Latest / The Scene Projects / Adam Davis on AI, Creativity, and Balancing Technology with Humanity

Transcript

Adam Davis on AI, Creativity, and Balancing Technology with Humanity · The Scene Projects

• 0:13
  Welcome in to another exciting episode of Real Biz.
• 0:16
  I am your host Bubba Starts, and with me today from AppsFlyer and the founder of First Man
• 0:21
  Marketing, Adam Davis.
• 0:23
  Adam, welcome to the show.
• 0:24
  Thanks.
• 0:24
  I'm excited to be here.
• 0:25
  I'm trying to get ready to match your energy, so let's do this.
• 0:28
  Well, it's a little later in the evening in Israel than it is here, in the middle of South
• 0:33
  Dakota.
• 0:34
  So I I I if I need to town myself back just a hair, I I will, Adam.
• 0:39
  Yeah.
• 0:39
  I I should have taken a caffeine shot or something beforehand just to get ready.
• 0:44
  Well, I appreciate you taking some time for me.
• 0:46
  As we said, you're on the other side of the world, from where I'm located, but that is
• 0:51
  absolutely the beauty of the Internet in this technological age of which we live in.
• 0:56
  And you are, swimming in it fully.
• 0:59
  So before we get into all the things that you're doing now and, obviously, the company
• 1:03
  that you founded, First Man Marketing, Let me get a little bit of your backstory and kinda
• 1:07
  dig into the human element a little bit.
• 1:10
  Sure.
• 1:10
  Yeah.
• 1:11
  I'm originally from Toronto, Canada.
• 1:13
  I came to Israel, excuse me, on a gap year after high school.
• 1:17
  I only intended to stay for the year and then come home, and then I just fell in love with
• 1:20
  the country, decided to join the army and stick around, went to university here.
• 1:25
  And then just through a bunch of random small content writing jobs, I got involved in the
• 1:30
  high-tech scene.
• 1:31
  And I've been working at different types of tech companies for the last twelve years,
• 1:36
  mostly content, basically, marketing, content branding, social media, localization, and a ton
• 1:44
  of AI stuff over the last year, like, basically, everybody.
• 1:47
  But while I was in between jobs last year, I really did a super deep dive into AI.
• 1:51
  I feel like I'm in the matrix, and I've seen the other side.
• 1:54
  So, building automations and workflows and agents and, yeah, it's really exciting.
• 2:01
  No doubt.
• 2:02
  And I say it a lot on the show here that without AI, I probably have no platform,
• 2:07
  because we use it so much in our editing, and now it's helping to as I'm learning how to use
• 2:12
  it better, especially establishing programs.
• 2:15
  And I use a router chat LLM called Abacus, which allows me to kind of use all of them.
• 2:20
  I don't use just one, piece of it.
• 2:22
  Right?
• 2:23
  I'm using Gemini and chat and Claude and kind of taking pieces.
• 2:27
  And and the router is great because it kind of knows what each one maybe does a little bit
• 2:32
  better than the other one.
• 2:33
  And I can select which one I want to run through as well, but it's it's now helping me
• 2:39
  to devise new show ideas and descriptions for all of these things and just really building
• 2:44
  out the framework that otherwise I would have no idea how to do.
• 2:48
  Right?
• 2:49
  And and I haven't offloaded the creative process to it, but it's making me so much more
• 2:54
  efficient to be able to run this.
• 2:56
  So I'm very grateful for where the technology has come.
• 3:00
  We can talk about the, you know, maybe the pitfalls of that.
• 3:07
  Right?
• 3:07
  I still use my brain quite a bit, but I use my brain enough to know that, man, if I don't have
• 3:12
  the answers, I go to chat first.
• 3:14
  And then if it doesn't know or I'm not appreciative of the answer it gives me, then I
• 3:18
  can call a mentor and try to get a human being on the phone.
• 3:20
  But it's got access to a lot more information than I do or really any other human being.
• 3:27
  Yeah.
• 3:27
  I'm I've over the last year, I've kind of been okay with letting AI do a lot of the thinking
• 3:32
  for me.
• 3:32
  It's actually one of my tips that I give people in workshops and and conversations that I have
• 3:37
  about AI is it you know, I don't wanna put any fear in anyone's mind, but AI knows a lot more
• 3:42
  than each of us do individually.
• 3:44
  And so when you're asking AI to do things for you, you're kind of taking out that element.
• 3:47
  You need to ask AI what you need to be asking.
• 3:50
  Right?
• 3:51
  Especially for things where you're trying to build your own business or start a new revenue
• 3:54
  stream or things that, like, it knows more.
• 3:57
  So if you ask it what you should be building or what you should be creating or who you should
• 4:00
  be talking to or the things you need to learn, it's gonna be a lot more effective than saying,
• 4:04
  hey.
• 4:05
  I wanna do this.
• 4:05
  Let's do it.
• 4:07
  And, yeah, like you were saying also, I I generally, on a given day, have 15 different AI
• 4:12
  tabs for each a different thing, Claude and Gemini and, ChatGPT and all these other random
• 4:16
  tools that I use.
• 4:17
  It's it's amazing.
