93: Cracking the Code of Human Behavior in an AI-Driven Future with Blake Eastman

What does poker, psychology, and AI have in common? Blake Eastman. From teaching forensic psychology at CUNY to coaching elite poker players, and now running cutting-edge AI companies, Blake has built a career around decoding human behavior. In this episode, Sean and Blake dive deep into the nonverbal cues leaders often miss, the hidden org charts that drive real influence, and the future of leadership in a world where AI is reshaping everything.

Blake brings hard-hitting insights on how rising leaders can avoid critical communication mistakes, how to “play the game” inside organizations without losing authenticity, and why embracing AI isn’t optional for tomorrow’s leaders. They also explore the looming societal shifts AI will cause, the importance of agency in our personal and professional lives, and how to prepare for the uncertain future ahead.

If you’re ready to sharpen your influence, think differently about leadership, and prepare for the next decade of disruption—this episode is a must-listen.

Episode Topics & Timestamps

• 00:00 – Sean introduces Blake and their shared connection
• 02:17 – Blake’s journey: forensic psychology, poker, and building businesses
• 04:45 – The #1 nonverbal mistake leaders make on Zoom
• 07:20 – Why leadership is fundamentally about people (and adapting to culture)
• 13:27 – How to build a “real” org chart & play the political game at work
• 17:25 – Measuring true value: would your company miss you if you were gone?
• 18:55 – Generational differences, communication, and culture fit
• 23:57 – Diversity, sameness, and avoiding groupthink in organizations
• 25:31 – AI’s role in mental health, disruption, and the job market
• 33:19 – Policy, robot taxes, and the global AI arms race
• 36:11 – What individuals must do to survive and thrive in the AI era
• 39:58 – Smaller, high-agency teams vs. bloated corporations
• 42:20 – Fear of becoming obsolete & the mental health implications
• 45:30 – Why agency is everything—work, family, and personal life
• 50:03 – Could AI run governments better than people?
• 52:28 – Where to find Blake: nonverbalgroup.com/newsletter

Links

• Blake’s Newsletter: nonverbalgroup.com/newsletter
• Subscribe to Sean’s newsletter: www.nolimitleaders.com/growth

No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:02)
Welcome to the No Limit Leadership podcast. I am your host, Sean Patton. I'm very excited to get to chat with my friend Blake Eastman today. Blake and I have known each other for years through our coach, John Michael Morgan. And in our first in-person meeting, I quickly realized we'd be friends when he was both dropping F-bombs like I was back in the infantry and sharing literally brilliant insights on business, life and technology. He's the founder of the nonverbal group and behavioral robotics.

and brings a fascinating perspective on leadership, communication, and where AI is taking us. And I know this is going to be a good one. So Blake, welcome.

Blake (00:40)
Thanks for having me. You know, I tell story about you all the time where I asked you, do you know what I'm going to say or no? I've told it on other podcasts. So we were at a dinner and I was asking you like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu questions. And I was like, so like, what's the difference between, you know, gi and not gi? And you were like, oh, and you like physically, like when you're learning with stuff, you can grab and you grabbed my shirt and I felt such like a little child.

Sean Patton (00:46)
No.

Blake (01:07)
Cause I was like, ⁓ cause you know, I don't think the average person, like, unless you're into comp, you don't experience like that type of strength or like concentrated strength, like technique and strength. And I was just like, ⁓ I'd, I'd be dead in a couple of seconds. ⁓

Sean Patton (01:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

that's hilarious, dude. Yeah. ⁓ like I said, we hit it off immediately. And, ⁓ yeah, every, every time we, I feel like our conversations always start like where everyone else is the table or at, and then just like quickly veer off into, you know, some dimension where everyone else is like, what are these dudes talking about? So we'll probably do that today. And, know, we'll start, we'll start with all the listeners on board. And by the end of it, they'll be like, what the hell are these guys talking about? but, ⁓ man, you.

Blake (01:26)
Yeah

there.

But always. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sean Patton (01:50)
have such an interesting, I know you've told the story many times, but such an interesting background where, you know, you were a professor at Columbia University and you were in forensic psychology. okay. City University. Sorry. So why, so why you give that? why don't you, what you have such an interesting, I said, of like initial career to get you into this from, you people don't hear like university professor and, you know, professional poker player.

Blake (02:01)
City University, close.

Sean Patton (02:19)
kind of together. And so why don't you just give us, know, give us the 60 second take on how you got started in this.

Blake (02:26)
Yeah, so my background's in forensic psychology. I started working in prisons and looking at like psychometrics, which is like psychological test construction. And ⁓ then started teaching at CUNY for like six years. And then I kind of got, the truth was like I never went the full academic road route or just because of the fact that there was just a lot of red tape and a lot of...

It's probably like the military, right? Like very similar. Like if you want to do something, there's like seven things that need to get done before you want to execute it. So I kind of left that. And at the time I was playing poker. So I basically used a lot of the money that I made from poker to fund a bunch of companies. One of them is the non-verbal group. The other was school cards and beyond tells. So we did the largest behavioral study on poker players. And then really what, and I work with like top poker players, but what also happened was I

Everyone grew upon and living social were like cool. Like it was like a unique thing. ⁓ I made a class called like body language explained and it went like viral. So every night, like teaching to 80 to a hundred people, literally every single night in New York, which led into, can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do this? Can you do that? And I started doing like a lot of corporate engagements, a lot of corporate consulting where I'd go into companies and help them with sort of how they're communicating and how they're.

Sean Patton (03:24)
Yeah.

Blake (03:49)
physical behavior makes an impact on their team and a wide range of things. And then in 2019, I started a company called Behavioral Robotics, which is a deep tech AI startup that's teaching machines to understand human behavior at deeper levels of fidelity. And we still use those models and those stuff for everything that we do. like when we work with clients, we're heavy on video.

