Embracing Simplicity: Ben Guttmann Shares Nuggets of Wisdom for Clear and Impactful Messaging

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we want things that are coming into our minds to be

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simple, to be easy, to be fluent.

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But when we're in charge of sending, when we're the ones speaking or

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writing or presenting, we have a really hard time doing that because

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internally we're battling stuff

Tim Winders: 00:00:28

What if the Secret to standing out in a world

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oversaturated with messages was embracing the power of simplicity?

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Today on Seek Go Create, we meet Ben Gutman, a marketing entrepreneur,

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educator, and author who's made it his life's work to unravel the

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complexities of human decision making.

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Ben has elevated brands such as Giants like the NFL and others with

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the belief that the simplest ideas Resonate the loudest as he releases

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his latest insights in a new book.

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Simply put, we're here to dive into the philosophy that less is truly more.

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Something that we love to discuss here

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Ben, welcome to Seek, Go Create.

Ben Guttmann: 00:01:08

Thanks for having me, Tim.

Ben Guttmann: 00:01:09

Great to be here.

Tim Winders: 00:01:10

Glad you're here too, Ben.

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Let me kick off with my icebreaker question.

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Someone asked you what you do, what do you tell them?

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that's a harder question than it sounds, right?

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for a long time, the answer was that I ran a marketing agency

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called Digital Natives Group.

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we had a lot of fun.

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You mentioned a couple of the clients there and, from the NFL

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to I Love New York to Comcast.

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And, it was, what a journey.

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I started in an old professor's basement, working with the local ice cream shop

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and Eventually, punched our way up to these bigger clients, got an office, got

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employees, all this, all the trappings.

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And then one day we decided to sell the business.

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And so that was about a year ago, almost two years ago.

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And it was, that was a journey in and of itself, the sale process.

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But since then, I've, helped off board that business.

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I've done a number of different kind of consulting projects.

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I've done some speaking, I've done some teaching.

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And what we're talking about a little bit today is I just wrote

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my first book, simply put why clear messages win and how to design them.

Tim Winders: 00:02:13

And I want to talk, I want to do a deep dive into the book later,

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but the reason I told you when we started, one of the reasons I was attracted to your

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message was the message of simplicity.

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And so like the big picture question I want to ask is, has

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that always been something that's been important to you, or is that a

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recent revelation that Simplicity is important in the world we're in today.

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it's been a little bit of both.

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in my experience working with clients, oftentimes I would come in.

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And they would, I would ask them, okay, so like, what do you, what do you do?

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And what are you selling?

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What's your product or service or idea?

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And they would have the hardest time articulating that things that people

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worked all day, every day on, they'd have a hard time and so I would sit there and

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I would just, I would be I use this term in the book later on, an enlightened

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idiot, which is what do you mean?

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Oh, what do you mean by this?

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and eventually being able to reframe what they are saying or trying to

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say in something that is clear.

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And to the point, that often ended up being like one of our,

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Like super powers a little bit in some of the work that we did.

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And so later on, after I sold the business, you start to think

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a little bit, that part of your brain rather, it doesn't turn off.

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Like you, you don't have to work for the clients anymore, but the like

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problem solving that you did for them is still the kind of is still running

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in the back of your head all the time.

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And so you're questioning why does some things work and other

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things don't, why are some messages heard and understood and.

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made use of when others fall flat and that's what led to the research

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that ended up leading to the book.

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And as it turned out, the answer was simple.

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And so that was how we put them together.

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So it was a little bit before that was the inkling to this, but

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then it was only when I really.

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Started interrogating, why does some marketing work?

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Why does some, emails are proposals or recent patients?

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Why are they effective and other ones aren't?

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That's when I began to identify it with a little bit more concreteness around it.

Tim Winders: 00:04:15

have you always been one that looked at things that may be complicated,

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complex, I know in the book, you break down the difference between complexity

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and complicating, but have you been one that could look at things that were like.

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there's a lot going on here and narrow down the reason why I bring it up is

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that I do believe that's one of my superpowers is when I go in and work

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with organizations as a coach, I can kind of, I don't even see all the

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clutter and things, but I'm trying to narrow down on that one thing that can

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have an impact or can make a change.

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And it sounds like, have you always been that way?

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Oh, in, in many ways, it sounds like we're cut from the same cloth

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in terms of that with that, sometimes.

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It's like you just, you talk to somebody and they have such

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a, they have such a block about something and then you realize,

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it's really just X or it's Y or Z.

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And it's this one tiny piece that you can see from the outside and that's actually

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when I looked at the research, that is one of the ways which people can get simple is

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by, by taking that outsider perspective.

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But that is definitely something that.

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That would always, be present in stuff I did either at work or, volunteer and

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community stuff that I've done or stuff in school would always be present of saying,

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okay, let's, this is what matters and this is what doesn't and focus on what does.

Tim Winders: 00:05:41

I think you said you were married.

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The only thing I've seen, and I've been married over 35 years, I'm not sure that

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works well in marriage relationships.

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Any thoughts on that real quick?

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Tips before we tell people to all of a sudden go and tell

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people, by the way, here's what's really important and what's not.

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any thoughts come to mind?

Ben Guttmann: 00:06:00

Oh boy.

Ben Guttmann: 00:06:01

yeah, I've been, I've married a little bit less than 35 years, but the.

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I think you're right.

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I think you have any of these things that you look at from a business book.

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if you ever try to apply them to a marriage, you're just going

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to fail because it's completely different of a, of an arena.

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And, you're probably just going to get in trouble for trying to

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apply some of those things, in it.

Tim Winders: 00:06:23

Yeah, I could just picture myself.

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Hey, listen, sweetie.

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I just want you to know that most of what you just said is not important.

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We need to really pair that back and let's get focused on a simple, yeah, no,

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I could just see that's not a good thing.

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that comes into though, having that EQ of knowing when to use

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tools and when not to use tools.

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let's, let's go into, what I'd love to know in the research that you've

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done, especially in the background with working with huge brands, Obviously

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our culture, we have gotten a lot of things that are coming in at us.

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That may not be critical in our messaging or communicating or marketing or getting

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word out, just all of those things.

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How have we come to be where we're at?

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What, why do we have such a, is it complicated or complex?

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What's the right word we should be using here?

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how has it gotten so convoluted?

Tim Winders: 00:07:21

Maybe that's a word to use too.

Ben Guttmann: 00:07:24

Oh, yeah.

Ben Guttmann: 00:07:24

so I, I do semantically break down the difference between complexity

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and complication, complex is when something has a lot of pieces and

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they're interconnected in a lot of intricate ways, and that's often

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a benign state of nature, right?

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Like things like international diplomacy is complex.

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The human eyeball is complex.

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But complicated is when something is complex, but really could be simple.

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It's something that's artificially created complexity.

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complicated is a verb, right?

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And so you can complicate something and make it more difficult than it has to be.

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So while international diplomacy is complex, like your bad self assembly

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furniture instructions, those are.

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And so the goal, there's no way we will put up of complexity when it's worth it.

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but we will not put up with complicated when something.

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it's something that isn't a motivating factor for us.

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if we can avoid, if we can pull things towards the simple side, we're going to

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match up a lot more with kind of what our, psychology wants in terms of a messaging.

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But I'll back up to the other piece you said too, which is

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about how did we get here?

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it's not particularly insightful to say it's obvious that we are in this

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environment that is louder and busier and more distracting than ever, right?

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We, the average American spends 13 hours a day consuming some form of media.

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it's a crazy amount of messaging.

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Both stuff we seek out and stuff that's pushed towards us that is just

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bombarding our brains all the time And what happens is our kind of natural?

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Defense mechanisms kick in which is to say, okay.