• 4:20
  It really is.
• 4:21
  And maybe we're building, you know, the antichrist or or whatever.
• 4:25
  Maybe we're we're feeding the beast a little bit here.
• 4:28
  I I know that it's definitely helping me to get where, where I want to go, and it's helping me
• 4:35
  to do it so much faster than I ever could have done on my own.
• 4:38
  There there's no it's made me smarter.
• 4:41
  It's made me a more intelligent human being because I have access to this.
• 4:45
  I'm not just go do it and I'm not but I'm absorbing this information that's coming at me.
• 4:49
  Every day that I use it, I get a little bit better not just at using the tool, but as I
• 4:55
  want it to go.
• 4:57
  As I'm talking to it, I get better at that.
• 4:59
  You know?
• 4:59
  I I didn't realize that you can tell it, you know, what it is.
• 5:03
  Hey.
• 5:03
  You are a content expert.
• 5:05
  I need Right.
• 5:06
  Five posts for social media right now over this topic.
• 5:10
  Here's the images and craft it from that, and then let it do its thing.
• 5:14
  It's just, unbelievable what what it's capable of.
• 5:18
  And, yeah, I I'm not using it to make candy cane pictures.
• 5:21
  Right.
• 5:22
  Yeah.
• 5:22
  Yeah.
• 5:22
  There's so much more.
• 5:23
  I mean, firstmanmarketing.com is is the AI consulting agency that I founded in the last
• 5:28
  year.
• 5:29
  And the website, I built in five hours, I think, using AI tools, which over a year ago,
• 5:37
  wouldn't have even thought that that was possible or would have had to pay tons of money
• 5:40
  for something that was, like, you know, drag and drop website builder.
• 5:44
  And just knowing that I first of all, the confidence to say, yeah.
• 5:48
  I'm gonna do this myself.
• 5:48
  I'm not a developer.
• 5:49
  I'm a marketing guy.
• 5:50
  But the confidence to be able to tackle that myself and to actually accomplish it in such a
• 5:54
  short time, that just seems impossible eighteen months ago.
• 5:58
  You know?
• 5:59
  Right.
• 6:00
  It's happened so fast.
• 6:01
  Right?
• 6:01
  Yeah.
• 6:02
  Just so fast.
• 6:03
  Things that you couldn't do a year and a half ago that seemed absolutely out of this world
• 6:08
  are right at our fingertips, and it's getting better every day.
• 6:11
  It's accelerating.
• 6:12
  It's becoming faster.
• 6:14
  It's, you know, with what especially, I use Higgs field for a lot of my, image generation,
• 6:20
  which is kinda running through Nano Banana and a lot of these other different ones, but it's
• 6:24
  been unreal with the speed that it can generate, the quality of the images that it's
• 6:29
  generating.
• 6:30
  And I use another AI to tell me, hey.
• 6:32
  Like, what's the prompt that I want to put into this?
• 6:35
  Like, you know me.
• 6:36
  You know, your personal AI can get to know you a little bit, and you know what we do, and I've
• 6:40
  developed the programs and kind of the workflows to take us through there to where now
• 6:45
  I'm kinda building this out.
• 6:46
  And, eventually, I'll get smart enough to be able to plug it all into where I just put in
• 6:50
  the one thing and it does all of it, and there's less clicks and and everything to do
• 6:54
  it.
• 6:55
  But, I mean, people could be doing this with extremely higher level stuff than what I'm
• 6:58
  doing.
• 6:59
  Yeah.
• 7:00
  I think the advantage that I have was that I was looking for a job last year.
• 7:04
  And because of this whole AI revolution, I wanted to build AI stuff to prove myself as
• 7:09
  being someone that they should actually look at for these AI agencies or for AI positions.
• 7:14
  So I had the advantage of being able to spend eight, nine hours a day on this, which, you
• 7:17
  know, a lot of people don't have the time to do that, which is fine.
• 7:20
  They have a day job, but have other responsibilities.
• 7:22
  And so that's what I keep telling people is take advantage of the ability to learn from
• 7:28
  what I use and what I don't use.
• 7:30
  What I think is, like, you know, you don't have to have FOMO of every new tool that's coming
• 7:33
  out and jump on the latest trends.
• 7:35
  Like, learn from what I understood and, you know, broke my teeth over trying to figure out
• 7:41
  the best way to you know, my first automation that I built took me three weeks.
• 7:45
  Now I'm doing it in two days.
• 7:46
  So take that kind of you know, if you have any time, even if you have half an hour a day or
• 7:53
  something to really continue learning and pushing towards it, you'll just find that it
• 7:57
  just opens so much more up for you.
• 7:59
  It just takes a lot of time to figure it out.
• 8:01
  And you can't don't get overwhelmed.
• 8:04
  You know?
• 8:04
  Don't try to tackle every single new tool that comes out because you're just gonna get lost.
• 8:09
  Yeah.
• 8:10
  Well and and most of the tools will catch up to one another eventually as well.
• 8:13
  So if you have one that you've learned, you don't have to jump on each and everything.
• 8:18
  That one tool where it may be behind now may eventually catch up and be able to do that or
• 8:23
  ask the tool that you have how to effectively learn the next one.
