level. Make the question as difficult as you can, as specific as you can, but then let it come back to you. So you start to refine and get those bite sized pieces that may go into that buffet worthwhile.

Daniel Aaron:
Nice. Beautiful. Well, it's. It's like so many things. It's the way you use it, the approach you take to it and the the learning process. So I'm curious for you, Jim, then, what attracted you to it? Like you mean, a lot of people, myself included, are using it, experimenting with it. You know, there are some people that are afraid and maybe they're going to warm up to it now because it's, you know, it's there for us and inevitable that we're going to need it. But you you seem to like really go deep into it. Why was that? What motivated you for that?

James Feldman:
Well, part of it is I go deep into almost everything I do. So I'm not someone that just puts their toe in the water. And when I realized that ChatGPT was on a trajectory that got over a million users in five days, I had been kind of playing with it and hadn't spent the $20 and was just kind of using it to write emails and stuff, and all of a sudden I'm going, Wait a minute, there's a million people signing up for this. This thing is going to be awesome. And I got to figure out how to control it. And I don't mean control it like take control, but control me to understand how to leverage it. You know, when I was getting my pilot's license, I learned that one of the most important things on the airplane was called the Trim tab. This little tiny thing that helped keep the plane level without the trim tab, you're constantly fighting with the ailerons and the rudders and everything else, trying to keep it level. But once the trim tab is put into place, it kind of takes care of itself. And that's the way I kind of look at the ChatGPT. Figure out what it does well and start to leverage it. Now, let me make a distinction for you. Chatgpt is only one AI tool, and there's a lot of AI tools out there that you can use to help augment what you get from ChatGPT. So let me walk you through a real quick one. Whatever I write in ChatGPT, whether it's a book which I'm cranking out like every seven days, whether it's a video which I'm cranking out every 30 minutes or emails which I'm cranking out because I multitask, I run it through Grammarly Grammarly has been around for a while, but it's now an AI tool as well, and Grammarly cleans it up for me because I've specifically said I'm a businessman. I am considered an expert in many of my fields. This is how I want you to review the material. Then I take that material and I put it back into ChatGPT and I do something that most people have never thought of. I translate it to another language because when you go from English to French or English to German and you bring it back again, it gets rid of all the little inconsistencies in the English language because it doesn't make that same mistake coming back in.

James Feldman:
So now you've got something that's had the benefit of grammarly, the benefit of translation, and now you start to read it. And so when I'm done with it, I give one more pass to Grammarly for a different reason. Because when you get it from ChatGPT, it's got these weird formatting marks on it. And if you put it into word or pages, it's a mess. But if you put it into Grammarly, Grammarly gets rid of all of that real fast, gives you a clean copy, and now you can paste that into an email or a document without having to reformat, because I've learned how to do that quickly. I was asked to create a course for a university that normally would have taken me a week, maybe ten days. I did it in less than two hours, came up with the PowerPoints, came up with everything behind it, came up with the work assignments, had it done, sold it to them, walked away. They came back and said, We like it so much, we'd like to have you do four more courses. Again, They didn't ask me if I was using I. Now they're asking me if I'm using I. So am I obligated to tell them I am or not? Well, now, that's an ethics question. And I tell them in a sort of vague way, I'm using all the tools that I can find. Same as I've always did most of my life. And that's my answer.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, fair enough. Well, boy, there's so many different ways we can go with that. I want to step back a little bit, though, and I think there's more specifics for us to go into with AI and ChatGPT. And I appreciate you making the distinction that ChatGPT is one form of it. And then there are these other ones, and you mentioned Grammarly and the way that's working now. One of the things that I started thinking about and I've seen other people comment on this a little bit when ChatGPT first came out, which now I'm realizing, gosh, it's been almost a year, right? It was like, yeah, last year, end of December, something like that. That's when I first heard about it. And there was that, as you mentioned earlier, a concern among certain people out there that, well, you know, it's going to take my job away and it's going to, you know, have these negative effects. But one of the things that I was thinking about with that is, well, okay, so if if AI has certain abilities that are going to go beyond what we can do, right, because it's got capabilities that humans don't have. Well, what's the flip side? What are the capabilities that humans have that AI is not going to have, Right. And doesn't have? And I got some ideas on that, though I'd love to solicit from you your perspective, if the question makes sense.

