that well though. I mean, anytime you know a lot about a subject,
you can know enough to get into trouble. Right?
That's everything.
You find yourself in that, you know, as a doctor,
do you find yourself in that situation more often than when you
were younger or do you find yourself in that situation less now that you're a
doctor?
I think you find yourself in more.
And the reason is, is because the older you get,
the more you realize what you don't know.
You think you know everything when you're, you know,
you hit your thirties and forties and then you slowly figure out that you don't.
And then you, you watch your kids, you know, do the same thing.
And you just go, you just wait for the lights to come on later.
You know, I don't know, you said you learn it slowly through the thirties and
forties. I'm 36. I felt like I got hit hard in the face at 30.
It was like, okay, nope. Never, ever, ever again.
That's just when you can't brace yourself, my friend.
Hit, so keep coming. Well said. That is strategic planning.
We already started now. Everybody's listening in the strategic planning session.
Dr. Dr. Rivers has just given me one of life's greatest lessons right there.
So as we, as we get ready to dive in and talk about AI and,
and savants AI and what that is, by the way, guys,
so free to look that up while we're talking.
What are three resources, three books or resources that you would recommend to
visionary entrepreneurs out there?
The first one that comes to mind is a creativity Inc by Ed Catmull.
He's the one that started Pixar and the guy is a genius on building a cohesive
and cooperative culture.
And that is how he really accelerated the business of animation was creating
the course where people felt free to create and to never get in trouble for
anything they did.
He was in a lot of ways the opposite of Steve Jobs who still got stuff done,
but went through a lot of employees and seldom have anyone say anything good
about him. Ed Catmull had an EQ that probably exceeds anything that I can
possibly think of that made him a lovable and yet effective.
But his book is amazing. I read it twice.
And I thought it was super great.
And another book, whether you're a fan or not of Elon Musk,
there are a thousand things to learn from his new biography that Walter Isaac
wrote. It's unreal of the things that this man has accomplished and
simultaneously while doing many of these extraordinary things all at the same
time, just to do one of them would be amazing,
but he had all these balls in the air and he kept them going and he succeeded at
all of them and they were different industries and required different skill
sets and he pulled it all off. So, you know,
whatever you think of them on a personal level or a political level or whatever,
set that aside and look at it with your entrepreneur eyes and take notes.
That was, oh my gosh, that was such a great book.
I don't know. There's so many books that I've read over the years that have made
an impact on me. What I try to do, I try to read a book.
Well, I will preface that by saying I listen to a lot of books.
I'll listen to them when I drive. I'll listen to them when I work out.
I am forever trying to learn something new.
And the other one I will say, and it's also by Walter Isaacson and it's called
The Code Breaker and it's about how CRISPR was developed.
I am not a scientific person,
but it made me want to go into science after I read this book.
And it's all about the uphill battle of a couple of several different
people he talks about. But basically the woman who decided that she was
going to make a name for herself in the scientific community that was only
really looking at men at the time. And she had a tough time being noticed.
But what she did was she kept going at it and she created value to the point
where they had to look at her. And I think that's what made it so important.
They had to look at her. And I had this discussion last week.
I was at Abundance 360 in California and that is a phenomenal summit.
I look forward to it every year.
I feel like I drank from a fire hose when I came home from that for four and a
half days. And you know, you have a list, I don't know,
four pages long of action items that you want to follow up on because you've
learned so many things and it is specialized in teaching about artificial
intelligence. And then there was a whole day on longevity.
You just rapidly taking those. Thank heavens for Otter.AI who took my notes
and summarized them and came up with the action steps.
All I had to do is print that out and then decide when I was going to do each
one of those. So don't forget your little AI friends when you go to things like
that, because you don't need to sit there and scribble everything.
You just need to make sure your recorder's on and the high level you go.
So it was awesome. But that was an incredible event.
And there was a discussion about the women who were there,
which are sort of few and far between compared to the men.
And really the bottom line is if you want to get noticed and you want to be a
part of what's going on, whether you're a male or female or whatever,
create value, create value to the point to where they have to notice what you're
doing because of what you're doing is so great.
And that is the key to get your foot in anywhere, no matter who you are or what
level you're at. Create. You were going to say, grow your hair out.
Well, no, no, no. My poor, my poor dad joke does not do it justice.
What you said is huge. No, you go.
It's a multi-cast. Grow your hair out and create value.
