ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Podcast 14 min read

Is Entrepreneurship Still Worth It in 2025? w/ Jodie Cook

with Jodie Cook

Chris Do and Jodie Cook defend entrepreneurial agency without pretending everyone starts with equal advantages.

Chris Do

Founder, The Futur™ · July 5, 2025

An unfair system is not a finished argument

Entrepreneurship does not become fair because someone succeeds. It does not become pointless because someone starts behind. Jodie Cook, who ran a social media agency and coauthored a book about raising entrepreneurial children with Daniel Priestley, brings both business experience and an interest in how ambition gets taught to a conversation with Chris Do about the space between those claims.

The tension is not simply whether starting a business remains worthwhile in 2025. It is whether defending individual effort requires defending the conditions under which that effort takes place. For Do and Cook, those positions are too often bundled together, leaving people to choose between an implausibly fair world and an entirely hopeless one.

Do begins with a qualification that should accompany more entrepreneurial advice. Borrowing a line he attributes to Blair Enns, he says, “all strategy is autobiographical.” His confidence in business comes from having built one; Cook’s confidence comes from her own experience of creating opportunities.

That admission establishes the limits of their authority. Neither personal history can establish what happens to everyone, and neither speaker presents an economic study of entrepreneurship. Their subject is the relationship between circumstances, interpretation, and the decision to act.

Personal agency is not proof of a fair system.

Do explicitly acknowledges the advantages attached to family wealth: better education, stronger support, access to resources, and less anxiety about basic necessities. Someone who can concentrate on a business without worrying about food begins from a different position than someone who cannot. Calling both people entrepreneurs does not erase that difference.

Yet he resists the conclusion that an unequal starting line makes effort meaningless. The practical question is narrower than whether society rewards everyone appropriately. It is whether a person retains any ability to change an individual situation while recognizing that the larger arrangement needs improvement.

Cook arrives at the same question through ambition. She worries about teaching people to treat financial success as evidence of moral failure while also encouraging them to escape financial insecurity. That creates a destination someone is supposed to pursue and despise simultaneously.

Her concern is not an argument against scrutiny of wealth. It is an argument against making an entire category of people into an enemy, then expecting the desire to join that category to remain psychologically uncomplicated.

This is the useful starting point for their defense of entrepreneurship: not that the system works, but that its failures do not answer every question about what a person should do next. The distinction keeps encouragement from becoming an alibi for inequality and criticism from becoming a verdict on individual possibility.

Their case is strongest when it stays within that boundary. Success stories can illustrate a route. They cannot certify that the route remains equally available to every person standing at its entrance.

The argument needs a better opponent

The immediate spark is a debate Do watched on Stephen Bartlett’s podcast, The Diary of the CEO, involving Priestley and an economist identified in the conversation as Gary. What unsettles Do is his impression that the discussion, and much of the audience response, favored an account of economic unfairness without making enough room for practical individual action.

That is Do’s reading of another conversation, not an independent account of its participants’ positions. The distinction matters because his frustration is as much about the format as the substance. He describes interruptions, uneven speaking time, and questions that seemed to keep the discussion on one participant’s preferred territory.

His proposed correction is modest: let each person finish, answer questions in good faith, and allow disagreement without treating it as a failure of the exchange. The ability to name a problem should not excuse refusing to consider someone else’s response.

Cook sees a related mismatch. One person can be trying to change institutions while another is trying to help an individual navigate them. Those projects operate at different scales, but they do not have to cancel each other out.

The distinction can be kept simple:

Institutional change addresses the rules. Taxation, public services, and economic opportunity belong to the system-level argument.
Individual action addresses the next move. Building a business or developing a useful skill belongs to the personal-level argument.

Neither is a complete substitute for the other. Better institutions do not remove every personal decision, and successful personal decisions do not eliminate the need for better institutions. Much of the friction comes from demanding that one kind of answer do both jobs.

Do’s own position resists an easy political caricature. He says he likes paying taxes, wants a stronger social safety net, and objects to wealthy people avoiding what he considers their fair share. His complaint is not that public contribution exists, but that public outcomes can fall short of what he believes that contribution should provide.

Cook also values clean, safe places and accepts taxation. Her additional priority is a culture that celebrates people doing ambitious things rather than treating achievement as an offense against the group. Security and aspiration are not opposing preferences in her account.

The conversation does not establish a superior tax system or identify a country that resolves every tradeoff. It does something smaller: it separates support for entrepreneurship from blanket approval of wealth, government, or the status quo.

That separation gives the argument somewhere productive to go. The enemy does not have to be an entire class of people. The relevant obstacle can be a specific rule, an unavailable resource, or a belief that prevents a person from testing an available option.

AI makes the contradiction personal

Artificial intelligence turns the discussion from a general argument about fairness into something Cook says she experienced directly. On an early encounter with ChatGPT, she asked it to write an article about raising entrepreneurial children. She recalls receiving what she recognized as her own previously written article.

Her account conveys the shock of seeing familiar work returned by a system that someone else could access with a prompt. It does not, by itself, establish how the system obtained the material or settle a legal question about infringement. The article’s significance here is the conflict it creates for someone inclined to embrace opportunity.

Cook can feel wronged by a technology and still want to understand what becomes possible through it. Her response is not to declare the concern imaginary. It is to refuse to let the concern determine the entirety of her business behavior.

Do approaches AI through the people whose livelihoods concern him: artists, designers, and other creative workers. He raises the problem of companies profiting from systems trained on creative material and proposes heavier taxation of AI companies to help fund universal basic income. That is a policy preference, not a worked-out funding model.

The two responses are different without being mutually exclusive. Do emphasizes responsibility for the consequences of technological change. Cook emphasizes the actions available to someone living through it.

For a creative professional, their positions expose three separate issues:

The treatment of existing creative work used by AI systems.
The economic consequences for people whose work becomes easier to reproduce.
The opportunities a new tool creates for building or operating a business.

Collapsing those issues into a single declaration of enthusiasm or rejection makes the conversation less precise. An objection to the treatment of creative work does not automatically answer how a business should respond to a new tool. Interest in that tool does not resolve the objection.