• 8:27
  And it's just it's it's wild.
• 8:29
  It's completely wild to me, and I've had a few people that, just enlighten me, you know,
• 8:34
  telling it that, you know, hey.
• 8:35
  You are an expert in this field.
• 8:37
  So you're not just randomly spitballing things.
• 8:39
  You're like, no.
• 8:40
  You are a expert in this field.
• 8:43
  Tell me what you would do in that, and then it's able to really craft those things out.
• 8:47
  That was such a game changer for me because when I was first using it, I wasn't like it
• 8:51
  wasn't giving me what I wanted.
• 8:53
  Right?
• 8:54
  Yeah.
• 8:54
  So you have
• 8:54
  to learn how to use it.
• 8:56
  It's like swinging a hammer.
• 8:57
  Right?
• 8:58
  The first time you swing it at the nail, you may you may thump your thumb a few times before
• 9:02
  you really get the hang of it, but eventually, you learn that there's such a thing as a nail
• 9:06
  gun.
• 9:07
  Right?
• 9:07
  And then you start getting really efficient, and I feel like that's where we're really
• 9:12
  moving.
• 9:12
  And, you know, take advantage, like you said, of your really, you know, rough year.
• 9:17
  Right?
• 9:18
  You had a rough year looking for work, don't have it, but instead of kind of, you know,
• 9:21
  hanging your head and being woe is me about it, you said, this is revolutionizing.
• 9:27
  This is the future.
• 9:28
  I need to learn this, and then dedicating yourself to learning it.
• 9:31
  And I think that alone is something that people can take a lot of inspiration from, whether
• 9:36
  you're doing it in AI or for me, I'm in the music world.
• 9:39
  Right?
• 9:39
  Just like honing into what you want to do, whether that's I wanna be, you know, I wanna
• 9:44
  produce my own music now.
• 9:46
  I'm a singer or a songwriter, but I don't I am always having to pay people to do this.
• 9:50
  Okay.
• 9:50
  Well, then really invest into that.
• 9:52
  Invest the time into it, and you're going to get the dividends down the road.
• 9:56
  Yeah.
• 9:57
  A 100%.
• 9:57
  I think it it also lends itself to the fact that my personality is that I, you know, I I'm
• 10:02
  excited by learning new things.
• 10:04
  I have 35 different hobbies that I like doing at all times, so I'm always trying to jump on
• 10:08
  to the next thing.
• 10:09
  But I think kind of this little, you know, this weird feeling, maybe a little obnoxious feeling
• 10:14
  of, like, I know more than other people do is very exciting because everyone in the world is
• 10:18
  talking about AI.
• 10:19
  And I'm just like, you know, I learned that already eight months ago.
• 10:23
  It is kinda cool, and it's nice to be able to help and teach people.
• 10:26
  Like, that's part of what I like also of educating people, giving workshops, trying to
• 10:31
  slow down that fear or that lack of confidence with AI where people are saying, I don't know.
• 10:35
  I I'm worried about opening myself up to it or security risks or how do I learn everything?
• 10:40
  And all and I'm just saying, no.
• 10:41
  There's stuff that you need to understand.
• 10:43
  What's your use case?
• 10:44
  What are you trying to accomplish?
• 10:45
  Let's take one task you do every week and that annoys the shit out of you, and let's just make
• 10:49
  it easier automated.
• 10:51
  And, you start slow, you go from there.
• 10:53
  And that's what I'm trying to teach people is this mindset shift.
• 10:56
  You know?
• 10:57
  Don't be afraid.
• 10:58
  It's not taking your job.
• 10:59
  You don't have to prepare for the apocalypse, but let's kinda start to automate and shift
• 11:03
  your mind and take on some new tools and do things you didn't even think were possible
• 11:07
  beforehand, which is really cool.
• 11:09
  Yeah.
• 11:10
  And it can do way more than caricatures, people.
• 11:12
  Let me tell you.
• 11:13
  Yeah.
• 11:13
  Right.
• 11:14
  That is there is a there is a time and a place for that.
• 11:16
  I make, coloring pages for my son all the time.
• 11:18
  But, no.
• 11:20
  Some of the other stuff that I'm doing is like, I just had a call with a a potential client
• 11:25
  this week who actually, someone who finds other clients because she also has a consulting firm
• 11:30
  that needs AI help.
• 11:32
  And she said this one, news website, like this media company is basically manually going
• 11:37
  through news every single day to find stuff for their segment.
• 11:40
  It takes them eight hours a day to do this.
• 11:43
  And I was like, well, I literally built an automation that will do this for you in a
• 11:46
  minute and a half.
• 11:47
  And so, like, just that kind of and, like, think about how much time that'll free them up
• 11:52
  for other things.
• 11:53
  You just saved you sixty hours a week.
• 11:55
  Right.
• 11:56
  Yeah.
• 11:56
  They're I think they're getting paid, like, over a 100 k just to do this kind of news
• 12:01
  aggregation.
• 12:02
  And it's just like, yeah.
• 12:03
  I'll I'll build you an automation, and then you could either kick your feet up or you can find
• 12:07
  something else to do with your time, the new work and new projects.