So we will record every Zoom interaction they have and then we'll analyze them. And then I can go in and be like, oh, you know, you're kind of coming across abrasive here, you're coming across warm here and just sort of help them understand the impact of their own behavior. And I've just done a wide range of things over the years, just never focused and just always was like a little bit of a basket case. So I oh, that sounds cool, I'll do it. That sounds cool, I'll do it. So that's kind of my origin.

Sean Patton (04:39)
Yeah. And, always around like human, human behavior and trying to, trying to understand that. And so what would you say when you do work with companies, ⁓ especially like rising leaders or people that are starting to, that want to have like greater and greater influence, what's the like one, not one number one nonverbal mistake you see them make that they don't realize they're making.

Blake (05:01)
I'd say the biggest one is just a lack of awareness of what they look like in business comms. So they're on a Zoom meeting, and they don't even know what they look like when trying to rally the team, or when giving feedback, or when speaking to their board members. And then they don't know how there's maybe a disconnect between their message and their behavior. So they're sort saying thing and displaying something else. Or it could be something as like somebody's got a face that

is more stoic and doesn't move that much and people don't like them because of that reason. So I would say a lack of just sheer facial awareness is probably the biggest one. And then within that, there's a bunch of subtypes of things that other people struggle with.

Sean Patton (05:44)
And I'm assuming your answer is yes, but how do people train or, my question is gonna be like, can people train once they have awareness on how to improve that so they can sort of match the message they're trying to communicate with what they're actually communicating number.

Blake (06:04)
Yeah, I would say for the bulk of people, something like 75%, let's just say on average, if you show them video and highlight things, they're like, oh, I got it. Like they just get it, right? They're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. And then there's like maybe another 20 % of the people in that, that.

Oh, I get it, but they've got too much stuff going on and it's going to take a lot of work to sort of break through. And then there's like 5 % I hope those numbers add up right there's 5 % that are just like – it's probably lower than 5, it's probably 1 % that it's very hard. It's just they don't see the social dynamics, they're not aware, they've got maybe some disorder or condition or something that impairs their ability to understand what's going on.

Those are a little bit ⁓ trickier, but not impossible to deal with. But most people are just like, listen, it's really easy for you to recognize in a video. Like, yeah, I came across a little bit like a dick right there. Like, most people could recognize that if you show them a video of yourself. It's not so easy to get them to change their patterns of behavior and how they show up. And it really depends on sort

motivational paradigm if they actually want to change or if a lot of leaders just don't want to change. They got to reframe their behavior and do other things. ⁓ It really depends. I'd say it's highly individualistic and dependent on what they want.

Sean Patton (07:39)
Do you find that there's certain like industries or types of leaders or like use cases where this is particularly important for leaders to get right?

Blake (07:51)
I mean, I feel like it's everywhere. You're dealing with people. You gotta start reframing it as a part of your job. So a lot of people have that. They're like, oh, I wish I could just not deal with the people and just deal with my work. Well, then get a different job. If you're in a leadership position, dealing with people is a fundamental, it is probably the fundamental aspect of what you're doing, right?

And most people have to learn to not resist it, but to learn it. So it's it's kind of a difference between like a growth mindset versus sort of a victim one, right? And being able to step into that growth and being like, this is something that I need to work on and something I need to sort of fix. I gotta be honest, like a lot of these leaders, I understand like they've got a lot of demands. They've got a lot of stuff on their plate. So my job is usually to do things in the most efficient way possible.

So it's like, can't go in and spend like five hours with them each week. Like no way. Like some people I've get 20 minutes with and I have to just say, okay, do this, this, this, this week. And that's how we build the competencies.

Sean Patton (09:04)
Are there signs that, you know, to build that self-awareness where someone can be like, this is a sign that this may be an issue for you, like in congruence between what you're trying to get across and what is coming across, like how would you even recognize that this may be a problem?

Blake (09:14)
Yeah

I mean, there's two.

The biggest one is video because you can actually like watch yourself after the fact and say like, like I was really, let's say me and you had a one-on-one and I wanted to show you that like you're doing great work and I really love your sort of contribution or whatever to the team. And I'm like, Sean, you've been doing great. Like, I really appreciate everything that you're doing. It's like, ⁓ this doesn't really look like it, right? So that's the first one. And the second one is...

similar trends and themes of feedback, right? Like that's where like 360 assessments are really helpful or just throughout a career path, like everybody's kind of saying the same thing in different ways, like hard to talk to, hard to work with. But people, I think what people make the mistake with, they think the language needs to be.

exact in order to really hear that. Like everybody was saying to you, Sean, you're coming across like an abrasive, arrogant leader. And everybody said abrasive and arrogant. It would seep in more. But if some people said, you know, tough to deal with, not the best at this, not the best. You can't really see the through line, but the through line is like abrasive and arrogant. Right. And what's so interesting about some cultures is that not every

Culture is the same. that's the thing that I differ from a lot of other communication. I feel like experts or whatever, like they think that there should be a way that a culture works. Like whatever works, works, but it needs to work for that group. So for example, like me and you, ⁓ SF guys, they talk shit, they make fun of each other, they make jokes, they make all this, right? So me and you could get into that rhythm and start laughing and having a good time about it.

Somebody else could look at the things that we're saying to each other and be like, oh my God, these guys are toxic. So human behavior is way more nuanced. the culture really matters. And as a leader, it depends on your level of leadership. So you always could create these microcultures for your teams. But it's part of a bigger culture. It's part of a bigger apparatus.

And if you're the CEO of that company, you have more of the ability to change it or more of the ability to shift it in the direction that you want. Sometimes you got to ask yourself, like, am I going to be able to actually grow in this culture? And sometimes the answer for people that are sort of middle in the hierarchy is like, you're not like it's going to cause too much suffering. Like find a company that works for you because you're going to hate it.

