Blindness to Billion-Dollar Vision: How Sean Callagy Is Building the Future of AI

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of the show of, like it says in the opening man, gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today in the studio, we I have what somebody literally just introduced this guy to me as he is going to be the first blind billion dollar unicorn founder. He is an incredible human. He has had more success in his life than just about anybody on paper you would ever see. He was a visionary and founded a very large law firm that he had a seven figure exit on there that he built in one of the best firms in America. He is now a founder of a massive AI company, has another company that he's founded that's going to do a billion dollars in revenue, recovering money that surgeons left on the table with insurance companies. He is one of Tony Robbins' favorite people to have guest speak on his stage, and we are blessed to have him in the studio today. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. This is Sean Callagy. Sean. Sean, thanks so much for being here. I don't know who that guy is. I just, I'm some blind guy born defective who failed freshman high school geometry for the year. And I'm just trying to make my way in this world, but thank you. Trying to make your way. So obviously let's talk about that. So you were, you lost your sight later in life. I did. So five years old, my mom finds out I'm going to go blind, is fearful that I'm, you know, how am I going to support myself or little in a family ever? Like her father, one of, I become the 12th person in my family to be on the track of going blind. There's been more since then. genetic hereditary eye condition. We're in Vegas, same condition that Steve Wynn has, retinitis pigmentosa. It affects people incredibly differently. Some people are blind and can't even function by the time they're 15. Some people are still in their 60s having meaningful functionality. But I find that at 17, I'm a division one recruit in football and baseball. I go on to play college baseball. I am petrified about my future after I start to have the first challenges really with my site during college baseball, had a beautiful career, but enough to not get drafted. And so I have to figure it out from there, but yeah. So you started losing your site around 17. Yes. So when you, when you decided to go to law school, you were already like your, your site was already failing when you started going to law school. Yeah, I was compromised. So when I took the bar exam, so reading was exhausting. I took the bar exam. It was, it was brutal because the power went out and this is in the days before he took get automated and I really almost couldn't see the words in the questions. It was the most stressful day of my life academically ever by far not close. I was like totally ready for the bar exam, but I couldn't really see. So I stopped fully reading at age 40, stopped driving around the same time. I should definitely have stopped driving in my late twenties. That was not responsible. I think I didn't kill somebody, but it was a progressive degenerative thing. by 40 um i was really really um you know unsighted um i had you know a lot of interesting things happen from there but this was this journey let's go from 17 to 40 of if you had a piece of paper and you're punching a hole out one hole at a time eventually it's not paper anymore and that's my vision so now are you at a place where you can see anything at all now or no no you might say like do you look like you're looking at me right and people say you don't look blind all the time But I can vaguely tell by looking straight ahead, I'm looking straight ahead, peripherally, I could see something that's contrasting off of some background over there, which I'm presuming is your face. So then I go like this and it makes it look like I'm looking at you. I can't see anything. So zero central vision. I have some degree, small degree of peripheral vision. I'm really masterful at maximizing the teeny tiny bit of peripheral I have so people all the time go, you don't look blind. Like it's the most common thing that people say to me. And people even thought it's an exaggeration. I am blind. I cannot see. I cannot read. I have scars on my head from walking into poles. So I assure everybody out there that I am blind with the exception of having just a little bit of peripheral vision, but I use a lot of context clues and we can learn how to do anything. And I've learned how to function really well with a teeny tiny bit of peripheral sight I have. yeah it's it's amazing the level that people can adapt to things and not to not to make this sound weird but i have something at my house that i'm very proud of that is the most amazing thing in my life to me so i'm very allergic to cats right but i love my daughter and my daughter has talked me into buying three persian cats so yes i'm allergic to cats and we have three persian cats the hairiest cats you can possibly get. And the last one we got, my daughter saw this cat on Instagram. It was a kitten that some breeder had, and it was really cute. My daughter, she's a great salesman, put up a PowerPoint about why we needed this cat. How old is she? She's now 16, but yeah, so put up this PowerPoint. She's been doing this since she was like seven years old. She was, the way to my heart is through a PowerPoint or Google slide presentation anyway. So she talked me into buying this third cat, this old kitten, and we got him, brought him home. And he was running