• 12:10
  You know?
• 12:11
  So yeah.
• 12:12
  Unbelievable.
• 12:13
  Yeah.
• 12:14
  Unbelievable.
• 12:14
  I'm gonna have to have you sit down and give me an assessment on my business and where you
• 12:18
  could automate some stuff in the market.
• 12:20
  The time that I spend, you know, copying email addresses and adding them into an email that
• 12:26
  just says, hey.
• 12:27
  Here's the link for the call.
• 12:28
  Now I have everything pretty much templated, and it's all just copy paste.
• 12:32
  Do you know if I wanna type in a personal message, I can.
• 12:35
  It's about as simple as it can be.
• 12:37
  But still, when you multiply that times the 30 or 40 calls that I'm getting on a week, I could
• 12:43
  maybe get a whole hour of my life back that in that week.
• 12:46
  Right?
• 12:47
  And and that could be an automated process in there too.
• 12:49
  Now I use Go HighLevel as our CRM, that also automates a lot of our processes in there and a
• 12:54
  lot of different things.
• 12:55
  But I'm just learning all these things myself.
• 12:57
  Right?
• 12:57
  I'm I'm in the year that you were a year ago right now where I'm like, oh my I've been doing
• 13:02
  this the stupid way for a long time and and costing myself time.
• 13:06
  But even in the editing side, using podcast.ai, which has just been I would not have I would
• 13:13
  not be here probably today.
• 13:14
  I would still be editing, like, my fourth episode.
• 13:17
  Right?
• 13:17
  And instead Yeah.
• 13:18
  Instead, I have over 400 episodes out.
• 13:21
  All of the short form content that's generated over 360,000 views between May and December,
• 13:28
  and we only put out maybe a quarter of what we had because we were, again, running out of
• 13:31
  time.
• 13:32
  Right?
• 13:32
  It it would just there's only so many hours in a day.
• 13:35
  And if you're focused on the production of the content, meaning I'm here with you on camera,
• 13:39
  it doesn't leave a lot of time for the post production stuff to go on.
• 13:42
  Right.
• 13:43
  Now I'm very blessed to have StreamYard where I don't have any editing.
• 13:45
  I've just produced everything on the fly, which is what I'd rather do anyway.
• 13:49
  Right?
• 13:49
  I'm a live muse I'm a live performer.
• 13:51
  Right?
• 13:51
  Even in the music side, I wasn't a studio guy.
• 13:54
  I was on the stage producing this thing live, you know, hitting the lights, controlling the
• 13:58
  sound from the stage, running my own pedalboard, directing the band.
• 14:02
  Like, I'm very used to doing 17 things at once.
• 14:06
  Having the ability to do so here and to have conversations with people that are doing the
• 14:10
  same.
• 14:11
  Right?
• 14:11
  And this is why I love what I do is getting to talk to Adam across the world who's like, yeah,
• 14:17
  man.
• 14:17
  We could get 34 things at a time going if we automate a few of these.
• 14:21
  And I'm like, yeah.
• 14:22
  You're speaking my language, buddy.
• 14:24
  Yeah.
• 14:24
  I think that's that's really the key.
• 14:25
  And that it's kinda what I was mentioning before, but you really touched on it is that AI
• 14:29
  should not be something that is scary or worrisome or whatever.
• 14:33
  It should help you free up the time to do what you really wanna do.
• 14:37
  You know, I'm a content guy.
• 14:39
  I wanna create awesome content that resonates with people.
• 14:41
  I'm sure you feel the same way.
• 14:42
  And I don't wanna spend my time in reporting and admin and ideation and brainstorm.
• 14:48
  I wanna do and create and, like, produce stuff for people.
• 14:52
  So freeing up and automating all that other stuff is what gives me the time to do what I
• 14:57
  really enjoy doing.
• 14:58
  There's nothing to worry about in that sense.
• 15:00
  Like, no one's I'm not I don't feel that, oh, I'm a content marketing manager, and soon
• 15:03
  that's gonna be obsolete.
• 15:05
  No.
• 15:05
  I'm I'm managing the content.
• 15:07
  Maybe I'm not a writer in the specific sense that I used to be, but I'm creating stuff
• 15:13
  because I have all this time that I built systems to enable that, which is you know, it
• 15:17
  feels like I'm give empowering myself to do what I really wanna do, which is very exciting.
• 15:22
  Yeah.
• 15:22
  And now with your company, you're able to empower others.
• 15:24
  Right?
• 15:25
  You're able to use everything that you've learned and to empower other people to make
• 15:28
  their business more efficient, to give them some of their time back because maybe they
• 15:31
  wanna spend it with their children.
• 15:33
  Right?
• 15:34
  Maybe they don't wanna spend every waking minute trying to build their business and to
• 15:39
  keep up because whether you want to use AI or not, your competitors and your, you know, they
• 15:45
  are.
• 15:45
  The the big the big people are using it.
• 15:48
  The big massive corporations are using it.
• 15:50
  Small business owners are starting to catch on.
• 15:52
  If you're not using it at this point, you're falling farther and farther behind.