James Feldman:
If you think about it for just a second, let's go back to my assistant. My assistant has no emotion. My assistant has never run a business. My assistant is so smart that it thinks everything it says, you know, is perfectly right. But it's not. So at the end of the day, the human element still is still much more intuitive in terms of the real world application than the chat or the AI that you're using. However, the chat and the AI tools are much more efficient at what they do, not necessarily intuitively, but mechanically. And so if you think about a screwdriver and you can turn it by hand, it's sometimes better to use a motor, but sometimes that motor is too powerful and can strip the screw. So you have to make these decisions of how you're going to use the tools to your best advantage. Let me give you an easy one that I think everyone would like. When you're in a zoom call, there's always chats going on in the background and they say, Well, if you want to save it, click those three dots and what you get is a run on text sentence, which is a bunch of, you know what to deal with. Well, I've been working with a company for about a year who brilliantly has come up with an AI type tool that converts all of that into snippets of who said what. It can be imported into your csm's CSM system, and it's a very inexpensive tool and I put the link in and you could share it with them. It's called Chat Bridge. So Chat Bridge says import that zoom chat, we'll break it up for you. We'll then assign it to your various accounts and decide if you want to keep it or not keep it. Then you can export all that into a CRM system and start to communicate with those people and say, Hey, Daniel, it's great seeing you yesterday. Here's the information we were talking about boom, boom, boom. And now you've got a new connection, which is really what all of these networking calls are all about, is to build your, quote, electronic Rolodex. When I was in business, I had a Rolodex that had four Rolodexes on one platform, and it looked like a Ferris wheel game that I was spinning all the cards. Now I can sort all that electronically, but it's no good if you're not using it to talk to anybody. So ChatGPT and I are merely tools to help you be more competitive. Leverage yourself using those tools and create a competitive differentiation that you can charge for.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful. Well, and as you were saying that it would occurred to me many things. But one of them is there was a book by Daniel Pink, I think it was Daniel Pink a few years ago. And I forget the title exactly, but it had something to do with the right side of the brain. And one of the assertions he made and he's not the only one, but that the future belongs to the people that are able to access and really use the right side of the brain. And just for simplicity's sake, let's say that's more about the the creative, the intuitive. You know, and as you were describing, the difference here and what the assistant does well is it's really about the analytical and information. And so it's in some ways I think it's like combining these and bringing out more of our creative, intuitive abilities with the super powered assistance of the analytical side. Does that make sense?

James Feldman:
It not only makes sense, but with everybody struggling coming out of Covid, most companies, most individuals have not yet gotten back to their pre-COVID income or relationships, etcetera. But part of that is because the original spheres of influence have now kind of muddled together. So when someone says they talk about leadership or they're into mindfulness or they're into yoga or they're into diet, they're all kind of coming together in a overall wellness of your body, of your mind, of your business. So when I talk to people, you know, they say, Well, what do you do? And I'll say, I revitalize, I reinvigorate, I reimagine. Today. At the intersections of innovation. Customer engagement and performance management. Now, that's a lot of words. What does that really mean? I'm a single source solution. I'll find the answer. And now, with all the AI tools available to me, I can make that promise. I'll find the solution. I had a conversation yesterday with someone that 24 hours earlier, I didn't even know what the topic was all about. But 24 hours later, I had research, I had data, I had empirical information. The guy was blown away and he said, How did you get it? And I said, I've understood how to leverage the power of ChatGPT. I teach a mastery course. Would you like to join it? He goes, Why do I want to join it? I'll just hire you to do it. Okay? So I'm going to get paid one way or the other.

Daniel Aaron:
That's beautiful. Well, one of my favorite little quips about service coaching consulting is that the consultant just needs to be one chapter ahead and one drink behind. Right. And even if I go back to my early days with martial arts, when my teacher said, I want you to start teaching others, of course my response was like, I'm not a master. I'm not qualified. He's like, You don't have to be. You just got to be a little bit ahead of where they are. And it sounds like that is probably one of your superpowers is having the confidence and courage to keep pushing yourself to be a little bit ahead of what other people are investigating. Does that sound right? But again.

