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Giving Thanks 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 441)

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It’s Thanksgiving time again. Which means it’s time for me to share what I’m thankful for in 2024… and what I’m looking forward to in 2025.

What am giving thanks for this year? And, more importantly, how do they help you learn and grow as you look ahead to next year? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about.

Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.

Giving Thanks 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 441) — Headlines and Show Notes

Show Notes and Links

You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here:

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Recorded using the travel rig: Shure SM57 Cardioid Dynamic Instrument Microphone and a IK Multimedia iRig Pro Duo IO USB audio interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac.

Running time: 17m 51s

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Transcript: Giving Thanks 2024

Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud, your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter. This is episode 441 of The Big Show and thank you so much for tuning in today.

I really do appreciate it. This is a strange week for us around TPA Global Headquarters or Thinks HQ. Because this is Thanksgiving week here in America. And if you’ve listened to the show for any period of time, you probably know that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s not even close.

For those of you outside of America who may not be familiar with this, Thanksgiving is a time to spend time with family and friends and the people we love and to reflect on the year and to be thankful for all that we have. It is so tied to family and friends and community that many people celebrate something they call Friendsgiving.
That’s a gathering with the family they’ve created, rather than the family that they were born into, right? If they aren’t able to travel home to see their parents, or see their siblings, or maybe they don’t have parents or siblings any longer. They gather together with the people who matter to them, and celebrate their friends.

And I love that. It is so great. And it causes me every year to think about what I’m thankful for. Which of course it does. I mean, that’s the whole point of the holiday, right? If I wasn’t thinking about what I was thankful for, I kind of missed the point. But I love that aspect of it. It gives me an opportunity to reflect and say, what am I thankful for?

And I always start with the fact that I have so many amazing people in my life. And I’m going to start first, because this is a business podcast and a marketing podcast and a strategy podcast, I’m going to start on the work. I get to do good work with great people all the time, and I’m incredibly thankful for that.

What’s also true, and what’s most meaningful to me, is that I keep to get learning and growing every year. And that’s what I’m going to spend most of this episode talking about. It starts with my friends. I have the greatest group of friends in the world. We had a nasty hurricane here in Orlando just about a month ago.

And multiple people across multiple states, out of the storm’s path, reached out before the hurricane to offer my wife and I a place to stay. Their concern was immediate and heartfelt. There was no hesitation.

But even beyond the big things, it’s the little things. I have a couple of long running group chats with various friend groups that provide me with non stop conversations filled with good humor and great advice. I am smarter, and I’m happier because of those friends.

I also love my mentors and my reverse mentors. Now, sometimes there’s an overlap between my friends and my mentor community. Actually, frequently, my friends are great mentors to me, and many of my mentors are great friends to me. But I want to spend a moment calling out the folks who mentor me separately.

We’ve all heard the expression, "it’s not what you know, it’s who you know." And I think that’s true in a roundabout way. I don’t mean you will succeed because people will just give you things without you doing any work. I just don’t think that tends to be true. Are there "nepo babies", you know. Do things like that occur? Sure.

But what is more to the point, in my sense, is that if you surround yourself with really great people and you surround yourself with really smart people, they will lift you up. They will help you learn. They will help you grow. You know, there’s a, there’s a business rule that I try to follow all the time that says who, not how. Instead of, you know, when I come up with a new problem, it’s not how do I fix this, or how do I do this? It’s who do I know who already knows how to do this, or who already knows how to fix this?

There was a document that went viral a few months back that was Mr. Beast’s guide to how his company does what it does. And one of the things he talked about in that document was That guide was how much he loved consultants, because he said they’re cheat codes, right? They already have the answer to the problem that you need to solve.

Now obviously I loved that because I’m a consultant, but I also loved it because it gets to a core point of the people you know, the people who you surround yourself with have immense amounts of information, far beyond what you know or can learn in a reasonable amount of time on your own. But you can just call them up and ask them, or text them, or ask them.

And that’s where my friends and my mentors and my reverse mentors come into play all the time. They’re the who. They are the who I know. Because they’re able to help me all the time.

Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, reverse mentors are people who are earlier in their career who I not only mentor about business and how I think as a senior leader and a senior strategist and all the like, but they mentor me about how they live in the world, especially as it relates to technology and media. They teach me how young Millennials and Gen Z live in the world as it is and as it will be. I mean, they are young Millennials and Gen Z, and they simply invite me to understand more about the way they live their lives. Those folks constantly help me grow, both my mentors and my reverse mentors, and that growth is hugely important.