It's a multi-cast. That's right.
We can have both. Right. For sure. You do not have to choose.
Right. Well, if I, if you did choose a value, lean towards the value one.
You gave us five excellent resources. Thank you for that.
All three of those books are fantastic ideas.
And I had not heard of Abundance 360 and Make Your Own.
And make sure that we're, you know, taking our notes with systems like Otter or Firefly.
So that's awesome. One of the things that I will, before we segment to the quick break,
Creative Inc and Pixar, I remember watching the sketch ups of Shrek.
And I've never been behind the scenes on a process like that.
You know, I never, even after seeing that, as I watched that and I saw how ugly the cartoons were,
you know, initially, like how terrible they looked.
I was like, man, I'm not that bad of an artist. I'm a pretty bad artist.
But as I watched these guys engage in the back room where they're planning the storylines
and they're just like, they're so intensely passionate about how they were conceptualizing what they were up to.
You bring up this book, it brings up a tremendous point.
There are so few business owners that allow their team members to get after it like that, to get into it.
They want to shut everything down. You know, they want to say like, oh, this concept's awful.
It's a concept. It's supposed to be awful. You know, like it's not fully developed yet. That's the point.
And when entrepreneurs can kind of take a step back and away and allow people to create or appreciate the creation process,
I think it would be amazing what we can do. So I'm very excited to dive into that book. I haven't read it myself.
So we're going to bring you back on. We're going to talk about the vision.
Before we do, we're going to cut to a little break, take a sip of water, and then we're going to dive right into Dr. Rivers' vision,
AI powered custom video creation and strategic planning.
So let's all look forward to it. Butts in seats, pens out, Otter on, and we'll talk soon enough.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame. I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome in to another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I am so excited to have Dr. Doreen Rivers on my show today.
She has built one of the coolest AI platforms, configurations, inventions that I have yet seen.
I highly recommend taking a look at what she's built with Savant's AI and also be ready to listen to so many years of wisdom
and opportunities for growth for any startup, any company that could benefit from strategic planning.
That's all of us, by the way. We all need that. So without I'm going to bring on just a minute.
But before I do, I always want to give more more references to resources that you guys can benefit from.
So we start in the form of our sponsors, one of which is a client, one of which is just a program that I fell in love with.
Both started, though, at that same sentiment. So here comes Melissa Gray of The Lawspot.
She signed up and went through a pre show with one of my team members.
And I'm like, a lawyer on my show? Like, I don't I don't know if I want that.
I know these people are typically condescending. You know, you usually don't know how to talk to them without offending them or getting them all upset.
And they're just feisty. Not not the case with Melissa.
Melissa came on heart of gold and, of course, the profession of a lawyer. And she's making legal simple for people.
If you haven't if you don't have legal counsel on your payroll right now and you don't or you don't trust you don't really like that person or you think they overcharge,
just give her a call. Just talk to Melissa and see what she's all about and how she works.
I wish that I had learned to be a wise steward for my brands far younger than I did, because that means doing your due diligence, knowing what you need to know.
At Restaurant Connect, we went through a twenty thousand dollar trademark lawsuit and we won.
But did we? We spent twenty thousand dollars just to protect our name.
In addition to that, Apple patented our software. That was a scary day. And I probably could have calmed down sooner than the three hours that I was worried about it.
If I had had the right type of legal counsel on board, I could have just gone right back to work rather than continuing to read that stupid document,
only to then realize, you know what, I guess I'm just going to make my next call and continue to move my brand forward.
So protect yourself, know who you can go to in your market.
Consider looking at what she's up to and how it could affect your brand.
Then there is Andrew Sosin of Recovery Unplugged. I really love what he's doing.
He's helping people with addiction treatments. Specifically, the program was started and designed around helping people overcome drug and alcohol addiction.
But I would challenge that any of you who find yourself binge watching Netflix, anybody who avoids family by going to a sporting event,
they may not care about that much, you know, are watching endless highlight reels of sports.
Anybody who is playing the latest and greatest games on your phone for more than an hour, you might want to consider reaching out to a hotline like this.
And if this helps just one person, then it was worth talking about.
There are so many people that that don't know where to go and what to do when it comes to addictive personalities.
You may not. You may have somebody in your life who needs help calling the hotline and finding out how to help would be a great resource.
This team is more than 400 strong. They used to do this only in person at certain locations and covid.