James Feldman:
Daniel, I, like you, was into martial arts and I lived with a seventh degree black belt. And the very first day that we went to class, he said, Any questions? And I raised my hand being the smart ass that I was. And I said, Show us what you do in a knife fight. And he very carefully turned and he took a pose and then he ran off the mat. He says, As long as I can outrun the knife, that's the best defense you're ever going to have. Now, here's a seventh degree black belt telling you don't engage. So I think, once again, I'm bringing it all back. You got to use common sense. And I often say we're living in a world where where common sense is not so common. It's I try to bring uncommon common sense to my customers. And let me define that for you. I view a customer as somebody who does a single transaction. I view clients as customers that do multiple transactions. I'm always looking for clients, but they start as customers.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Beautiful. Okay, well, I know one of the things I want to get into is learning a bit more about how you assist people with AI and ChatGPT and there's an opportunity coming up for that. But before we get into that, you've you've spoken a few times about your customers, your clients, your business. What's what's it look like for you now in terms of your business and how you serve people? I mean, one thing I know is through shift happens and your presentations, you got a lot going on. I know there's a podcast coming up that you're starting, but what's what's the overview in terms of what you're doing and how people can engage with you?

James Feldman:
So the overview is that pre-COVID I most of my clients had been with me 25, 27 years. During Covid because they were senior C-suite executives, they were pretty much asked to retire. There were mergers and acquisitions. There were general retirement in general, and so I lost most of them. Now we're coming out of Covid, and their replacements are younger people that have great educations but have no experience. They also have no decision making, generally speaking. And so everyone's afraid to make a decision. So I have had to pivot and try to teach people how to use these tools. And along the way, many of the people, as they learn the complexity of using them and learn the amount of time it takes to understand them have said, you know what, let me just hire you to do it. So it's creating a whole new business direction. For me that really isn't any different than what I did before. You know, my my last book was called. Thinking inside the box using 3D thinking. And I'm repurposing that book to say thinking inside the box, using 3D thinking powered by AI. And so now it takes it into that turbo charged arena where you can quickly understand that most of the time I can get the answer very quickly, but I don't give it quite as quickly because I don't want to make it look like it was easy. If you make it look like it was too easy, then people say, Well, why should I pay you for it? So you just kind of have to hold back on your enthusiasm while I go back to Mr. Spock and say, Well, what if he says this? Or what if she says that? And so I'm always prepared for the well, it's too expensive or, Oh, we don't have time, or let me get other people to talk about it, etcetera. So I've always got that ready to combat their reluctance to make that decision.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay, perfect. Well, that's great what you said. And it opened up two parallel paths for me, one being and hopefully we'll come back to this about the title of that book, which I love. But before we get to that, part of what you spoke of around decisions reminded me of one of my favorite books, James Allen and As a Man Thinketh is the title, and there's something he said in there which is that wise and successful people come quickly to decisions and slowly to change them. People that struggle in life, I'm paraphrasing, are slow to make decisions and quickly change them. So the way you describe the changing, changing landscape of the people you work with and the challenges with decisions, it sounds like that's something that you have some perspective on. So what does that mean to you, what James Allen said?

James Feldman:
So in, you know, one of my favorite books was a fellow named Robert Feldman. And everything I learned, I learned in Kindergarten. And it's one of those kind of books that is filled with common sense. And I think at the end of the day, there is the technical of whatever the subject is, but there's always the application. One of my favorite examples is, is the woman who's got a clogged sink and after waiting two weeks, the plumber shows up, looks at the sink, walks around, checks it goes and gets this big mallet and whacks the side of the drain and voila, the drain is now working. And he hands her a bill for $100. And she goes nuts. $100. All you did was whack the side of the sink. That's not worth $100. He goes, You're absolutely right. He takes the bill. He tears it up. He writes another bill. He hands it back door and it says. Whacking the side of the sink $1, knowing where and how hard. $99. Sometimes you have to take into account who your audience is and how you give them back the answer. Because the benefits of streamlining this information and the benefits of having all these tools also needs to be tempered with what people will pay for it or what their expectations are. So you need to manage those. I once gave a talk to the American Dental Association. I said, What's the biggest problem you guys face? And they go something as simple as filling a cavity because we charge $125 and they don't think it's worth it. And I said, That's because you guys have priced it wrong. Filling the cavity. 50 bucks. Did you want it to hurt or not? Because the Novocain is 100 bucks. And guess what? Everybody wants the Novocain. Now, when I give you the shot of the Novocain, did you want that to hurt or not? Oh, no, no. Well, the topical to numb the gums to give you the shot. That's $35. So suddenly you picked up an extra $100 in revenue and you have a very happy patient. So think about how you package up this information and how you can use the leverage of AI and ChatGPT to not only monetize what you're doing, but to really put it into a perspective where your customer, your client, is happy to pay you.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Which is which is a win win for everybody when you do that. And part of part of the way I hear what you're saying is, well, one, it's about the perception that you are offering. It's about the framing. And let's let's stay with this for a minute, because a lot of my clientele, a lot of the people I serve are coaches, healers, solopreneurs. And so many of them are in the process of moving away from charging based on their time, you know, X number of dollars per hour. And part of what I'm often coaching them on is to say, Well, what is the result that you give them, right? What's what's the real thing that they want? And you know, going back to the knock the side of the sink example, right? It's so important for the people I serve to understand like their own development and their process and their learnings and what they've overcome. That's all part of what gives them the authority or the credibility to to charge what they charge to help people. So what do you say to people or how do you help them to understand charging based on the result as opposed to charging based on time? I always.