The same practical territory appears in The Futur’s Harnessing AI for Creative Success: Strategies and Stories. Here, however, the central issue is not which application to adopt. It is whether adaptation feels like surrender when the conditions prompting it seem unjust.

Cook’s answer is to preserve room for both frustration and action. That answer has limits: changing personal behavior cannot settle ownership disputes or provide society-wide protection against lost income. But waiting for those questions to be resolved would also make individual decisions dependent on an institutional timetable.

The conversation leaves that tension intact rather than manufacturing a clean victory. A creator can demand better treatment and still examine a new business possibility. A founder can see commercial potential without pretending every cost of that potential is fairly distributed.

Adaptation is a response to conditions. It is not necessarily an endorsement of them.

Yesterday’s opportunity is not the benchmark

Do’s housing story supplies a useful check on his own optimism. He remembers his parents working for years to buy a home, then recalls buying a more expensive home with his wife within several years of graduating and starting his business. Relative to his parents, he experienced faster progress.

He also recognizes what the comparison cannot prove. The prices are not adjusted for inflation, and his experience does not establish what a new business owner can afford now. The story explains his confidence more reliably than it explains the current housing market.

That is autobiography doing its proper job.

Cook redirects the comparison toward marketing, where she sees change as an ordinary operating condition rather than an exceptional betrayal. An advertising approach works with one audience until it stops working. A channel produces results until the business needs another route.

She invokes the moving-cheese metaphor from Who Moved My Cheese?, describing the temptation to imagine a marketing channel that keeps producing indefinitely without further attention. Her objection is not to repeatable results. It is to the expectation that repeatability means permanence.

An old route closing is not proof that every route has closed.

This is where her argument becomes more demanding than generic optimism. The task is not to insist that yesterday’s opportunity remains intact. It is to notice what has become possible under different conditions, including conditions that also remove something valuable.

Cook imagines how people in the future will describe 2025: a period when unfamiliar technology opened possibilities for very small businesses. Her examples are speculative, not forecasts supported by evidence in the conversation. Their function is to reverse the direction of nostalgia.

Instead of measuring the present only against opportunities that have disappeared, she asks what future observers will say was visible but underused. It is a change in attention, not proof that every person can build a large company with new software.

The distinction matters for anyone moving from craft into ownership, the territory signaled by The Futur’s Moving from Makers to Entrepreneurs. The work is no longer only executing a skill well. It also includes recognizing when the route connecting that skill to a market has changed.

Cook pushes this idea far enough to reveal a weakness in her own framing: she expresses a preference for helpful beliefs over true ones. Taken literally, that is not a sound standard for evaluating a market, a cost, or a risk. Useful conviction still needs contact with the conditions a business actually faces.

The more defensible reading is narrower. A belief that action remains possible can encourage investigation rather than resignation. It cannot replace investigation.

Do’s housing caveat and Cook’s marketing example work best together. Past success is not current proof. Past opportunity is not the full inventory of present possibility.

Privilege is a resource, not an origin story

The conversation becomes more uncomfortable when the obstacle is not the absence of an advantage but reluctance to admit one exists. Cook points to a contradiction in how opportunity gets discussed: parents are encouraged to give their children every possible head start, while adults who received such help are often expected to explain it away.

She does not offer a formula for determining how much success belongs to effort and how much belongs to circumstance. Instead, she describes the pressure to demonstrate that an achievement counts because it was difficult, independent, and insufficiently supported.

That pressure can distort the account of a career. It can also influence the career itself.

Cook asks whether people should downplay the advantages they did not earn or use them openly. She recognizes people who began with fewer resources and accomplished more, as well as people who began with more and accomplished less. Neither comparison yields a simple equation.

Do takes a firmer position. Natural talent, access, mentorship, capital, and distinctive personal qualities are resources. Refusing them does not make the original distribution more equal; it changes what the recipient does with what is available.

His examples extend beyond business. A singer develops a voice that began as a physical gift. A performer works with an appearance that was not earned. The existence of an initial advantage does not remove the practice, exposure, or risk involved in turning it into a career.

The resources he describes include:

Talent, coordination, and a distinctive way of seeing.
Access to people who can teach, advise, or introduce.
Money and support that make a business decision possible.
Personal qualities that help someone stand apart.

The useful distinction is between acknowledging these resources and making them disappear from the story. Do is not asking people to claim they created every condition of their success. He is asking why refusing an available resource would be the appropriate response to having received it.

The responsibility moves forward. What someone does with accumulated wealth matters; so does how that person treats others and contributes afterward. An honest account of the starting point does not prevent meaningful decisions about the destination.

Cook’s concern about how ambition is taught also connects this discussion to The Futur’s Raising Independent Creative Children. The tension is not simply whether adults should encourage children. It is whether encouragement survives once a child becomes an adult whose advantages are visible.

Acknowledgment is not disqualification. Nor does acknowledging privilege establish that every later outcome was deserved. Those are separate judgments, and keeping them separate makes the conversation more honest.

Do’s argument ultimately rejects a test based on having had no help. A business does not become more useful because its founder refused a mentor. A talent does not become more legitimate because its owner delayed developing it.

The seat at the table still has meaning

Cook’s charity-board interview complicates Do’s confidence about using every available advantage. While running her agency, she applied for a board position and was interviewed by an accountant and an HR lawyer. She recalls the accountant telling her that she stood a good chance because the organization was looking for a young woman.

The reassurance had the opposite effect. Cook wanted the role because of what she knew and what she could contribute. Being told that her demographic profile improved her chances made the opportunity feel less like recognition of those qualities.

She remembers the HR lawyer reacting with visible discomfort. But Cook also makes clear that she did not regard the accountant’s intention as hostile. The problem was not simply bad intent. It was the meaning she attached to the explanation.

Do challenges that meaning. If a board is dominated by people from similar backgrounds, bringing in someone with a different perspective can be a substantive decision. Diversity and competence do not have to be competing explanations for the appointment.

His point is especially pointed because both speakers recognize the frustration of looking at a panel and seeing little representation. An institution responding to that criticism should not automatically be understood as abandoning standards when it seeks someone different.