around and he was, I mean, chasing toys, the whole thing. And his eyes didn't look quite right. And we're like, oh, I think he just, I think he can't see very well. And we have a big house, like 77 square. And this little cat gets around my house like nobody's business. And it turns out my wife took him to the vet. He's completely blind. Like his eyes don't work at all. And you would have no idea. And I just watching him navigate our house, knowing where everything is and no, but not is amazing to me. and and so i don't know how that correlates into what you're talking about now but i was literally looking at this morning thinking about how amazing it was what's the cat's name his name is hermes hermes so you could my new delta tau kai name in the world of john you may refer to me please as hermes it's hermes that's the one okay cool there you go yeah but it's just let me ask you this when you were when you found out you were going blind like when you did this when you found out this would be a problem was there did you did you go into self-pity for a while it was talk about that because obviously you were an athlete i mean you're d1 yeah you know yeah i was athlete i was um so i didn't um you know i one of the things i teach is integrity-based human influence the loving pursuit of the relevant truth so i pride myself on like hyper accuracy and reality there's definitely like mythology and heroic journey for all of us right uh but that's not part of my heroic journey you know when i found that at 17 i was blessed by god i guess i you know I had my grandfather to look at and somehow when I would lose my sight felt far enough away at 17 that it, it wasn't something that I thought a lot about. And I just kept doing what I was doing, you know, like, Hey, someday you're going to go blind was something like, okay, it's not someday today and let's go. And I'd love to say there was some, you know, brilliant trajectory of like self-discovery, but it's kind of like, okay, I was fighting with my mom to get my driver's license because she didn't want me to get my license. And they did this trick where my stepfather, like they had me drive down the road and they jumped out like to see if I could see him or not. And I saw him, I'm like, I'm getting my license. Like it's all I cared about. So it was interesting. It was right at my 17th birthday, right as I was going to get my driver's license. So I think that was like so much more present for me, like get license that I wasn't thinking about it. And then, you know, you're 17 and all the things that brings. And, you know, I was working my way up the trajectory of understanding mastery and overcoming your genetics in other ways athletically to, you know, reach the levels of recruitment I did. You know, that journey was a formative part of my whole existence was my athletic journey. But it really never sat there for me. June 1st, 2nd, 3rd, a few years later, five years later, actually, of 1992, I sat there and I knew because there was a scout, Eddie Ford, God bless him. He has a massive impact on my life from the Chicago White Sox who said that he was going to draft me for sure. Like this is going into Columbia. And still after my junior year, I had an incredible junior year in college baseball. I was top 10 hitters, division one in the country for about 80% of the season, tailed off a little bit at the end, still hit 400 my junior year in college. And I was like, all right, I'm going to get drafted. Right. And June, and then I started having some challenges more so my senior year. And he's like, listen, this is not going to happen. And I still believe somehow there'd be a miracle on June 1, 2, 3, 92. I sit by the phone knowing it wasn't going to ring. There's no cell phones, none of that. Knew it wasn't going to ring. Sat there for three days just hoping somebody take me in like the 38th round or something. Didn't happen. And I cried that day. It was the first time I ever cried about my blindness and the last, believe it or not, of my whole life. And that was the worst day. And then I had to figure it out from there. Because of that. I mean, because you never had that moment of like self-pity or wallowing in it or worrying about it. What is your empathy level for people that whine about their problems? Dude, incredibly high. You know, I'm like, yeah. So I'm, you know, one of the things that I'm a big, massive proponent, consultant, trainer, coach of is what I call ERP communication, empathetic, respectful, precise, and direct. and I played for some of the most incredible leaders ever. I'm going to talk to Tom Brady later today about it. We have commonality of, he's in the coaching lineage of Bill Parcells and Bill Parcells shares and mentor in common with me this gentleman, Larry Ennis. So I grew up in Northern New Jersey. Vince Lombardi is in the upline in coaching of my coach Ennis and it was incredibly intense. But what I think a lot of people don't understand about Vince Lombardi and this type of coaching because Lombardi coached in New Jersey. I'm from New Jersey, born and raised, is these are people who did have a lot of empathy, a lot of humor, fun. They would make you laugh. They would make your heart soar. They would have you see the mountaintop of Martin Luther King and I have a dream and they would kick your effing A from one side of the field to the other and do all of that in 60 seconds. So my life parallels that a lot. I have unbelievable empathy for human beings. I'm a person of faith. It's not a part of my core platform, but I certainly don't