🔊 Critical Thinking in the Digital Age: AI's Impact on Business 🔊

🚀 Recently, I had the honor of sitting down with the incredibly insightful Dr. Bo Bennett on episode 43 of *Podcast Marketing Secrets*. As a seasoned entrepreneur and a scholar in psychology, Bo shared a wealth of knowledge that is invaluable for anyone looking to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of business, tech, and artificial intelligence. We explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the landscape of entrepreneurship, coaching, and beyond.

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS:

➡️ **Embrace AI Innovations**: Learn how AI is revolutionizing industries and discover strategies to integrate these technologies into your business for efficiency and creative enhancement.

➡️ **Critical Thinking Is Key**: Bo's insights into the importance of critical thinking in decision-making are a reminder that in a world filled with information overload, the ability to analyze and evaluate is more crucial than ever.

➡️ **Evolution Is Inevitable**: Our candid talk about the impact of automation on job markets sheds light on the necessity of adapting to change and using it to our advantage.

Dr. Bo Bennett's journey is a testament to the power of continuous learning and adapting. For any business professionals out there, this episode is a must-listen for understanding how to leverage technology and sharpen your critical decision-making skills.

🎧 Tune in to Episode 43 for the full conversation with Bo Bennett and walk away with insights to propel you forward in business and in life!

#PodcastMarketingSecrets #Episode43 #BoBennett #AIMarketing #CriticalThinking #BusinessGrowth #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #MarketingStrategies #Podcasting #Adaptation #SuccessMindset

📚 CHAPTERS:

0:00 - Intro

0:46 - Bo's Background

7:13 - Bo's Psychology Journey

10:57 - Bo's Programming Path

14:25 - Teaching Critical Thinking

18:00 - Attractive Business Ventures

19:51 - Ethical AI in Business

26:46 - Age Inquiry

29:43 - Missing Information

30:41 - Final Question

33:30 - Connecting with Bo

34:25 - Outro

🔗 CONNECT WITH BO:

Website: https://www.bobennett.com/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/thedrboshow/

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Welcome to podcast Marketing Secrets, a place for entrepreneurs, coaches and

ceos who are looking to grow their business with a podcast,

become a key person of influence in their industry, and get their

ideal clients to come to them. Also known as attraction

marketing. I'm your host, Al Morentin. My guest

today is Dr. Bo Bennett. Bo has a

phd in social psychology. He currently runs over a

dozen websites, has written over a dozen books,

mostly on the topics of critical thinking, and teaches

several online courses. He has been in the self

publishing industry for over a decade and has written multiple

screenplays. Welcome to the show, Bo. Thank you. It's good to be

here. Awesome. So why don't you fill us

in a little bit about your background and what led you up to where you

are now? Sure. Well, I went

to school for marketing back in the

90s because I always knew I wanted to be

wealthy. That was my number one goal. I wanted money

and I was incredibly interested in psychology, but I knew

that that wouldn't get me where I wanted to be. So I focused on the

marketing. Honestly, I didn't have the best time at school. The school I

went to, everybody was pretty much the same.

It was a business school. Didn't really like it much, but I got

through. So after that I graduated. I got

involved in the Internet back in 1994 when it was

like just first starting out commercially,

that is, and people started hearing about it. So I was in the right place

at the right time, started a web hosting company and it turned

out to be huge. Sold that in 2001. That was my big company. I

sold for $20 million. And then after that, I've

been just doing a lot of different Internet related,

mostly Internet related businesses online.

And then I went back to school for psychology. I got my master's and PhD

in psychology and wrote, as you mentioned,

twelve books in the process. And here I am today.

