Ep. 5 | Fall in Love with 'AND' + Stop Being a Bitch

In this episode, Ryan discusses the transformative impact of AI on the web, particularly how large language models are affecting publishers and content creators. He highlights the rising talent in Africa and the opportunities it presents, emphasizing the importance of accountability and the dangers of comfort. Ryan advocates for embracing a multifaceted approach to life and business, encouraging listeners to create cultural impact rather than just content. He concludes with a heartfelt reminder about nurturing passion in children.

Ep. 5 | Fall in Love with 'AND' + Stop Being a Bitch

Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube

🧩 Key Takeaways

• AI is drastically changing the web and affecting publishers.

• The crawl-to-click ratio for AI is significantly higher than for human users.

• Small publishers are struggling to negotiate with large language models.

• Africa is emerging as a hub of youthful talent and creativity.

• Comfort can lead to complacency and distract from goals.

• Radical accountability is essential for personal growth.

• Embracing an 'and' philosophy enriches life and business.

• Creating culture is more impactful than merely producing content.

• In sports and life, one moment can change everything.

• Teaching kids to care deeply is crucial for their development.

💬 Transcript

What's up everybody? Welcome back to Get Out From Behind the 8 Ball podcast. This one's going to bounce around a bit from AI and business to baseball and kids sports. But that's kind of the point. Why pick 'or' when 'and' is free? First thing I want to talk about is AI is reshaping the web. How large language models eat websites. Last week,

I read an article about how AI is changing the web and man it's pretty wild. Publishers are calling it out because they're getting eaten alive by large language models. 10 years ago Google's crawl to click ratio was about 2 crawls for every one click. 6 months ago thanks to the AI overviews it was 6 to 1. Now it's 18 to 1. ChatGPT

sits around 1500 to 1, and Anthropic sits at about 60,000 to 1. That's incredible. That means 60,000 times your site might get scraped by these AI bots before one person actually clicks it. So they're just basically taking your information from your website and using it for their purposes while people go to them.

to use the information they got from your website to inform those people while you're not getting a penny for it. Publishers were already hurting at 6 to 1. Now they're gasping for air. Some publishers, the big publishers, are able to make deals with Google and ChatGPT to recoup some of their money, but a lot of the small publishers are not able to.

negotiate any sort of deal with these large language models because they don't have any power.

So here's the tension. The user experience is actually better. You type a question, you get an answer right away. That's super convenient. But the cost is that people creating the answers, the writers, the experts, the small business owners, they're not getting credit or the traffic. And they're doing the hard work. I'm not saying ditch AI or go back to 10 Blue Links, but there's gotta be a fair way to make this work for everyone.

not just the giants. That's what worries me. The small business owners, the creators, the consultants, the people who aren't even in the room when these deals get made. That's exactly who I built 8Ball Consulting for.

Next thing I'm going talk about is the rise of Africa and an underpriced opportunity there. One of the biggest underpriced opportunities in the world right now is Africa. These numbers are staggering. Within a decade, a huge percentage of the world's youth population will live on the African continent. When you talk to these young creators and entrepreneurs, you feel it. Hunger, brilliance, ambition.

Every region gets its moment. Japan, China, India, the Middle East. Now it's Africa's time. And the opportunity isn't just doing business in Africa. It's understanding the raw talent from Africa. Look at the music charts. Afro beats are everywhere. Look at the food, fashion, and sports industries. They're all breaking through globally with African creators and athletes.

It's a two-way exchange, the same cultural back and forth we saw with Latin music years ago. So if you've got family in Nigeria or Kenya, or even if you're a white guy in Kansas with an adventurous streak, listen up, this is real. Not every country's perfect, but neither is anywhere else. The African basketball scene's exploding, Nigerian athletes are flooding the NFL. It takes patience, but that's how great businesses and great movements are built. The rise is happening.

See it early, act early.

gonna jump around 'and' talk about the comfort trap, the Odysseus Principle. Comfort looks harmless, but it's a trap. It's not a soft spot where ambition fades and ease takes over. You start thinking, maybe I've done enough and little by little you drift off mission. Odysseus had to drag his crew away from the lotus they found on the island. The lotus was a fruit that they got from an island that they had

crash landed on basically and they found a fruit called the lotus and it tasted so good that Odysseus and his crew wanted to stay on the island and eat the lotus. But it made them forget what they were working toward. And we all have our own lotus, the easy option that keeps us from finishing the real journey we're on. Stay uncomfortable, stay hungry, keep rowing.