Sean Patton (12:06)
What, and it's so interesting. think culture, you think, you know, like national or ethnic cultures or company, but you also, there's, you know, you and I both work with a lot of different types of companies and, know, the, the blue collar manufacturers and the plant floor and, know, the tech, the tech company and the, you know, the sales organization versus the, you know, I dunno, like those are all the versus hospitality or whatever else. Like, so like understanding what

Blake (12:22)
totally different.

Sean Patton (12:35)
the optimal culture is in like for your company and for your industry and being able to adapt on that. And I think you're right. Like some people are very good at sort of analyzing that and adapting and like, do I, how do I, how I most effectively communicate in this culture? And some people are just like, this is the way I communicate, deal with it. Okay.

Blake (12:54)
Yeah. And also like as a coach, when I work with companies, I have to do that. Some people I'm like, stop complaining. Like just let's, and they laugh and they're like, okay, I got it. Right. And other people I'm more sensitive. I'm more, it really depends on the individual. It's like what, what motivates them. Like some people on a, like take like, like a team sports, some coaches and some people respond very well to.

immense amounts of immense amount of borderline, what some people would think is abuse in the way that, that's how I like that. I like, come on, people that push me to the brink of things. I'm always grateful for that. Some people don't like that. Some people just, they're at a point in their life where they can't listen to what you're saying because of the way that you're communicating. And I think it's really important as a leader to both understand what the current

cultural dynamic is, but also to be able to adjust your style to the kind of people that are in the room. And that is probably one of the more bigger competency issues with leaders. They don't adjust.

Sean Patton (14:05)
Hmm. Yeah. When you walk on the plant for you walk up to the HR department, you know, you have a different, different, different game. Yeah. What, if you could give, you know, ⁓ you know, rising leaders that are maybe moving up to that very senior level and maybe they're having to now interact, right? Like cross-functional, right? Like they came up inside one sort of microculture inside the company and now they're like, they're having to deal across that or maybe with other companies. Is there.

Blake (14:11)
Different game. Different game.

Sean Patton (14:32)
one or a small handful of behavioral changes to like start putting in practice tomorrow.

Blake (14:37)
There's a couple of things. The first thing I would do is create what I call like a real org chart. So take your company's org chart, and it becomes dotted line, dashed lines, like whatever. They have these org charts, but that's the org charts are just some sort of like written out organizational structure. It's not how power influence really moves throughout an organization. There's subtleties there. So like I've worked for companies where the chief of staff yielded more power than the entire executive team.

because they worked with the co-founder, or they worked with the founder for like 12 years and they were the most trusted. So they were like, that chief of staff was like their name. And then, so I'd understand what that landscape really looks like. And then also you gotta understand, people don't like when I say this, but you're playing a game. You just really are.

Like you're playing a game of trying to navigate and you see the people that play the game do well and they move up and people that decide not to play the game and just put their head down and don't do work, don't do well. Which means, and what does the game mean? The game usually means being a decent value driven person. So like adding value whenever you can, helping out whenever you can, like, you know, not being a kiss up, but making sure that everybody understands that you have that value. But before you ever do any of that,

Climbing a career path, it is a time, labor, it's an intensive pursuit. Often, you're at a company, it's not gonna be like one year of your life. It might be two to five years of your life moving up that. Really ask, do you want to move up in this company? Do you wanna play this game? Do you wanna follow through here? Because I feel like a lot of people, maybe they do it for financial reasons.

then they realize that the structure of the organization, like, I could spend five years here and not make my goal. Like, it's not actually possible. And then they just burn out. So really, and also I think that's important to understand. Like, one of the biggest comments I get from people in that sort of age is like, sometimes they're trapped. So it's like their boss was just, you know, became like SVP and they only promote.

another SVP every three years and they know that they're definitely not going to get it. This other person is going to get it because they're two years and they've done a lot of good work. Like maybe the conversation is, can't like I'm ceiling tier. It's going to be too hard to break through and you have to find a different sort of job. I think a lot of people make that mistake.

Sean Patton (17:15)
Mm. And like planning ahead, not like not letting that surprise you. Is that what you're saying? I'm hearing you say like, yeah, like let's think through this like longer term.

Blake (17:20)
Exactly. Like

think through this. It's kind of like pen and paper. Like how do I get to where I want to get to? And then also be open and vocal about that. So it's like, Hey Sean, love working for you. I just want to be, I have no intentions of leaving. I love this company X, Y, and Z, but like, I need a path to where I feel like I can grow. And right now how I'm seeing the way that this company is structured, like there's no, I'm not going to replace you. Like there's nowhere I can really go.

And then sometimes they might give you some information or context where it's like, no, actually this is going to happen. That's going to happen, blah, blah, blah. And other times it's not going to be that, but this is where the sensitivity, there's a time and a place and a moment to have that conversation. And there's a time and a place where you say that and it's not going to look good for you. Right. So that's what I mean by playing the game.

Sean Patton (18:11)
When I, love to tie those two concepts together of like having the, providing the value first before you have that conversation. Cause that's where I see that go wrong. Right? It's like, you know, the new guy or the person who hasn't been doing anything other than just like head down, doing their job, hasn't like helped out, hasn't provided 10 value, hasn't, and there's like, Hey, what about me? Like, where am I going? You know, or they just showed up six months ago and it's like, well, let's, you know, that's different than showing up providing.

Blake (18:33)
Yeah.

huh.

Sean Patton (18:41)
tremendous value to everyone and showing that and then being like, now I just wanna have some clarity about where I'm headed. You have to of earn that, that whole law of reciprocity, right?

Blake (18:53)
Yeah, and it's also just, if you're looking to move up in an organization, you have to sit down, be real with yourself, and ask yourself a simple question. If you were to get hit by a truck today, would that company be screwed? If the answer is no, you don't have a lot of value. Like, the way you understand your value, really, in an organizational structure is to understand what it's like when you're removed.