Cook’s reservation remains understandable. There is a difference between being valued as a person with relevant experience and feeling reduced to a category. Her concern is not erased merely because broader representation can improve the composition of a board.

The disagreement exposes several distinctions that a simple instruction to accept every advantage would miss:

A good intention does not guarantee a reassuring explanation.
A search for broader representation does not establish a lack of merit.
A candidate can welcome access and still care how that access is described.

Neither speaker resolves the tension by the end of the exchange. Cook allows that she has probably passed over opportunities because of how she wanted achievement to feel. Do remains focused on the cost of rejecting a seat that an institution is prepared to offer.

This is the point at which the conversation becomes more useful than an uncomplicated celebration of confidence. The obstacle is not always a belief that success is impossible. Sometimes it is a narrow belief about which kind of success can count.

That belief can be exacting: the opportunity must arrive without demographic consideration, family help, fortunate timing, or an obvious natural gift. Otherwise, the achievement feels compromised before any work has begun.

The board story does not establish that every opportunity should be accepted. It establishes that the explanation for an opportunity deserves scrutiny before it becomes a reason for self-exclusion. Cook’s contribution would still have to be made after the appointment.

A doorway and the work performed beyond it are not the same thing.

The unused advantage is already in the room

Cook’s clearest business example is less politically charged than the board interview and more immediately actionable. While operating her social media agency, she obtained a Forbes column. Yet she says she did not use that publishing opportunity to talk about LinkedIn, despite LinkedIn being directly connected to the work her agency did for clients.

The advantage was not hidden in a future technology or dependent on a government changing its rules. It was the relationship between expertise she already had and a platform she already possessed.

She describes the missed connection partly as something she simply did not see. But she also wonders whether she was searching for a harder route because difficulty felt like the appropriate price of progress. The possibility of a direct connection went unused while she remained attached to struggle.

Difficulty is not evidence of a better strategy.

This is where the large argument about entrepreneurship comes down to a decision small enough to inspect. Cook did not need to deny inequality, solve taxation, or settle AI ownership before recognizing the relationship between her publishing and her agency. Those questions mattered, but they were not the obstacle in that particular case.

The conversation offers no formal framework, and presenting one would make it tidier than it is. It does, however, provide several concrete practices that follow directly from the examples:

Use the expertise already being sold. Cook’s missed connection was between client work and public writing.
Build from the clients already available. Do describes working with smaller clients and trading up toward larger ones.
Reconsider channels when they stop producing, rather than expecting past performance to continue indefinitely.
Accept useful resources without rewriting the story to pretend they were earned alone.

These are not substitutes for a viable offer or a market that wants it. They are ways to stop adding avoidable friction to an already uncertain undertaking. The practical value is in removing a self-imposed restriction, not promising a particular financial result.

Cook’s closing admission is that she can probably still find advantages she is failing to use. Do’s answer is more categorical: he tries to play every card available. The contrast is less about who possesses greater confidence than about what each notices when an opportunity appears unusually direct.

Do locates his own earlier resistance in school, when standing out felt undesirable. His present position is the reverse: “But now the last thing I want to do is to blend in.”

That leaves a sharper test than whether entrepreneurship is universally worthwhile. A specific person, with specific resources, has to distinguish the barrier that is genuinely outside their control from the restriction they are maintaining themselves.

The system does not need another defense. The available opportunity needs an honest assessment.

Refusing an advantage does not make the world fairer. It leaves the advantage unused.