I would say in this case, fixed that it allowed them to shift gears and start doing this in an online capacity.
And their incorporation of music as a healing mechanism is something that I'm a big fan of.
As you can tell, that's not a ukulele, by the way, it's kind of deceptively small on the on the wall behind me.
I highly recommend considering what he's learned and taught.
If you are not a fan of Tony Robbins, you would not be a fan of Andrew.
Andrew has been to Tony Robbins program live event 22 years in a row and taking more than a thousand people to that.
I am a big fan of the outcome and master of personal development.
He has learned to teach so well and so much that it is to me,
it's one of the more solidifying aspects of why I know Andrew has worked to like how he's been able to build, what he's been able to build.
And I just yeah, I hope that helps at least one of you.
And we're going to move on to the water project.
The water project is something that I choose to hold near and dear to my heart.
Why? Because I've never had to worry about where I get my source of water ever, not even when I lived in Uruguay that I ever have.
And I was there for two years, never had the threat of losing it.
There are millions of people who do not have access to clean drinking water and their kids have to go and leave school to go get clean drinking water for the school.
They have to leave work in order to go get water.
If we had those types of circumstances in our lives, then it would be very hard to provide for our families, too.
It would be very hard to drive our economy forward.
So my hope is that we can use this as an inspirational opportunity to inspire others to give, perhaps, you know, being able to give yourself.
But if you're in that position where you just can't give more, then please just share this with people out there who may not have thought about the millions of people who don't have access to this.
What's really cool about the water project, though, is when you do invest in a specific project, you actually get to see that project come to fruition and they show you what was built.
You get to see the social media, the evidence of it through photos, through social media.
And seeing these kids celebrate water like my kids celebrate Christmas is something that simultaneously breaks my heart, but also allows me to feel the peace and joy of, OK, when I get back to this, I'm making a meaningful difference in this life.
And that's something worth meditating and pondering on.
So without further ado, I'm going to bring Dr. Doreen Rivers on stage.
We're going to talk about Savant's AI.
In fact, we're going to use a clip to introduce Savant's AI before I bring her on.
And then we're going to dive in as much and as fast as possible and everything else she's doing.
This video you're about to see was created completely using original artwork designed by an AI.
There were certainly some touch ups that she did in the process, but it is amazing where this technology has gotten us today.
And we'll talk about how you might be able to implement this in your lives as well.
Traditional education and training methods are no longer suitable for today's learners due to several reasons, including a lack of engagement,
inflexibility and limited use of technology and lack of relevance.
What if there was a solution for this?
Welcome to Savant's, your creative future awaits.
Welcome to Vision Pros Live, Dr. Rivers.
Jackson, I love talking to you.
I love your projects.
I love the things you spend your time on.
I love your heart, the way that you help other people.
It's all it's just it's my pleasure to be here.
And my honor.
I'm going to we're going to go back and forth.
I'll show on this.
So, Dr. Rivers, that that video we just watched before I dive in and ask you about your vision for those you serve.
I know you might tie these two aspects together, but how not how long did it take to create the whole program?
But how long did it take?
Would it take a user using your program to create a similar video for their brand?
The one we just watched is a very short what we call a sizzle video.
That one was, I think, a minute long.
Yeah, that was a great second clip.
Are you saying it took a minute to build that?
No, but I think that you could build that if you already know what you want to say.
That script was, if I remember, seven, eight really short lines.
And then what you do is you upload that into our platform, the text that you'd like,
and it will build the images and you say, great, those are images I want.
And then you'll choose a voice and the voice will turn what you wrote into the voiceover and you generate the video and you download it.
And you can upload it to social media or to a platform for an online course.
Maybe it's training for your company.
So it's going on your your your the back side of your company website for your employees.
It could be anything that you want to use it for.
The big thing is that traditional method used to include a copywriter and an editor and someone that does the voice and sound effects.
And then someone puts it all together.
It's it's about seven or eight different people to put that video together.
And so I took a one minute video that I had recently done and I went back and found all the costs and all the people involved in it.
And it took me about 40 hours to get them to do a one minute video, 40 hours of my time to babysit them doing all that.
And it was over twenty two hundred dollars for the one minute, which is pretty standard for a one minute, you know, great video.
Well, if you do that on online, you probably could do it in a couple of hours.
And it's going to cost you fifteen dollars.
It's a no brainer for time, for money and then for for an excellent output.
