If You Remember a World Before the Mac, I Have an Important Message for You

Greetings entrepreneurs:

I decided on an audio post for this newsletter since it was taking me forever to write an article. I hope you find these reflections interesting, illuminating, and inspiring. And my apologies for a little background noise.

Enjoy!

Transcript [Cleaned Up]

Prologue

Hey it’s Doctor G. from the Impact Generation. I have had an article on my mind for at least three weeks.

I've started it on Substack. I’ve made modifications, did audio. Today I just said, you know what, I'm going to try to get it down. Almost the way that I formulated it, so that you can see the emergence of the ideas.

And so I just jotted down some notes and like I do with lectures, I'm going to share it now.

Amazon Delivers

So it all started with a dumb delivery van.

The other day I saw an Amazon delivery van go by my house. You've seen them, right? And on the side was emblazoned, emblazoned or whatever, on the side it said “Everything and the kitchen sink. Delivered.”

That's an audacious motto, right? First of all. But it triggered a cascading wave of emotions and memories and ideas and realizations, one realization after the other.

Wow. You are this. You are this.

And it continued for weeks.

And as I usually do in the mornings, I take a walk, and I begin recording. I have been walking around the neighborhood. You can ask the neighbors.

He’s the guy walking around always talking to himself?

Well, close.

I'm talking into the iPhone, and after I walked and reflected on these several ideas, after that dumb van, one ingenious and harmonious idea burst through like a brilliant sun, that parts the clouds on a rainy day.

It just appeared. Here is the chain of realizations as they happened almost in real time.

And what that means for you and I.

Amazon Represents the Dramatic Growth of the Internet

So if you remember a world before the Mac, I have an important message for you.

You see, that van. The first thought that ran through my mind is, “that's an incredible growth,” right? To go from books to the global e-commerce king, undisputed, in 30 years, that's phenomenal.

But again, it was like, that was just the trigger because then after that I said, wait a minute. I thought about the Internet, myself, my place, where I am ideologically now, all of those things.

Here's what I realized.

Amazon is a stand in for the explosion of the Internet, for the commercialization of the Internet, for the Internet as a tool of mass communication, education and entertainment and e-commerce as well.

But on a global scale.

That's what Amazon represents.

I Lived Through That Dramatic Change

I lived through every glorious year of that radical shift.

1. From the Internet. 1.0, the early years. The early years would be, Google, Amazon Apple, and maybe Facebook.

2. Then social media, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, the creators, the influencers, all of that. The iPhones.

3. Then COVID, the Internet 3.0. Everyone goes on the cloud overnight. Remote work, digital nomads.

4. To where we are now, the Internet 4.0 and the birth of AI. Go check out that article I wrote on Chai, the most powerful and profound conversation partner you can have.

That's what Amazon is a stand in for. It's from, I would say from the Mac to AI.

You can look at this chart here that I drew. This is my cartoon conception of this whole idea as it coalesced.

That time period in between, from the Mac to AI is what I call I would call a digital revolution. It's a time of rapid technological change. Let's just say that.

And I lived through every one of those changes through the iPhone, through the social media, through all of it. And where I am now looking out into my own future.

We Are the Bridge Generations

But the other thing that triggered after that realization that I went through that digital revolution, is that I remember the analog world.

It’s like a sitcom or a comic. You know, I'm from the analog world.

And when you say that to somebody that does not remember the analog world, in other words, they were born after the iMac or they were born after the iPhone. When you say to that person, you know, the analog world, they will not understand it like you do.

And I'm from the analog world, before the Mac, before technology.

I mean, kids today have iPhones and weed dispensaries. They don't really stand a chance. I had mountains, I could go exploring and bicycles. I would sometimes leave the house and not come back all day because I was out playing with my friends.

Today.

It's on the phone, you know, 300 images per minute, and we're not going to go back to the analog age.

The analog age is over.

That's what I realized, that's the idea that began to crystallize in my mind is my generation plus or minus one generation is the bridge generation between the analog world and the digital world.

There's only a few generations that can say, we remember a world without the Mac. And here I'm talking to you 70, 80, even 90 year olds.

If you're still around, we need to start hearing your voice as well, because you have an even more incredible perspective than those of us who are 60 and below.

But we are the generations, we’re the bridge generations. And there are only a few generations that remember the analog world, lived through the radical shift in technology, and connected the analog world with the digital world and AI.

And it's just by sheer luck of being born, you and I, and those of our generations, we are unique in human history.

Legacy and Longevity

As a bridge generation, this is what also clarified for me, we must think about the legacy we want to leave our children. We are the analog generation that lived through the digital revolution and is now going to live, I'll get to that in a minute, a long time.

What are we going to say to the next generation?

What from the analog world are we going to give to our children who now grow up in the digital world?

You are the generation that is most invested and ready to share the best of your thinking and expertise with the next generation.

And here's the other cascading set of emotions. I'm 60 years old. You can go read my article about, why I started the Impact Generation.

The real reason?

It was just a radical change in my ideology. I left the world that I lived in for almost 30 years. And now I'm looking at the future. I'm going, what do I want the next 40 years of my life to be about?