And I, and to all of you leaders out there listening to this, like that's a good way to assess your team. Right? Like if you have a team of six people and you're like, and Susan could be gone tomorrow and it really wouldn't change anything. Why are they on the team? Right? Like that's, it's a really, that's how you run like a lean operation. And with that, there's inherent risk because sometimes what happens is you run such a cohesive team and every, every part is so good.

that if one part's removed, you have problems, but there's ways to defend against that, right? But like, if you wanna move up in a culture and you're like, yeah, if I didn't show up for work for the next month, nothing would happen. Your role is probably not that critical and that's a problem.

Sean Patton (20:07)
Yeah, exactly. That's so true. That's very interesting. So when you talk about these like leaders moving up, ⁓ there's a big generational shift going on between sort of millennials, boomer, Gen Z's kind of in the middle of that. And what do you see in terms of maybe, you know, obviously you're speaking generically, but is there a difference in how those different generations approach communication?

Blake (20:32)
Yeah, I mean, I think every generation is different. Every generation likes to think that they're the best generation, right? Like this is kind of like, I wish we could this. At the end of the day, people are these, we'd like to think of ourselves as these individualistic type of people, but the truth is we're very pattern oriented and we're very at the victim of the culture that we grew up in, right? Like that's just what happens, which creates these generational gaps and these like slight overlays and so on and so

⁓ And it really depends on where you're at and what organization and what culture you're in. I think the first thing you have to do is not, people tend to over index on the negatives. So they're like, they don't like this, they don't like that, but start with the positives of the generation. So like, what are the good things? Like I have in my mind, like a model for what I would call old school finance.

New York Finance, these are people that built their career in the 70s and 80s, in the 80s, made insane amount of money. And then I started working with them later in their career, like when they run an organization and they're like, know, early 2000s, actually mid 2000s kind of thing, right? ⁓ And with a lot of these folks, like they would just do things.

where I was basically saying that you can't do this. You can't operate this way, right? Just rip people apart over emails, in all capitals, like, you fucking idiot. It's like, what are we, we're in a new time right now. And it's a new construct because you can get sued. There's something called.

Sean Patton (22:05)
Like what?

Blake (22:23)
Discovery, if you ever get sued and they look at the emails, like there's all these types of things. But a lot of it is just specific to the organization. So like some stuff that I still see in big financial firms, I'm like, they're crazy for saying that, but it's still the culture. But if you took someone like that and had them maybe ran a tech company, it'd be completely different. And a tech company that was based in New York might be slightly different than a tech company that's based in Palo Alto.

versus might be different than Nashville. Like it really is highly variable. So I wouldn't put people into the buckets of generate. I just drop it. Like I don't see people as a byproduct of their generation. I see them as like their own unique microcosm of themes and interactions and behaviors and all these things. And I try to treat people like that instead of lumping them in. It's kind of like we could do that with anything. Like, are you going to be really effective if you lump all your friends into Democrat and Republican? No. Like,

I'm sure there's some Republicans you hate and some Democrats you hate and some Democrats you love and some Republicans you love, right? We create a breakdown in communication and in effectiveness and in just like human connection when we label people into these broad big categories. That is the problem. Like, and as a tribal species, we love doing that, which is why it's so hard.

Sean Patton (23:48)
Yeah, you do have to fight that natural tendency to do that. I feel like there's a bit, you know, maybe this is sort of a, uh, I've mentioned your take on, there's obviously a lot of reasons for this, but like sort of the, I don't want to say DEI backlash, but definitely some pushback on some of this. And, and I sort of, I sort of view that as a resistance to at least a perception that people were sort of starting.

Blake (24:06)
yeah.

Sean Patton (24:17)
to categorize or put people starting with difference as opposed to starting with sameness, identifying sameness, and then celebrating difference, right? Like there's a different approach. Like what do you start with?

Blake (24:28)
Yeah, I would totally agree. And this is what happens. It's kind of like a pattern. Something happens, and then there's an overcorrection. And then it balances out. That tends to, if you follow a lot of trends and themes of behavior, it's like, OK, we overcorrect. We do something to max intensity. And then they realize that that doesn't work. So there's a middle ground, right? And it's like, yeah, it's funny because I

The diversity question, I always like careful the way I answer this, but the truth is I like diversity for diversity's sake because I believe that diversity builds really good teams and outside thinking and prevents group thinking, all these wonderful things. So it's, but I'm not trying to be like, ⁓ I need a purple person. So let me hire a purple person, right? Like there's a distinction there. And ⁓ yeah, I think it seems like it's calibrated at something that's more.

Normalize now.

Sean Patton (25:29)
Yeah, I agree. Cause it's like a sort of an overlap because you mentioned before about how, well, maybe you're in a company. You're like, this isn't right for me. You know, this company is just like, you know, you can try to shift. You can try to turn this whole ship by yourself, but there's 500 people on the ship. They're going the other way. And so there is also the thing of like, what's the optimal culture for the org and do you fit it while understanding that if you get too much sameness, you, you run, you run a larger risk sometimes of a unit group group thinking.

Blake (25:40)
Yep.

Yeah, everybody thinking the same

and that's this danger within itself.

Sean Patton (26:03)
Well, that ⁓ actually segues pretty great to my next topic, which you're one of the smartest people that I know personally on AI. And I know you use it hugely in your companies and a lot. And one of the things that I hear a lot about AI, there's obviously tons of different use cases. We'll get into those.

how it can sort of create sameness, right? It kind of pulling everybody out. If everybody's using chat GPT to ask it the same question and get the same response, it sort of pulls everyone and doesn't and takes strips away, people stripping away sort of individual takes. I know, do you sort of see that or see a danger in sort of bringing everybody on board with one sort of take that AI is telling us this is what the truth is?