TRANSCRIPT

is the question who's the real enemy? Is it the AI companies? Is it the billionaires? Is it the education system? Is it the government? Who is the actual enemy? If you were born into wealth, it's a lot easier to use your money to make money. How much you believe that you are in control of your own destiny and you can affect your own situation. There's a popular idea that's going on right now, given the global economic condition that we're in, with the parties moving far right, and it seems like we're headed towards a recession or much worse. And there's this conversation that's happening out in the ethos about entrepreneurship. It's this dream that's being sold to people to keep people poor. And recently I watched this episode, there was a hot debate on Stephen Barlett's show, The Diary of the CEO, between Gary and our friend, mutual friend, Daniel Priestley. And they're kind of going at it, kind of at each other a little bit, a little hard. And Gary was going much harder than Daniel. And I was a little surprised when I scrolled down to read all the comments at how one -sided the support was. On one hand, Gary was saying that rich people should be taxed, but he doesn't call that a redistribution of wealth. He's not exactly sure how to implement this because I wasn't clear. And Daniel kept asking him about this. Whereas Daniel was saying, you know, I grew up relatively poor. I was able to make something of myself and I want to help other people do the same. And Gary's like, that's a pipe dream. That doesn't happen anymore. That cannot exist. And he goes on and on about this kind of stuff. So I thought, I know another entrepreneur. I know someone who's kind of built themselves up and is in a position to help people. Now, I do want to say this to our audience who's listening, that all strategy is autobiographical. This is a line I learned from Blair Enns. So we're going to talk about the things that we've done naturally and the things that we believe in naturally, because otherwise we'd be kind of a hypocrite. So I just want to put it out there. Now, I'm not sure how familiar you are with that specific episode of the arguments on both sides. But let's just begin the conversation there, Jodi. Yeah, let's do it. Is that okay? So yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah, I mean, you go for it. How'd you all start? I think Gary's background, he's an economist. Now, I'm not sure how familiar you are with that specific episode of the arguments on both sides, but let's just begin the conversation there, Jodi. Yeah, let's do it. Is that okay? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I think, yeah, I mean, you go for it. How do you all start? I think Gary's background, he's an economist, and according to his own biography, he's very bright, top percentile, goes to one of the best schools, and does this thing where he's trading or leveraging things, and he's made a fortune, according to him, betting on the economy doing poorly, and he's done well. I think it's called short selling. And so the reason why I mention that is because, okay, I'm going to put it out there. I don't have a lot of love for people who are academics, people who make money on other people's money. Both ways, betting on things going well and betting on things when they go poorly, because they don't actually make anything in the world. And I have a lot of love and respect for people, small mom and pop people, or multimillionaire billionaires who craft something, who provide jobs for people, who make life a little bit better. Because one of those things that we talk about is we're always looking for some kind of transformation to go from a desired state to desired future state. And the one thing I don't understand is why there's so much money involved in trading and moving money around. Because none of them actually do anything. But what they do is they profit from people who do do things. And I was a little shocked. I was reading all the comments and how popular Gary's sentiments are. And it felt like he was saying to me, to the audience, everything's effed up, the world conspires against you, and let's rage against the machine. But really nothing practical about it. That's my take. I think that overall, it's kind of a scary thought to me to make rich people the enemy and to make, to kind of demonize the wealthy, like that fundamentally really scares me because I think it's almost like you create an enemy out of something like rich people, and then you put them in a certain place where you have a certain set of beliefs around them. Like rich people are greedy, rich people have cheated to get there, rich people, they're not like us. And you kind of create this us and them. But then it means that the people who want to then get out of a bad financial situation and then trying to do the thing, trying to achieve the thing that they're also demonizing. So it's like, well, which is it? Do you want to, do you want to demonize the wealthy and then not try and be wealthy? Or do you want to demonize the wealthy and still work to do it? In which case you're never really going to do it. But then it means that the people who want to then get out of a bad financial situation and then trying to do the thing, trying to achieve the thing that they're also demonizing. So it's like, well, which is it? Do you want to do you want to demonize the wealthy and then not try and be wealthy? Or do you want to demonize the wealthy and still work to do it? In which case you're never really going to do it because you're always going to create arbitrary ceilings because fundamentally you believe that rich equals bad. And that to me is terrifying as a thing to teach people. I think so. I think it's not a great idea to label somebody something that's not you and then demonize it. Like poor people aren't bad. Rich people aren't bad. Middle class people aren't bad. It's just we're in different states. I do want to acknowledge this before people go super crazy on me and angry in the comments because Simon Squibb started talking about this and he had some really bad blowback on this. And I want to try to have a more nuanced conversation about this, more tempered. And I just want to say this. I want the game to be fair. And I want to acknowledge that the game isn't fair because if you were born into wealth, it's a lot easier to use your money to make money. You get access to the very best teachers and schools and programs and neighborhoods. You don't have to worry about food shortage. And most of the times you have parents or people to look after you. You're not concerned about the same kind of basic necessities in life. And how very wealthy people pay very little tax. That bothers me. I believe in fairness. And I'm for things that level the playing field. Not to punish people for doing well. Not to punish people for doing poorly. And one very specific topic that is hot on everybody's mind because it's so controversial is AI and how AI is going to be a disruptive force to displace working people, especially artists and creatives, people in my community, people near and dear to my heart. And one of the things that is trending right now is the Studio Ghibli filter that's being put on everything right now. And Miyazaki has been on record saying he's really against AI. Granted, that same was made eight years ago. So it wasn't like a reaction to what's going on right now. But the engines are trained on people's artwork. And so there does feel to be something like unfair about this. So my thought, my proposal to this is, you know what? The AI companies get a lot of money and they're using, according to the last thing I saw, 10 % of the world's energy. And processing power right now. Just that is a staggering amount and it's only going to get higher. So my thought is we need some kind of universal basic income. And these AI companies that are profiting on ideas should have to pay a fairly hefty tax because they have very low overhead or people working for them. And so they can help to contribute their fair share in displacing jobs, but also profiting from ideas that aren't their own. So my thought is we need some kind of universal basic income. And these AI companies that are profiting on ideas should have to pay a fairly hefty tax because they have very low overhead or people working for them. And so they can help to contribute their fair share in displacing jobs, but also profiting from ideas that aren't their own. Why don't we start there, Jodi, because I know you have perspective on AI. is stealing your content, 100%. It's stealing all of our content. It's so scary. We might have talked about this before, Chris, but the first time I ever used ChatGPT, I typed into it. Actually, this has kind of linked it up. So I typed into ChatGPT, write me an article called How to Raise Entrepreneurial Kids, because I'd written an article and then wrote that book with Daniel Priestley, who was in that episode. And actually, let me just go on a tiny tangent. When Daniel and I released the book, How to Raise Entrepreneurial Kids, we were sharing about it on Twitter. And we got a message back from someone who said, look, this just isn't fair. You can't teach people that they can just