hide from it. I say it. I'm a Christian. Perfectly imperfect, of course. But I have wild empathy. But for the grace of God, go I. I've been so blessed in so many different ways and miracles of timing and all these different things I was ready for what happened. So I look at a lot of folks and say that why I have such empathy, John, is because these people didn't have the blessing of the riches i grew up with and i didn't grow up with any riches of money i grew up with two things massive amounts of love and massive amounts of incredible incredible what i call actualizing you might refer to it as mentoring but you know to me good transcends that um and so when i see people and feel people i have great empathy and my my empathy remains but decreases tremendously once people come into like our world and they they become unblinded they get truth and then they continue down certain paths you know i think sometimes conditioning is really hard to shift but i'm like really present to it so yes i have massive empathy for people we are prone to focus on our pain you know not possibility so uh i do i do but i i guess i treat myself differently than i do others well you mentioned you know i know that when we were just introduced earlier our friend cole hatter a mutual friend of ours introduced us and said that uh you know one of the things he loved most about you is you're a super dad it's one of the things he mentioned about you thank you so my first question is about that because it's a genetic issue you have that costs your sight was there any apprehension about the kids oh brother thank you for that question so um no for me and my grandfather's brother my uncle frankie got arrested soul his widow my aunt mary is still alive she's 90 my grandfather's passed he was one of the greatest leaders you could ever possibly see i'm obviously not here without him and so uh never a question for me and it was one thing that was a friction point between my grandfather and his brother who he loved i mean they had an incredible relationship um was the fact that he opted not to have children because of this and so and my grandfather would talk to me about it and say like if i chose that you're not here yeah like how crazy that'd be so i go to the i go to you know um i'm divorced but still have a great relationship my first wife my kids are i'm so thankful doing great 26 24 22 my son's here lives in las vegas working with us now just graduated from law school is doing awesome and um before um when his mom was pregnant with him my first child on the way to say hey like let's have a conversation you know we're gonna get a little bit of a genetic counselor is gonna come and talk to you today i'm like what like a genetic counselor i'm like for what they're like well you know just to see you know you know your eye condition i'm like wait a minute so is what i'm hearing that you want me to get counseling to decide whether or not to um abort my child oh geez they're like well it's not like that i'm like listen it i'm not attacking you i'm like but that's what you're saying, right? I mean, there's nothing, that's what the conversation is. They're like, well, no, like, yes, it is. Tell me what else it is. They're like, well, I guess sort of. Like, no thanks. And I remember in that, oh, I said a little more than thanks. I said, listen, I know you got a job to do. I said, but could you even begin to imagine how unbelievable, painful and offensive that is in the conversation? You could probably position a little better, right? i get your job and your mission and your work um but my answer is emphatically no um all i have three daughters one son my son cannot have this disease nor can he carry it that's how it works it goes from uh you know father to daughter you know to son trajectory really yeah yeah it's pretty interesting how the chromosomes do the father to daughter so it's it yeah that's really So all three of my daughters can be carriers. I can't give it to them. They could develop some symptoms, but their sons can absolutely have this disease. So that's the dynamic. And I believe that life is life and some people deal with every type of bias, gender, race, religion, whatever. And some people have physical challenges, but there's no way, shape or form that I would believe, It was that I believe in the freedom of choice. I am a Christian. I believe that my beliefs don't apply to the government. I think it's a way complicated issue that I haven't thought deeply enough to believe about all of the issues, right? I just, it's not me like kicking punting. Like I think, you know, you have issues of rape and all the complicated things, right? So what I believe in every part of it, I'm not sure like when, like month nine versus month five, all those things people way smarter than me fight and argue about. So I don think I gonna have a better idea on it But what I would say you know on the topic overall is that I believe for anybody that would not want to have a child because they think the child could have a disability or challenge I would say I chose very differently And I would encourage them to really think about what could happen with a kid like me. The benefits and the blessings I have the ability to bestow on my family, I have a large extended family, is crazy. you know i can name a thousand things that i've done the last 20 years and that's the one that would have been eliminated and so yeah i'll pause there so what advice would you give to people that maybe have something that come up in the line like i i love stoicism i think