Blake (26:41)
No, I-

actually think it's a little bit of the opposite. I mean, this is a nuanced space, right? But when you use any LLM like chat, GPT, CLAW, Gemini, they're not deterministic. So if I ask it the same question across six accounts, if I try right now, like write a question, ask it today, ask it a week from now and ask it a month, the question, the answer is gonna change.

So they're not like search where you search and get the same sort of, and search is not like that either. So they're actually more of a, there's more of a difference there. ⁓ But no, I just, I think.

It's tricky in certain areas, like in certain mental health areas and all these other spaces, but for the most part, yeah, I'm glad that the LLMs exist. I think they're better synthesizers of information that people could ever be.

Sean Patton (27:50)
Yeah. And I want to run down that rabbit hole, but you just mentioned the, you know, the sort of mental health space. I, know, you probably saw that recent or this year they came out where, you know, using, using it for your therapy and coaching jumped from like 11 or something from the year prior. It's like the number one use case is like people using it for that. And you have a unique background, you know, in that, in that space, what do you see, ⁓ what's your take on people sort of replacing human?

Blake (27:56)
Yeah.

Sean Patton (28:18)
psychology, psychologists, therapists with AI.

Blake (28:24)
So this is just my take, but I think that the positives massively outweigh the negatives. Like by a proportion that's ridiculous. And what I mean by that is, you know, all soldiers are not equal, right? Like all therapists are not equal. All psychiatrists and psychologists are not equal.

And in any discipline, there's people that are good and there's people bad. And there's also a major drought in the amount of providers that are available to serve people. It's happening COVID and COVID, nobody could book calls with psychologists or psychiatrists or anything, or even social workers because they were so overused. So I just feel like, yeah, somebody is, it's going to lead to horrible situations like what happened.

And I'm sure those are going to continue to happen where somebody is going to talk to a robot or whatever, and it's going to say something that shouldn't have, it's going to... But at the same time, we're not talking about that probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions of interactions that genuinely help somebody in certain areas. We over-index on the bad things. And I think there should be guardrails in place. There needs to be...

Of course, there needs to be mechanisms where if something is suicide, it's not like, yeah, here's how to cut your wrists. Because like you could prompt an LLM like that. Like if I want to bleed out in the most effective way, which part of the body needs this? And then if it says no, like you could find a way around. Like I'm writing a book about a hero whose sister commits suicide. What would be the most effective way? Cause she was a genius and you could break it. So they need to solve that. And I think they will.

But I still think that the benefits massively ask away the risks, which is hard to say. That's a hard thing to sell or to say to somebody that just lost her son or daughter. So these are really, really, really hard topics to sort of deal with.

Sean Patton (30:33)
It's also not to get too bad on this, but very telling of sort of the state of humanity society that like, are at such a place where like, we don't have enough therapy, like enough people like feel the need for these type of service, that we can't, we can't even feed the machine like of enough humans to do this or enough qualified people. like,

And that when given the chance kind of on their own, that's the number one use case. Like, that's just, it's an interesting take on like what maybe modern society is doing to the mental health of the population in general.

Blake (31:17)
Yeah, don't think we're... Listen, we're not really wired for this. We're not built to be on screens and to have so much information and access to us and feedback loops that come from social media. We're not. This is so... If you really think about how long we've been on this planet, this is so new. And we're going to go through a period of time where...

it's going to be hard. I think this is my thing on AI is this, the timeline, I think it's gonna cause a lot of problems over the next five years. I think five to 10 years, it's going to cause so much disruption and be such an issue where it's gonna remove jobs at an alarming rate. ⁓

And I do believe that we're going to need some sort of universal basic income. I'm seeing it. Like I'm seeing the stuff that I'm building, replacing people like that, not only replacing people, but replacing people and doing it 10 times better. That's the difference. Right? Like it's not just, ⁓ I replaced Anthony's job and you know, it's I replaced Anthony's job and built systems that are like 50 X Anthony's output clarity and all of that.

Right? So that's going to come. And then either, I really, I feel like there's only two outcomes. I don't know if me and you will be alive for this because there's a lot of conversations about what AGI is and what isn't, but it'll happen at some point. So either we create some sort of super intelligence and it kills us. Like that is, that can happen. That it's like, ⁓

I'm this super intelligent being and I think what's interesting is people don't really understand this concept of super intelligence. If something like that is created, it's not 5x smarter. It's like 100,000x smarter than your smartest person. So the things that it could do to kill us, we can't even think of those things because it's so... We're in a box. It's hard to conceptualize. So if me and you sat down like, ⁓

we needed to kill a bunch of people. We have all these things in our head. An AI solution might come up with something that we never thought of, genetically bioengineered, some sort of novel virus that wipes the population out just done. Like that is a possibility in my opinion. And then the other possibility is more of a utopia, like more of a access to all these types of things. And I think what we're going to do is we're not going to experience the death and destruction maybe in our lifetime.

or, but we're going to experience a lot of friction problems, issues as we replace, replace, replace, replace, replace people. Like, and this is not something a lot of people say, well, this is not, it's happening right now. Like just in Austin, the amount of way Mo's everywhere are ridiculous. Right. And you just, just think about it. Think about when they really nail self-driving cars. We've got the entire trucking business. That's going to get gut.

Right? You're going to probably have somebody that sits there and navigates and just, you know, has to unload or load. Then we think about the robotics revolution and how robots are going to load and unload things. I looked, I was at JFK the other day and looked at this crazy construction site and said, you know what, in 15 years from now, this might be all automated. And let's be real, everybody that's talking about, ⁓ people, people, people, when you know that you can have your house fully built in maybe two months by robotic systems.

Are you going to hire a general contractor?

Sean Patton (35:07)
Especially when you can have...