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there's lots of bits of stimuli that are out in the world A lot of them are

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gonna hit our senses But most of them are going to be thrown away immediately.

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we grew up as a species in this environment where a lot

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of things wanted to eat us.

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And we're looking around and we're saying, Is that rustling of a leaf over

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there or that branch that just snapped?

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Is that something that's important to us?

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if it is, then I start to pay attention to it and I can...

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And I can react to it, but if it's not, I quickly dispose of that stimulus

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and I move on to, something else.

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And so what's happening now is we do the same thing, right?

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if I see, if there's an advertisement that pops up on, on a website that

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I'm on, there's something known as banner blindness, which has

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been documented for decades now, actually, where we don't even see it.

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We didn't even say like our eyes just immediately in a subconscious way.

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we recognize what looks like an ad and we say, this is not important to us.

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And we immediately dispose of that visible stimulus and we move

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on to other parts of the page.

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And so that's the kind of thing that's happening over.

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There's such a huge amount of stimulation, and just noise.

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that the window, which we get to communicate with

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anybody is incredibly small.

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It's a small, and it's a small little like sliver of a window that gets cracked open.

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And the more we can, understand that as a communicator, the, and the more

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humble we can be as a communicator because of that, the better we're

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going to be at making the most of it.

Tim Winders: 00:10:36

I think one of the things from my perspective, I just

Tim Winders: 00:10:40

turned 60 years old a couple days ago, so I'm looking back on a pre

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digit, thanks, on a pre digital...

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World and then moving into, the early internet and I wasn't around,

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when they were carving things on stone or anything like that.

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I know that some people are probably putting comments

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down in the video I, I think.

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It's interesting that I still do have a perspective on pre digital, whereas

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like my children, younger generation and all that's everything's been

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connected in that, you know, we had cookies and we were attached to things.

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And so anywhere you went, they knew it digitally, you had this digital, trail.

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And I think some of that's changing cause they're trying to break that up.

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But I think there was this reward for just more stuff, it's let's just keep.

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Creating stuff and the message that I'm getting from you is maybe

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there's too much stuff out there.

Tim Winders: 00:11:39

Is that correct or incorrect?

Ben Guttmann: 00:11:41

it's not really even just for me.

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if you look at.

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the survey data, everybody says that they hate advertisements that

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they don't want to see the ones that are the most distracting.

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if you look at the usage data of like meditation apps or download data of,

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of ad blockers, all these numbers point in the same direction, right?

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Even the platforms themselves, even Google and Apple have been, who benefit

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the most from us using more of these.

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These devices and these technologies, they have been on uh, rolling out

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software and features that enable us to restrict our usage on them.

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So there is a general societal trend in terms of saying, ah, man, this is like.

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this is too much.

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This is a lot of notifications.

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the average person gets like 160 some odd emails a day.

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And that seems actually kind of low for a lot of people.

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if, when I asked my students how much time they spend on their phones,

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and then I asked them to actually go pull out their phones and show

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me that and then yell out the data, the first number is already high.

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They think they're using it a lot.

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And then when they look at the data, that's even a higher number a lot of times

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about how much we're using our stuff.

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So it's just, it is a noisy, world.

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and this is something, but the, here's the thing we've also, we've

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been complaining about the ever, quickening and loudening noise of

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the world for centuries, actually.

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So this is something you can look back and you can find, writings, from people.

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In the 1300s, the 1500s, 1800s that are complaining about, Oh my God,

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there's so much, so many books these days and so many, and we can't, we

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can't read everything and we have so many newspapers and we can't do it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:13:16

Oh my God, there's radio.

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Oh my God, there's television.

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So it's not particularly unique.

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It is accelerating for sure.

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We have always, we've always been.

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in many ways, just tired of this level of stimulus.

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And it goes to show that again, the idea of simplicity, as our

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frame of reference for how we can.

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interact in that environment as the, our kind of guiding principle for

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it, is something that, that will work now and has worked for a long time.

Tim Winders: 00:13:48

Yeah, I agree with the history of it.

Tim Winders: 00:13:49

I was actually, I was reading some scriptures.

Tim Winders: 00:13:52

Yeah, I was reading the book of Acts and there was this comment

Tim Winders: 00:13:55

about the crowd getting all riled up when it was Paul that was arrested.

Tim Winders: 00:14:00

I'll get into details there.

Tim Winders: 00:14:01

And I actually underlined it.

Tim Winders: 00:14:03

And I said, This is like a social media thing.

Tim Winders: 00:14:06

This is like the crowd got all fired up because this, guy that was

Tim Winders: 00:14:10

coming out against their religion.

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And then it made a comment and it said, but the crowd was not even sure why they

Tim Winders: 00:14:17

were there and why they were excited.

Tim Winders: 00:14:19

I'm going, that sounds like today.

Tim Winders: 00:14:21

That's exactly today.

Tim Winders: 00:14:24

so one thing that's interesting, and I'm just talking about this

Tim Winders: 00:14:27

big topic of just simplicity, and then we'll dive into more some.

Tim Winders: 00:14:30

Tips and techniques that, that you have in the book.

Tim Winders: 00:14:32

But one of the things that I've noticed with myself is that I've been on a

Tim Winders: 00:14:38

simplicity journey with everything in my life, not just messaging

Tim Winders: 00:14:45

and things like that is, is that.

Tim Winders: 00:14:48

You, or is this really just in the marketing realm or is this causing

Tim Winders: 00:14:53

you to spill over into other things?

Tim Winders: 00:14:55

what's been your journey, especially as you've gotten prepared and

Tim Winders: 00:14:58

written the book and moved into this and seeing how important it

Tim Winders: 00:15:01

is for just the marketing world.

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:05

Oh, I wouldn't, yeah, that's a good question.

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:07

I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily, a lifestyle minimalist.

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:11

I don't think that, like the Marie Kondo is the role I do reference,

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:14

her a few times because she actually.

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:18

I do like her attitude on things, which is, it's spark joy, right?

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Like what, every item you own should serve a purpose to spark joy.

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And I think that attitude really actually translates when I talk

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about the more intangible aspects of simplicity and communication.

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In marketing.

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:35

does it spark joy?

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:36

What's the, what's the translation of that?

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does it, is it what, is it everything you need and only what you need, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:41

That, that's what we're talking about.

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:42

It's not saying that every single word has to be cut in

Ben Guttmann: 00:15:47

your email and your presentations would only have three slides.

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It's not saying that it's about saying, how do you, how do you create.

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A piece of communication that has everything you need, but only what

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you need is that you can get rid of the things that are distraction

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and focus on the things that are actually conveying the message, the

Ben Guttmann: 00:16:06

core meaning of what you want to do.

Ben Guttmann: 00:16:08

I um, I've personally, I, even though I'm.

Ben Guttmann: 00:16:11

In marketing, I try to minimize the amount of marketing messaging that hits my brain

Ben Guttmann: 00:16:16

of the same, in my life, I try to put on ad blockers like all the people I just

Ben Guttmann: 00:16:21

quoted before, I try to unsubscribe from emails when I'm not enjoying the list.

Ben Guttmann: 00:16:26

So it's been something that, is also personal in addition to

Ben Guttmann: 00:16:29

being something that's on the, the business side of things.

Tim Winders: 00:16:32

The reason I bring it up is I don't think minimalism

Tim Winders: 00:16:35

is the right term for me.

Tim Winders: 00:16:37

I've read there's a guy named Josh Becker that writes about that.

Tim Winders: 00:16:40

And of course the Marie Kondo, does this bring you joy?

Tim Winders: 00:16:43

I don't necessarily think that way about things and stuff, but,

Tim Winders: 00:16:48

there's a book called by Greg McKeown called essentialism.