And I decided I wanted it to be about giving people the tools to make an impact in their corner of the world.

I think we are living in an incredible time period, and this is the other thing that is going through my mind as I approach my sixth decade.

You start to think about, gee, how much longer do I have? But what I have been thinking about for a long, long time is what is the legacy that I want to leave behind. And I'm not talking about starting a foundation like my great, great friends that I know.

Imago dei.

It could just be in your own field, in your own craft, in your own world. You can make an impact there.

But here's what was going through my mind.

We are living longer. We're just living longer now. I mean, go watch the Blue Zones. That gives me hope that, barring some accident or some kind of disease, that we are just going to live a lot longer.

And so that got me to thinking that maybe we need to reframe the whole question of aging, right? Aging is like a decline and with longevity now, longevity studies, and now we got AI looking into the thing.

But even so, without all of that intervention, science moves forward and it gives people, they're talking about, slowing down the aging process, those kinds of things.

Anyway. We're living longer.

And so we must reframe the whole retirement thing. We accepted, many of us accepted a contract, a social contract of working and then retiring and riding off into the sunset.

And that just needs to go be blown out of the water. That needs to be reframed. Because we are we're living much longer. We still have 20 to 50 years to contribute meaningfully and creatively.

And so I say, we're not ready to retire, damn it. We've got a lot of life left, and we've got a lot to say.

I'm telling you, this was all coming to me in a stream of like, you know, ingenious. It's got to be a stream of genius or, the biggest self-serving project.

But you can decide if you want to join this movement.

We Have Three Big Advantages

This generation, which I am now calling The Impact Generation, you can self-identify if you want, if you want to say I belong to the Impact Generation, you know what I'm talking about.

You remember a world before the Mac. You lived through the biggest, one of the biggest digital, technological revolutions in history. And you saw the birth of AI, and now you are poised to live another 20 to 50 years or even longer.

So we have three big advantages.

We have expertise.

But I'm talking about superpower expertise in probably multiple fields. And we've built it over time because we've studied it. We've honed our craft. We like, in many cases, what we are doing. And so we have this wealth of expertise in so many disciplines built over possibly a career or two.

We have experience.

This is just, again, by sheer luck of your birth.

If you've lived to this point through all the things I've described, you've lived, you've been married, you've had kids, you've raised kids, maybe you sent them to college. Maybe something terrible, tragic has happened in your family. Maybe you're divorced. All those things you have literal life experience and this is something that no one can compete with.

I mean, yes, the younger generation, all full of energy, creative, but they lack this experience, and then they lack the other thing that you have [perspective]. And you have that experience, rich, rich experience. You can tell stories galore about your experience in the analog world and the way that you thought about things in the analog world.

And number three, you have perspective.

There's only a few of you who remember the analog world, lived through the digital revolution, and now are poised to live a long time in the digital world. There's only a few generations that are the bridge generation between the analog and the digital worlds.

I mentioned the four Internets, the Internet 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0. The Internet 4.0, well, the Internet 3.0 was COVID. 7.5 billion people jumping onto the cloud overnight. Forced to. Everybody went digital from that moment.

Work from home. Alternative work options. People reevaluating their career / life choices, digital nomads, remote work.

All of those went mainstream.

People started learning and teaching online. Like overnight. Zoom. They upgraded their cameras. They became astute at presenting and receiving information online.

So it was poised for the experts.

For the guides, the people who have all the knowledge just to come and share that knowledge, get it out of the classroom, so to speak, and take it out of the boardrooms, the experience and put it into the public sphere.

We Must Make an Intellectual Deposit

And here's what finally came home to me. We are that Impact Generation we're the bridge, we're the connector.

We as a group of people need to make an intellectual deposit into the next generation. We need to take the best of our expertise, our thinking, our philosophy of life, how we see the world, what we understand about history, our place in history.

And we need to give it to the next generation.

Because the next generation, folks, you can see it? I mean, if the political debates are any indication, we are in serious trouble, because there is no one doing deep thinking.

And deep thinking comes from the analog world.

This is what I'm trying to get you to see. I'm trying to get you to see your place in history, and I'm trying to get you to see that you have a perspective, you have experience, you have expertise in multiple fields, and that needs to be given to the next generation.

And that's what we propose that's what that's what came to me as I was thinking about the Impact Generation.

The Impact Generation started among college kids. I walked them through several workshops, told them I told them how to do a workshop. One of them actually went and did a workshop, got paid for it.

So I wrote a book, I took that knowledge, and I wrote a book, but it was all geared toward that early young entrepreneur, the person just starting out. What I was completely overlooking, obviously, were the people who actually had the knowledge, the experience.

But it all came back to me. I was like, wait a minute, the Impact Generations are the people who remember a world without the Mac. If you're still here and you remember a world without the Mac, you can immediately connect with all the ideas I've shared and with the purpose.

With the goal.

Because I think, I want to I want to call you to action.

I want you to make an intellectual deposit to the next generation of your experience, of your expertise, of your, perspective.

Those three things.