Blake (35:08)
And yeah,

and that's not, I'm not saying that's here right now, right? I mean, there's basic systems. think like a lot of people doing, I find it funny where this whole AI revolution, they thought it was going to be the engineers and the scientists. They were going to have jobs. Uh-uh. Like you have a good blue collar job and you're like a plumber. There's no AI system that's going to replace plumbing for a long time because it's a hard technical challenge, like moving into a space.

You know, ripping out dry, it's not easy. But for a home builder, there's going to be AI systems that put in drywall. There's going to be AI systems that ⁓ build foundations quicker. Like all these types of things, it's going to get solved and it's going to cause like massive, massive, massive disruption in my opinion. And not a good way. It's going to be hard.

Sean Patton (35:59)
And so as we go through this tumultuous period, what are the key decisions that need to happen or at like a policy level, let's start there at a policy level that can sort of push us down one of those two paths?

Blake (36:15)
Yeah, feel

like, mean, I'm not an expert in this, but I think one, we need to take care of our people. So I think the smartest policy I've ever heard was there should be a robot tax. So any autonomous system or robotic system that's replacing a human job, there should be a tax on using it. And that money is pulled back into the economy and redistributed to people.

Right. So, and it's not like a thousand a month. It's probably like 10 K a month, something bigger. Right. So I think that's really important, but the whole, it's called the AI alignment problem and it's hard, man. Like from not going into super intelligence and destroying all of us. I don't think we're doing that that good. Like, cause you have to understand there's a, there's multiple races going on right now. So like the first, the race that everybody thinks of is like, Oh, you know, AI versus Claude or.

Gemini Google versus open AI like all that type of stuff, but there's also a national race like You know, I'm a pretty like proud American whatever but I believe I'm a citizen of the planet and all these other things But I'm obviously nationalistic right like I want America to win We'd better wake the fuck up. Do you like what China is doing is? I see the stuff coming out of China. They are

I really feel like in some ways they are so ahead of us and in some ways they are so behind us. But this whole global ecosystem is just so fragile. China goes and Jacks Taiwan and now most of the chips that are being made from TSMC, TSMC I think, yeah. Now that's what Nvidia is powered on. Like this is like a global thing. It's not like a...

It's not, we're just so interconnected right now that I think for the first time ever, we need to start really reducing the nationalism because if we don't, we're just gonna get into all these proxy wars and all these like things and then who knows where it's going to actually lead. I always made a joke that like, I always thought that the best thing for the human race would be if aliens came and tried to fight us. We would get absolutely destroyed. If any alien civilization came, it'd be over.

But like, we need to bound on the human level, like that we're all part of this planet, that we all... And listen, you talk to most people, there's radicalists and there's extremists, most people just want a life, most people just want to take care of their family. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, it's that kind of thing. And the reason why I think that needs to happen is because if that doesn't happen, and these AI systems are dedicated towards national security or...

Sean Patton (38:36)
You

Blake (39:03)
fence and all that and we start having conflicts at that level, I don't want to live in that world. I just don't.

Sean Patton (39:13)
I love that. So now this is such a good, a good take high level. now let's go sort of individual level in terms of what we need to do in terms of maybe our own, our own lives, our own mindsets, our own families, our own businesses as we move into this period of uncertainty.

Blake (39:17)
Yeah.

So I would say one, you either learn to ride this wave or you're get crushed by it. So if you're not using AI considerably in your organization, you're at a massive disadvantage. It's that simple. Like every organization should be looking at all their processes and looking how those could be not completely taken over, but augmented or supplemented by some sort of autonomous system, right? Like that has to happen. If you are any type of...

manager or in any organization, you should personally take it upon yourself to understand how to use AI better in your work. And let me be clear, using ⁓ AI, most people say when I say, they're I use AI. Cutting and pasting into chat GPT is not using AI. That's a type of using AI. But there's code development. There's a whole world out there of things that you can actually do to get better. And I would if, I mean,

If I wasn't in this conversation, I think in-person experiences are gonna go through the roof. I think people are going to, I think the social platforms over the next two to three years, I think they're gonna go to shit because people are not gonna be able to trust what's real and what's not real. You're not gonna feel like you're getting like an authentic voice. Like even LinkedIn has gone to shit. Like you post something basic and everybody's a great post. Like that's all generated by some sort of thought, right?

So I think in-person businesses are going to do really well. And even if you have a business, like if you're like a plumber and you have a really thriving plubbing business, let's say you have like, you three locations, you should be thinking of how AI is not going to walk into the place and do it, but like, how can it supplement or increase your business? Cause I really just feel like it's just, it's going to be a very haves and have nots thing. It's going to be, well, that use it are going to make money and do great. The people who don't use it are going to be massively left behind.

And there's very few industries that don't fall into those categories.

Sean Patton (41:33)
Yeah, you know, I was thinking about, a lot of talk around companies getting smaller, right. And being more filled with more high agency people that, ⁓ are maybe empowered by technology, but these like smaller, more like elite teams, as opposed to these giant corporate structures that are, you know, everyone is like, they show up to work, they get in their cubicle and they like,

do one function and they close out and they go home every day and how that's just like not gonna be the case anymore, would you agree?

Blake (42:06)
100%. It's like, now we spoke about this, I didn't know how big a platoon was and you were giving me... If you think about that, it's just...

Sean Patton (42:17)
Yeah, that

was that I was thinking of, you the example I think we were talking about was people notice but a so you take a infantry like Army Infantry Battalion, an Army Infantry Battalion, let's just say is 700 soldiers, right? You got privates and all these other people. There's like this conventional unit soldiers and a special forces team, the Green Beret ODA is 12 people. OK.

And so when you do, when the strategic planners are looking and they'll look at an area and based on, know, the terrain and, you know, population size, all these things, all these factors are going to play. They'll say like, this is like a unit of area that we need. Like we need a, a unit, ⁓ a ground force unit to control, to like be able to influence. And when they do that, the one for one swap is.