Right on. That's awesome. So

is there something that sparked your interest

in going back to school and pursuing that

PhD in psychology? It was always my

interest from a very young age. When I was about ten

years old, I was working for my father in his

workshop in his basement, just doing some stuff for him. And it was a

really boring, monotonous job. So I borrowed some tapes from

my sister and my mother. They had a lot of motivational

tapes, self help tapes, the classics, the Dennis Waitley

Zig Ziglars, Anthony Robbins. So I would

listen to those and I'd be completely, totally fascinated by it. I

absolutely loved mean, that's

not really psychology, but it's kind of like pseudosychology

it piqued my interest in the idea of the human mind and

belief and all that. So that's what really got me

interested in psychology. But as I mentioned, it was business. That was

my number one passion at the time, and that was what I

pursued initially. Yeah, for sure. And

there is a lot of psychology that goes into

business because you're dealing with people all day long,

right? Sure, yeah. Sales or

employees, whatever,

for sure. That's super awesome.

What made you back in the day,

how did you get into web hosting? I

was actually into graphic design when I was going through

school. I made my money in graphic design,

advertising specialties. So I used the school's

computers. And it was funny because if anybody

was around back then in the mid 90s

creating art with computers, you remember this thing called

rendering. When you adjusted an image, you'd have to wait

like five minutes for it to draw. So it was

really monotonous. But I mean, we fortunately wouldn't have to deal with that today.

But I was doing that, the graphic design. And then

after college, I started a graphic

design company, and I realized that

it would be just incredible if I could use this thing called

the Internet to get my graphic designs to my clients, like

immediately. I don't have to go to the FedEx office and FedEx it because

they have to see a full color version and they have to wait a day.

They have to approve it, sign it, and send it back. So all this could

be done immediately over the computer. I thought that was amazing.

So when I tried to figure out how to do that, I realized

back in 1994, early 95, there

were very few, if any, web hosting companies.

So I had to learn what web hosting really was, how it

worked. I hooked up with this guy who kind of ran a server farm, gave

me a server. I used Apache software. So I started my own web

server, and I'm like, wow, this is great. I could actually make

small ones and give them to other people or sell them to other people.

And that's what I did. I built a web based interface

so people can use the web page to actually control their

website. And it was kind of like the first of its kind at the time,

so it just exploded from there, as you know, the history of

the Internet and websites. Right on.

That's super awesome. Yeah, it's amazing

how little chains of events could

just shape your life, basically. Oh, sure.

And it's super awesome that you're

really into business and marketing and all that

kind of stuff too. You're sort of

multifaceted and

using all the tools that you

have to help you with business and grow.

That's super awesome. So you did

the exit at 20 million.

You were still, like, in your late 20s when you did that. Yeah,

29 years old. Yeah. So I was before 30, which was my

goal. So that was good. That's super awesome.

That must have been, like, a drastic

lifestyle change for you.

Not as drastic as you would think, because at the last

couple of years before I sold, we were doing extremely well.

So we had, like, tons of money coming in.

So I was kind of used to the cash flow as of then.

And really, once I got that big chunk of money, it was just,

like, a big number in my bank account. My lifestyle really didn't change

too much. Right on. That's awesome. That's

really cool. So, I was noticing

that you deal with cognition, critical

thinking, something like logical

fallacies. So can you explain a little bit about what that is?

Yeah, sure. So, just to go

back a little bit, after I sold my business,

I was doing some other businesses, and it kind of, like, slowed down a little

bit, and that's when I really wanted to pursue my

academic ambition a little bit more.

But before I did that, one of a

friend of mine gave me a book, basically, on religion, trying to

convert me to a religion.

I grew up catholic, but I just thought it was kind of strange. I'm like,

all right, I guess I'll read it. What is he trying to do? I didn't

understand this whole conversion thing, so I read the book, and

it was so weird to me, like, all these claims that were being made

and the things that were being said. So I wanted to learn a little bit

more about that academically, not really

from a religious perspective, but what's going

on? Do people believe this?

Why do people believe this? Am I supposed to believe it? There were a lot

of questions I had, so I basically started a

website to debate and talk about

topics dealing with religion. So I was involved

with that a little bit too much for about, like, three years.

And in that process, that's what I said.