James Feldman:
Charge by.

Daniel Aaron:
Results.

James Feldman:
And I always pay on results. I don't care how long it took you. If you can give me the results in five minutes and they're the right results, good for you. If it took you five hours, not my problem. So when I go to my customers, I give them two choices. This is the cost for the project. Or I'm willing to partner with you. What do you mean you're willing to partner with me? Okay, let's see. How big is your problem? Well, my problem is $100 million problem. Okay, so with or without me, you got a $100 million problem. If I can reduce that by 50%, what's that worth to you? You just picked up an extra $50 million. Well, what do you want? I want 10%. 10%. Why would we give you 10%? That's $5 million. Okay. Without me, you got $100 million problem with me. You got a $45 million problem. Which would you rather have given what you're going to have to pay me? So people will say, well, Jim, don't deal with people that way. Well, let me give you an easy one. Daniel and I are walking down the street. I don't know Daniel. He doesn't know me. And I say, Hey, Daniel, you look like an honest guy. If you give me $1, I'll give you back $10. Daniel goes, Well, how do I know it's not counterfeit? How do I know you're going to give it to me? Once you get beyond all that? Here, examine it. Look at it, sniff it, smell it. Whatever you're going to do. There's my ten bucks. Give me the dollar. Daniel, Would you do that?

Daniel Aaron:
Everybody will do it.

James Feldman:
Now you got to get your customer to do the same thing because they are focused on what you're going to make, not what they're going to make or what they're going to save. So you've got to put that back in perspective saying Daniel. You got $100 problem. You're going to you're going to spend $10 with me and I'm going to give you back $90. What is wrong with that? You've nine times your investment. Anytime you can. Nine times an ROI on a problem, that's a pretty good day. Sometimes they get, Oh, Jim, I just don't think you're worth $10. Okay, keep your problem. I'll move on. So you got to have scarcity. You've got to stick to your guns. It's like the dentist. Oh, you didn't want that to hurt. This is how much that's going to cost. But when you bundle it together, then you don't see the residual benefits or how you're going to want or not want that ultimate solution to appear. I often can give my clients a solution that they cannot implement. It's not intentional, but I know based on what I've done for my homework, they can't do it by themselves. So I'll go, Here's the solution. Do you want me to implement it? Because I will. By the way, that's an additional charge. Or do you want to do it on your own? And you go from there.

Daniel Aaron:
Nice. Nice. I'm with you. You know, there's something that's occurred to me over the last couple of years. I've heard repeatedly from people. I don't know why, for some reason I keyed on this, keyed in on this. I'm sure people have been saying it in my midst for years, but my reticular activating system just got provoked in some way. But, you know, there's this old phrase, and we're both big fans of language and its importance. Old phrase that we've heard so many times, which is if something looks too good to be true, well, then it probably is. But the flip side of that in some way is all of us, or most of us are walking around saying, like, I would love to have this. I would love to experience this. And so if we play with all those and put them together, in some ways the way it looks to me is. If we offer someone, Here's what you want. Here's the solution. Isn't this your dream? A lot of people are going to like reflexively. Maybe because of that programing say, no, no, I don't want that. Does that make sense to you?