A 12 person ODA and a 700 man battalion can cover the same space. And so I think you have to think of that analogy of like, we're heading more toward that. Yeah.

Blake (43:19)
That's the analogy. Like that's why,

in Appleton, it was a battalion. Okay, so that analogy you told me was the perfect analogy of what we're going through right now. Like that is the same exact thing. like, it's like you have high agency folks that know how to use these tools and they're not one or two X multipliers. They're a thousand X multipliers, right? Like, and that's what...

gives the competitive advantage. And then also just thinking about coordinating movement patterns with 700 people versus coordinating movement patterns with 12. Same exact thing in a company. No different. For every node, every person that you add to your team, it increases the complexity. People think it decreases it, it doesn't. Because now, like if there's a team of six and you add a seventh, the seventh person is interfacing often with all six of those teams. So it expands considerably.

So I think you're gonna start seeing massive consolidations of teams. And quite frankly, as somebody who's looked at businesses and been involved in business, that needs to happen. Cause sometimes I look at teams and I'm like, why do you need 10 people? Like these three do all the work, it's clear. And the other seven just do 20 % of it. So companies are gonna bloat and then they're gonna go and get smaller and smaller and smaller. And they're gonna keep there.

Sean Patton (44:25)
Right.

And so that's what you kind of are seeing. you matching that sort of like tactical or, know, business level with sort of the meta societal level is your, cause I almost see that there's going to be a, uh, this is my personal take. think of maybe when we had the height of, I don't know, the American middle-class maybe, I don't know when that was the sixties or seventies, right. And sort of like a bell curve, right. Of like middle-class, have certain people that

Blake (45:02)
Mm-hmm. 60s, yeah.

Sean Patton (45:08)
have a lot of money, a lot of people have a lot of money. Most people are in the middle or some standard deviation off that. And then what I'm hearing from you is that if that takes, you're going to have those high agency, higher producers are going to move forward, have a larger percentage of them and then sort of everyone else fall off. And it's almost going to be like a, like a, like a bicamel, like two loops where you have. Yeah. Bimodal distribution of like, if you're there on, like you said, if you're a high edgy person who's going to like take charge of this,

Blake (45:26)
Mm-hmm, a bimodal distribution, yep.

Sean Patton (45:38)
do the work, see it and move forward. And if you're someone who's just just trying to get by in their job and take your 120 grand a year, like you may end up with 60 grand a year UBI and no work to do.

Blake (45:50)
Yeah, and also there's a real big fear. My friend told me, I don't know where it came from. My friend Michael Margolis told me this. It was called phobo, and it was fear of being obsolete.

You know, like so that it's going to replace so many people's jobs. think about, like, I remember, like have a lot of like SF and special forces friends, right? And like the funny joke is it seems like everybody, like a lot of people were in the SEAL teams or Green Brave for like a long time, like 18 years or whatever. And I'd be like, why'd you stop? And their answer is either like they got pushed, like they got really injured or something like that.

Sean Patton (46:04)
Tell me more about that.

Blake (46:33)
Or there was no more wars to fight. Like we went through this period where there was all this stuff and then all of sudden it was like, okay, like what am going to do? Sit here, I got something else in my life. Right? Like, but, think about that, like the warrior mentality of somebody that you're somebody with it. Right? Imagine if you did that and you got into that game and then they were like, no more war Sean. Like it's all autonomous drone bots. Like we don't want to waste human lives.

But think about that unique example across everything. There are people out there that take great pride in what they do. They love painting a house. love, yeah, everybody likes and doesn't like some aspects of jobs, but our job is a major identity and what we do. I don't know what I would do if I wasn't doing the things that I'm doing. Like I just sit here. Like, so I think it's gonna start making certain things obsolete. when people feel

not needed and not a part of something, it's dangerous. And when that happens very, very quickly at mass scale, that's even more dangerous. So we need to really think about like, what are you going to do? Like what is going to happen? And yet some people will be like, ⁓ some people listening to this might be like, ⁓ I'll find plenty of things to do. Like I'll, I've always wanted to do this and you're probably a unique kind of person. Not everybody thinks like that, right? Some, some people just

Sean Patton (47:47)
Hmm.

Blake (48:01)
Their job is their life and their profession is their life. mean, it's a large percentage of time that if it was erased, how you gonna fill it?

Sean Patton (48:09)
Mm hmm. Man, it's just like, ⁓ if you're, if you're not the type of, as this starts to head, not only do you need to sort of like think of how you roll, you want to play in the future and how that, what that purpose is going to look like, but you know, getting back to almost like this mental health conversation around the amount of people that I think just, ⁓ you know, look for that X have to have that external purpose sort of given to them and aren't doing sort of the work now on like,

What is your meaning and value as a human being outside of that role that you play? Like you mentioned, if it goes away, then what? Like, I just think that's such, I mean, one, I just think that creates resilience in a person, but two, if it's thrust upon you and you haven't started doing that work to your point, there could be, you know, devastating consequences. So just getting back to like that high agency person, whether that's high agency and work or high agency for your own like identity and self work.

Blake (48:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (49:08)
man,

you got to be doing that because otherwise, as you head into tumultuous world that is constantly in upheaval and constantly changing, and you're just clinging to that, it's a scary place to be, I think.

Blake (49:20)
Yeah, and you should always do that. At the end of the day, agency is correlated with so many things. You need to feel like you have agency of your life. If you feel like you don't have agency and you're just in a state of, I don't know, victimhood or you're trapped, you'll never feel fulfilled. So like everybody, whether AI was here or not, agency is something you want to have agency in a relationship.