Okay, I really need to dive into this whole concept

called the human mind, because one factor that I

found that connects everybody and

everything that was going on and all these different beliefs

is the human mind. Like, the

psychology of it, the psychology of belief. Like, why do

people believe certain things? And why do other people

have an incredibly difficult time believing things? What's this whole idea

called? Evidence. Like, logical fallacies. Like, people

would make these claims that were clearly

problematic, but it was difficult to see why at first. And I

realized that what those are, they're called logical fallacies, they're errors

in reasoning, and they're also kind of manipulative tactics. If

you ever watch the news, you're probably very aware of

these and politicians and what those are. So I was

fascinated by that. Again, it all has to do with psychology, the psychology

of it, why we believe some of those things. So

that's when I kind of started my academic pursuits and

studied philosophy and then actually formally went to school,

back to school for master's and then ultimately a phd. And I

focused on social psychology. So social

psychology and cognitive psychology, it really has to do

with the thoughts we have and how we relate

to other people and how other people's actions and behaviors

can affect our actions and behaviors. So I found that

part the most interesting. I didn't really care much

about the mental health portion of it,

like that part of psychology. So I'm not a mental health

professional. So if somebody says, oh, like you're a psychiatrist.

No, I'm nothing like a psychiatrist, or I'm not even like a psychologist

in that I don't help people with their personal

problems and struggles. In that way.

I took the academic side, more of a researcher. There's like the

mental health and then there's the researcher, if you consider that like a

split the two different areas of psychology. So I'm on the

research end. Right on. Yeah, that makes sense

too. So you're sort of like seeing how it

affects all of that, affects society, basically,

in an overall view and even the subsects of it and things like

that. That's awesome. And I could see how

if you understand that stuff just like anything

else, you could use it for good

or evil, too. Well, what's interesting is

I consider myself a programmer by trade, like ever

since 1994, when I started programming and programming the Internet and

learning the different programming languages, I really was drawn

to that because I love the idea of creating the code to make

things happen. And maybe it's kind of like a God complex that

programmers have, because you are kind of like the God of your website when

you have complete control over things and you can make virtually anything happen.

So I really took to it, and I loved

the logic of it, because programming is

perfectly logical and mathematical and things happen.

When things happen, there's a reason for it and

there's like a perfectly logical reason for it. It just doesn't happen Willy nilly and

you can't figure it out. So I really like that. And then

I see a lot of parallels with the programming

and the critical thinking, and

the same thing when it comes to business or doing anything, dealing with people

in relationships. There's that element to it where you could kind

of see through a lot of what's going on, like the code,

let's call it the code of human language and

human behavior and how we respond. And you kind of

see through the behaviors and the language into the code, and

you really know what's going on. And that's what I

found most interesting about my pursuit of learning

psychology. It's to be able to see

things that other people can't see. And the

difficulty, of course, is to try to explain it to them,

like what they're missing. And the reason that's

always a difficult pursuit is because of what's called cognitive

biases. A lot of people have these very strong cognitive

biases that prevent them from seeing things

really the way they are versus seeing things the way they

want to see them. And that's difficult. If I could

crack that code, I'd be extremely happy and probably the

most popular person in the world, but

I don't know if there's such a code to crack on that one.

Yeah, for sure. It does

amaze me.

You see it in other people, but I'm sure it happens to me as well.

But how something could just be so

that something somebody believes in is just so off

and not correct and even sometimes an

outright lie, and they can't see

it for whatever reason, and no amount of

proof can change that. And sometimes when you show

them proof, it makes them hold on to the belief even stronger.

Right? Yeah, the backfire effect. Yeah, it's

really interesting. So

you mentioned you're able to see these things

because you have a more refined

sense of critical thinking and things like that.

So it's like a learned skill. I guess

some people get it naturally, whatever, I'm sure. But

I'm sure it's a learned skill as well. So

I saw that you had courses and things like that that you

have. Do you teach people how to increase their

levels of cognitive thinking and things like that? Yes.