We spent we were quoted nine thousand eight hundred dollars for our 90 second explainer video when I was in restaurant connect.
OK, then I'm granted that was 10 years ago.
And we ended up whittling them down because we were great at sales.
Thank goodness. All the way down to that twenty three hundred dollar mark.
We ended up with 17 views, you know, and on a campaign we thought was going to go viral.
I gave her so many bubble bursting experiences in that process.
The hours we spent going back and forth in the script that that did help us with our messaging.
I think that's important to get the messaging right when you're but now you got to help.
It usually writes things better than me anyway.
And then you can pull it. It is incredible.
But what really struck me about this, my kids and I are writing children's books.
And the hardest part for us because we want to you know, I'm trying to teach them how to use Dolly to create the images.
And the image creation process is quite a bit of a disaster in Dolly.
And I don't mean to mudsling. It's a growing process and a learning process.
And it's not going to be perfect on day one and year one.
But yours is creating imagery that's kind of like this video, not just imagery.
And it's all custom that it's just it blows my mind that it's capable of doing that.
I just wrote a really short children's book and it's four minutes long.
It's a whole children's book. You can choose from eight different templates.
You can do a realistic one. But the really fun ones are fantasy and 3D and pixel art.
And so you choose what you want that to look like.
And it's great because everybody has these great big eyes that are emerald green and all these spectacular colors.
And and then it gives you the images for the book from what you wrote.
And then the speaker that you're going to choose is going to tell the story with these images.
None of what you're doing needs to be done hand done step by step by step, image by image,
because our program does that. And that's it's one of the main reasons that I created this.
It was actually an accident that it turned into a platform.
I wrote a book last year called Brain to Bank. How to get your idea out of your head and cash in.
I had gone the long route before on taking a book and turning it into an online course.
And I did what you did. I did explainer videos.
And, you know, twenty thousand dollars later, eight months later, hating everybody I had ever worked with on the project because they never got it right.
You know, finally, I have this this project done and I finally uploaded. So I thought I want to avoid that this time.
So I hired a specialist to coach me on what I can I use to help me create videos from my book that took me a year and a half to write.
Because I'm making a dollar on my book, but I can make a thousand dollars on an online course, which is another another no brainer.
So I want to create this online course. So two months into this, I realize I am not creating an online course for Brain to Bank.
I am creating a platform that can benefit millions of people who want to do what I do.
They want to take either existing content or content they'd like to create, in your case, a children's book, and they want to make a video out of it.
So I changed courses and I hired three other development teams and we were off and running and we went from concept to MVP in seven months.
And every single day we're saying, what can we do to make this platform easier and better for everyone to use so that people learn faster and remember more?
Because it's really fun and it's education meets entertainment. So it's entertainment and it's a blast to create.
And it's even more fun to watch when you're done.
I love that. We're going to dive in deep now. Let's expand on that vision for those that you serve.
And this can go outside of the AI, of course, the strategic planning side. What's your vision for those that you serve?
What do you want to see them accomplish or feel or do or see?
I want learning to be easier. I want it to be more fun.
And I want people who want to learn something come away with having learned it and be able to remember it.
So I think it's learn faster, remember more.
At the end of the day, there can be all kinds of fun videos that you can create.
You know, I mean, let's the big elephant in the room is open AI and they just came out with Sora, which creates videos.
But there are four second segments and they're not making movies out of this.
They're giving you four second segments. And then you've got to put everything else together. Right.
Our platform gives you that production studio that is a one button push.
You are going to make some creative decisions. What do you want to look like? What's the voice sound like?
If you don't like this image, you're able to change it.
You there's some things that you get to do to make it exactly what you want.
But at the end of the day, we have storytelling elements and we have things that we have built into our platform
that help it become a video platform with videos that you can remember.
When I taught at Grand Canyon University and I've taught at some other universities, I realized a couple of things.
One, nobody has a hardback book anymore.
Two, if they have any kind of a book, it's on their computer and they are scrolling rapidly through it,
and you figure out what you're talking about because they didn't read the chapter.
And I have read the book and I didn't want to read it either.
It is not fun and it's boring and it sucks a life out of you.
So how can you make that fun and how can you get the students to get the same amount of information?
Well, let's meet them where they are.
They have their phone in front of their face about 95 percent of the time, even when they're sleeping.
Right there. So let's meet them there. Let's give them something fun to watch.
So we create micro modules that are three or four minutes, maybe five, and it gives them the key points.