The single biggest mistake I see people make as they advance in their careers and as they advance in life, frankly, And probably the thing I fear the most in my career and in my life is failing to keep learning and growing. The reality is the world continues to change. I’m in my 50s, and far too frequently I hear people in my age cohort and older, and sometimes younger I’m afraid, talk about the world as moving too fast. Or, much more to the point, how "everything was better back in the day" right?

And, if it’s not obvious, I disagree with that view. I genuinely just can’t get on board with that. Of course, some things were better. Some things were also worse. And of course, a remarkable number of things are more or less the same.

The differences, far too often, are what we make of them. If you think about 10 years ago, there’s plenty of things you can look back on and say, yeah, that was definitely better. There are plenty of things you can also look at and say, yeah, that was definitely worse. And ten years from now, that will be true too. The differences will be what we make of them.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound naive here. Of course there are things that we’ve lost. I also think we hurt ourselves when we focus solely on the loss.

I look at it this way. You’ve heard me talk before about ships and shipwrecks. And that comes from a quote from Paul Virilio, who said, When you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck.

Think about the changes we’re experiencing right now with artificial intelligence. We’re able to accomplish some tasks much faster, much more easily. Our access to insights and knowledge has jumped manyfold in just a few years. If we choose, we now all have an incredibly helpful assistant available to us that’s able to quickly and easily research and learn and complete various tasks.

Again, it’s a cheat code. That’s a good thing, right?

And yes, these assistants also haven’t changed our everyday lives all that much yet. Their biggest benefits are probably still a year or, I don’t know, three away as agents become more sophisticated.

It’s also true that AI is already causing some shipwrecks. We know they have bias. We know that they’re helping to create a bunch of misinformation that’s flooding search results and social media. We know that they’re leading some companies to eliminate some jobs. Those are all bad things, right? But at least a couple of them, the misinformation and the companies eliminating jobs, aren’t driven by the AI, they’re driven by the people making those decisions. The technology is just what it is. It’s the people that we have to think about.

And you have to ask yourself, which of these is the reality? Is it a good thing or is it a bad thing? Is it a ship or is it a shipwreck? I think it’s both. I think the reality is that both are true. Is AI making the world better or worse? Will AI make the world better or worse? I just don’t think that’s the right question. It’s not a question of better or worse. It’s a question of better and worse. Again, ships and shipwrecks. You really can’t have one of them without the other.

The thing is, I’m incredibly thankful that I get to participate in the conversation around how companies and individuals use these tools. I’m incredibly thankful for my friends and my mentors and my clients and my students at Rutgers Business School and all the rest of the people I talk to Who challenged my thinking around artificial intelligence as well as the other tools that preceded it, like social and mobile and the internet. They keep me thinking. They keep me sharp. They keep me growing. They keep me asking questions about whether we’re building ships or shipwrecks. Or, ideally, ships that at most only occasionally wreck.

That’s what excites me about the world that’s coming. And yes, sometimes it’s frightening. Sometimes it hurts. Growth is scary. Growth sometimes hurts. If you work out, if you spend time in a gym, you know that your muscles sometimes hurt after a workout. You’re sore. Some of the best lessons I’ve ever learned in business and in life came from tough lessons. Sometimes they hurt. Sometimes I was sore. I’m still super thankful for those learnings.

And my mentors, whether they’re traditional mentors or reverse mentors, continually remind me to see both sides of the story, to see the ship and see the shipwreck, and work to change the things I can around them. I am so thankful for their support. I’m so thankful for how they keep me learning, and growing, and getting better at what I do.

There’s one other group that I think I have to talk about here. And it’s the fact that I count you, the people who listen to this show and comment on LinkedIn or YouTube or in email, as a part of my mentor and reverse mentor group, too. I’m always learning from you. The questions you ask, the comments you leave, the emails you send. They help me learn and grow as well.

Thank you so much for listening and for commenting and connecting and helping our team to grow this community. I genuinely appreciate all that you do to make me and the team here better at what we do. So, if you’re here in the U. S., I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with family and friends and food and fun.

If you’re outside the U. S., I hope you have an opportunity over the next few days or over the next week to reflect on what you’re thankful for, and also to enjoy time with family and friends and food and fun, too. I don’t think you need a holiday for that. Do that every chance you get. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year holds.

I can’t wait to see where we’re going in 2025. And I can’t wait to share with you and learn from you about how we can keep learning and growing together over the course of the next year plus.

So have a happy Thanksgiving wherever you might happen to be. And I guarantee we’ll be back here with more soon.

Show Wrap-Up and Credits

Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week.

And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast. Just look for episode 441.

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Show Outro

Finally, and I know I say this a lot, , I know I just said it a moment ago, but I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week.

So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending me things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business.

So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody.

Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

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