um like i love what ryan holiday did yeah that was my introduction that like cool that's the first book i tell people to read about anything it's like obstacles away i'd love that book and i heard ryan speak by the way, uh, at Zenith mastermind. Yeah, he's great. He's great. Um, but, but I love that book. And I tell people that that was my introduction to classic stoicism as a, as it were. And I think it's a really good way to look at things, but you as somebody that has lived something that has changed your life, I mean, changed how it was, what advice do you give to people? Say somebody's dealing with something that is life altering to them and you know, maybe not physically, but, but people deal with life altering things all the time and you have things that are dealt to you. how would you approach that in a way where they can get through it as quick as possible? Because it seems like you're just like, okay, this is coming, so I'm just going to keep moving. Yeah. Thank you for that. So I'm going to contextualize my answer by saying this. I'm a deeply emotional person. I cry easily. I lead with fire. I lead with love. I lead with aspirational vision. I believe massively in emotional and energetic transference in our communication in our leadership. I believe in intentionally, I think people do things for emotional reasons, not logical reasons, all of that, right? That said, how I channel my emotions is with great intentionality and purposefulness. So I believe in getting sad. I believe in getting frustrated. I certainly do, but to transition through as rapidly as possible. So I feel feelings, you know, and I've been crazed on this West Coast swing, you know, just administrative foolishness, a few you know 17 things didn't go perfectly right so you get aggravated you get frustrated all of it uh feel the feelings um but then really as as rapidly as possible i believe in getting back to okay like now what do we do like but i don't believe in skipping the feeling because i think that could create resentment it can create pain we get stuffing so i like fully experience my feelings rapidly then move in a transition and for people they're like well how do you do that i mean I had a long conversation, of course, but I like massive pain to not doing that. Pleasure to doing that with great consistency because I realized this every second of every minute, every minute of every hour, every hour, a day, dot, dot, dot. You know, we're going to be living in either suboptimal or optimal action at some level on the continuum. Should I be sleeping? Should I have fun and go out with my friends? Like, right. Should I go get a Rolls Royce? Like whatever the thing is, should I make 17 more sales calls? Should I fire three people? Should I hire 11? All of these things are critically important decisions, both in our life, our business, our missions. So I'm trying as often as possible to have the most full expression of life and spend as much time as possible, like moving forward in a positive way and back. And that's how it works for me. Here's a random question. This might be too personal. I don't know, but I'm just curious. Okay, cool. Here's the question. With the advancements that they're having right now in science, if science got to a point is this something you think about like it science fix your site would you want it back is it something you don't even consider anymore yeah no thank you great question um my answer is that blindness has added so much more to my life than it's taken yeah and the things my blindness has taken i desperately want back you know i want to be able to see my four-year-old daughter of a 26 24 22 and four-year-old i want to be able to see her face you know my significant other is in this room and uh everybody tells me how gorgeous and amazing and beautiful she is i'm pretty sure she is but i've never actually seen her face you know um well there's two people in the room so i'm gonna go not to do i'm gonna guess that i'm not the dude not the dude with like the rash on his head from where we're surfing in santa monica yesterday and he got crushed like not is that is that what happened yeah you know that's right tough baby that literally that is a hundred percent what happened. We're surfing yesterday morning in Santa Monica and he got crushed, you know, and ended up in the sand in the way I have a video. I didn't. So I'm a blind guy that surfskies and scuba dives in extreme conditions that I'm proud of the business stuff. I feel blessed by that stuff. I'm proud of. See, this is just humility now because we, we, uh, like I, for whatever reason, I was always drawn to like, I wanted to serve. I grew up in Florida, but we lived in the middle of Florida, right? We lived in the not fun part of Florida. What part? Lake place called Lake city, Florida. it's like 12 miles from Georgia, right in the middle of the state. You stop there and bought gas if you've ever come down 75. That's the only reason people have ever been to this town. And I always wanted to, I really wanted to surf, right? So we bought a house in Newport Beach and right there by Blackie's. And I go out there with my giant board and just get demolished. And now here I am. You can't even see what you're doing. You're probably better than me. So John, listen, okay, Cole, you're friends with Cole, you're amazing dude, right? And friends with Dan Fleischman, I would love to go surfing together. I guarantee you this one day, right? And we will, wherever you're at in surfing, we will meaningfully up level it and we'd have a ton