It's fun to watch. And guess what? They remembered it.
And that's the whole vision.
I want to serve people who want to give people information that needs to be and they want to remember so they can use that in their lives.
I love that. I love everything about what you just said. I have a huge bias.
Strengths Finder 2.0 highlighted for me that my number one skill set or strength is learner.
So I love to learn. And to highlight what you were talking about earlier about value.
If we provide a certain amount of value, then it is hard to be ignored.
And so I know the world is worried about cell phones and what cell phones have done.
We have an amazing world out there, but the power that exists within that device to captivate is undeniable.
And the best thing, I believe you're right, that we can do is how do we enhance the purity?
How do we enhance the virtue? How do we enhance the great things that could also come through to individuals on that device rather than just try to ignore it or complain about it?
Like, that's going to solve something. So thank you. Thank you for that.
I think that's very wise for people to ponder on is how do we make moves towards that?
I think a big part of it that you kind of alluded to is these types of books.
Well, I like that you say they suck the life out of you somewhat.
They dare certainly drain a great deal of energy.
But when we can combine that with the modern capabilities of being able to understand this book faster and other formats is super helpful and empowering for people.
We don't need to shy away from that. What's your vision for you?
What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
Right now, I would say that it's every day I get up and walk in my office and work is more fun than fun.
I can't wait to get in here and figure out what I'm going to do to make that platform better so that it's easier to use.
And it benefits more people who want to learn faster.
In some ways, it's a selfish thing for me to do because I can't learn fast enough.
I even did a whole research paper on how can I learn while I'm sleeping because that just seems like wasted time.
And I can't learn fast enough. I need that time. And the answer is no, you can't.
But I just wish it were true. But I want to learn faster.
And there's chances to do that now. And it comes with how you present any information.
Can you pull out the key points and put the fluff aside and give them the meat of what they want?
Because honestly, you have five seconds to get their attention and then off to something else.
And so what does that look like? Well, let's get them in that first five seconds.
So they watch the whole thing and they go, wow, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. That's cool.
Oh, I know what to do with that. Would that be a great thing for anyone who wants to learn to say instead of, oh, my gosh, that was such a waste of time.
So what do you want? You want to learn faster and you want it to be fun. Let's do that.
And you mentioned learning through your sleep and not being possible. That's good to know.
I know Thomas Edison used to do a lot of experiments on that as well, from what I understand.
And more so was when I learned about it, it was about him trying to access deeper levels of subconscious behavior by combining naps with these little things that would trigger him to kind of wake up or stay in that state of mind.
Did you did you go through studies like that? Is that something that you've learned about in your process of trying to unlock that capability?
When I did my Ph.D., it's in business management, and I did a whole series on subliminal learning.
And so I put these headsets on and every night, you know, I would think that I wake up being I can be fluent in Spanish the next day or whatever it is.
And none of it works. There's a really great book. It's called Why We Sleep. It's by Dr. Matthew Walker.
And he talks about why it doesn't work and why you don't want it to work.
And it's because there are certain deep levels and REM sleep and some things that are massively important to your body and your brain so you can function well the next day.
And and those things are critical to get to get right.
And so you don't want to like have that interrupted like all night long.
But basically what happens is when you get in that state, you hear nothing anyway.
And so you just you just miss the whole section on verb conjugation while you were sleeping and you wake up, you can't say anything in Spanish anyway.
Yeah, I like that. So the I think one of the lessons there is to learn to appreciate the things that drive strength for us rather than fighting against them is how do we maximize what the intended purpose or opportunity is with the resource, not necessarily kill the resource or change it.
So, you know, one of the subjects that we've we've added in recently to talk about is funding. I mean, a lot of a lot of people who want to be visionaries that are more pipe dreamers still they're struggling to really put their resources towards the dream itself.
Why do leaders hide from funding their vision? What do you think it is that causes them to avoid funding it?
Are you talking about personally funding it or now and finding investors to fund it?
Either one, because I see people who are so focused on feeling like they need to personally fund it, they forget that there are investors out there.
So just exploring that broadly for all visionaries who, you know, again, I don't I can I have my perspectives on it.
But I always like to ask the new leaders, the new visionaries who are on here.
What do you think? Do people hide from it? Maybe they don't. This is a leading question. Maybe they don't.
Well, I think there's a couple levels to this. Here's here's what I've learned.