You want to have agency as a parent. You want to have agency when people feel like they're trapped, they feel like imprisoned. then most people, like that's the whole thing. Like when you put people in cages, we make the assumption that people try to get out. The average person doesn't try to get out. The average person sits in the cage, right? Like it's not, it's just not how we're like learned helplessness and all these interesting psychological sort of theories. Like they do that with rats. Like they like do studies where they like,

electrocute rats and they just keep shocking them and after a while the rats just give up. They learn to help like nothing I'm gonna do. I'm just done. It's over. Yeah.

Sean Patton (50:22)
Mmm.

I saw a study ⁓ where they had, they were using some different animals, eventually they got to like spiders where they they would put the spider and they would just draw a circle around and the spider like wouldn't cross the circle. Like it never would, right? And they kept making the circle smaller and smaller and it kept like not crossing it. And then one time they would draw the circle to the point where like their foot accidentally like stepped over one and they couldn't stop it. And as soon as it realized it was past it, they could never get it back in a circle again.

Blake (50:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's how we learn. It's a good analogy for us, right? We have our own circles that we paint around ourselves. You ever think that? You're driving in a car and you're like, if I wanted it right now, I could just turn the wheel and just kill those 12 people. But I don't. I don't do it. Right? I still believe no matter what people think is happening in the world, I mean, maybe it's just my perspective as an optimist. I just think it's so...

Sean Patton (50:57)
It's

Yeah.

Hahaha

Yeah, don't do it.

Blake (51:27)
Like it's so incredible that everything still works. right? That people cross the street when they're supposed to cross the street, that it's not like complete anarchy. Like how does this all just work? Like yes, people, and yes, there's horrible things, but it does for the most part work and it has gotten better. Like you can't dispute that your quality of life now versus 500 years ago is dramatically different. Like your poorest person lives like a king compared to the kings of those times.

You know, like it's just with access to food and access to whatever, at least in America, not in the whole world, but like in America for the most part. So things are good and I still believe that things are gonna get better, but I am not ignorant enough to say that like, yeah, it's just gonna be great over the next 10 to 20 years and we're gonna have no problems and it's all gonna work out and it's gonna be fine. Like anybody that thinks that is just, I think just that that's crazy too.

Sean Patton (52:28)
And I think that's when, if you take that approach, that sort of naive approach, that's when, you know, either just through ignorance or through bad actors, right? I mean, there's a lot of people in power who have control of these things or making policy decisions that maybe aren't in your best interest. So I think all of us being more high agency, being aware, can proving as, you know, I think of, mean, there's never, that's reason I'm really passionate about what I'm doing right now is there's just never maybe been another important time where having more people with.

high agency people who are stepping up and being leaders, whether that's leaders of themselves, leaders of their families, leaders in the communities and leaders in business that are willing to step up and do that has never been more important.

Blake (53:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, and things are gonna change. I think, you know, like America is like really young, if you really think about it. Like, you 1776, like to now, this is not a lot of time. And like, I have my own beliefs that like the concept of a president is just so dumb now. Like there shouldn't be a president, there should be a council. Like one person can't do all, like it's just too much power.

Like it's just, like it doesn't make any, it's hard. Like, so there's going to need to be changes over time, right? And, and, and just like, you know, founding fathers didn't look at taking office as like, there was no career politicians. Like you, you were successful in your life and then you were of service to your community and of service to your nation. And it was like a, it was almost like this obligation, like something that I should do now.

You could just be a lifelong politician.

Sean Patton (54:09)
Get

150 % return on your investments because you're making the policy. ⁓

Blake (54:13)
It's...

And I'll be honest, man. Like, I love our... I think this is not easy in our system of government for all its faults. It's still the best right there. But in 50 years, and we had some super intelligence, I'd probably want it to run shit if it had our best interests in the plant. If it had the true interest. Because like, your local state senator, they have your interests-ish.

because they want to get re-elected. But like, imagine just an autonomous system that just, nope, this is what's fair, this is not fair. It's going to be way less biased than this. But I don't think that's coming, but it would be, it's going to be interesting to live through it and see if it does. I don't know. We'll see.

Sean Patton (55:00)
We

just need to see like policy think tanks when they create algorithms to create recommendations and then it's a better recommendation than anything else and those came up with. We just need to see that debated.

Blake (55:04)
⁓ yeah.

Yeah.

And what do you do when the recommendations are run by systems that are not as biased as people are and don't have ⁓ corporate money in their pocket and all? Like, it's going to be weird. Like, maybe it comes up with things that I don't like. And it's like, tax rates should increase for certain. I'm like, wait, no, I don't want that. Right. And that's what happens with technology and innovation.

I don't know. I was thinking about this last night. Do you watch, there's a show, Alien Earth, and in Alien Earth, show, it just came out on Hulu. The world is now run by five corporations. And I sat there and I was like, oh, that's crazy. That'll never happen. And then I started thinking about it. I was like, no, something like that could happen. You could start seeing tons of wars or consolidation or whatever it is, and it could change.

Sean Patton (55:50)
Mmm.

100%.

Blake (56:05)
So it's just, it's interesting to think about, but for everybody listening, just make sure you're using AI, make sure you're making it a part of your life. And if you, if you don't, but like, can't think of an argument of where you shouldn't. Like, that's what I mean. Like, even if you started your own business, that was like some local farm, like you should be using AI. Like even if you started a business where you did like in group workshops, you should be using AI. But

Use it to facilitate whatever goal and end goal you want to do. And also use it to explore ⁓ and learn and do different things. It's a wonderful tool.

Sean Patton (56:42)
That's awesome. Blake, it's been great. People love this conversation and they want to connect more with you. do you have, I know you've got multiple companies now, multiple places people to find you. So like, where should they go?

Blake (56:54)
Yeah, I just consolidate everything to a newsletter I send out every Monday. So it's ⁓ nonverbalgroup.com slash newsletter. It's the best way to kind

Sean Patton (57:05)
Thanks so much for your time, brother. I appreciate it,