• 15:57
  And, using someone like yourself with first man marketing to catch up is critical right now
• 16:04
  while you maybe buy yourself some of the time or having you kinda teaching people.
• 16:08
  I think that's what's cool about you is not only are you in the space of, yeah, I'll do it
• 16:13
  for you, but also, hey.
• 16:14
  You should probably be learning how to do this for yourself as well.
• 16:18
  Yeah.
• 16:19
  That was actually a a really interesting learning experience that I had with building
• 16:22
  out, like, what my offerings were gonna be.
• 16:24
  Because initially, was like, great.
• 16:25
  I built these automations.
• 16:26
  People need them.
• 16:27
  I'll just build them from the I'll just be that builder that people could hire.
• 16:30
  And then I realized that, you know, through some of the client calls that I had, a lot of
• 16:34
  people are like, no.
• 16:35
  We're using AI already.
• 16:36
  You know, it's okay.
• 16:36
  But then as I'm talking to them, I'm seeing the gears turning, and they're like, actually,
• 16:40
  wait.
• 16:40
  What if we built this?
• 16:41
  And then so I realized that the education aspect of it is what leads people to want to
• 16:46
  build.
• 16:47
  So it's not like offering one and offering two.
• 16:49
  It's more like one a and one b.
• 16:51
  It's like, let me do a workshop for you maybe on a one hour Zoom session or a half day full
• 16:54
  day where we really dive into what your team needs.
• 16:58
  And then you'll understand what you need, and then I could build it for you.
• 17:01
  You know?
• 17:01
  So, and I'm fine either way.
• 17:03
  I'm fine with just teaching people about it.
• 17:04
  I think it's really valuable and important.
• 17:07
  We're doing a course at at AppsFlyer right now about like, for AI builders and agents and
• 17:12
  things like that, and I'm just like, well, I know a lot of this already.
• 17:15
  And I'm just helping people on the side, like, answer their questions when the teacher's
• 17:18
  unavailable.
• 17:19
  So, I really enjoy that.
• 17:21
  And so I that's great that I can incorporate that as well.
• 17:26
  Did you ever have any experience kinda teaching before this?
• 17:30
  Was it a passion for you to teach people like this kinda before getting into this side of it?
• 17:35
  It was something I thought about when I was a kid about being a teacher.
• 17:39
  I also studied world history in university, which is so random.
• 17:43
  But it's just, it's something that I
• 17:45
  wife would she dropped the class.
• 17:48
  It was like, can I take, like, a civics class instead?
• 17:50
  Oh, that's how I'm gonna get that credit.
• 17:52
  Yeah.
• 17:53
  Like, I just love, you know, learning, and and I kind of thought about the idea of being a
• 17:59
  professor or being a teacher.
• 18:00
  And and, obviously, that didn't really work because I went into marketing, but I I've been
• 18:04
  like a coach in, like, football for high school football and things like that.
• 18:07
  And I kind of like that, You know, now that I'm a parent to little kids, just kind of, like,
• 18:12
  guiding and leading and teaching and showing them the ropes and things like that, and that's
• 18:15
  probably where it comes from.
• 18:17
  And I just I also think that it helps me learn.
• 18:20
  Right?
• 18:20
  Like, proving that I know things or proving how I know it by explaining it is really great.
• 18:26
  And I'm also really open to feedback, and I do these workshops.
• 18:29
  I ran a whole bunch of workshops for free just to get people you know, get my name out there
• 18:32
  and also to get feedback from people.
• 18:34
  What am I doing right?
• 18:35
  What am I doing wrong?
• 18:35
  What would you wanna hear more of?
• 18:37
  And, there's just something about that that, I don't know, I really enjoy.
• 18:41
  Well and I asked because, my wife is a special education teacher, but she didn't start off
• 18:46
  that way.
• 18:46
  She had already had a business degree and was working.
• 18:49
  She worked at some banks, and then she was working I mean, honestly, got into just like a
• 18:53
  labor force.
• 18:54
  Right?
• 18:54
  Has a four year degree, but she's doing something she could have done right out of high
• 18:57
  school.
• 18:58
  And, through happenstance and injury and and workman's comp and then just not wanting to
• 19:03
  really do that anymore, she ended up taking a summer off and then returning to the workforce
• 19:08
  as a paraprofessional.
• 19:10
  And through that, she was offered an opportunity to apply for what they call a
• 19:14
  teacher apprentice program where you remain employed at the school, but you get to, you
• 19:20
  know, take college courses to advance into a teacher degree.
• 19:23
  So elevating people that are already working in the schools and working with these kids to
• 19:26
  actually being teachers to fill the teacher shortage.
• 19:29
  So great program.
• 19:30
  She was accepted last year, so she did a year working as a para.
• 19:35
  And then this year, she's still going to school and finishing her degree, but she was actually
• 19:41
  offered because there was a need at the school for special educators, a position at with on an
• 19:46
  advanced teacher permit.
• 19:47
  So she actually began her teaching career a full year ahead of schedule, with the nice
• 19:52
  little pay bump, right, from an hourly to salary paid all year long, and, she fell in
• 19:59
  love with it.
• 19:59
  Right?