go and be anything they want, that they can have big dreams, that they can make something of themselves. You just can't do it. And they shared this really long message. And I was like, I don't know. What do I say? Do I get involved? And Daniel just responded. Why don't we call our next book, How to Raise Kids with Low Expectations? Just as a response. But yeah, so the first thing I put into ChatGPT was write this article, How to Raise Entrepreneurial Kids. And it came out. ChatGPT came out with my exact article that I'd already written. And it was like, this is literally my content. It's in there. But now someone else can type a few prompts in and a few questions in and get the exact same article. Like it's so unbelievably didn't sound right. But I feel like where I am with so much of this is that. It's yes, the system's rigged. Yes, it's not fair. Yes, it's really, really, really annoying. But I do kind of think that I would so much rather see what I can do and take personal agency rather than back to the entire system. I feel like for me, that's the difference between business, entrepreneurship, being a bit scrappy, making pirate moves, going, yeah, that's not fair, but I'm going to succeed against the odds versus, I guess, going into politics. Because really, that's what it is. You take this fundamental institutional inequality and you try and attack that. So I feel like it's very different ways of approaching the same problem because I fundamentally believe that we are all on the same page with this. Yeah, I think so too, Jodi. But I don't think we're approaching it like we're on the same team. I think it's you're in team A or team B. And I think that's also part of like how government and society is set up so that we're busy squabbling with each other while the barons take everything. And I think that's a problem. approaching the same problem because i fundamentally believe that we are all on the same page with this yeah i think so too jody but i don't think we're approaching it like we're on the same team i think it's you're in team a or team b and i think that's also part of like how government and society is set up so that we're busy squabbling with each other while the barons take everything and i think that's a problem i feel like it would be really nice if daniel and gary could agree that ultimately they're fighting for the same thing which is equality which is prosperity which is people being happy and they're just approaching it in very very different ways they're not really i feel like the argument isn't actually with each other no and they so there's a couple things that were kind of strange about how that conversation unfolded um i think stephen was brilliant in setting up the debate and he was fairly neutral about this but what he didn't do which bothered me a lot was he wasn't moderating the conversation at all gary was allowed to talk for as long as you want and just be as interruptive as he wanted to be and daniel bless him stayed cool the entire time i would have lost it at some point i would just said gary can we just agree to one rule i won't cut you off and please don't cut me off and if you ask me a question i'll do my best to answer it and if i ask you a question you'll do your best to answer it and we can just agree to disagree when we when we don't agree but let's just have some decorum when we're speaking and oftentimes he would just hammered priestly with some questions like let him finish and i don't know how daniel does this but he has the patience of an angel and my patience would have been tested at that point so i would appreciate a little bit more moderation from steven on that but daniel came in to fight on economics whereas anytime it came up with the issue of entrepreneurship gary was like that's not my thing he would just say that's not my thing and so i was thinking so we just only can debate about the things that you know about and we can't talk about the things that i can bring to the table and if daniel said well that's not my thing about economics and academics i don't want to debate that either so it was kind of a weird setup for the two of them to go at it so i think there was something fundamentally kind of not balanced in terms of like giving each person an opportunity to speak whether you agree or disagree with anybody i think it's important to let the other side speak i would quite like it if debates had some kind of electric shock system where if someone talks for too long they just get and that's it so there's no even need for moderation maybe this could be done with ai in the future you won't even need panel hosts you won't need facilitators it's just like when someone's spoken for too long they get a little electric shock when someone hasn't answered the question they get a little electric shock and then we just run our debates like that too long they just get and that's it so there's no even need for moderation maybe this could be done with ai in the future you won't even need panel hosts you won't need facilitators it's just like when someone's spoken for too long they get a little electric shock when someone hasn't answered the question they get a little electric shock and then we just run the our debates like that i think there's some kind of dystopian future and i think there's a movie and a book written about this somewhere yeah yeah there's probably many the hunger games 1984 but who knows like we have to use physical punishment but i was just thinking out of mutual respect it's let's have a conversation about this so on the one side it's like i think gary's an activist and he may or may not run for politics i i don't know and it's a very populous sentiment and i do want to address some of the things he's talking about because i do agree with a lot but i just don't agree that we have to shut down the other side to say like that's that's silly so gary's story is that his mom and dad are working class blue collar people and he grew up in a time when they could afford to buy a home and being able to own a home is part of the dream to kind of make it and he goes today no one can buy a home because all the barons and the tycoons have taken all the property from you and have raised the rate so much so that you can't afford to live where you live i think that's a real problem um but i also kind of think like i'm growing up in this time or or maybe that time is over maybe in the 30 years in which i've been working the the real estate market the political climate the economic climate has changed so much so that people who are new in business today or new in life can afford to buy a home anymore i don't know i don't know but i know my parents worked a really long time 50 years ago to be able to afford a home for us and the time in which it took me to buy a home was much less uh here's here's point of reference i think my parents bought i think it's called a ponderosa home which for them was like a big deal i don't know what that really means and i think the house was like a 250 000 house which back then is a lot of money and then i remember like within five years of graduating from school starting my business my wife and i we bought our first home together and that house was 510 000 and i was able to pay it off pretty quickly and so like for me relative to my parents coming to america and my ability to buy a home that is not adjusted for inflation but twice as much as their home in less than five years of just being an art school student that says like we're moving in the right direction but maybe not so much today anymore and i'm not professing to be any kind of real estate or economics expert here i'm just kind of using anecdotal stories here My ability to buy a home that is not adjusted for inflation, but twice as much as their home in less than five years of just being an art school student, that says like we're moving in the right direction, but maybe not so much today anymore. And I'm not professing to be any kind of real estate or economics expert here. I'm just kind of using anecdotal stories here. Have you seen Who Moved My Cheese? Or have you heard that phrase? I've actually read the book. Yes, the book. And then, oh man, I've seen the, I haven't read the book. I've seen the YouTube video. That's a tiny video version of it where you have these mice running around the maze and they're like, Who Moved My Cheese? And I feel like as marketers, we're so used to that because it's like, oh, I used to run these ads and to this audience and now it doesn't work. Someone's moved my cheese and you go find the new cheese and then someone else has moved my cheese. And then you think everything that you think that works in marketing at some point runs its course and then you have to find the new cheese. And it's just a thing that you keep constantly having to do it. And even though I think so many marketers, business owners have this vision and this dream of this one marketing channel that just works every single time forever and ever and ever and they never have to touch it ever again. It's like, it's not going to happen. There's no point even thinking like that. But if you think that the cheese is always moving, then what it makes me think is what are people going to say about