And I am actually in the process of getting funding for savants.
And there are a couple different camps on this. The first one is that if you really believe in what you're doing, you'll you'll put some skin in the game and you'll put some of your own money in it.
Because if you don't want to put money in it, who else is going to put money in it? They want you to put money in it.
And there are people who say never put your own money into it. No, it's OPM all the time. Right. Other people's money.
But that doesn't work well when it's an unproven concept, especially A.I., which is so new in the game.
They want to see that you're willing to do what you have to do. Now, that has to come with some prudence.
You know, you don't want to drain your retirement account and put everything in this because, as we know, within the first 10 years, more than 95 percent of startups are no longer there.
They fail. And if you've done it before and you've successfully done it before, your percentages are going to go up.
But most people, this is their first rodeo. So I say be prudent about it.
And I say, do put some money into it, because if you don't bet on yourself, who else will bet on you?
And then get your your your MVP up there. Minimal product, the viability part of it and prove that your concept work you want proof of concept.
Yeah. Well, you go into the next question, which is how do leaders lean into funding? Right.
So the first one was why are they hiding from it? The second one is, you know, how do they do it? So good. Good.
You mentioned putting money in yourself, being prudent about doing so. And of course, seeking capital that's out there.
I will pitch my buddy's book. Steve Distante has written a book called Pitchology.
It is a masterpiece on how to go get money for your business. Read it.
Read it three times. And I knew quite a bit about it anyway. But the nuggets that I picked up that I didn't know about are invaluable.
But that book tells you how to go about doing it and just as importantly, tells you what not to do, which I always think is just as important as what to do.
But that is a super great book to start with and to get your highlighter and writing the origins on and then get your action plan about how are you going to go about funding?
There's, you know, obviously there's the friends and family round. And if you've done it before and not done well, you might have burned out your family and friends.
Like, OK, what's next? You know, but there's crowdfunding. There's a couple of ways to go about it. But as a startup, you're not going to walk into some big hedge fund or even a private equity firm.
My apologies. You're going to start with a small angel investor.
Even venture capitalists don't want to come in until you're looking at your second or third round.
Those are all the things to know about. So you don't think, oh, I'm going to send a letter to Warren Buffett or something, you know, I mean, be real about it.
And but all this is explained in pitchology. And I would say that is the number one place to start. Read that book and then get your game plan.
That's fantastic. We're going to dive into a little bit of a darker subject.
What is the worst leadership experience that you've ever had?
That was pretty easy. I spent the last 30 years helping startups and people will call me and say, we want to start a company.
Can you get us up and running? My PhD is in processes and systems.
So I go up and I set up their business and I'll set up global expansion and logistics and product development and human resources.
Get all the necessary things that they need to have a viable business that runs with the systems and processes that should help them be successful.
Well, I had a company call me to start their company and they were so new that I even named the company and I had to move to another state and live there for a year and a half to run their company.
But the biggest problem was that the founding the founders could not get out of their own way.
I kept saying this is the best way to set this up. You should do this. Here's what I know to do this.
And they've never started a company, but they always had a better idea or or they just simply didn't do it.
And at the end of the day, they a decade later went out of business and never made any money, never made any substantial money because they couldn't listen to someone else.
And and you just got to know who you're working with. Are they willing to be taught? Are they teachable?
If they're not, there's an uphill battle unless they really are good at it and they've done it before.
They're not going to make it. And that's a tough lesson for me.
Obviously, they're paying me and I had a little bit of equity, not very much.
So it didn't matter. Not that it didn't matter. I hate to see any company fail, but it wasn't on me after I left to make sure they were doing it right.
Because I knew who they were and I knew I knew before I left what was going to happen. It was a disaster.
It is. It's hard to you have to you have to create some separation from the loss in order to move forward to your future victories.
And at the same time, that's neat that you wish them well, but you can't you can't do anything about it if they're not willing to get out of their own way.
So it's a really good example. Let's switch into the opposite. What's the best leadership experience you've ever had?
Oh, I would say right now. And I'll tell you why.
It is because I've learned and a lot of it has been from from reading books.
The one I told you, Creativity, Inc. I learned a ton from Ed Catmull about how to let people experiment and how to never point fingers at something that went wrong.
Just to say this didn't go right and you never pin it on anybody else. It's just it's a it's a team thing. It's a company thing.
We've learned this. Let's all figure out what to do with what we just learned.