• 19:59
  Like, I just saw a different version of my wife come out.
• 20:02
  So that's where kinda, like, on a human and a very personal level for me, I I'd never seen
• 20:07
  that side of her until she became and started working in the school and teaching.
• 20:11
  So, yeah, interested on how people fall because, like, I think there's two different
• 20:16
  sides.
• 20:16
  Right?
• 20:16
  There's people that kinda know they're a teacher and have a a a need or or, you know, a
• 20:21
  desire for that early on in life, or you have someone who kind of almost falls backwards into
• 20:26
  it that then realizes that my wife just likes helping people.
• 20:29
  Right?
• 20:29
  She's a special education teacher.
• 20:31
  It's not necessarily a passion for teaching.
• 20:34
  It's for helping others.
• 20:35
  Right.
• 20:36
  Yeah.
• 20:36
  That's important.
• 20:37
  I think it's great.
• 20:38
  I mean, it's very commendable, and it's awesome that you kind of you know, it it all transpired
• 20:42
  that way.
• 20:42
  I think that's really great.
• 20:44
  It's yeah.
• 20:44
  I think there's something that's in all of us.
• 20:46
  You know?
• 20:46
  Like, you love connecting with people and you like creating content.
• 20:49
  That's why you're doing this and pumping out tons of content that you're doing.
• 20:52
  There's something really interesting about engaging with people and talking about topics
• 20:56
  that you're interested in also.
• 20:57
  It's a lot of fun.
• 21:00
  My cat's very interested in our conversation, Adam, if you can't tell.
• 21:04
  Maybe she just likes being pet.
• 21:05
  I don't know.
• 21:06
  It could be one or the other, but anytime she hears dad talking, she's gotta come and make an
• 21:11
  appearance.
• 21:12
  Absolutely.
• 21:15
  Everything that we've touched on here is so poignant for the times that we're living in.
• 21:19
  Right?
• 21:19
  It it's really about collaboration in this world.
• 21:23
  Everything's moving so fast, then sure we could all get there on our own.
• 21:27
  But I feel like we're leaving that dog eat dog world that we've all kind of grown up in, Adam.
• 21:33
  I I may be a little bit older than you, but my entire life has been driven by the need for
• 21:39
  more, more of this, and and more money and a bigger house.
• 21:43
  And I feel like the world as a whole now is pulling back and saying, but do we really?
• 21:49
  Right?
• 21:50
  Do do we really need all of that?
• 21:51
  Couldn't we, like, do more with less and to be good to one another in the process and not have
• 21:57
  to step on the next of everyone around us to get where we need to go?
• 22:02
  And I feel like, especially with first man marketing, that you kind of embody all of that.
• 22:07
  Right?
• 22:08
  Like, hey.
• 22:08
  I took a year to learn how to do this, but instead of gatekeeping you and saying that, oh,
• 22:13
  well, you can pay $10,000 to me and I will do this, You're really offering people the
• 22:18
  opportunity to not just learn, but to work with you, to work beside you, to elevate their own
• 22:25
  knowledge base, and to grow.
• 22:26
  And I think that's how we get to, like, the next evolution of human being, honestly, is
• 22:32
  through that.
• 22:33
  And I I don't know if it's a a European thing because a lot of these companies that I started
• 22:38
  talking out to is the podcast has grown internationally now through, you know, things
• 22:42
  like Podstar, a shout out to Gall, and and, you know, just being on LinkedIn that all the
• 22:48
  Europeans that I talked to and the companies that come out of there are very much about, you
• 22:53
  know, like, how can we help one another to make everything better for the end user, which I
• 22:58
  feel like is not something that and you kinda have a a foot in both.
• 23:02
  Right?
• 23:02
  Being from the West and immigrating, you know, to to the the Middle East, I guess, the
• 23:07
  Mediterranean.
• 23:08
  And seeing that, do you see a big difference in the way that people operate as businesses in in
• 23:14
  Israel as compared to what you grew up in in Canada?
• 23:19
  Yeah.
• 23:19
  I I'd say for sure in a in a few different ways.
• 23:22
  Like, Israel has a massive high-tech scene, and a lot of the companies that started here were
• 23:27
  just ideas that someone had once upon a time, and they just turned it into a company, whether
• 23:33
  it's, you know, AppsFire, which is a company that helps, other companies that have apps or
• 23:38
  game gaming companies that have apps, like, understand where their data is coming from and
• 23:42
  how to attribute clicks and downloads and things like that.
• 23:44
  So, basically, once upon a time, someone had an idea about, hey.
• 23:48
  All these companies are running apps, the iPhone is getting huge back twenty years ago.
• 23:53
  How do we how do we help people figure this out?
• 23:55
  How do we make sure, that they're really getting the most out of their company?
• 23:59
  And I think one of the biggest things that's stood out to me about what you're saying is,
• 24:02
  you know, as I've been onboarding in this new position at AppsFlyer, the number one message
• 24:06
  they keep talking about is how much they care about their customers and how much they care
• 24:10
  about their people.
• 24:11
  And I could see it day to day.
• 24:13
  Every single person in the company is not only a professional, but they're just a great person
• 24:17
  because the company went through I mean, it was a very long hiring process.