Tim Winders: 00:16:52

And that word seems to resonate with me a lot is what is essential?

Tim Winders: 00:16:57

For me to do what I need to do.

Tim Winders: 00:16:59

and it's fascinating that you bring it up.

Tim Winders: 00:17:01

I've actually, a couple of months ago took all of my subscription

Tim Winders: 00:17:07

emails and I rolled them up.

Tim Winders: 00:17:10

I think it's an app called unroll me.

Tim Winders: 00:17:11

I don't know much about them.

Tim Winders: 00:17:12

I'm not necessarily promoting them.

Tim Winders: 00:17:13

and so I'll wake up in the morning and I really have no emails in my inbox.

Tim Winders: 00:17:18

Because they're all subscriptions.

Tim Winders: 00:17:19

Now if, if you had been, if you had sent me an email, before we recorded

Tim Winders: 00:17:22

here, I would have seen that, but it's amazing how few I get that are personal.

Tim Winders: 00:17:28

I'm on subscriptions and they roll it up and I get it later in the day and I've

Tim Winders: 00:17:32

gotten to where I look through them.

Tim Winders: 00:17:34

And I don't do anything with them anymore.

Tim Winders: 00:17:36

So I've like freed up almost an hour of my day just by, and I've got no notification,

Tim Winders: 00:17:42

I've never had notifications on my phone.

Tim Winders: 00:17:44

I don't like things pinging and buzzing and all that, but I do want to say

Tim Winders: 00:17:48

here, I want to acknowledge the irony.

Tim Winders: 00:17:52

That we're talking about simplicity and less while we're recording

Tim Winders: 00:17:56

a one hour conversation, that's going to be on YouTube and put

Tim Winders: 00:18:00

all over the socials and podcasts.

Tim Winders: 00:18:03

And that you wrote a book called simply put this, I think a

Tim Winders: 00:18:07

200 and something page book.

Tim Winders: 00:18:08

I do.

Tim Winders: 00:18:09

Cause someone is going to say what they're talking about simplicity, man.

Tim Winders: 00:18:14

I've got an hour.

Tim Winders: 00:18:14

I've got to listen in on.

Tim Winders: 00:18:16

because it takes effort, right?

Tim Winders: 00:18:17

This is something that you have to go against the grain to think this way.

Tim Winders: 00:18:21

Correct.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:23

Oh yeah.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:23

I actually, I think that's like the first paragraph on page one there, which I

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:27

say, look, I understand the irony here.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:29

It's a 208 page book about how to say things simply.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:32

It seems like I didn't take my own advice.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:35

And what I always say is if it's enough to hear.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:41

Simple messages are more effective than complicated ones.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:45

Then great.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:45

Like you don't need the rest of the book.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:47

You can, you don't have to buy it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:48

You don't have to read it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:49

You don't have to, you could turn off the show.

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:51

But if you're interested in the kind of why of that or of

Ben Guttmann: 00:18:56

the how behind connecting those pieces, that is surprisingly deep.

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:00

And that is something that Will take those other 200 and some

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:05

odd pages to, to tell that story.

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:07

I joke a little bit, and we were talking about this before, that

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:12

this is, certainly a book that used to judge by its cover, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:16

it, if the title and the subtitle and the design and the back cover

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:20

copy, if that stuff doesn't clearly explain what's in it for you, then.

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:27

You know what?

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:28

I didn't do my job.

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:28

And so you should, and you should put it aside and do something else.

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:31

but the goal is uh, to not just give platitudes, but give people the real

Ben Guttmann: 00:19:37

understanding about how to put this type of, this type of practice into action.

Tim Winders: 00:19:41

Yeah, I think that's good.

Tim Winders: 00:19:42

And I want us to go into that.

Tim Winders: 00:19:44

More in depth here in just a few minutes, but before we leave your

Tim Winders: 00:19:48

background and history, and we've got probably, leader types, some people

Tim Winders: 00:19:54

in the faith world, some people in business world, entrepreneurs

Tim Winders: 00:19:57

and all that, I think it would be.

Tim Winders: 00:20:00

Kind of a poor host of me.

Tim Winders: 00:20:02

If I didn't ask a few other learning points, tips, things that you gained

Tim Winders: 00:20:09

from your marketing agency, things that you learn, things that you

Tim Winders: 00:20:12

would never do again, or things that boy, I really learned this

Tim Winders: 00:20:15

outside of the simplicity message.

Tim Winders: 00:20:17

We're about to really go into that even more.

Tim Winders: 00:20:19

working with the NFL.

Tim Winders: 00:20:21

I love New York.

Tim Winders: 00:20:22

those are some big ones, you know, local ice cream shops.

Tim Winders: 00:20:24

Which could be more exciting than those other two, by the way.

Tim Winders: 00:20:27

Just, I just want to put that out there.

Tim Winders: 00:20:28

what can you share just that might just be good ideas, good tips

Tim Winders: 00:20:33

that, that we all need to know.

Ben Guttmann: 00:20:36

Well, I'll tell you that, this is a tip and also a riff on that,

Ben Guttmann: 00:20:39

which is something like the local ice cream shop can be a harder client than

Ben Guttmann: 00:20:44

the national football league, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:20:46

Like it is that's kind of actually a big lesson when I talk to my.

Ben Guttmann: 00:20:49

students in particular, a lot of them who are thinking about starting a

Ben Guttmann: 00:20:52

business at some point is it is like 90 percent as hard to sell something

Ben Guttmann: 00:20:57

for a hundred bucks as it is to sell something for a thousand dollars.

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:01

and that applies for a widget.

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:03

And that also applies for professional services to the work of making

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:07

that connection, convincing somebody that you're legit and

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:11

developing kind of a scope of services and then executing on it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:16

If I'm doing a website for somebody when we first started for a few

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:19

thousand dollars as opposed to something that was a 100, 000 plus

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:25

dollar project later on as we grew.

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:28

they're not super different in terms of the technical work

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:33

that goes into the end process.

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:35

What is different?

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:36

That's an end product.

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:37

What is different is the process that gets us there.

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:40

It is the discovery and the planning and the reliability that we have and

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:44

our expertise and our insight, all that stuff is what people pay for.

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:48

And that's the big difference is a lot of people get stuck thinking Well, you know,

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:53

I was talking to somebody recently who couldn't believe ever that we charged.

Ben Guttmann: 00:21:57

30 or 40, 000 for a relatively that wasn't our biggest project

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:01

to do a 30 or 40, 000 website.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:04

they wouldn't believe it couldn't, how do you, how do you justify that in an

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:07

age where I can go get, somebody to do it for a couple of grand on fiber.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:10

I was like, go ahead and do with them.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:12

And honestly, if you're really good at your own stuff and you want to

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:15

babysit them, like the end product is not going to be 10 times better.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:20

The PR, the people that are hiring us to do 30 or a hundred

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:23

thousand dollar projects.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:25

are doing that because they want somebody who is a professional who they can,

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:30

they have a process, they can roll, they can call on them to fix things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:33

they don't have, they have somebody to maintain stuff later on.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:37

They have somebody who asked the right questions.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:39

They know people who can solve this problem.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:41

They're charging for all their, they're paying for all of that.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:45

They're not paying for the end process.

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:48

and so that's one of the parts of value on the, other kind of aspect of that

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:52

though, is if you are dealing with that ice cream shop and they are going to

Ben Guttmann: 00:22:57

pay you 1, 000 for something or 2, 000, that is money that is either going to

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:02

you or is like their next vacation.

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:05

And if you're dealing with the NFL or I live New York or Comcast

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:08

and these are the big brands, the 100, 000 they're paying you.

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:12

is just a lie.

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:13

It's a budget item.

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:14

it's part of their marketing budget.