this time in the future? If we're looking back at the 70s, 80s, 90s and going, oh my God, you could buy a house for this much and you could do this for this much and you had all these opportunities that you don't have anymore. What are people going to say about 2025 in the future? And they'll say things like, oh my goodness, this technology was brand new. It was like, it was moving everything. Like these people could come out of nowhere and they could make huge businesses with just one person. And we could have like the first billion dollar company with one employee or no employees. And oh my God, you could buy a .ai domain name because they were available and now there's none available. And it's like, I feel like you just have it every single year and it repeats again and again. And there are going to be things that people look back at 2025 and say that if you think in a certain way, you will miss at the time when it's happening, which is just as dangerous as demonizing the wealthy. It's like thinking there's no opportunities around right now when there's so unbelievably are. So I feel like I so much prefer believing what's helpful rather than believing what's true. It's almost like, yep, sure. There's all these bad things that could happen and there's all these bad things going on and there's all these unfairnesses. But if you just think, but I can make it anyway, then you probably will find a way somehow. Okay. So how do we, how do we attack this so that we're contributing to the dialogue here? How do we. what's helpful rather than believing what's true it's almost like yep sure there's all these bad things that could happen there's all these bad things going on and there's all these unfairnesses but if you just think but i can make it anyway then you probably will find a way somehow okay so how do we how do we attack this so that we're contributing to the dialogue here how do we take on one of the the pull on one of the threads so that we can have a meaningful deep dive conversation about it that maybe wasn't present in that conversation where two people weren't seemingly talking on the same wavelength is the question who's the real enemy is it the ai companies is it the billionaires is it the education system is it the government who is the actual enemy in that conversation or how do who do we want to identify as enemy or is that the conversation all together who do you want to blame yeah kind of who do you want to blame because i think it's just an age -old thing that well it's populism like you said it's yes if you you there's lots of people um who are not who represent normal people and they are all against this group of elites and it's so it's so standard and we do it in we do it in copywriting we make an enemy but when the enemy is the elites and the normal people are the normal people it's like they have to they have to represent something and in this debate the elites are the the rich people but in the ai conversation the elites are the ai companies and we're the normal people so it's like which is the real enemy we've got all the enemies i have an idea so while while gary was talking about the the ills of the economic situation that exists i was thinking is there somewhere in the world where it actually is more ideal where it's working much better than where you have it right now and if there's such a place why don't we model ourselves after that place so i kept thinking and so as i zoom out i think there's basically as far as i know three kind of major ways of governance or kind of economic systems there's capitalism socialism and communism and they kind of run that spectrum right or we all understand the free market system that's capitalism and then we all understand like communism everybody's equal everybody makes the same amount of money which in practice isn't real at all and there's socialism which is some kind of blended version of that where there's some state -run things and there's some free enterprise and capitalism and that seems to be like where most of the world is not pure capitalism not pure communism but is there a place in the world that you can think of where everyone has an equal shot that rich people pay their taxes there's universal basic income everything is kind of working where there's some state -run things and there's some free enterprise and capitalism. And that seems to be like where most of the world is, not pure capitalism, not pure communism. But is there a place in the world that you can think of where everyone has an equal shot that rich people pay their taxes, there's universal basic income, everything is kind of working really well? You travel a lot. Okay, you're shaking your head. So for people on the podcast, Jodi's like, no. I feel like everywhere has its problems. I feel like you just have to choose your, you go somewhere knowing that there's certain things that are wrong with the system and then believing that you can just find a place with the problems that you're okay to deal with. And not even necessarily in politics, but because I think I've lived in about 35 different countries, sorry, 35 different cities and not to do with politics, but they all have different weather. They all have different walkability. They all have different friendliness to women and different safety and all of these different things. And I have not yet found somewhere that is the absolute perfect year round sunshine, amazing walkability, perfect for gyms, perfect internet access and high air quality. The closest is Hawaii probably, but then you've got that whole time zone thing. So there's always something wrong, but I feel like that's exactly the same with this. And even if there isn't something wrong, you've always got someone who's going to disagree with that way of running things, depending on whether they're the person who makes the rules or the person who breaks the rules or the person who wants to live there and work or the person who wants to live there and be retired. So I don't think, I've found anywhere perfect. Have you? No, but I've only lived in mostly one place in California. I've visited many places, but maybe the model isn't about perfect, but like mostly perfect, where there's a place that they seem to have most of it done right. When there's equality and there is an ability to move up the socioeconomic ladder, there is a healthy tax, but the tax money is being used for things to take care of the people. I feel like it's always somewhere in Scandinavia. Yeah, they're the people and the places who get it the most right because they tax a lot, they charge a lot, they look after people a lot, but it's cold. But we're not talking about that though. I'm just talking about forms of governance because we can use the same form of governance in a more moderate climate, I think. But then the people in, say I have friends in Sweden, they're like, we pay a lot of taxes. It's a lot. And there's also the culturally where they don't seem, there's the law of Yant. I'm just talking about forms of governance because we can use the same form of governance in a more moderate climate, I think. But then the people in, say, I have friends in Sweden. They're like, we pay a lot of taxes. It's a lot. And there's also culturally where they don't seem, there's the law of Janta and there's this lagom and these things that they don't celebrate exceptionalism. It's like the way that maybe in America that we do. So there's some kind of inner conflict that I feel when I'm talking to people from those areas, right? Yeah, because if you fundamentally believe that people should be taxed less and they should make their own money, then you're not going to like it. But if the taxation is higher and that means that the streets are cleaner and there's less crime, then that's going to suit some people at the same time. I really think it depends on personal preference, which is so strange because maybe we're not that similar underneath and we all do actually want different things. But then does it come back to the fundamental belief of how much you believe that you are in control of your own destiny and you can affect your own situation? Because what is, is it a Noel Gallagher quote? Is it something about the left don't care about the aspirational and the right don't care about the poor? Something like that. It's some kind of phrase like that said by someone in Oasis. I don't know what he knows about it at all, but I quite like the idea that it's like, choose your, choose the thing that you decide to care about and then work back from there. Yes. Well, I'll state what I care about and then maybe you can state what you care about and we'll see where we agree or disagree, Jodi. Yeah. I like paying taxes. I know it's weird. I like paying taxes, but I don't like how my taxes are being used because our streets are dirty, the roads are unpaved and there's a lot of homeless people in California and there aren't a lot of social welfare programs that help support people when they're falling down. And so when you lose your job or certain things happen to you, economic crisis, the social network here is not very strong in terms of supporting you. Oh, I'm sorry, the social net, not the social network, isn't very strong in