Next I'm going to talk about radical accountability. Stop the excuses. Stop being a bitch. Here's the hard truth. Nobody's going to save you. We've gotten addicted to people validating our complaints. We post, we vent, we get a you're right and it feels good for a second, but it fixes nothing. The road to recovery starts with one sentence. I'm the problem. Because the second you admit that, you actually get your power back. Blame keeps you stuck. Accountability sets you free.

So the reason I'm jumping around a lot is because one subject I want to talk about is 'and' over 'or'. My personal philosophy, why choose 'or' when 'and' is free? Why talk about business and business only when you can talk about business 'and' baseball or business 'and' Odysseus or business 'and'.

accountability 'and' it's not being a bitch.

So why would you choose 'or' when 'and' is free? It makes life much better. I can be a business owner 'and' a snowboarder, a marketer 'and' a guy who cold plunges at 6 a.m. Even though I don't do that, but I could be a marketer 'and' a guy who cold plunges at 5 p.m. A dog dad 'and' a storyteller. You don't have to pick one. That mix, that range is what makes you interesting. Stop limiting yourself to 'either' 'or'.

live in 'and'. It's way more fun.

Create culture, not content. So every founder of a business asks the wrong question. What's our content strategy? How many times should we post? Wrong. The real question is how can we impact the culture around our niche? For me, it was how do I impact the culture around marketing and business consulting? At the time, nobody in my space was giving practical, tangible advice except a few. And you know who you are. Just generic tips.

So I built 8Ball around authentic, useful value and opinionated takes that actually help. So here's your exercise. Write down everything you want to change in your industry. Turn each item into a series, and then break those series into content formats. That's how you build a brand that moves culture, not just algorithms.

I'm gonna jump to the Seattle and Toronto game the other night, game seven. I believe it was on ⁓ Sunday night. The Seattle-Toronto game was brutal. I was rooting for Seattle. Seattle had it the whole way and I'm thinking this is their night. They've never been to a World Series. They're finally gonna get one. And then George Springer, who already has a ring and a World Series MVP steps up and hits the three run bomb, crushed them. They were down one to three and then George Springer hits a three run home run.

in the seventh inning and they go up four to three. Seattle fans, I felt that for you. And honestly, I don't even think Canada should have a baseball team anyway. Kidding kinda. Julio Rodriguez hit a home run early for Seattle. Cal Raleigh added another and then boom, Springer flips the game for Toronto. This dude has just taken, George Springer had just taken a 96 mile per hour fastball off the knee a few days ago and comes back to do that.

Seattle had chances they just didn't execute. Stop chasing pitches, get on base, extend the inning. They had Cal Raleigh up at the end of the ninth inning. And Julio Rodriguez should have taken a ball to the hip or gotten hit by a pitch or leaned into a pitch to get Cal Raleigh up the MVP of the MLB this season. But they weren't able to do that. And that's how life goes sometimes. You can be winning and one swing changes everything. But the question is, what do you do next?

How do you respond to that? Do you fold or do you keep swinging? Think strategically about it. Seattle should have told Julio to get hit by a pitch so Cal Raleigh had a chance to come up and hit a home run to put Seattle back in front.

Got a bonus tip for you guys before I end this episode. so if you're lucky enough to have a young child, a six year old kid who cares so much that they cry after losing some sporting event they're in, a soccer game, basketball game, please don't tell them it's just a game when they cry. That fire that the kid has is rare. The ability to care deeply, that's the thing you want to protect. Not mute.

Telling them it doesn't matter teaches them to stop caring and that's a dark road. Instead, teach them what to do with that feeling. Channel it. Because passion, even when it hurts, is what moves the world forward. Anyway, I hope you guys got some great advice and...

good soul information from this episode. And so yeah, that's this week's mix AI, how large language models are changing the internet and eating small publishers alive. And what we can possibly do about that The rise of Africa and the young talent that's there.

few years the majority of the world's young population will be in the continent of Africa. So do whatever you will with that. Next is accountability. Stop being a bitch. It's all on you. Control what you can control and leave what you cannot control out of your mind. Because that's not going to do anything for you. Again, I'll say it Stop being a bitch. 'And' then the baseball game there tonight was great.

Again 'or' 'and' is what I'm getting at here. I talk about

I'm not, I'm gonna talk about 'and', that's my philosophy. It's not 'or', I wanna talk about whatever I wanna talk about.

'and' that might be a wide variety of things that goes all the way from baseball to...

doing a backflip on a snowboard. I don't know. But anyway, and then the last thing is a reminder to care deeply. Make sure that your young kid, if they have a tough time with something that they're caring deeply about, don't tell them it's just a game or not to care so much about it. Teach them to channel that energy and care, because that's what moves the world forward when we care with our passion.

So that's what I'll leave you guys with. Thanks for listening and I'll see you guys next episode.