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:16

It's nobody, it's no skin off anybody's back.

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:18

It's not somebody's bonus that they didn't get to take.

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:21

And so there's a, there's this kind of healthy remove that

Ben Guttmann: 00:23:24

allows for investment instead of thinking of it as just an expense.

Tim Winders: 00:23:29

What, this is a little bit of a trick question and you may not

Tim Winders: 00:23:32

be able to answer, but looking back, who do you enjoy working with more?

Tim Winders: 00:23:38

The big, we'll call them big operations where you may not be sitting down

Tim Winders: 00:23:42

with, the owners, you're with a group and things like that, or say smaller.

Tim Winders: 00:23:46

the reason I bring that up while you're thinking is that I've worked in large

Tim Winders: 00:23:51

corporations and I've also worked with some, what we'll call solopreneurs.

Tim Winders: 00:23:56

And I have found the sweet spot that I like is where I could sit

Tim Winders: 00:23:59

down with at least the leadership team and interact with them.

Tim Winders: 00:24:03

the paychecks may be a little bit smaller.

Tim Winders: 00:24:05

But the impact is different for me.

Tim Winders: 00:24:08

Looking back, is there one or the other that, you would go, you know, and if I had

Tim Winders: 00:24:13

to do it again, I think I would work with blank trick question I know, but go ahead.

Tim Winders: 00:24:19

That's why I'm here to ask these tough questions.

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:22

I love it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:23

I think that it's less so much kind of the scale as it is the individual.

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:27

I, there are people we worked with who we like went to their weddings, the people

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:32

who years later, I'm still, I still keep in touch with, there are people

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:35

who, you know, when people on my team have had kind of family emergencies,

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:39

I've called and checked in on them.

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:41

and it becomes this really warm kind of intimate relationship with some of the

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:44

folks that we worked with and that's who I try to seek out as much as I can.

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:49

and to the extent where sometimes I will do something my work now or before when

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:54

we had the agency, we will do something.

Ben Guttmann: 00:24:56

We have a good person for less money because it was just, it was

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:01

worth it for the relationship.

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:02

It was because they were almost our, you hesitate to use the word friend because

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:05

that implies that, Oh, you're doing it for your friend, but they became friends.

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:08

A lot of the people that, that, that's what I sought.

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:12

Out more what I would, what I'd recommend anybody seeking out is don't work of

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:16

assholes work of good people because if you work with jerks, you become a jerk.

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:21

Eventually you spent, you spend a lot of time with the people you

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:25

work with, whether that's your colleagues, whether that's your client

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:28

or customers or service providers.

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:30

You just spend a lot of time with them and if that is time that's draining

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:36

you and if they're being mean and they're, trying to use their resources

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:40

or powers or whatever for, for lack of a better term, evil, they're trying to

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:43

make the world a world, a worst place.

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:45

you know what, eventually you can't just say, Hey, it's a paycheck

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:48

and I'm getting out of there.

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:49

At some point it becomes your responsibility as well.

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:51

And so I'm proud mostly.

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:56

We were able to say no to when I look back on this after we sold the

Ben Guttmann: 00:25:58

business, I was like, I'm proud of a lot of the work that we did, but

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:02

I'm really proud of the moments where somebody who we thought was an unsavory

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:06

character came knocking on our door.

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:09

And even though it's a small business, you can always use the check.

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:13

We said, Hey, get out of here.

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:14

we don't want to work with this person.

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:15

We don't want to work with this brand.

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:16

and that is something that.

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:19

that I always try to advise people to, to maintain is that kind of like

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:22

for the more do work with people and with brands and organizations that you

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:26

can feel morally comfortable doing.

Tim Winders: 00:26:28

I love the moral because it sounds like you're a better guy than I am.

Tim Winders: 00:26:32

There were, I actually had two situations pop into my head

Tim Winders: 00:26:36

while you were saying that.

Tim Winders: 00:26:38

That I know that I added a zero or two on the end of the, proposal because

Tim Winders: 00:26:45

I knew it was going to be a hassle.

Tim Winders: 00:26:48

I knew it was going to be tough and my thought was if they

Tim Winders: 00:26:51

pay me enough it's worth it.

Tim Winders: 00:26:53

So you're obviously much more virtuous and, did you ever do that?

Tim Winders: 00:26:56

You never did that, did you?

Ben Guttmann: 00:26:58

it's easy to sound like that, but at the time you still think

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:01

about it a tiny bit, cause you're like, Hey, payroll's coming up again

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:05

and there's other client is late on their paycheck on their check.

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:07

And so you, it's a debate, some, sometimes it's so odorous that you immediately.

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:14

you can say no, but there's plenty of stuff in the gray area that, that

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:18

sometimes you go, Oh man, like we could do it, but like not put it on our

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:21

portfolio and think about it for a second.

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:22

Then you sleep on it and you're like, no.

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:24

It's, it's not something you want to do.

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:26

But, yeah, sometimes people would say, I had a couple of partners and

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:30

my partners would say, Yeah, everybody goes through these kind of highs

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:33

and lows where you have more money coming in and less money coming in.

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:37

And somebody can say, what if we added that zero as you're saying, and then we

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:42

didn't have to tell anybody about it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:43

I'm like, I don't want to have to do work.

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:44

I don't want to tell anybody about, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:46

So ultimately we always came down to the side of saying, let's do the

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:49

thing that protects us morally and also selfishly protects our brand.

Ben Guttmann: 00:27:54

Is that not being a company that works with those type of characters?

Tim Winders: 00:27:57

I think something going back to that word I used earlier,

Tim Winders: 00:27:59

essentialism, something that we all go through is coming to terms with

Tim Winders: 00:28:05

what's important to us in life.

Tim Winders: 00:28:08

And it sounds to me just from reading some of your stuff and seeing it sounds to me

Tim Winders: 00:28:12

like teacher, educator, someone who shares information is Something that's core to

Tim Winders: 00:28:19

you at what point, and I didn't see this anywhere, so you could share the story.

Tim Winders: 00:28:24

At what point did you move, back to, I think it was your alma mater and

Tim Winders: 00:28:28

start teaching and become a professor.

Tim Winders: 00:28:30

And I don't know if that linked in with when you started writing the book and all

Tim Winders: 00:28:34

that, but get, give a little bit of that.

Tim Winders: 00:28:36

Because to me, that's part of what the journey we go through

Tim Winders: 00:28:39

in life is identifying, you know, what I kind of knew early on, I

Tim Winders: 00:28:43

was a coach, I was supposed to.

Tim Winders: 00:28:45

Coach, I avoided it, but then I migrated back to it.

Tim Winders: 00:28:49

So a professor, come on, that's unique.

Ben Guttmann: 00:28:52

I've been doing it for a while now.

Ben Guttmann: 00:28:53

I did it for, I started about 10 years ago, nine and nine and a half years ago.

Ben Guttmann: 00:28:57

I started, teaching, at Baruch college, which is where I also went to

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:01

school and it was on a, like a whim.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:04

I was at, for lack of the abridged version of it, it was, I was at an alumni event.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:09

I saw the department chair at the time and I basically said,

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:13

your shit stinks about something.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:15

It was about like, what are their digital marketing things?

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:18

Cause it was a new track they just had and they didn't have any

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:20

like real good material for it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:22

cause I guess, but I guess spoke in somebody's class

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:24

like the previous semester.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:26

And so I, they basically turn around and say, okay, why don't

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:29

you do something about it?

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:30

And I said, okay.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:31

And I put together this course and I've been teaching it now for my 19th semester,

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:37

my 20th semesters coming up in the spring.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:39

and I love it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:40

It's like the best thing.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:41

It's so fun.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:42

I go, sometimes I have a very large class.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:44

I have 70 or 80 students.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:45

Sometimes I have 20 students or so depending on kind of what the.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:49

You know what the semester is.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:51

And I like them both.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:53

you get a lot of energy from the big group.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:55

You get really good relationships from the small groups.