supporting you when you fall down. And when I visit countries where the streets are really clean and they look after people and there aren't as many homeless people, I feel really good about being there and I don't mind paying taxes. The other part to it is I think rich people have many more loopholes and ways of hiding their wealth about moving the money around so they're not paying their fair share. meaning a percentage of the income that they make relative to everyone else. And I think that's a problem. I think there's... people, I feel really good about being there. And I don't mind paying taxes. The other part to it is I think rich people have many more loopholes and ways of hiding their wealth about moving the money around so they're not paying their fair share. Fair share meaning a percentage of the income that they make relative to everyone else. And I think that's a problem. I think there's a Warren Buffett quote that said something like the top nine richest people in America paid their share of taxes. The rest would not have to pay at all or the 9 % or something like that. The rest of the 91 % won't have to pay. And so we know this and it's shocking because when we get into politics and they start auditing people's tax returns, they're saying that person who made X amount of money, a thousand times more than you, paid zero taxes. That does bother me. And in a place where we try to have some equality, that's a problem. So that's my take on it. I also like paying taxes. I also like living in clean and safe places. I feel like my favorite places to live or to be are places where doing cool stuff is celebrated, where the goal is for you to be as successful as possible and where there's never any sense of tall poppy syndrome or like, Oh, why are you getting above your station or anything like that? Because I just like the idea of yes, go for it. Why wouldn't you? I think my enemy is not the government or anything other than like your own limiting beliefs or what you get told is not possible. So, um, I heard, I overheard a conversation yesterday and it was this little boy and he was doing, he was trying to, he was trying to ride his bike. It was like a standard situation. He had stabilizers and it's his first bike and his, um, I guess it was his nanny. She was just so good. She was so patient. She had infinite patience with this guy, with this little tiny kid trying to get on his bike. And she's just like, no, you can do it. No, keep doing it. No, no, no. You're going to work it out. And it's like, everyone needs that person in their life. Everyone needs that person going, keep going. I know. Yes, it's not fair. Yes. Gravity is there. And you had never done this before. I get it. I get it. But keep going. And I feel like that's my fundamental belief for just the whole of society. And maybe I just live in a, in a fairy land where I believe that that could be possible for everyone, but that's definitely the world that I feel like I want to live in. Well, let's do this then. Um, let's acknowledge that both of us have some form of privilege because we wouldn't be where we are without some of that. Now there are things that you're just born with and there's the things that we've earned and worked for. So we can't be accountable for what we're born into. You're born poor. You're born rich. You're born white, black, Asian, whatever. How are you guys for the execution? There are many people that want guests to get active. We're actually doing these things because of having an experience that where matter should be what's going on. I hope they could you look up because it doesn't have to mon завகible, but you read whatever. the world that i feel like i want to live in well let's do this then um let's acknowledge that both of us have some form of privilege because we wouldn't be where we are without some of that now there are things that you're just born with and there's the things that we've earned and worked for so we can't be accountable for what we're born into you're born poor you're born rich you're born white black asian whatever it is tall short you can play basketball you can't play whatever it is i can't sing right so we're just born with that so when we when we map out two scenarios and you have to ask yourself which would you prefer to live in if one of them is true where on one side it's like everything's f there's nothing you can do about it the system is all broken and let's just be angry because we're powerless to do anything whereas the other one says the system might be broken but there's something that you can do about it individually and you'll be rewarded for the kind of risk that you take in the world and it may not be true but i personally would prefer to believe that i actually have some level of agency where that my my actions have consequences the amount of risk that i take has a reward and i'm going to choose to continue to believe that that's possible even if it's not because the alternative is just to resign and say nothing i can't do anything it's just it doesn't matter if i show up to work or if i don't work or if i take care of myself or don't because the outcome is the same because one is more of a fatalist point of view and the other one is kind of we have more free will and agency what are your thoughts on that i also want the same outcome as you do i think that something i've thought a lot about is it's like everyone who has kids wants the best of their kids they want to earn as much as possible they want to pass on as much as possible they want to give their kids the best start ever but when you've got a kid with a rich parent you're like oh you've got a rich parent you had a massive head start like that's not cool so it's almost like which is it do we want to provide lots of people so they never have to think about anything or do we want people to always start from zero because then they've got where they are without having any help i don't know what the right answer is in that and then it almost feels like if you have come from a like very privileged privileged position which most most of us have it's then like do you play down your kind of ace cards because you didn't earn them they just were given to you by parents or by situation or do you say do you use them or do you play them down and which is the right thing to do because there are so many i think about this a lot like there are so many people born with less than me who've made so much more of it but then there are so many people born with way more than me who've made less because you didn't earn them they just were given to you by parents or by situation or do you say do you use them or do you play them down and which is the right thing to do because there are so many I think about this a lot like there are so many people born with less than me who've made so much more of it but then there are so many people born with way more than me who've made less of it so then which is it how do you decide which way you're going to choose I don't totally know the answer for that and I've probably played things down before because you're almost like oh well yeah okay I had this head start but now I got there on my own as well and you almost have to sometimes feel like you have to prove yourself more to kind of prove that you didn't use the eighth card but then I also believe in using your ace cards I think it's a very very confusing just life in general yes but let's let's just kind of look at let's abstract some of these things and see how we feel because it's easier to understand if you were six foot one model ask with beautiful cheekbones and eye structure and all that kind of stuff and you became a model would I be mad at you that you were born with good genetics no and we show up to the cinema to watch really good looking people pretend to be somebody and we celebrate that or someone can hit that super high dolphin note uh on the microphone I'm gonna add it you know the gifts that they were given no I mean a lot of work went into refining that instrument that they play their vocal cords and a lot of dedication and focus and and possibly just risking a lot to be able to say I can I can make it in this career in this industry where the percentage of success is very very low so I would get mad at anybody doing that and also in in business when when I when I'm coaching folks I say how do you get a really big client well you work with a small client and you trade up and you keep trading up until you get to the bigger client and so if you have resources to use it'd be foolish not to use the resources and if you were born into access and privilege and money and capital and investment and mentorship it would be foolish for you not to use that later on how you use that wealth that you acquire is really important and that's on you but if you're given a head start would you run backwards you wait I don't think so that wouldn't be very smart it wouldn't be very smart but I think people do it I think people play down their advantages because they believe that it should be hard there's a friend who I've been going for walks here she's called Anya she's a model she's absolutely beautiful but it took her a while to almost accept it to be like no I'm going to