That's huge. But I've learned how to put better people to be on the team.
And the number one main thing for me is a passion for what we're creating.
If they are behind the vision of what we're doing, they will give it everything that they have. And they have personal ownership in it.
They want it to succeed because they feel like it's partly theirs.
And if you can create that, the problems get solved and you move past whatever gets in your way because they insist on finding a solution.
Yes, I love everything about that. Again, that you just said.
There's a couple of things that it reminds me of. One, when I was at Video Power Marketing, it was the most amazing experience to know that 70,000 people per month were coming to our website to learn how to make money on YouTube.
That's 70,000. I daydreamed about that every day. Some kid in Sri Lanka or in India is going to find this course, find out about creating an agency.
And who knows, maybe in 10 years, there are better agencies than even we are. That opportunity that existed there was huge.
Then there's the book about the boy who harnessed the wind. That kid lived in Africa, found out about windmills, became obsessed with them through the soul-sucking nature of a book.
He was able to power through that, figure it out. His dad is mad at him. They didn't think he was going to do it. He finally did it.
And he goes to MIT, right, through the power of that one little resource book.
Then there's Dr. Doreen Rivers with Savance AI and the ability to teach people all.
And what's cool is you're empowering all teachers out there. Anybody who doesn't consider themselves a teacher could be a YouTube influencer, could be somebody who's just getting started.
And now we can bring our concepts to life, right? We can all take the opportunity to teach people what the heck is important to us and why it's important.
And the ripple effect of that is just, it's just insane to try to imagine. But, yeah, I could see why your current opportunity and what you're building is.
And here's what I'll equate it to. I tell my team all the time, and all of our prospects, too, that want to work with us as a first class.
I say, listen, I could go to this, like, if I had tried to do this, right, turn this light off 200 years ago or 150 years ago, it might have killed me.
Right now, I can take my son, we can watch YouTube for an hour. We can go to Home Depot and we could get all the things we need to, to be able to create a light like this over a weekend, super affordably.
And why? Because of education. Right. And when we can do that with entrepreneurship, where we can turn the light on and off, like, I'll be happy.
I mean, I'll be super joyful about that. I'm so going to enjoy the journey. But you are on to something absolutely incredible.
That's not just limited to entrepreneurship. This is, you're going to have, you're already having a profound experience pioneering education for the future.
And, yeah, I just, I just can't, I can't stress enough the value of what you're building, Dr. Rivers. It is amazing.
I appreciate that, Jackson. That, that, that is how I look at it. If I can help transform education and make it better so people learn faster and remember more, I will have accomplished what I set out to do.
And you're very much on that track. Keep going. I love it. I hope you keep going. So if, and let's dive into, this is for me my favorite question.
If this was the last chance you had, though, to give a powerful lesson of truth to other, other visionaries, what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
It's a model that I created last year. I prepared for nine months to hike Mount Kilimanjaro last year.
And I'm not a hiker. I'm a biker. But I decided that it was time to hike Kilimanjaro. It had been on my bucket list for 30 years.
And when I went on safari that same year, I kept flying over Kilimanjaro. And I'm thinking two things. One, this has been on my bucket list for 30 years.
And two, you ain't getting any younger. So I thought I have to do this. So I came home and I signed up for a trekking company.
And then I bought my airline ticket. And then I prepared a nine month hiking schedule so that I would be in shape.
Because there's no way I'm going there nine months later and I'm not going to summit. And then I make sure that I get ready by not missing a workout day.
So what happens is I had committed to this because I got my ticket and I paid for my trek. Now I've got to get ready.
When I landed in Tanzania and I took that first step onto the trail, which was seven days up and two days down, that first step to me is the last solid commitment that says, here's the first step.
I am not quitting until I get to the summit. And I don't care if I'm crawling there on my hands and knees. I will summit.
And then you keep taking one step at a time. And it doesn't matter what happens between the first step and when you reach the summit.
Because there are problems and really hard spots, places where you're crawling on your hands and knees up rocks to get up a section.
But that doesn't matter because you've already set your goal and decided you're going to reach it.
Starting the new business is exactly like that. You decide what you're going to do. You prepare for it and get your game plan, your strategy in place.
And then when you take that first step, grit knows no limits. You don't quit until you reach the summit. And that's entrepreneurship.
I love that. I got two quotes out of that that I'm going to be able to tie back to the story and remember with great passion.