Ben Guttmann: 00:29:58

I will do it until they kick me out until they stop letting me

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:01

be there to talk about things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:04

it, it's not something I do in a full time basis.

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:07

It's not something that I probably would want to do on a full time

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:10

basis, but I've enjoyed it as I call it like my favorite hobby because.

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:15

it's the city university of new york.

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:17

It's a public institution.

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:19

you're not really making your money doing it But if you're able to make a positive

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:24

impact on somebody's life by being at the right place at the right time and these

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:29

students are seniors in college about to make the kind of biggest single change in

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:35

their life, which is going from student to Adult basically, it's a weird honor to

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:43

be there at that time and to try to nudge them in the right direction and to be

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:47

there as a resource and to see them come into them, into their selves at that time.

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:51

Because, the analogy I make at that moment for them every

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:56

semester and as we're talking.

Ben Guttmann: 00:30:58

I think this is my next class I have for them or in two weeks, is I

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:02

tell this analogy of the escalator, which is if you're a five year

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:06

old, 15 year old, 20 year old, at some point you're on an escalator.

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:11

as long as you don't really screw up, you're going from grade

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:13

one to two to three and you're going to high school to college.

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:18

And unless you jump off or get pushed off for the median person, you're just.

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:23

It's going to keep going.

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:24

Spring semester, summer, fall semester, spring semester,

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:28

summer, and it keeps on going up.

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:31

And at some point where these students are right then is that the escalator

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:34

stops and you have to figure out you, you get off and it's your

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:37

responsibility to figure out what it is that you want to do in your life.

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:41

and if that's to make a job, to get a job, to join a cause, whatever it is.

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:47

I just try to impress upon them that like this is an important moment and that

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:53

there's more opportunity than they think there is because a lot of folks think,

Ben Guttmann: 00:31:56

I just have to go continue on the next thing that looks like this escalator,

Ben Guttmann: 00:32:00

but in reality, they can go out and they can do a ton of different things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:32:03

And that's what I try to connect with.

Ben Guttmann: 00:32:06

what that's where I look as like my, like an unstated mission a little

Ben Guttmann: 00:32:10

bit in, in the teaching is to talk about the, uh, incredible expanse

Ben Guttmann: 00:32:16

of opportunity that's out there.

Ben Guttmann: 00:32:17

There's

Tim Winders: 00:32:19

So one of the things that kind of fascinated me in 10 years, and

Tim Winders: 00:32:23

I'm thinking back, I know where we are now recording in late 2023, go back

Tim Winders: 00:32:27

10 years, 2013, something like that.

Tim Winders: 00:32:29

And I'm thinking about all this happening.

Tim Winders: 00:32:31

Then have you noticed.

Tim Winders: 00:32:34

any trends or things that excite you or concern you or bother you

Tim Winders: 00:32:41

or anything about, I'm guessing most of them are young people.

Tim Winders: 00:32:46

It's not, if it's a city school, there's some adults older in there or most of them

Ben Guttmann: 00:32:51

a handful, but most of them are 20 or 21 years

Ben Guttmann: 00:32:54

old that I'm, that I have.

Ben Guttmann: 00:32:55

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:32:56

Perfect.

Tim Winders: 00:32:56

so just a couple, what are you observing?

Tim Winders: 00:32:59

what's going on with that generation that's coming along?

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:02

I think the kids are all right.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:04

And I'll put it that way.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:05

I think that the.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:07

A few things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:08

A few things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:09

I'll tell you one broader piece is COVID was a complete, just

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:14

earthquake for this age cohort.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:18

the students that I had are seniors, so they're usually in

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:21

their last one or two semesters.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:24

The, three, two years that I was basically teaching remote, like one,

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:29

and I think it was three semesters or maybe four that I had that were, at least

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:33

partially, online, that was really tough.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:36

It was really tough because, the class wasn't built for that.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:40

These students didn't sign up for this.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:42

people just weren't engaged.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:43

I'm, I wasn't teaching at a hundred percent myself because I'm sitting here

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:48

at the same computer that I just spent eight hours working on for my agency.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:54

And then.

Ben Guttmann: 00:33:55

At night, I have to just go stare at the computer again, looking at 40 gray

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:00

boxes because nobody had their camera on because, you can't, you could be

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:04

the policy was you couldn't even ask them to turn the camera on, which I

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:07

totally understand why it was because it was chaotic times, but it just didn't

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:10

lead to a good learning environment.

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:12

So I think there was a couple semesters.

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:13

There were people really had A hard time absorbing the material and then a

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:20

couple of semesters after people came back and it's really, it's only kind of

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:23

this semester that it's fully that it feels like we're like 95 percent back.

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:28

there just wasn't as much energy and engagement in the classroom.

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:32

and this is something I spoke to other people at my school, other

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:34

people across, across the country.

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:37

would be that they're just, I had to come like highly caffeinated.

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:41

I'll put it that way.

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:42

I had to come and bring a ton of energy every single night to get the same amount

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:48

of response that I would get back on like my bad nights, in previous years, only

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:54

now is it beginning to the students that I have now I've had enough like normal

Ben Guttmann: 00:34:59

life, since the pandemic has tapered out, that they're beginning to, to,

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:05

Act the way they did a few years ago.

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:07

So that's all to say, I wonder what's going to happen to this cohort.

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:11

As they progressed through their careers, there's going to be a good kind of

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:15

three or four or five years worth of students who at different points hit

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:19

them in high school or college when they're in that pivotal maturity stage

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:22

that I think it'll be, this will be a defining question for the next generation

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:27

is what's going to happen to that.

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:29

So that's the big piece.

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:30

And again, I'm not, again, I'm part time, I'm part time adjunct, so

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:34

this is not, this is not something that, you know, I did any sort of

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:39

empirical research on the other thing.

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:41

I will say I did add a, I did add a, uh, what's it called a focus group

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:47

class to my syllabus a couple of years ago, because I was curious.

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:51

I would always talk to them informally, but I wanted to

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:53

do it in a more formal way.

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:54

I was curious about how do they use technology?

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:57

How do they use social media?

Ben Guttmann: 00:35:58

How do they use their phones, websites, everything else?

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:01

and it's definitely changed a lot.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:02

Instagram stays very popular.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:04

Tick tock obviously rose a lot.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:06

Snapchat's gone on this kind of wild ride.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:08

a lot of them have a little bit of anxiety about how much they use their

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:11

devices now as I didn't see that same level of concern a few years ago.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:16

and I write up a blog post about this most semesters.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:19

And so I, I have a few of them you can dig through, but it's, it is interesting

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:23

now to see this is a generation that has Facebook, but doesn't really use Facebook.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:27

Facebook is a utility to have.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:29

And when I was in college, like Facebook was the coolest

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:32

thing on the planet, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:33

Like it was brand new at the time.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:35

It's a big, it's a big difference.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:37

in terms of how social media is viewed.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:40

and I think that is a big defining aspect of their technology.

Ben Guttmann: 00:36:43

Of their technological lives.

Tim Winders: 00:36:45

Facebook is where old people like me hang out, I think is the way

Tim Winders: 00:36:47

they perceive that, which probably pretty darn accurate, if they're pegging that.

Tim Winders: 00:36:53

One, one bridge question that I want to go from the teaching and

Tim Winders: 00:36:57

students to back to the simplicity discussion is, I want to bring up AI.

Tim Winders: 00:37:04

I want to ask in this, I know there's general stuff.

Tim Winders: 00:37:08

I know it's not necessarily expertise.