James Feldman:
And I'll say to them, Don't let what you think you know. Prevent you from learning what you need to know. You think it's too good to be true? Okay. You still got the problem. You want me to help you solve it? Then you got to figure out where is your pain point and what are you willing to pay for it? So I have four questions that I ask a client. What's your biggest problem? What do you see as the solution? Then I repeat it and then I say, What are you willing to pay for that? Now, here's an easy one. During Covid. Many speakers couldn't go out and do live events, and so it all became virtual. That's that's how Zoom got to be so big. But during that time they kept reducing and reducing and reducing what they got paid for. And so they became their own worst enemy because now as we're coming out of Covid in the live meetings are coming back, the meeting planner goes, well, I didn't pay you that much money when we did it, you know, on Zoom or whatever, and you go, Yeah, but this is now live. I got to get on a plane. I got to stay in a hotel room. I've got to rent a car. I've got to do all kinds of other things that I didn't have to do before. So where do you see that? You can still buy it As if I'm sitting in my home office versus I got to get on a plane or take a train or drive or whatever it is to do the live event. I had someone call me locally and say, We want you to do this event and our budget is X and X was almost insignificant. And I said, Let me just point out to you that if I take an Uber from where I am downtown Chicago to you in the suburbs and back again, I've lost money just on the Uber. So why would I do this? Well, Are you busy that day? It's got nothing to do with it. I'm still bringing you my intellectual property. You still found me.

James Feldman:
You're the one that has the need. Well, we're going to hire somebody that can. We can afford. And I said, Let me paraphrase this for you. This meeting of your 200 top sales people that have come in from all over the country are going to hear somebody who thinks that their content is almost worthless because they're willing to accept that very small fee that you're willing to pay them and you're the one that's going to take the hit, not the speaker, because he or she's gone. But you're the one that made that decision. And are you willing to risk your job on that? Gee, when you say it like that, I'd better rethink that. Okay. Call me when you've got a realistic number. Now, sometimes that realistic number is the way you package it out. So, for instance, in this case, this was a company that had a product that I could use. And so I said to them, All right, I'll tell you what, I'll take part of my fee in this product, and the other part will be in cash. Et cetera. Et cetera. And as it worked out, I really got a better deal for me than I would have gotten if I just had accepted his low offer on what they were willing to pay. Another rule of thumb. Everybody's got something that they don't value as much as you do. Figure out what it is. I've done barter with my dentist to teach customer service to the dental office and how they treat their patients. And I've also made a big point of it. I go, if it hurts when I'm here, I'm not doing the customer service stuff. So you got to make sure that it doesn't hurt me. Okay, Jim And I'll go in there and, you know, swallow this pill and sit in this chair and listen to this music, and somebody will come in and massage your head and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, Hey, when are you guys going to start? Oh, we finished five minutes ago.

Daniel Aaron:
That's great. Well, I love what you said in your response to that meeting planner, the one that was going to hire you and offered you that really low, insignificant fee. And part of the way I relate to that is something that I always say before I start working with a new client is, look, my commitment to you is to serve you, not necessarily to please you. Right? And your the way you put it just now is like, well, let me paraphrase what you said to me. So you fed back to them their own thinking, which previously had been unaware for them, right? Which for us is like, well, that's a really non common sense way of looking at this. It's a it's a hurtful way. It's not going to get you what you want in your life and business. But, you know, from my perspective, it took courage for you to you could have just said, okay, well, see you later. Right. But you instead said, well, let me let me feed this back to you. Right. So does that make sense in terms of the serving?

James Feldman:
I think anytime that you can get somebody to realize what they're doing and then if they don't feel free to remember this phrase, stop trying to sell your big ideas to small minded people. It's a waste of your time. So if your time is not valuable, then you spend all this time trying to convince someone to do something and then you end up regretting it. Instead walk away. Instead, focus on those people that value your intellectual property, your ability to solve a problem, your ability to deliver a solution. And if they don't get it, okay, they don't get it. Move on.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Nice. Well, in so much of what you described really is about knowing and owning your own value. Right? And I think that's one of the biggest problems for so many people, especially people that are new in the business, is they just haven't owned that right. They haven't possessed or really got their own value. So as our time is unfortunately running out soon, what would you say? What would what would be a piece of advice you would give to someone who is needing to learn that lesson and understand their value more?