• 24:20
  It took me, like, a couple months.
• 24:21
  And because they really wanna get people that actually care.
• 24:25
  And it's kind of unique in a lot of like, what you were saying about how the world didn't
• 24:29
  really work like that.
• 24:30
  But, you know, AppSlider has been around for twelve years, and they're growing, and they're
• 24:33
  doing great because they have this foundation of helping people.
• 24:35
  And I think that ties into where the world is now with AI that there's so much digital and
• 24:40
  fear of Skynet and Terminator and where we're headed and taking jobs and all this kind of
• 24:44
  stuff.
• 24:45
  And I think there's this kind of pushback to analog.
• 24:47
  You know, I also think that, like, you know, as, like, millennials looking back on the
• 24:51
  childhood we have and then fearing for our kids about having Snapchat and Instagram and TikTok
• 24:57
  and being connected to the phones all the time and wanting to go back to riding our bikes to
• 25:01
  our friends' houses and going out until it was dark.
• 25:04
  And I feel like there's that shift that's happening of, like, despite the tech and the AI
• 25:08
  and the way we're going, let's kind of bring it back to people and personal relationships and
• 25:14
  interactions and, using AI to better that or maybe not using AI and kind of going back to a
• 25:20
  more analog world.
• 25:22
  So I think people are craving that kind of human element a little bit.
• 25:26
  Maybe it started from the fact that AI felt like it was too computerish, now we wanna have
• 25:31
  humans back in it, you know, for content, for sure, that's a big thing.
• 25:35
  I see it going that way.
• 25:36
  I hope I'm not just being optimistic and, you know, hoping for the best, but that's kind of
• 25:40
  what I've been seeing a lot of the conversation be.
• 25:43
  Like, let's let's bring humans back into it.
• 25:45
  Let's help one another.
• 25:45
  Let's create communities, not just send everything to AI and rely on that.
• 25:49
  You know?
• 25:51
  Exactly.
• 25:52
  Well and what's great about what AI has done for me is that it's given me my time back to
• 25:57
  live in the analog world.
• 25:58
  Right?
• 25:59
  Instead of having to be stuck to a computer, you know, fourteen, fifteen hours a day.
• 26:04
  And and right now, I'm investing that amount of time into it, but it's so that when summertime
• 26:08
  hits, everything's already done.
• 26:10
  Everything's done.
• 26:10
  So I can actually just enjoy the summer, get out and catch some rays and go to the pool with
• 26:15
  my kids and not be thinking about, oh my god.
• 26:17
  Because I'm not doing because I'm doing this right now and and enjoying being a a a father
• 26:24
  that I something else is is to a detriment.
• 26:28
  Right?
• 26:28
  And with AI, I'm so far ahead of the game right now that I I take six months off.
• 26:33
  Right?
• 26:34
  And everything's already everything's already done.
• 26:36
  And that's really what I'm trying to set myself up for is, okay.
• 26:38
  Let's work really hard nine months a year so that we can kind of put the automations in and
• 26:43
  all the content's already done and everything that I had to do is done.
• 26:47
  Everything can run as automations.
• 26:48
  I can come in, spend an hour or two in the morning making sure and babysitting it all to
• 26:52
  make sure that it's operating and functioning properly, do the things that I have to show up
• 26:56
  for, but then be able to go and enjoy the vacations with my children and the time with my
• 27:01
  wife when she's off of, you know, school.
• 27:04
  And I just it's allowing me to build my own flow of my life, not just a workflow, but a
• 27:12
  life flow.
• 27:13
  Yeah.
• 27:14
  That's great.
• 27:15
  Yeah.
• 27:15
  I think that's what it should be for.
• 27:16
  Right?
• 27:16
  We shouldn't be using these tools just to work, work, work all the time.
• 27:19
  It should be, like I said before, freeing up time like you were saying.
• 27:22
  Let's automate things so we can have our life back.
• 27:24
  I think that's the best way to think about it.
• 27:26
  You know?
• 27:26
  We're not here to work.
• 27:27
  It's about work life balance.
• 27:29
  Right?
• 27:29
  So we wanna find that balance, see our kids.
• 27:31
  You know, I this kind of this line that I keep saying to any jobs that I've had or any
• 27:36
  managers that wanna force people back into the office every day or to stay there for ten hours
• 27:40
  a day.
• 27:40
  And I said, unless I'm an astronaut, no job is gonna keep me from seeing my kids.
• 27:44
  You know?
• 27:45
  Like, and I will not apologize for that.
• 27:48
  So I I'm fine with, you know, working on AI stuff while we're watching Netflix at night,
• 27:54
  but as long as I can see my kids and put them to sleep and spend time with them, like, that's
• 27:59
  fine with me.
• 28:00
  You know?
• 28:01
  Big part of why I left the factory and was willing to spend two years taking a massive pay
• 28:06
  cut to build something better.
• 28:08
  You know, being told on Thursday that, hey.
• 28:10
  We're working mandatory Saturday.
• 28:12
  I don't care if your kids got his ballgame.
• 28:14
  And me going, no.
• 28:16
  Like, you can discipline me however you feel fit, but no.