Tim Winders: 00:37:10

So this is observational from you.

Tim Winders: 00:37:12

What are you seeing the impact being of AI with maybe that generation?

Tim Winders: 00:37:19

And then we'll start merging into how AI might be impacting this.

Tim Winders: 00:37:23

Simply put message that you're attempting to get out to the world.

Tim Winders: 00:37:27

So let's bridge with AI.

Tim Winders: 00:37:29

How's that for a segue?

Ben Guttmann: 00:37:31

Oh, yeah.

Ben Guttmann: 00:37:32

So AI is the most, I guess revolutionary seems like a big puffy word, which the,

Ben Guttmann: 00:37:42

piece of technology since the iPhone.

Ben Guttmann: 00:37:44

And before that it was the internet.

Ben Guttmann: 00:37:46

And before that it was the personal computer, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:37:47

it is.

Ben Guttmann: 00:37:48

It has every bit of app practical application that the hype around

Ben Guttmann: 00:37:53

something like web three or crypto or metaverse, had, but never materialized.

Ben Guttmann: 00:37:58

I never was a huge, believer in, in crypto and, and any other kind of metaverse type

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:05

stuff, just because, as somebody who works in that space and I would use it and I'd

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:10

always be, I would always be trying to figure out how to, stay on these trends.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:15

I realized that a lot of that was hype and very little substance was there.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:18

AI is one of those things where there is a lot of hype, but there is still a very

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:22

great deal amount of substance below.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:24

I'll put it this way.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:25

I don't ban the students from using it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:29

I don't, go out and encourage them to use it for things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:32

I say, if you want to go use it to augment the stuff that you do, it's great.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:36

But using it to write a paper is not going to really help you, because it's

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:41

not going to fully understand things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:42

It'll make a bunch of fluff.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:43

It'll make things that look like the right answer to something,

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:47

but it doesn't actually understand the material behind it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:49

So it's really good as a tool.

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:53

if Grammarly is a great example of this, run your writing through that

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:57

and say, okay, how can this improve?

Ben Guttmann: 00:38:59

Your grammar, your spelling, your syntax, all these different pieces,

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:03

but asking it to completely from whole cloth, write something is often at this

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:09

moment, whereas we're recording this in the fall of 2023, is not going to be

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:13

the right answer for most applications.

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:16

So look at it as the best framing I've heard about this has been look at AI,

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:22

not as having an, like a super genius.

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:25

At your disposal, but as having an unlimited number of stupid

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:28

people, at your disposal.

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:30

So I, and I think that's a great way of putting it is it can help you with things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:35

It can help with I have a paragraph and I need it to be two sentences, put

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:39

it in there, ask it to shorten it for you and then, tinker around a little

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:42

bit and you have a really good answer.

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:44

But if you're asking it to write that paragraph from scratch,

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:46

at this moment, that's not the.

Ben Guttmann: 00:39:49

Best use of it.

Tim Winders: 00:39:51

Is it messing with anybody in that education?

Tim Winders: 00:39:54

I was thinking back to had AI been around When I was, you know starting to write

Tim Winders: 00:40:00

i'm an engineer by training But so we didn't really have to write anything.

Tim Winders: 00:40:04

We didn't even have to know verbs But I was thinking about

Tim Winders: 00:40:07

what if AI had been around?

Tim Winders: 00:40:09

are you seeing is it messing with their heads at all?

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:12

a little bit.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:13

they've used a little bit of the image stuff and some of

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:15

their presentations to me.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:16

this, this past semester.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:20

I just saw this study or this, survey.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:22

I think it was a Pew survey that it was like one in five us teens have

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:26

used chat GPT for their homework.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:28

And so there are professors, there are teachers at the kind of the

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:33

primary and secondary level who are very concerned about, about it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:37

And I think there's some validity to say, you know what, if, I want

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:41

somebody to read, the great Gatsby and write an essay about it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:45

if some kid comes back and just ask Chachi P to write an

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:47

essay about the great Gatsby.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:49

Okay.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:50

you're not really learning at that point.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:51

For me, my, my class is not as theoretical.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:53

it's a practical, it's a marketing class.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:56

It's a lot of applied stuff.

Ben Guttmann: 00:40:57

And so I say, if you can figure out how to use for the projects that I'm giving,

Ben Guttmann: 00:41:01

if you can figure out how to use AI to, to get there, that's actually going to

Ben Guttmann: 00:41:04

replicate a lot of what, what working in marketing is going to be, because every

Ben Guttmann: 00:41:08

marketer I know is trying to figure out how do you use AI for their own purposes.

Ben Guttmann: 00:41:13

So I don't go out and ban it, but I think that, I think that it is

Ben Guttmann: 00:41:17

something that if you rely on it too much, instead of developing your own

Ben Guttmann: 00:41:20

understanding of kind of the world and of the subject you're talking about, then

Ben Guttmann: 00:41:23

you're going to be at a disadvantage.

Tim Winders: 00:41:25

So your book is simply put why clear messages,

Tim Winders: 00:41:29

when and how to design them.

Tim Winders: 00:41:32

And I want to give a full disclosure here.

Tim Winders: 00:41:36

I typically write out my introductions to a guest, like I did at the beginning,

Tim Winders: 00:41:44

when I introduced you, however, Ben, what I did was, is I took what I wrote

Tim Winders: 00:41:49

out and I put it through chat GPT and I said, I would like to make this simpler.

Tim Winders: 00:41:54

And more succinct.

Tim Winders: 00:41:56

now someone's trying to think through what was the intro and

Tim Winders: 00:41:59

it actually did pretty good.

Tim Winders: 00:42:00

I adjusted a couple of words and I had to know what to ask it and all that.

Tim Winders: 00:42:04

But, I guess it is it a tool that's going to help or hurt us with this

Tim Winders: 00:42:10

simple message that we're attempting to.

Tim Winders: 00:42:14

Train people.

Tim Winders: 00:42:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:42:15

You're good.

Tim Winders: 00:42:16

You're thinking now, wait, what did he say at the beginning?

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:20

Well, it's fine.

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:21

So, um, I was just, emailing with an old, old client of mine who has habits of a

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:27

podcast, and he was saying that what he did was he took the lessons in the book.

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:31

He trained a AI, like one of the new GPT, custom ones that you can

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:36

build and he trained that on that.

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:38

And he asked it to edit his email that he was sending out like his

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:42

newsletter and the new, and he ran a test, he ran an AB test.

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:46

And the one that his original one, got X OOP click rates and the one

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:53

that he ran through the AI trained on the book, got 50 percent more clicks.

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:58

And I was like, that's pretty good.

Ben Guttmann: 00:42:59

I'm, I love that data.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:00

I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to keep an eye on that

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:02

as you're putting it together.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:03

so simply put, so the whole, I've alluded to this a little bit in

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:06

some of the stuff we talked about.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:08

The entire thesis here comes down to this idea of fluency.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:12

So fluent.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:13

is a word that you and I know from, normal life, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:17

You can be fluent in English or Spanish or Mandarin.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:20

You can be fluent in cooking or chess or whatever it is

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:23

that you're passionate about.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:24

You can be fluent.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:25

it's where things are easy.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:27

Things are fluent.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:28

the Latin root is from the word that means flowing, which is what it feels like.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:32

So that's how we understand.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:34

But if you ask a cognitive scientist, About the word fluency.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:39

that describes this whole suite of experiences that loosely translate

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:42

to how easy it is to take something from out in the world, stick it

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:46

in your head and make sense of it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:48

and so the things that are easier to see here.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:51

And perceive in general as well as things that are easier to process.

Ben Guttmann: 00:43:55

all of those things that take less mental energy, we're more likely to buy them,

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:00

to like them, to trust them and all the good things that we want, what we're

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:04

informing or persuading or selling.