be a model it's cool because before then she was pursuing other different careers and then she was will do it. And I think people play down their advantages because they believe that it should be hard. There's a friend who I've been going for walks in here. She's called Anya. She's a model. She's absolutely beautiful, but it took her a while to almost accept it, to be like, no, I'm going to be a model. It's cool. Because before then she was pursuing other different careers. And then she was always kind of resisting it, maybe because it felt like the easy thing to do. It felt like, oh, well, I've got these looks. I match the people in the magazines. Therefore, that's what I'm going to do. It was like, no, I'm going to do this other stuff because I think we arbitrarily make stuff harder for ourselves because I almost think it's actually not that trendy to use all your ace cards or to acknowledge your privilege or the stuff that you were born with. And then to, and then to play that. I think there's kind of an underdog. There's like a sexy underdog thing that sometimes means that we ignore them. Yeah. I don't know anybody like that. And I've always been pushing people to use all of the gifts that you were given, the way that you look, the way you sound, your brain, how you see the world, your talent. If you have great hand -eye coordination, use, use as much of the gifts you were given as possible. Because as, as long as I've been able to say this part, I think we're all designed to do something very remarkable in this lifetime. And most of us struggle to find what that thing is. Many of us go to the grave, not knowing what it is. And those of us who can find it are happier, healthier, wealthier because of it. And so I don't, I'm not quite sure. Like if you're a beautiful person, you're like, well, I'm not going to do that. Well, that's on you and I don't really care. And you, you don't have to use that if you don't want to. Like there's a guy, I saw this on a news report. He's called a man with a golden voice. So he's standing out there homeless and he's holding up a sign, you know, please help out. And somebody discovered him and discovered that he had this really beautiful radio voice and could do on that voiceovers. But he got mixed up in drugs and wound up on the street and they cleaned him up and got him an opportunity. And he does, he has the most amazing voice. And since then he's, he's done well. He's battled with his drug addiction, whatever, alcohol abuse, whatever. But he's done really well because he was able to use that voice. And if you have such a voice, why wouldn't you use it? And it's almost like you're taking a gift and you're throwing in the trash. I don't understand that. But Jodi, it seems like you do understand this perspective. So one story that's brought to mind is when I was running my agency, maybe about 10 or so years ago, I went to an interview to join the board of a charity. And there were a few different people being interviewed to be on this board because it was a cool company. And when I was there, I was being interviewed by two people. One of them was an accountant. The other one, agency maybe about uh 10 or so years ago I went to an interview to join the board of a charity and there are a few different people being interviewed to be on this board because it's a it was a cool company um and when I was there I was being interviewed by two people one of them was an accountant the other one was an HR lawyer and the accountant said to me oh you stand a really good chance of getting a place on this board because we're looking for a young female and the HR lawyer just put her head in her hands I was like don't say that and there was an element of I don't want to I think I might have actually said to them like well can I can I apply for this position as like an old male then because I don't want the token gesture seat I don't want the seat that's like oh this is the seat that that means that we're going to give people concessions it's like no I want to be there on merit I don't want to be there just because I'm young I don't want to be there just because I'm a woman I want to be there because I would contribute a lot to this board and I have some good things to say and I know about this topic so there's I definitely think there's an element of I don't want to feel like I'm just in this room because of that one thing that I couldn't even control there's something more that's like I want to be there because I've worked really hard and I've earned it that feels like it means more the person who said that to you was there intention to say that to patronize you no not at all he was being what do you think he was being really sweet he was telling me that I stood a really good chance and I should be really excited and I was like yeah but I'm not excited because I want to get the position because I'm the best person for the job not because I'm like I don't know so when when we stand by I guess you and I we're we're minorities right yeah and that you and I were part of a protected class I'm a person of color Asian and you're female so we're part of a protected class and we say oftentimes and I'll just say it is out there and I'm not saying this with any kind of hate or venom that when we see a panel of speakers generally speaking they're heterosexual older white men generally speaking and that's the thing and we we say to ourselves like how come they don't have more diversity so when they actually bring on people diversity it's like no you need to bring me on because of my merit because I deserve to be here it's like we're fighting the machine that we wanted to change which I don't totally get now if he said in a patronizing way like oh you have a good shot like toots you know like what f you you mother effer but it's like no we're actually looking for young smart brilliant women just like you do yeah do we take offense firstly I would love it if I heard a British people say toots because that would be awesome I don't totally get. Now, if he said in a patronizing way, like, oh, you have a good shot, like toots, you know, like, what? F you, you mother half -er. But it's like, no, we're actually looking for young, smart, brilliant women just like you. Do we take offense? Firstly, I would love it if I heard a British people say toots, because that would be awesome. I would have been like, son, yeah. I had to be careful how I said that, by the way. I was like, that could come out really wrong. But, you know. Oh, is it an Oprah quote? Just be excellent. Just the kind of antidote to any ism, sexism, racism, any ism is just be excellent. And I feel like if you just believe that you are doing everything you can to be excellent and then you get that seat that you think that you shouldn't need, yeah, it doesn't sit that right with me. But maybe that's wrong. Maybe I've ignored kind of pirate moves that I could have made because I'm like, no, I want to go against the heteroization of old white men who are on this panel right now. Well, let me ask you this question since you reminded me of that. Have you had to play something down? I've for sure played things down. So too many things I've played down. One of them is I used to run a social media agency and I got a Forbes column about halfway into running that social media agency. And now I write three articles a day and one of them is about LinkedIn because as we discussed in the last episode, LinkedIn is life. And when I had my social media agency, I posted zero times about LinkedIn. I didn't talk about LinkedIn at all, even though that was literally my topic. It was literally what I had, what I had was doing for clients. And I just completely played down an ace card that I had partly because I just didn't see it. And I wonder if it's partly because I was looking for the difficult way of doing stuff. I was like firmly on the struggle bus, ignoring the turn off to easy street and ignoring it and not using it whatsoever. So I don't know if I've done it intentionally, but I've definitely done it accidentally. And there's probably stuff now where I'm not, I'm not, I've got, I've got the ace card and I'm not using it because I, there's something that tells me to struggle. Is there any, is there any ace cards that you're not playing on purpose? No, I'm trying to play all my ace cards all the time. If I have cards, I play them all the time. I think the time in which I struggled with this was probably through junior high and high school, not wanting to stand out. But now the last thing I want to do is to blend in. So I play all my cards, whatever cards I got. That is the episode. Thanks again for listening to an episode of Jody and Chris Don't Know Anything. If I have cards, I play them all the time. I think the time in which I struggled with this was probably through junior high and high school not wanting to stand out. But now the last thing I want to do is to blend in. So I play all my cards, whatever cards I got. That is the episode. Thanks again for listening to an episode of Jody and Chris Don't Know Anything.

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“But now the last thing I want to do is to blend in.”

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