• 28:21
  How's that sound?
• 28:22
  And then being like, well, what do you mean?
• 28:24
  You don't want the extra money?
• 28:25
  I was like, man, money doesn't make my world go around.
• 28:27
  I don't know who you think you're talking to.
• 28:30
  I'm here mostly because, you know, yeah, I need the four I'm already working time.
• 28:33
  Right?
• 28:33
  We were already working forty five, fifty hours a week.
• 28:35
  And it's like, well, don't you want the extra overtime so I can get taxed more and I
• 28:39
  essentially make the same amount of money?
• 28:40
  No.
• 28:40
  I'm good, man.
• 28:41
  I know how math works.
• 28:43
  I know what taxes are.
• 28:44
  Right?
• 28:44
  Like, the you're not convincing me when I can look at the numbers and just be like, no.
• 28:49
  It's not worth my time.
• 28:50
  Right?
• 28:51
  The the extra $17 on my paycheck is not worth missing my kids' games.
• 28:56
  Like, I'm sorry.
• 28:57
  And I'm I'm sorry that I'm not sorry, and I'm willing to tell you that, and now it's hurting
• 29:02
  feelings.
• 29:02
  Right?
• 29:03
  But you can find somebody else that that loves money more than that because I I just don't.
• 29:08
  And but I realized that without it, I was never gonna be able to live the life that I wanted to
• 29:13
  give to my kids as well.
• 29:14
  So also realizing that it's like, okay.
• 29:16
  You can make a certain amount doing this and abiding by their rules, but you're never going
• 29:20
  to make over that.
• 29:21
  Right?
• 29:22
  Like, I was pretty much at my ceiling where I was at, and it's like, woah.
• 29:24
  You could just work more.
• 29:26
  I don't wanna work more.
• 29:28
  I'm trying to work less and make more.
• 29:30
  And because I made some probably poor decisions early on in my life and didn't get a degree,
• 29:34
  that probably wasn't worth anything anyway, and didn't do some of those things, then I had to
• 29:38
  be willing to, like you, go to school on my own dime, right, on my own time and to say, okay.
• 29:43
  I gotta figure this out.
• 29:44
  Right?
• 29:45
  And for me, it was podcasting and digging into it, realizing we were at a pivotal moment where
• 29:50
  human connection was fading because we're using AI and all of these things to do it, that just
• 29:54
  having a conversation was becoming an actually very worthwhile commodity to a lot of people.
• 30:01
  Right?
• 30:01
  All of a sudden to have someone to talk to that knows how to have a conversation and has some
• 30:05
  emotional intelligence, that they can bring to the table became, something that was of value
• 30:11
  again.
• 30:12
  And here I am.
• 30:13
  Right?
• 30:14
  Hoping to capitalize on the moment, build something that maybe I can cash out in in ten
• 30:20
  years time, and go on to the next thing and learn what I wanna do for the rest of my life.
• 30:25
  But, man, Adam, I absolutely appreciated this conversation.
• 30:29
  Go ahead and plug.
• 30:31
  Know we've mentioned AppsFlyer.
• 30:32
  We've mentioned the company several times.
• 30:33
  But for our audio only listeners, make sure they hear everything from your mouth.
• 30:37
  And, yeah, appreciate you spending some time with me today.
• 30:40
  This is great.
• 30:41
  Yeah.
• 30:41
  Thank you.
• 30:42
  So, yeah, just check out firstmanmarketing.com.
• 30:46
  If you're looking to learn more about AI, start automating things, build some cool assistance
• 30:50
  or agents or automations, reach out to me.
• 30:54
  I'll be happy to talk to you, understand what you need and what you wanna learn, and which we
• 30:57
  could just talk about AI.
• 30:59
  And, yeah, that's mostly what I'm working on, and I love it.
• 31:03
  It's great.
• 31:04
  So thank you.
• 31:05
  I appreciate it.
• 31:05
  Thanks for reaching out initially.
• 31:06
  It was a lot of fun meeting you and being on the show.
• 31:08
  So and listen.
• 31:09
  Best of luck to you.
• 31:10
  You're killing it.
• 31:10
  So keep it up.
• 31:12
  Thank you.
• 31:12
  As someone who does content for a living and yourself and on the other side of it a lot in
• 31:17
  the marketing phase, I I feel like I'm definitely on the right track with everything
• 31:21
  that we've been doing.
• 31:22
  So I hope you can stick around because I wanna talk a little more AI off camera.
• 31:26
  I don't wanna take too much time away from the kids yet, but would love to share a few more
• 31:30
  minutes with you.
• 31:30
  So, Adam Davis, thank you for taking some time for me today, and thank you for being part of
• 31:35
  the scene.
• 31:36
  Appreciate it.
• 31:37
  This was great.
• 31:38
  Thanks.
• 31:42
  Imagine capturing the raw essence of nature with its infinite color and beauty.
• 31:51
  Now, envision turning that into something truly transformative.
• 31:56
  Pure and easy tea cultivates the goodness of nature's bounty into fuel for your body.
• 32:04
  We are what we drink.
• 32:07
  Pure and easy tea, the pure nourishment your body craves.