James Feldman:
Don't take this to be self-serving, but this book, my last book, is, without a doubt, one of the best business tools that has ever been made because it represents 35 years of my thinking. It represents thousands of resources. And it comes with an hour of consulting. So the way I priced out the book was you buy the book and somewhere sometime you can talk to me about a given problem that you're having. Now, somebody will say to me, Well, Jim, you've just diminished the hourly rate that you charge. You're absolutely right. But along the way, my solution may be so good or so difficult that they ultimately hire me to help execute. So it's really a way for me to create a lead gen to create a sales funnel because you got the book, you're reading the book, you go, Wow, I would have never thought of that. I don't know how to do that. Let me talk to Feldman about it, and ultimately that works. So in the case of that meeting planner, one of the things that I said was, okay, you can't pay the fee. Are you going to have any kind of room gifts or any kind of takeaways? And she goes, Yeah, we're thinking of giving them a coffee mug or this or that. I said, No, give them a copy of my book and I'll sign them while I'm there. So they ended up buying several hundred copies of the books, as well as giving me the product, as well as paying me a fee. And so overall, they both my side and their side thought they got the better end of the deal. And that's always the best end of business. When you believe you got, the better end and they believe they got the better end because that brings back a repeat customer.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful. Well, and part of what I heard you say also is another principle that I so value in business, which is giving people more than they expect right over delivering. So you're adding on the consulting with the book is to me that sounds like another way of saying I want to give more, right?

James Feldman:
So I recently got a new client and I told her what my rate was. And of course she went into cardiac arrest. And I said, What's been working with you so far? She goes, Well, I spent 12,000 on this and it didn't work, and I spent $15,000 on this is where I said, Well, what are you complaining about? My fee? She goes, Well, I've run out of money. And I said, okay, so how do we fix that? She said, Well, this is how much I can come up with. I said, Tell you what, I'll take it, but I'm going to be able to see that you're starting to make money again. And when you make money again, then you still owe me X Now, we could always say that she's going to not do that or I'm going to have trouble collecting it. But remember, I'm getting into her so much that she wakes up and says, I need to talk to Feldman. I know he can solve this for me. I have two sleepless nights she's now getting shall we use the word addicted to having me as her assistant? And I've said, you know, I do this seven week course in how to use ChatGPT and. No, no, no, no, no. I don't want to do that. I like being able to pick up the phone and call you. You solve the problem and I can move on to the next thing. Now it turns out that what she has done is she has created this beautifully well written book on wellness 300 and something pages. And I said, Let me help you promote it. So we're going to use that as a giveaway item initially for another promotion that we're doing that will get her exposure, that will get her feedback, that will get her some distribution. And it's a win win for everybody. We're giving away an expensive book. She's getting new customer acquisition without spending any money. She's going to get feedback because when we give it to those people, we're going to ask them to give an evaluation and suggestions. So you start to come up with a synergy that really becomes one and one equals three.

James Feldman:
And any you can have a one and one equals three, everybody's happy. So do those people that are struggling in their coaching or any other businesses. I will say this, number one. Get on board and look at ChatGPT or any of the others that are out there and see if you really want to learn to use it, but at least get familiar with it. Once you've made that decision, you could decide you want to take somebody's course. If you take a course, whether it's mine or anybody else's, do the homework, do what they tell you to do. I do recommend you don't take a one day or a one weekend course because it's like drinking water from a fire hose. You'll get a lot of information from a lot of really smart people. You'll never be able to implement it because it's too much, too soon. The advantage of our course is that it's seven weeks, it's two hours once a week. It's one hour of material and one hour of reviewing what you did the previous week. So you're constantly walking up the stairs. You're doing one step at a time and at one step at a time. You end up because we help you solve a specific business problem. And typically the business problems that we're solving are giving people a 10 to 20 times investment on their ROI. So again, think about your own business, think about your own coaching, set that goal and make sure that they are doing their part. Because if they're not, you're the one that's going to get blamed for it. You're the one that didn't help them lose weight. You're the one that didn't help them have a better romantic relationship. You're the one that didn't teach them how to cook. But you say to them, Hey, did you do what you're supposed to do last week? No, no, no. My kids got in the way. I had to take him to soccer. Stop. That's not going to work. So should we just quit right now and I'll refund you your money? No, no, no, no, no, no. I want you to do this at the end. They will thank you over and over and over because you held them accountable.