Three Things You Need to Make a Deposit

You need three things to do that, okay.

You need the technology.

So a place to store that (deposit), and if you want to offer that, a place to sell that, and then a place to deliver that, like courses or workshops, you need the technology piece.

You need the content piece.

Which is your expertise, your worldview, your experience, your perspective.

You need that downloaded in a consumable format. It could be ebooks, workshops, courses, could be high ticket mentoring programs where you guide people through your signature solution for example.

And you need someone to to sell it at the very end. So you need sales and marketing.

What I'm proposing, at the Impact Generation, is that we can we can guide you through the process. If you are part of the Impact Generation and now you know who you are. We can guide you through the process of downloading your experience, expertise and perspective to put it into a format to leave for the next generation.

And if you want, you can open a paywall and begin to charge.

What I now propose, what I will make my singular goal is to is to teach as many people how to leave an intellectual deposit for the next generation.

All of those thoughts flooded my mind for weeks after my encounter with the Amazon van: the dramatic growth of the Internet, the bridge generations between the analog and digital worlds, my place as part of that, and a vision for leaving a legacy of our best thinking for the next generation.

Our 90-Day “Legacy Proposal”

So here's what I propose. Here's the program that I propose. A 90-day program where, we take you through three months, three steps.

They are simple, but very profound, and they take advantage of all the things I just mentioned. They take advantage of all the perspective, experience and expertise.

Step One - Know Yourself

The first month, Step One is Know Yourself.

Simple. It's simple, but profound.

We have a guided questionnaire that we walk you through it. It's a beautiful thing to be able to spend 5 to 7 hours with yourself thinking about what you've done over your career, your life.

The name of the actual guided tour, It's Your Wonderful Life.

And so we want to get your greatest hits of your whole life. And then we narrow it down to ten, and then we let you think about that for a while, then just 2 or 3, and then just go with those as the first knowledge that you want to share with people.

That you would be proud to share.

Step Two - Know Your Audiences

The second month we do audience research. We make research fun again.

I mean, because it's like digging for gold. You want to know the people that you're going to serve with your knowledge. You want to be able to understand them and understand what their needs are, but not as a way to manipulate. You want to really understand, so that you can deliver, so you can deliver with empathy and care and compassion.

What we call marketing with the soul.

And so we take you through that process of getting to know, falling in love with your audiences. When you were dating somebody, you wanted to know everything about them. You're like, you know, you talked to them for hours. That's what you need to do with your audience.

Step Three - Download Your Knowledge

And in the last month, we help you download your knowledge.

See, a lot of people are experts. They're experts, but they don't know how to teach. And they don't know how to put their knowledge into a consumable format.

Let's just put it that way.

And so we help you with with an e-book or with a course or with a workshop, whatever feels the most comfortable to you.

We help you develop that.

And there's a process to it, because you have to take all that knowledge. You have to put it into outline form, from point A to point B, what is the transformation, and then what are the steps in order to accomplish that transformation?

And we have a way to, we have templates. We have ways to do that.

So at the Impact Generation we we take care of the tech. We know the platforms. It's not one size fits all. But if you're a writer, we have minimal suggestions for how to get started with that.

But you're going to need a place, if you're going to house courses, workshops and your own coaching programs, you're going to need a place, a community where people can congregate.

And we're just saying, it’s much easier to go with that.

So we have a platform we recommend for that.

And the tech part is one of the biggest challenges. We eliminate the headaches of all of that. We walk you through the technology. We hand you basically a system that you can plug yourself into.

Ready to Rock and Roll

So that's our program.

It's 90 days for you to have:

1. The configuration of the platform you need to house and store and sell your knowledge.

2. To have a download of content of what you have to offer to the world of your experience, expertise and perspective.

3. And we even teach you if you want to start writing, we teach if you want to start generating organic traffic, we can teach you how to start doing that with just article writing, for example.

But at that point, you're ready to go. You're ready to rock and roll.

You just continue to record, edit, download.

You just do you. You just build around yourself.

You just download your knowledge because you’ll have a system to start downloading your knowledge, piece by piece, different things. And you'll have a process. You'll have an effective system in which you can begin doing that on a regular basis.

If you ever decide to open the doors, believe you me, there is a public, there is an audience for literally any nook and cranny of the Internet.

And could be weird. Doesn't have to be weird, but the Internet, 5.5 billion people, again all went on the cloud, all looking for entertainment, inspiration or education. And here's you with 40 years of life left, a unique point in history, you are a unique set of generations, and you should just give it all away.

Just download your knowledge.

Coming Soon

If that program is of interest to you, I’d like you to signal that by signing up for our waiting list. Click on the link that appears in this post.

LEGACY PROJECT WAITING LIST

And it will open to a form where you can enter your email address. That will show me that you are interested.

Our first cohort, we’re trying to launch in January of 2025 and for those on the waiting list, there will be a founder’s price. It's going to be very, very low compared to similar mentorship programs.

I hope you’ll join me in making 2025 the year that we, the Impact Generations, started downloading our intellectual legacy for future generations.

Take care and here's to your success.

Gustavo