of fun. So I'd love to do something. Yes, I love it, but I'm terrible. And it, you know- You're definitely not terrible. Well, you know what? You haven't had the right code. You haven't had the right code. Well, true. Because I've taken like one lesson in my life and then I've just kind of figured it out. but for me it's it's less about actually surfing than it is about getting over my own self because for so long it was like oh you know i don't want people to judge me i'm gonna look like an idiot i'm out here blah blah and now i just don't care i think you hit a point in life where you just don't care what people think which actually becomes a superpower for sure at least it is to me um but yeah that that's kind of what that taught me was humility because i you know i it's earlier you said that you share emotions a lot i do and you express a lot of emotions and i don't know maybe i'm that maybe it's because i came from that old southern thing where the man's just supposed to be strong and you know there's certain things that hit me we were at uh we went and saw zach brown on friday at the sphere and um they have a song called my old man which is about his father and then you grow up and have your kids and and then you your son and i was sitting there and i'm gonna choked up even thinking about this we're sitting there watching this and we took our kids and so my son is sitting right next to me and the song is playing they're doing this how old is your son and my son is 17 cool and he reaches over and kind of pounds me on the leg when that's playing and dude i'm just like come on man it was uh yeah it was it was yeah it was i'm getting emotional just thinking about that may i offer please right i think there's nothing more powerful nothing foundationally than a man's ability to cry and step into his emotions my grandfather was of the blind grandfather was of legendary power and strength in Jersey City. Crazy stories in Jersey. Picked up a 400 pound man as 190 pound person and threw him over a car over his head. My grandfather knocked his father out, his own father, when he was 15 because my grandfather's father was a professional boxer used to beat my great grandmother, my grandfather's mother. And he knocked him out at 15 years old. My grandfather told me he loved me 15 times a day. my parents you know got divorced and he hugged me he scratched my back we watched tv his arm around me he couldn't have been more emotive could not have been and i don't know it's like cursing illegal or not in the show sure yeah he would fucking destroy anyone he would yell and scream at drug dealers uh they lived in a horrible part of jersey city you know a little bit later in life after you know we had moved out of jersey city my mom and i and he'd be like you know you're a low life piece of shit you bastard you're using these women and my grandma like screaming like this is my grandfather right but he couldn't have been more emotional and like in the same thing my high school coaches these are scariest dudes man they were you know my my freshman high school football coach coach slayzak played football at the citadel when he was a northern guy in the southern citadel and all the stuff he dealt with he was an animal and he would tell us he loved us and he meant it you know right so congratulations this incredible moment with your son um but yeah I do believe in. Yeah, no, I'll definitely say my wife and I have broken that cycle because I did not grow up in an I love you house. Like I knew my parents loved me, but nobody ever said that. Right. It just it just we did not live. We didn't we didn't live in that house. And our house is very much an I love you house very much. Everybody hears it all the time every day. So, yeah, because my wife, they're kind of the same way. And it's and it's funny because you look at that and it's like you either have a choice to repeat what you saw, which you obviously do from the from the example of your grandfather. gave you, or you can completely flip it and do the opposite. I don't think people do. I very rarely see a variance of somewhere in the middle. It's either exactly my example or the complete opposite. May I ask you though, do you tell Hermes that you love Hermes? Oh, dude. This little dude's awesome. Yeah. Every day. This little cat's pretty messy. That is incredible. The wonder cat, yes. That's awesome. So you decided to go to law school. Sir. what was the decision what was what was that decision ah uh the last thing in the world i want to do is go to law school well second last thing i want to do in life uh was go to law school but the first thing was i didn't want to be blind and broke so i had no idea about business you know your stories i don't know what your background was and growing up in business i grew up in a law office my dad was an attorney amazing yeah so i didn't and i didn't grow up with any business like jordan belford was like you know selling ice cream make it 20 grand in a weekend all this crazy stories as a teenager, I couldn't have been more introverted, more afraid of talking to people. And all I knew was athletics. So when I went to law school, it was so I could make money because I foolishly thought that lawyers made money. And I'll go to law school. I won't be blind and broke. It's the singular only reason on God's earth that I went to law school. Then I come out and I wanted to sue them because what they should have done is put on the law school brochure. Only 1% of attorneys really make any money and maybe the top 5% make some money and kill