James Feldman:
So take the role of being that Sherpa, that mentor, and hold your own customers accountable.

Daniel Aaron:
Hallelujah. So nicely said. Thank you. You know, and to me, that's that's. We haven't even spoken directly about leadership on this call. We'll have to have another at some point because that's a topic we're both passionate about. But to me, that's really that's what I would call spiritual or noble. Leadership is taking the responsibility to motivate and extract from your clients what they need to do to actually hold them accountable to a higher standard, which is, of course, what everybody really wants, even if they don't realize it at times. Yeah.

James Feldman:
I think that the more conversation you have with them articulating the problem, them saying, you know, the reason I want to lose weight is because my high school reunion is coming up and I want to fit into the dress that I. Okay, Now we got a certain date. Now we can work backwards and say, okay, you've got nine months to lose. 20 pounds. Anyone in the world can lose 20 pounds in nine months. It's not that difficult, but you can't lose 20 pounds two weeks before the event. So. So as long as you're helping them with 1 pound, 2 pounds, 5 pounds, 10 pounds. When I was really, really, really heavy and I mean over 500 pounds, people would say, Well, you need to lose half your body weight. I couldn't picture it, but what I did is I said I need to lose 5 pounds. And once I lost 5 pounds, I said, I need to lose another 5 pounds. And I kept losing 5 pounds, which goes to the old African expression, How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How did you put the weight on one meal at a time? One lazy afternoon at a time. So from my standpoint, once I did it, I never wanted to go back because I knew how hard it was to lose it. And yet I still feel every single day I could find another 20 pounds to lose somewhere. I could still come up with a way to eat a little better or exercise a little more, because that's always running in the back of my brain. So I. I have kept my fat pants. I kept one pair, and every time I'm feeling a little unhappy, I go put on the fat pants. And I realized that Daniel and I could fit in the fat pants together and there'd still be room. And I go, You see what you accomplished? Now go put on your regular pants that are feeling a little snug. You want them to start to look like your fat pants. And there's there's the goal.

Daniel Aaron:
That's. That's awesome. Although I got to say, that's a cruel twist you brought in at the end of our conversation, because being a former fat boy myself, that's a whole realm of conversation there that has a lot to do with the art of vibrant living. However, because our time is just about up, I want to make sure we get clear on the course that you are about to launch into, because as I understand it, you have offered a generous discount for people in our tribe. My audience, right? Yeah. So would you say just a quick word about what that is?

James Feldman:
So it's a seven week course. We're going to meet every Thursday for two hours. The class will decide what time and even move it to a different day. Once everyone agrees, the way it'll work is you'll be given an assignment. You come to the next class a week later. The reason we're picking Thursdays so you could work on the weekends if you come to the class and everybody talks about whatever challenges they had with that assignment, and then we get over that hurdle and then move on to the next assignment. So my partner and I have figured out that what we're offering with the individual coaching and everything is worth about $52,000. Now we can claim that that's inflated. You can say that's realistic, but it's still a lot of money. We think the course is worth $10,000. Now, you know, people coming out of $10,000. Okay. So we said, you know what, We'd really like to get this out to a lot of people. So we reduced the price to 2997. But because we're on this podcast with Daniel, we've got a special offer. He's going to give you a code and that code is going to reduce it another $1,000. So your total investment for seven weeks of one on one group instruction and coaching and implementation will net to you at 1997. And if you need some financing, we'll help you get that as well. But most people could put that on a credit card or put it into PayPal or PayPal will let you make payments on it. But it's a seven week learning how to master ChatGPT with an overlay of various AI programs that may be applicable to the students in the class. So we're not going to just give you 500 AI programs. We're going to come up with those that are the most applicable to whatever the class is trying to learn. And so with his code, the net to you from the let's just call it $10,000 value nets down to you at 1997.