On my website, I've got a bunch of, like, that's where pretty much all of

my books follow that same pattern of teaching people

how to think more critically, more logically,

reasonably. And then I have a couple of courses, too. If people don't like the

books, they could go to the courses. The courses have some videos in it. They're

a little bit easier to ingest. For those who don't like the

written word. Or the spoken word. I've got all the books on audio as

and when I taught too. I taught at a local university here

in Massachusetts for a few years, and

that was fun, but I didn't

like the commitment to travel and then having to

grade that really wasn't for me too much. But I did

enjoy the teaching part. That's awesome. And yeah,

and I have the bobennett.com pulled up right here, and you

have some really interesting titles for your books,

like positive humanism and socially

psyched. One of them

that sort of caught my eye was

that squat

something sitcom, whatever. Yeah, that was

my first attempt at a fictional

writing, and it turned out to

be a ten

episode sitcom that I started

about five years ago and I completed about a

week ago, believe it or not. And it's fully

up on YouTube now, and you could see all ten episodes.

They're about 20 minutes each. And it's at

squatspotfitness.com. And that'll take you right to the

YouTube channel. And it's a sitcom that

incorporates pretty much everything that I'm about.

You have to look at the subtext. There's a lot of critical thinking in

there, logic, reason, there's tons of

psychology. And this really came about as

my 40 plus years of going to gyms

and fitness centers and just observing some of the

behavior there of the people. And it's a comedy

goldmine. There's so many hilarious things that

have happened that that's what kind of sparked the creation of this.

And I just did ten episodes. I could do 100 more,

but it was a fun experience doing

it. And I ended up doing all the animation myself and everything, and it took

a long time, but it's up there, so it's a lot of fun.

That's awesome. Yeah, I owned a gym for

28 years. Oh, no, it's away, so you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Yeah, it's a special animal. Oh,

jeez. You'd love it. Then you definitely have to

watch it. Yeah, we're going to check it out for sure.

So what kind of business is attractive to

you right now? What are you doing right now? So I've

been in the publishing industry, like the book publishing industry for the

last 13 years or so, and

just recently, probably like in

the spring of this year,

I had access to AI for the first time

commercially, so I could use and interact with

chat, GPT, and as a programmer, I could actually use it for

the programming. And I could tell you that I dropped everything that I

was working on including squat, I did like

eight episodes. I animated like eight episodes in two

months, and the last two episodes took me like five or six

months because I was just so busy with the AI. But that's what I've

been working on, artificial intelligence and incorporating that into the

publishing industry. And right now I've got websites that use

AI to do all the audiobook narration. And I have got the website

that uses AI to actually write books for

you. You just give it the idea, walk it through, and that's called

Bookbud.AI. So that's been hugely

successful, and that's what I'm most excited about right

now. That's awesome. Yeah,

and you're touching on a bunch of stuff there, too.

What people feel is, like, the ethical use of AI

and things like that, especially with things like book publishing and

copywriting and all that kind of stuff. That's

the world I live in, is copywriting and marketing and

a bunch of things like that. And I've written a

book for the wellness business, better

living with whole foods.

Really cool book, but yeah. So what do you think about

that with the AI and

helping out writers and things like that? Well, I

think it's like any other kind of improvement that we've seen,

like technological, industrial improvement over

the decades, the centuries. There's always going to be some kind

of technology that

displaces human labor,

and that's never going to change. It's been that way for over

200 years, and that's what we're seeing now. But people are more afraid

of it because I think this is the first time

where this technology is so much like a

human and has the potential to be so much like a human

that it could replace so much of what

we do and so much of what

so many people do. So it's scary to a lot of

people, and I completely understand that. But my

advice and my warning is not to fight it and to

embrace it and find out how you could use it

to your advantage. Virtually

any job right now where AI is under

threat, the job is under threat by

AI, you can find some way to

use AI to make your job, to make

it better, to do a better job, maybe not put as much time

into it, and maybe for some

jobs, you're just going to be out of business if that's all you do.

