 Well I think another part of technology is it creates this artificial filter between us and the real world. So whether it's changing the way you look, changing the background, it's becoming more and more virtual which of course creates a mask between us and our real identity and then of course showing others that real identity and being vulnerable. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure you guys get notified and in order to do that you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. The book proposal was done four years before the pandemic and what I had seen and felt was that we had lost the humanity when we were connecting with each other that it became all about the technology all about the clicks and likes and followers rather than that intentionality that rather than meeting people and building long-term relationships the kind that I learned from my parents back in the late 60s early 70s and of course February 2020 when I started to write the book I was going along my merry way and then of course in March of 2020 all we had were the clicks and likes and followers so in some ways I kind of had to go start all over in terms of the intentionality but I will tell you back maybe seven years ago a friend of mine told me a story that stuck with me and she said when she would take her 10 year old and 12 year old to the bus stop in the morning and she would hug them goodbye and send them on their merry way they would get up on the bus sit in their respective seats and as soon as they sat down their heads would bob down to look at their handheld devices and every other child on the school bus was doing the exact same thing now AJ Johnny I can tell you I don't have amazing memories of my school bus right I mean like I don't know about you but I will tell you that I wasn't I was talking to my classmates it's amazing how much we live on our devices these days and I know the book is full of research to show that was there any research that you found that was really shocking about how lonely and disconnected we are currently well I mean there's so much but I would say one of the most telling things that I learned was the fact that if we make a life filled with meaningful connections both personally and professionally we're gonna live longer we're gonna be healthier well that's certainly one we've been seeing a lot of research on and we've even had some guests on to talk about that the other thing with technology that you mentioned is with the clicks of likes and shares putting out great content is one way to get likes and shares but being rude having snapback hot takes and just being outrageous gets you more shares than likes than great content and because of that it changes our frame and how we deal with other people because in the real world if you did these things you would get punched you would be excluded you would not find connection however but online this is getting you notoriety it's getting you followers it is getting you power and the and I have noticed this and I've told AJ this we've come to the same conclusion which is we're going down this road with all this technology it's all experimental for everybody we don't know what the long lasting effects are going to be I would say that we're starting to see the effects on our society is happening all around us but you mentioned about bus memories like I don't want to get the end of my life because of all this technology that I found to help me with work only to realize that I wish I would have spent more time being present with others enjoying my life and reaching for goals and building things we drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends no I couldn't agree more and the thing is also something to be conscious of the next 15 years the platforms are going to change anyways so if we are basing our success on numbers now they're only going to change in another few years so I mean it is in some ways a futile effort and it you just made me think I was actually the beginning of 2020 in Antarctica and I'll never forget that everyone on the boat all they did was take pictures and it was like stop just look think of what you're gonna you know there's whales and penguins and you're missing it because you have this ginormous camera in between you and the animal but anyhow what you just said Johnny just made me think of that I go to concerts all the time and I see people watching the concert through their phone and the 4th of July just happened I live in Vegas and I even caught myself filming some of it because I wanted to send what I was seeing to somebody I was like just enjoy the moment well and I do also think I mean I am non-antitechnology and I am certainly a user of various social media platforms both personally and professionally but I don't consider that connecting okay there's a means to an end and I will tell you I have been to three weddings of people that I met on Twitter but to me the goal is if it's someone who's meaningful to me to get it offline um now of course the last year and a half that has been very very very very difficult and my hope is if we can get this damn country vaccinated we might be able to get back to normalcy I like to call what we're in right now is like a normal normalcy well I think another part of technology is it creates this artificial filter between us and the real world yeah so whether it's changing the way you look changing the background it's becoming more and more virtual which of course creates a mask between us and our real identity and then of course showing others that real identity and being vulnerable and being honest and open with them and what we really loved about the book was really breaking down what are the steps it takes to get back to connecting and I'd love if you could just unpack for our audience the gather ask do method because it is so powerful and it's certainly in line with what we teach here at the art of charm I love it and I just love the name the art of charm whoever came up with that kudos well interestingly enough when you write a business book you have to come up with a methodology and I did some deep soul searching because I have a mask a tremendous community over the years and I founded my current company um the only company ever founded at age 48 I'm now 56 and over the last eight years 95 percent of the business has been in that so what that has told me is the connections that I have built since my early 20s actually have come back to health and it wasn't like I had a crystal ball all the way back then in fact it wasn't even part of the dream or hope but what I realized is as I was doing the soul searching is I actually did have a methodology and that is what the gather ask do is and that's the components of the book but I will say that the underlying theme but beneath gather ask do is this notion of leading with how can I be of help to others and this does not mean not taking the oxygen mask first but in other words it means leading with help help will come back come back to you so in the gather phase the first and most important component is to do some self reflection and connect with yourself and really do a sense of deep dive in what are your hopes and dreams over the next four years four months even four weeks and who are you going to want to connect with or reconnect with that is going to help you meet those goals and then in addition that you can be helpful to notice it's that reciprocity okay also during that time in the gather phase what are your secret sauces what are your superpowers that you can bring to the fold and lastly what are you going to do to ensure that you break that hermetically sealed bubble in other words how do you ensure you're doing everything in your power to meet people who don't look like you sound like you the same age as you the same color race etc so that is the gather phase and I would go so far as say we are in a very good kind of reset moment in this world where we might be able to use this methodology the next is the ask phase and the ask phase is learning to ask the meaningful questions of others so that we can learn about their hopes and dreams and think about how we can be helpful and if you listen carefully which we are woefully bad at doing myself included we can get to the do phase which honestly is to me the most fun and that's when you take all that data that you listen to and then you become responsive reliable trustworthy and follow up on the you know what sh it that you're going to do to be that person