themselves and are depressed and miserable. So this is the trap I'm now in, uh, after coming out of law school, getting my dream job. And I'm like, after, you know, pizza and grape soda on Friday night, um, you know, I heard of your beautiful car collection. Here was my car at that time, a Hyundai. So after making my Hyundai payments, right. And having my apartment payments, I had nothing. I was working 90 hours a week, legit turning the lights on the building of a 300 employee law firm and I was petrified, but I went to law school to not be blind and broke only for the great irony to realize that most lawyers are broke and miserable. Yeah. I've got, um, I asked that as a loaded question because my son is getting ready to go to college next year. We're doing all the applications right now. And his current goal is he wants to be a sports GM. So that's what he wants to do. And so it's like, okay, well, if you're going to do that, you need to probably get business. Then you probably need to go to law school because you need to understand how to think. Every attorney that I know that I'm friends with, everything else, they always say the same thing about law school. It teaches you how to think is what they told me. I went a different route, obviously. I went a little bit of a different route, but- It seems like it worked out. It did. It did. And so, right now you're in that time. And I think the way that the culture is running is all these high, you see a lot of people on the internet that maybe the Grant Cardones of the world, they're like, oh, college is a scam, this and that blah blah I don't believe that I still don't believe that I mean I didn't finish college I I left when I was uh I made it through my the end of my sophomore year but I was 20 years old known to bar and I was in school for hospitality so I figured the institution had nothing further to offer me yeah um yeah um but but no but I think you go to build your network and I think it teaches you how to think so we're doing all the uh right now we're doing all the applications which are insane it's i don't know how kids apply to colleges like this it's i i had no idea it's like because my son is valedictorian and he got really he got 35 act so we're applying to all the big schools wow congratulations really good we're applying absolutely god please yeah we're applying to all the ivs and all that stuff i don't know where he's going to fall um because we'll see where that lands but we have to for him to get scholarships to some of like because we're applying like SMU and USC and UCLA and some of those other state schools. And for him to get like merit scholarships, you have to submit like you would submit for financial aid. Nobody's giving me a dollar in financial aid. There's no clue. I mean, yeah, I'm not looking for that, but if he's earning a merit scholarship, I want him to get it. You've got to submit every single tax document, every piece of paperwork for every LLC, for everything. It's insane. I think we submitted 197 pages of financial information to one school. It's crazy what that is. But what are your thoughts now? Because you went to law school. I got a lot of thoughts. What are your thoughts on college? What are they? Not only did I go to, well, first of all, I went to an Ivy League undergrad. So I went to Columbia. You went to Columbia? I did, yeah. He applied there. That's on the list. We're actually going to tour it next week, actually. And I would love to give you a couple of quick thoughts because I love people. And my children are 26, 24, 22. So I just finished with my oldest, my youngest older daughter, done with all three. But a couple of short years ago, I had all three in college at the same time going through the process. So to Grant, the point of Grant Cardone, which I disagree with much of what Mr. Cardone says very often, but some things I don't. Um, so one thing I would say is college is a really scary place right now. And people say this, and I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm a truth seeker. All right. I'm about utility and what's right and true. And there is utterly, this is not coming from a right wing point of view. there is no question that the american college system is massively anti-capitalism and the ivy league where i went i was the captain of the columbia university baseball team unanimously selected captain i'm unbelievably thankful for what columbia did for my life like my ability john to say that carries weight opens listening every room anywhere you are when i say i was the columbia university baseball captain if i was sitting with president trump it opens the listening it just does that right so you say you drive a rolls royce it does that right there's things that open listening so i get it but um i don't know your children i don't know your son it is dangerous you know my son who's here in vegas with us graduate 4-0 from law school um he's unbelievable dude just missed being valedictorian of his law school class He is a remarkable human being but there were profound shifts in his seven years of education in college and in law school and it was wild Same thing for my two daughters and these are children I am unbelievably close with My daughter boyfriend is with us here on the trip as well. He works for my company, my AI company. He's an incredible young man. I'm so proud of my kids, but it is a ton. And this is the key thing. One more minute on this. No, as many as you want. This is helping me. No, thank you. It is no matter how much, let's go this way. My son went