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:07

The inverse is also true, which is that the things that take more

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:10

work, things that are harder for us to stick in our heads and make

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:13

sense of, we don't like them.

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:15

We don't buy them.

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:16

We don't trust them.

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:17

And that's not where we want to be, obviously.

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:20

So there's this divide here where we want to be, we want things that

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:26

are coming into our minds to be simple, to be easy, to be fluent.

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:31

But when we're in charge of sending, when we're the ones speaking or writing

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:35

or presenting, we have a really hard time doing that because internally we're

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:40

battling stuff like, an additive bias, which we're more likely to add than

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:45

subtract when we're presented with a.

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:47

An option to change something as well as externally, we're being pressured

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:51

by our bosses, by the systems that we're in, by the media, whatever

Ben Guttmann: 00:44:57

it is to have more, more, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:00

You get credit for more.

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:01

You don't really get credit for less in many arenas.

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:05

So there's internal and external kind of that are pulling us

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:08

in the opposite direction.

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:10

So there's this gap.

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:11

We want things one way we want things to be simple, but we are

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:15

built to send things another way.

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:19

And so how do you bridge that gap?

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:21

And that's what I try to answer with these different design

Ben Guttmann: 00:45:25

principles that, that kind of make up the second half of the book.

Tim Winders: 00:45:30

I was just actually just looking through, I actually was not,

Tim Winders: 00:45:33

I usually am able to preview books prior to conversations, but I figured,

Tim Winders: 00:45:39

Hey, it's a book on simplicity.

Tim Winders: 00:45:40

I could, no, I needed to have read this and I recommend people get this.

Tim Winders: 00:45:44

I'm looking at the, the index right now one of the things I've always

Tim Winders: 00:45:47

said is a confused mind does nothing.

Tim Winders: 00:45:50

I don't know if that's actually true, but it seems like it should be true.

Tim Winders: 00:45:55

Maybe that's the case.

Tim Winders: 00:45:57

And like we were talking about earlier, we built up this, we just added to attitude.

Tim Winders: 00:46:02

I was even thinking about some.

Tim Winders: 00:46:05

training that I went through.

Tim Winders: 00:46:06

I don't really consider myself a copywriter or a marketing person, but I've

Tim Winders: 00:46:10

done parts of it for some of my companies.

Tim Winders: 00:46:13

And I was just thinking about one of the phrases they taught was, and

Tim Winders: 00:46:17

in addition to that, you know, it's like you're writing all the benefits.

Tim Winders: 00:46:22

And in addition to that, and in addition to that, and, and I think

Tim Winders: 00:46:25

I've heard you say that just, and is something That we really can get

Tim Winders: 00:46:31

into a trap or it can cause issues.

Tim Winders: 00:46:33

But I guess one thing I'd love for you to tell us now is I know this is

Tim Winders: 00:46:38

geared towards the marketing person, but to me, this is communications.

Tim Winders: 00:46:45

this is for leaders and owners and heavens.

Tim Winders: 00:46:49

It'd be awesome if our politicians would get this a little bit better.

Tim Winders: 00:46:53

so talk a little bit about the.

Tim Winders: 00:46:55

audience for the book and the message that you're trying to get across.

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:00

this is a book that would live on the marketing shelf

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:02

of a bookstore that would sit next to other marketing books.

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:05

the library, I think you hit the nail on the head there, which is this is not

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:11

something that is strictly limited to if you work in an advertising agency,

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:17

this is something that if you're, if your responsibilities in the world

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:22

involve informing or persuading, you can be better at both of those.

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:26

by being simple, by getting to a message that resonates, that actually is built

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:33

for how a receiver wants to understand it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:36

So that applies to advocates and politicians, leaders, and parents

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:42

and teachers and all these other roles uh, just as much, if not

Ben Guttmann: 00:47:46

more so than if somebody is a copywriter at an ad agency somewhere.

Tim Winders: 00:47:51

I think back at people that have been elected, whether you

Tim Winders: 00:47:55

agree or disagree with what they say, let's take that off the table, they

Tim Winders: 00:48:01

did have an ability to cut through a lot of noise and say what they wanted

Tim Winders: 00:48:05

to say in a fairly succinct way.

Tim Winders: 00:48:09

And I'm thinking about.

Tim Winders: 00:48:10

American presidents on both sides of the aisle.

Tim Winders: 00:48:12

Bill Clinton could really get a message across, you know, Obama, Donald Trump.

Tim Winders: 00:48:18

Hate him or whatever, but he speaks to the people in a simple way.

Tim Winders: 00:48:24

And, anyway, I'm not saying we can learn from any of that.

Tim Winders: 00:48:26

That's not my message here, but I think to be able to communicate

Tim Winders: 00:48:30

in those ways are important.

Tim Winders: 00:48:32

What are some, one of the things I really loved is that you talk,

Tim Winders: 00:48:35

not just, this is not just about words, but it's also about design.

Tim Winders: 00:48:40

And the reason that speaks to me.

Tim Winders: 00:48:43

Is because I tell my wife all the time that I Read times new roman.

Tim Winders: 00:48:49

that's my font.

Tim Winders: 00:48:50

In fact, I joke.

Tim Winders: 00:48:51

It's tim's new roman And if you start doing a lot of fonts that have a lot

Tim Winders: 00:48:56

of curly cues and stuff like that I sometimes I literally Can't read it.

Tim Winders: 00:49:03

So this is not just about words, correct?

Tim Winders: 00:49:05

This is like the whole Design and messaging.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:09

Yeah.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:09

And there, there's, So the entire, the entire book, I put the word design in

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:15

the subtitle very intentionally because even though it's not about visual

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:19

design for most of the principles are here, I argue that design is not just

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:25

that design is about Arranging things in the world to achieve a goal and

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:29

that can be words as part of that.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:31

And so it's about how do you design your messaging with intentionality

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:35

because it's design is an art.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:37

It's business.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:37

there's art that infiltrates it and informs it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:40

it is fundamentally a business function.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:43

It's about arranging things to achieve a goal, to solve a problem.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:47

And that's how I look at the different principles here about,

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:50

about how we can bridge that gap.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:52

I talked about before one of them, which is visual design them.

Ben Guttmann: 00:49:57

So there's a number of, user experience studies that you can look at for across

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:03

the span of decades that show that we.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:06

We don't read on a screen remotely the same in the way that we read

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:12

when we're looking at like a book.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:13

We don't start in the top left corner and move down to the bottom right.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:17

that's the dream.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:19

Everybody who's made a website or made a written an email thinks

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:23

that's what people are doing.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:24

But in reality, what people do is they start at the headline, they go to the

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:29

next headline, they go jump around a little bit, they go to something else,

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:32

they go to bullets, they go to boxes, they go to italics, they go to pull quotes.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:36

They go to buttons and they, we do what's known as a layer cake pattern.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:40

It looks like the letter F, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:41

We go, when we go up and down and we read the different pieces until we

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:44

find what's relevant to us, what we're looking for, and then we go into it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:49

and we augment that a lot of times also with like a search strategy.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:51

So if we're looking for a phone number or a name or an address,

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:55

something that's shaped differently.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:57

we're going to hunt around for that.

Ben Guttmann: 00:50:59

And so the lesson there is when you're designing the physical or

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:04

the visual layout of your messaging, we'll make use of that understanding.

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:09

Use headlines, use bullets, use italics, use bold, use call out boxes,

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:14

make it look like a really great magazine more so than a giant essay.

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:18

and we would do this.

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:20

In our own work and our proposals, our goal of our proposals was to look like

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:24

a magazine because we wanted it to be something that was easy to read and

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:28

understand and that stood out in a pile of other things that were just top to bottom

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:32

Times New Roman instead of using those headlines and everything else that make.