Daniel Aaron:
That's awesome. You know, and I know just from the little bit of conversation we've had today and one time before, your knowledge of ChatGPT and just some of the little pieces that you've given me to implement far eclipsed the value of what someone would pay for the course. I've already gotten that much value just out of a couple little tips. So let's let's be clear and we need to wrap up for anybody that wants to take advantage of this. And now and this is something that's starting right now. There may be ones in the future. So y'all are watching by replay here. We're speaking on October 9th and the course starts this Thursday on the 12th. Right. So the code for anybody that wants to take advantage of it is my last name, which is Aaron r o n v i p and I'm going to give you the the link and I'm going to post it in the comments also that you can get to the Eventbrite landing page for how you can access the course. Right? So again, the code is Aaron VIP and the and I'll say it out loud just to give people the option in case you're not looking in the comments. The website is Http colon forward slash forward slash F a dot Tips Tips slash ChatGPT Workshop Jfa.

James Feldman:
You forgot the J jfa.

Daniel Aaron:
I see the J now. Thank you for correcting me on that. No problem. Now last thing though, because I want to make sure that nobody feels like, oh man, I don't have the money to put into that. And I feel like this was just a pitch to get that. There's also a free gift that you've given so that everybody has something they can walk away with that is of value and will further everyone in the AI and ChatGPT world. And that is well, it's the intro to ChatGPT that you shared with me. Do you want to say a quick word about what that is?

James Feldman:
So it's a flip book that basically is the things that we talked about. But in addition to that, Daniel, let's remind them we're starting a brand new podcast that will also be free to you. And if you'll put that link in the chat box and that starts on Tuesday, 5 p.m. Eastern time, 8:00 I'm sorry, 5 p.m. Pacific time, 8:00 Eastern Time. It's called Better Change. And in that, we're going to give you all kinds of tools, tips not only with ChatGPT and AI, but networking and other things. And that will take place every Thursday. Every Tuesday.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. Okay. So we've got so many ways of taking advantage, going further, learning from Jim in this exciting world, and I love that. So great. I will put all of those links into the comments on all the relevant platforms. All that said, if there are any questions or concerns, you can reach out to me. Daniel at Daniel aaron.com. Jim what's the best way for people to get in touch with you and connect?

James Feldman:
Jay Feldman My last name Jay as in Jim Feldman at shift happens.com shift has an F in it.

Daniel Aaron:
A fine distinction. Yes, it's a good upgrade. All right. So last question. I got a big question for you. Are you ready for the big question? Sure. All right. So you've got so much wisdom, so much experience. I know we've just tapped into the smallest amount of it here. If you boiled all of that down into one suggestion, one tip, one thing to do or not do to help someone, our audience to create a vibrant life. What would be the one thing you would say?

James Feldman:
Innovation is the product of discomfort. Find the pain. Find out what they will pay you to make the pain go away and then come up with the solution. Do not negotiate against yourself, because the bigger the pain, the more money people will pay to have the pain go away. So if you are talking to someone and someone says, This is my pain point. Ask them what they would pay to have that pain go away and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Daniel Aaron:
That's beautiful. And I love. We're not going to get into it now, but just. What you brought forward is really saying that the there is huge value in understanding what's painful and not settling for limping along in life, not settling for something, being dysfunctional. You know, what I hear you saying is go for the potential. Go for what you deserve. And that's a beautiful, beautiful inspiration.

James Feldman:
And remember, for all of us, what got you here today is not going to get you there tomorrow. So ask yourself, what are you doing differently tomorrow? That'll get you better results than you got yesterday. And you do the same thing with your clients and they don't have an answer. You're the answer. And once you've got the answer, then you start to establish that pain payment principle.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful. Well, there's so much more we could go into, though. Our time is up. So I will say simply mahalo. Thank you so much, Jim, for sharing, for offering the generous discount for all those incredible gifts that you've offered for free to our audience. And I look forward to our next round. So for you, all the viewers, for those of you that are with us live or by rebroadcast, Big, Mahalo to you also. That's Hawaiian, by the way, for. Thank you. Thank you for not only being interested in creating your vibrant life, for investing this time with us and doing something about creating your vibrant life. It really makes a difference in the world. It's worth it. You're worth it. And I so appreciate that you spent this time with us. So y'all, thank you so much. See you soon.

James Feldman:
Thank you.

Daniel Aaron:
Mahalo for tuning in to the art of Vibrant Living show, y'all. I'm Daniel Aaron and may you live with great vibrancy.

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