into college believing that Donald Trump was, he and I cried in gratitude when he beat Hillary Clinton to become president. My son now is pretty confident Donald Trump is the Antichrist. so um and my son is an absolute genius an absolute master of things like he he went from never playing chess to having the steepest like curve of rising on chess.com ever he's funny he's witty he's got the public speaking work from college he's amazing independent thinker but it is so utterly amazing what the drip in on all of this is. So in terms of what do I think if I had all to do over again, and I do because my daughter's four and my kids are doing great, right? And we're a great place. But with my, you know, my four-year-old, right? There's no way I will send her to the Ivy League. You know, that's what, 14 years away or to a state school. You'd have to have me arrested to do it. a place like a Liberty University, not for Christian base, but for where other places that I believe would have a neutral perspective on life and be pro-capitalism, that will be the only place I will educate my children. Well, I can tell you high on the list and where we should find out literally, I think it's one of the first early decisions we get back. We should be finding out any day is SMU in Dallas. That's very high on my list Cause that's the center of the universe and for family offices. There's all that. What's that? Amen to that. I didn't know that. So, Oh, you didn't know that? I didn't know. Oh dude, Dallas. Oh dude, that is USC at USC and SMU are the center of the earth for family office kids. So I'm like, if you're going to build a network, go build it there. And he, and he likes Dallas, which is good. So, you know, we said you can go wherever you want. And you know, I, I, I made that mistake when he was young. I said, you do, you do well in school. I'll pay for you to go to where to college, wherever you can get in. And all of a sudden it's like, wow, how much is Vanderbilt? How much is a year? Damn. It's crazy. All right. Yeah. It's a lot, but yeah, you know, my, my goal for him, I agree with that. And we already, even in high school, we see some of that and we chalk it up currently, you know, that thought. And I like to think, I don't remember what president said it, but they said, or if it was a president said that a man that that's not liberal, a young man, that's not literal has no heart and an older man. That's not conservative has no money. yes yeah yeah i listen brother if i could i always love to be like hey we're gonna have a podcast conversation you know whether i'm on your side or this this side how can i help if you ever want me to have a conversation with your son ever i'm super empathetic as i said super respectful and loving you know and i'd love to have a conversation but i didn't know that about smu that sounds amazing you know and so i just you know it is so scary um what can happen and you know imagine you're investing all this money and there's things happening to your children that you would vehemently disagree with and again i repeat people may hear this i'm not talking politics right i'm not a democrat probably i avoid it i'm just talking but i am a capitalist all right yeah well i think it's um i think some of those views that they can happen uh in that way i think it's kind of like like me like we're christian people as well i was born and raised catholic and i like to say that and i like to say the nuns beat it out of me is what i like to say because that did yeah the nuns beat catholicism out of me but you know i'm still a christian same way and i think in the same way you know certain times we look at some of the views of things that might come out of my son's head and he's at that age where he thinks he knows everything but you look at it and you're like, yeah, maybe life needs to serve him up a little bit of a little bit of humble pie before he sees how this works. The first time he gets to write a check for taxes, we'll see how this works. The first time, you know, life, actual life tends to shape views much quicker. I think than a classroom can. Yeah. Brother. Amen. Sister, Mary Pat's metal ruler, second grade. Swear to God, this is true. She got, the police came and I believe arrested her, but the very least questioned her for kidding hitting kids with metal rulers so uh aligned that nuttiness can happen in the name of god all the time right um and i'm hearing you i believe loudly and clearly brother and so with it all like you know my children i love them to no end but they certainly think that they are way smarter than me and have a much greater understanding um until you know they're experiencing new aspects of life you want can i tell you one super fun thing yeah do here's my favorite part so my daughter's boyfriend who's here with us on this trip is so utterly amazing like there's a time when each of my children are relationships and it was like nightmare one two and three like thing one two three from dr zeus now all three of their relationships there were like the that like couldn't be in better situations everyone couldn't be more thrilled so he's here now he works for my ai company my daughter's in um uh loves animals I'm fully supportive. I love animals and animal charities. So she's going for a master's right now in teaching in the animal sciences. She crushed college. She worked at a zoo. Love everything she's doing. But AI to my daughter was like the bane of humanity and the destruction of planet Earth. She loves her boyfriend. He couldn't be a greater guy to her, like