So you really need to say, okay, what else can I

do? For example,

for me, I write nonfiction books,

essentially, and AI is already

kind of putting me out of business. And I say that with a big caveat,

because AI is incredibly good right now. It writes, like, at a

college level. The books are fantastic. They're better than about

95% of all the authors that I deal with

who write nonfiction books. So it does an incredible

job, but it's not quite to the level yet

where it could beat that 5% of humans who

do an amazing job at writing books. So out

of the dozen books that I've written, I would say that AI could do a

better job at probably like, ten of those books. It could rewrite ten of my

books and do a better job. But two of my books, where my real

specialty is with the PhD and my

decades of experience, I don't think it could come close to

that right now. So there's still a way

for an author to write. You

just got to up your game, and I think that's a good thing. It's kind

of pushing everybody to do a little bit better. You can't just turn out

the same kind of junk that people have been turning out for a long time,

because AI could do a better job than that. But the main

message is there's going to be times when

AI is going to potentially

do away with a lot of different jobs. And just

like the coal miners

and the people who drove the horse and buggies,

you're going to have to find another job. I mean, that's the way it is.

It's unfortunate for those people, but

overall, it's not going to be a bad thing. I really believe,

like, AI frees up our human

ingenuity and creativity. And at least for

me, it's allowed me to do so many higher

level things that I wouldn't be able to do

normally because I'm usually bogged down with these minute

tasks. Another great example is, like, with programming.

Normally, when I'm creating scripts and updating my website,

I'm writing code pretty much line by line and copying and

pasting from old code and looking up, and I have to research, like,

okay, how do I do this? And it takes a really long time, but

now with AI, AI, I could just talk to it like a human,

basically, and tell it what I need, and it writes me the code,

and it saves me tons of time. And this isn't

like high level stuff. I mean, this is the kind

of code that when I write it, I'm just, like, bogged down with

these minute details, and it's

things that I would rather not do. So it really has helped me

in that way, and I think that everybody should

think like that. And how can AI help

you? How could it free up your time? How could

it give you access to more of your

creative juices and ingenuity? And how could you take

advantage of that? There is a way. I think there's a way for everything.

So you just got to think about that. Everybody has to think about that.

Yeah, for sure. And like with me,

we do help people with their podcasts

and YouTube channels and putting out the content for

that, and repurposing and doing all that kind of stuff. And there is

AI programs or whatever that could help with that

and putting in prompts and things like that to help with show notes or

posts or whatever. And I find

that as a business person,

it's almost like the mechanic. You like working on other people's cars,

but not your own, because you're just

recreating all this stuff or creating from scratch.

And it's almost like the AI, I'm using

it to reinspire me inside of my own business

and create things. Because it's not a blank slate,

it's the white screen. There's some ideas up there, and

it's almost like you're masterminding with this artificial

intelligence, and it's there

at your will whenever you need it. So I'm trying

to see it that way, and I'm still taking

time and rewriting and doing

things, but it sparks a ton of

ideas. And like you said, I'm

trying to see it in a positive light because anything

from weapons on down could be used for good and

bad. Sure. Right.

Instead of trying to complain and be one of those people,

just try to see that positive light

and then show other people that there is something positive that can

be attained from it instead of just like, shunning it.

Yeah. So how old are you?

51. Okay. Yeah. So I just turned

58 a few days ago.

So it's sort of that time when

I graduated in 84, and that's when the computers,

that year, they first came into high school, it was

like the Dos. You had to put the in there and write all your

own stuff. So you've gotten to

see the need to embrace

things instead of shunning them out, because it could be something

that's going to envelop a huge part of your

life. Yeah, I mean, that's a perfect analogy. Just think back to when the

computers came out and people were freaking out, like I was going to put us

out of business. Everybody who was doing things manually that computers kind of

took over and did for people. It didn't make the

world worse.

Arguably, it made the world better in so many different

ways by doing this monotonous work that humans don't have to

do now. And the same thing with robotics. Robotics has been around

for pretty long, and it's going to get even more incredible with artificial

intelligence. But just think about all the people that don't have to

be on the factory line. Like, if

you're familiar with the movie Charlie and the chocolate factory, Charlie's

father, his job is to put the caps on the toothpaste. He does it one

after another, and he lost his job to a robot that does it.