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:36

What you're saying more, more easily, understood by our eyes and then more

Ben Guttmann: 00:51:41

easily understood by our brains,

Tim Winders: 00:51:43

I like the example of the magazine.

Tim Winders: 00:51:44

It's interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:51:45

It's been so long Since i've seen or held a magazine.

Tim Winders: 00:51:50

I was going to the airport a while back Went through the little bookstore

Tim Winders: 00:51:54

and I picked up two magazines and read those on the plane and there

Tim Winders: 00:51:58

was Such a comfort about it, Ben.

Tim Winders: 00:52:02

it felt well, it was inviting, the ads are there, the information's there.

Tim Winders: 00:52:06

It was, I think it was fast company or, some business type thing

Tim Winders: 00:52:10

that I used to read all the time.

Tim Winders: 00:52:11

And now I just go grab it digitally.

Tim Winders: 00:52:13

That, that was nice.

Tim Winders: 00:52:14

What about, and just, we've got a few minutes left here.

Tim Winders: 00:52:17

And the thing I'm going to highly recommend is people get the book because

Tim Winders: 00:52:19

I'm looking at the index and I'm going, this has a lot of great info in it.

Tim Winders: 00:52:23

And I love just the, I love the fluency of it.

Tim Winders: 00:52:26

I think we need to be able to speak.

Tim Winders: 00:52:28

The language of simplicity.

Tim Winders: 00:52:29

I think that's one of the things I'm hearing you say, but I'd love

Tim Winders: 00:52:32

for you, and I'm sure there's probably examples in the book.

Tim Winders: 00:52:35

What are some examples that you can share, either good or bad that

Tim Winders: 00:52:41

everybody will go, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:52:44

Oh yeah, that's good.

Tim Winders: 00:52:45

any examples pop into your mind that you can share in the last

Tim Winders: 00:52:48

few minutes that we have here.

Ben Guttmann: 00:52:51

Oh yeah, certainly.

Ben Guttmann: 00:52:51

So what, if there's any regret I have with the book, by the way, it's, I

Ben Guttmann: 00:52:54

leaned a little bit too much into the like taglines and slogans and the

Ben Guttmann: 00:52:58

first, bit of the book is that's a quick way to understand it, but this

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:02

is so much more valuable for the higher frequency communications like emails and

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:08

presentations, those types of things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:10

That being said, I'll give you a couple of things that, that

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:12

have always resonated with me.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:14

So one of the things I talk about is benefits and this is sales, one

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:17

on one features versus benefits.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:18

We don't buy features, we buy benefits.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:20

We don't want the thing.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:22

We want what the thing does for us.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:24

So the best example of this is if you go back about 20 years, Apple introduced

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:29

the iPod and they didn't go around saying it's got this many gigabytes

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:33

of space, this many pixels on the screen, this much processing power.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:37

What they did was they said.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:38

It's a thousand songs in your pocket.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:41

It's a thousand songs.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:42

But immediately you understand the benefit.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:45

I don't care about the four gigabyte hard drive.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:47

I care about there being a thousand songs in my pocket that's the feed.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:51

That's the benefit, not the feature.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:53

Eventually you get down to the details somewhere on their

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:55

website or their packaging.

Ben Guttmann: 00:53:56

They'll tell you about the features, but it's about investing proportionally.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:03

In what level of benefit is going to resonate in that market.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:07

And so that's a great example of that.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:10

And I'll give you something else that is completely different.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:14

I have, I've had bad luck with my teeth and I, I blame my genetics for it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:19

And so I'm at the dentist one day and he's digging in there doing

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:21

all sorts of terrible things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:23

And the, he says, you only have to floss the teeth you want to keep.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:29

And I was like, ah, You got me.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:30

you got that is exactly where I need, what I need to hear when I need to hear it.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:35

And exactly in the language, which makes sense to me, it exhibits this

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:38

degree of empathy, which is one of the other principles, about,

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:41

okay, you're speaking the language, you're meeting me where I am.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:44

and since that day I've lost every single night, right?

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:46

Like it's, so it works in a way that saying something like you should floss to

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:50

prevent plaque buildup below the gum line.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:52

That's correct.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:54

But that's not what I needed to hear.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:56

What I needed to hear was you only have to floss the teeth you want to keep.

Ben Guttmann: 00:54:59

And all of a sudden that connects on a way that dozens of other similar

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:05

administrations before have not done so.

Tim Winders: 00:55:08

Yeah, those are, those good messages, I think,

Tim Winders: 00:55:11

are good and they stay with us.

Tim Winders: 00:55:12

sayings and things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:55:13

The book is simply put, Why Clear Messages Win and how to design them.

Tim Winders: 00:55:18

Ben, why don't you tell us where they could find it and how to connect with you.

Tim Winders: 00:55:22

And then I've got one more question before we finish up here.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:26

Oh yeah.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:26

Thank you, Tim.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:26

It's been a blast.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:27

yeah, you can, if you go to benguttmann.Com, two T's and

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:30

two ends, you can find all sorts of information about the book.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:33

You can download a free chapter.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:34

you can connect with me.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:35

You can listen to other podcasts and.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:38

If you go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever books are

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:41

sold, you can grab a copy.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:42

if you enjoy it, leave a review, let me know.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:45

I'd love to hear from you.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:46

or shoot me an email, connect on LinkedIn.

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:48

I'd love to, if there's something that resonated, if there's something

Ben Guttmann: 00:55:52

I could do to help you with a question, I'm all, all ears.

Tim Winders: 00:55:55

Thanks, Ben.

Tim Winders: 00:55:56

We'll include links so people can get that.

Tim Winders: 00:55:59

I love the cover that we've recently added some colors here that are that kind

Tim Winders: 00:56:03

of like that gold and stuff like that.

Tim Winders: 00:56:04

It's a really cool, simple, good font, by the way, good design cover.

Tim Winders: 00:56:10

I really appreciate that.

Tim Winders: 00:56:12

Ben, we're seek, go create those three words.

Tim Winders: 00:56:14

Last question.

Tim Winders: 00:56:15

I'm going to let you pick one of those over the other two.

Tim Winders: 00:56:18

I'm going to give you one choice.

Tim Winders: 00:56:18

Seek, go or create.

Tim Winders: 00:56:20

Which one do you choose and why?

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:23

Oh, I have to say create.

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:25

I think that, my background is in design, which you probably may have picked up

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:30

at some point in this conversation.

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:32

and I.

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:33

Think that I'm grateful that I have done that in my career, that I've had some

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:37

sort of natural aptitude for that because the ability to create something out in

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:42

the world, is such a magical experience and it makes you, aware of all the

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:47

possibilities that there are when you, you realize the world is more malleable,

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:50

that you think everything that's there was made by somebody and with some.

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:53

Inspiration and some work and some creativity.

Ben Guttmann: 00:56:56

And, and it makes you want to join that grand project of creating things.

Ben Guttmann: 00:57:00

So I'm going to go create.

Tim Winders: 00:57:03

Thanks, Ben.

Tim Winders: 00:57:04

I appreciate you being a guest here.

Tim Winders: 00:57:05

The book is simply put why clear messages win and how to design them.

Tim Winders: 00:57:10

I just recommend you get it, just get the book.

Tim Winders: 00:57:12

And one of the things I really loved was collect the premise,

Tim Winders: 00:57:15

which is the fluency of, my words, just the message of being simple.

Tim Winders: 00:57:21

We're seek, go create here.

Tim Winders: 00:57:22

Thanks for joining us.

Tim Winders: 00:57:23

We've got new episodes every Monday until next time, continue being

Tim Winders: 00:57:28

all that you were created to be.