This is a huge moment for me. I appreciate you sharing that. You may never know why, nor others why how. That just means so much to me.
So I got I will summit and I got grit knows no limits. Is there another M.O. or quote that I missed in the process of the story that is kind of your go to quote?
Just curious.
Well, I think it's basically when you take the first step, it doesn't matter what happens in between. You don't quit until you reach the summit.
That's it is right there. Let's get all these memes out there right for everybody to be able to turn to so that they don't miss the opportunity to understand and unpack the wisdom that you just shared with that.
So that that is awesome. I'll give the team a little bit of time to just kind of share your brand.
Is there any final thoughts you'd like to share related to strategic planning or the AI powered custom video creation? We didn't talk too much about the strategic planning side.
But in essence, I think a lot of people are going to know they can gravitate towards you.
Plus, we're going to put for everybody listening in action steps on the landing page so that you know where to follow Dr.
Rivers that you can connect with her on specific materials that she's created.
Dr. Rivers, a few minutes for yourself. What would you like to talk about?
I just think being an entrepreneur is absolutely the best job in the whole world.
I remember watching the movie and it was something like Father the Bride or something.
And the kid came in or it was meet the parents is what it was.
And the kids says, yeah, I'm an entrepreneur and the prospective father in law says, oh, is that a euphemism for unemployed?
And sometimes it feels like that.
But the other part of is if you're a true entrepreneur, you really are unemployable.
And the the nine to five and someone else telling you how to do something instead of having the creativity figured out what you want to do.
And it just doesn't fit in.
There is a book by Dr. Doug Brackman and it's called Driven.
And it talks about how 10 percent of the world has this extra DNA where they are driven and they cannot quit being the entrepreneur and driven person that they are.
And if you've ever sat down to watch a two hour movie and you get up to get water and you get up to get something else and you get up to do.
And the person next to you says, can't you just sit here for two hours and not move?
And the answer is no, I can't.
And and we're built to move and to think.
And a lot of times you have to train yourself to have that shut down at night.
I remember I can almost hear the wheels turning at night and I've got to figure out how to not have it do that so I can actually sleep.
But if it starts again at 2 a.m., I'm sunk because I'm getting up and I'm writing down notes of things that I'm thinking about because your mind is driven to move things ahead to solve problems, to create things that people need and want.
You know what? At the end of the day, accept it.
One of the things the best thing about the whole book of Driven is this.
Doug Brackman says there's nothing wrong with you. You don't need to change. Embrace it and figure out how to channel it for the good of others.
And that was a great lesson. Absolutely.
And so those of you who are driven, I see two polar opposite ways that that occurs as well.
Oftentimes with entrepreneurs, I think I would have been a phenomenal sniper had I gotten into that.
Because I can I can sit and work on something for 18 hours right without being in or without interrupting without getting up when I get out, my legs will shake.
You know, because it's like, oh, you weren't supposed. Wow. It's like taking a drive from here to Canada from Texas to Canada, you know, one sitting.
And then at the same time that, you know, my instincts are super high and fast, too.
The the harmonization of those types of personalities is often what creates some of the best type of programs that are out there, too.
If you look at the founders of Google, they're also incredibly different.
You know, and learning to leverage those strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is super valuable.
Also, if you're in if you continue to end up in career positions where you just can't stand being involved in something that doesn't align with your values, that might be an inner entrepreneurial screaming at you to say, like, hey, go build a community or find a community that that supports these values and is doing something super meaningful with them.
So lots of lots of opportunities to learn from what Dr. River shared today.
So one call to action, I'd like to call out beyond the action steps, of course, is if you have a vision you want to share in the top right corner, you will see a button that says be our guest.
And if you click on that, it'll give you the opportunity to come on and share your vision with us in the show.
We would love to hear anybody's vision, who is looking at building something that's holistic, that's inclusive, that is meant to help the world become a better place.
And you get to join the stage after fantastic minds like Dr. Rivers. I mean, look at just how valuable what she's building is and what you're building, even if it's not as far along as Savon's AI, even if you're not the Elon Musk of the world yet.
Don't let those realities intimidate you and hide your vision because there are many people out there who need to who are going to want to support what you're up to, but are also going to be very inspired by the fact that you're just getting started.
And that's what this is all about, inspiring people to go and be their best self. So thanks for joining us on Vision Pros Live today, and we will see you all on the next episode.
Take care, everybody.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and be safe.