And then at the end of the movie, he gets the job fixing the

robot when it breaks down.

That's like a perfect evolution of

a career or of somebody what they're doing

and how they can kind of rethink and

relearn what they were doing and do something a little bit different in order to

be more productive. And I'm pretty sure that Charlie's father, by

fixing the machines, is

probably more satisfied and more fulfilled in his job

than actually putting on the little caps. So

it's going to shake things up, no doubt. But that doesn't have to be a

bad thing. Yeah, and that's a

really great way to put that, too, because

these monotonous jobs that just like, well, somebody has to do

them, it could

potentially free up those people to actually have these

more fulfilling jobs or things that might otherwise,

that might actually be needed. But we just don't know right now

because so much time is preoccupied with something else. Right?

Yeah. So, yeah, there's a bunch of avenues that could be opened

up. There's all kinds of, like you said, benefits to

it.

Is there anything that I'm missing forgetting to ask you

about or anything like that that is really important that you. Do

so many things? We could talk about tons of stuff, but for the most part,

we covered a lot of good ideas, I think in terms

of critical thinking, logic, reason, why it's important,

how it could help you with business, some of the sitcom

stuff. Bookbud. Yeah, we covered quite a bit.

Right on. And then how do you market

your business?

Mostly I launched my most

recent business through Google Adwords.

I do some Facebook advertising, but Google

Adwords, I found, has been the most successful. For

what? Awesome. Awesome. And then is

there one big idea or key takeaway

that people should take from this episode? I think

it's the importance of critical thinking that's the big

idea. That's something that people should really focus on

that probably don't it's? So

important when it comes to decision making as well. And decision making

is, as you know, is a critical part of pretty much anything you do in

business. You're always faced with important decisions to

make.

There may be people listening who are really good at business and really

good at decision making, but yet in their personal lives,

they may not be the best critical thinker.

And that's a psychological phenomenon

called compartmentalization. It's when we

compartmentalize certain parts of our

lives that are kind of untouchable to reason,

critical thinking and logic, but everything else will

apply those things to. So I would probably leave

your listeners with that challenge. Is there any part of your life

that you really aren't applying critical thinking, logic and

reason, and you're really just being guided by your

emotions, guided by what you've always

believed, what you've grown up with, the

social environment that you're in. Everybody else believes it, so

you kind of don't want to not believe it because it would make you an

outcast. But if you're being honest with

yourself and

you're being critical of your own thoughts, I think that everybody needs

to basically believe what's true

and do the best they can to distinguish between fact and

fiction in all domains and areas of their lives.

That's awesome. Those are some really key points

that you just brought up.

I'm sure that as people increase

their levels of critical thinking and that decision making and

all that, that there's a lot of

emotional stuff that can come up with that because you might

realize that you've been following

this one path or this one belief because of this people, maybe even

your parents, and you find out that it's

not true, it's a lie and that you've been lied to your entire life or

something like that. And that could be traumatic,

like you say, still believe that because it's going to change

your whole trajectory,

and that's really hard. So

for the people out there that like, hey, I want to find out more

about this critical thinking and maybe increase my levels of critical thinking

and improve my decision making skills and improve

my business skills, how could they get a hold of you or

follow you? Sure. I've got two primary

websites. One is for my books and educational

material, and you could find that under bobennet.com.

Bobennett.com.

The other one is all my business

sites. And that's where you could also find squat. And that's under

archieboy.com. Archieboy.com. Right

on. And Archie

is your doggie? Yep. Awesome.

Awesome. Cool. And we'll be sure to include those

links in the show notes for the video and audio for this

episode. Right on. And thank you again for coming on. All right, you

bet. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So that concludes this episode of

Podcast Marketing Secrets. This is Al Morentin signing off. I hope you have

a successful day.