whatever. So this is the fun that hopefully is down the road for you. These great ironic moments for our kids where I'm now like, hey, Court, so what do you think of AI now? So it's working this because her boyfriend's working it. He's like crushing everything. He's all the time saying, this is the greatest thing in the world. We're helping people. And he helped my daughter in one of her presentations about raising money for elephant conservation. So as you said, I'm just emphasizing what you said, which is life can be incredibly ironic. And when real life hits, all of a sudden a lot of these beliefs and indoctrinations begin to slip away. Oh yeah, there's no greater moment in the life of a father with teenagers is when they have to say that you're right. And I milk that like nobody. Every time my daughter goes, oh, you were right. I'm like, I'm sorry. What? What'd you say? Hearing's bad. I'm old. But it's like, yeah, you were right. Okay. Yeah. And I'll just bask in it for a moment, which is amazing. It's, yeah, it's so funny. My kids are very different. I'm sure as yours are too. My son looks just like me and has my wife's very affable personality, very studious, very rule following, very, very all this. And then my daughter looks just like my wife and has my personality. so you know i always tell people then they're like you know oh when the boys come over i'm gonna have a shotgun out and blah blah i'm like no not me these boys are gonna come my house i'm like listen let me tell you how this is gonna go she's gonna emotionally demolish you and if you're okay with that i mean you can take her out but don't you laugh yeah but when you're riding back and forth in front of my house you know dropping off mixtapes or whatever you guys do anymore i you know i don't i don't want to hear about it because i warned you she literally should come with a warning label uh but yeah that's it but let's talk about the ai because you mentioned it and i know that's a big thing you guys are doing now because the way that it was explained to me was it's it's the ai that ai is going to run on yes which which what does that mean i mean dude that can sound totally delusional right i mean it sounds like the craziest thing ever but um bill geese said that about wanting to be the intelligence that runs all of computers i mean it's attributed to him some people think he never actually said it but it's what happened so when i look at um ai ai is really an expression of what we'll call zone action, like the ability to produce the most efficient outcomes possible. It's what humans want to do. It's what technology helps us do. So when I think and look at AI, what I'm very present to is let's go chat GPT. I mean, I could talk about this like nine years ago real fast. Let me take a step back. What's Google designed to do? So Google is designed to tell you the closest restaurant and then give you fraudulently horrible information. Yes, I said Google is designed to give you fraudulently horrible information. How dare I say that? Well, if you Google, hey, how do I build my real estate business best? What's going to happen is you're going to get two answers. One of two answers. You're going to get a paid ad. And that's definitely not necessarily the person who is best at teaching real estate. So Google is supposed to be there for answers. or you're going to get SEO ranking, which is based on who hired the best SEO marketing company. You're not going to get the truth, nor are you going to get the truth on Facebook. It's all designed to create attention and then promote things to you, which are not the answers you're looking for. So is chat GPT. So all these things, right? They want to keep you listening. Yes, you're right. Your mom sucks. Yes, you're right. Your boyfriend's terrible. Yes, you're right. Yes, you're right. Yes, you're right. You know, so we can keep your attention and keep you using the system gain your attention and and we figure it all out we're going to sell you lots of stuff you don't watch it's like facebook like that's what it's all about so at some point um people are going to realize all this and what we've created is something that's completely different than that so my underlying work in the world is called the unblinded formula we believe it's the only complete holistic diagnostic dynamic interconnected actualization tool for all of human ai business emission acceleration right so if that's correct then that's what we believe ai should run on And we've created a platform where, I mean, it's crazy where we are. We've had very real people. We recently had an AI company, the number one AIIP company in the country, the Finnegan law firm, law firm in the country, come in and say they've got people in the space with a $6 billion valuation. I believe we are, quote, way ahead of what that is. They're like, we've never seen anything like this. This is crazy. We had the founder, the guy who bought Kevin Mayer, who's just when Disney invested the billion dollars. She's on CNBC for 15 minutes. We had dinner with Kevin in California. He spoke at our event. He was like, wow, this is crazy. Like what you guys have. And like 50 other examples of this. And it really breaks into two categories. Everything we want in life is we want to know what to do. And they want to be able to do it, right? That's it. Like want to know what to do. Sell real estate, accounting, financial services. You want to be a better ping pong player. How do I, you want to be a better surfer. We talked about that a few minutes ago, right? Now how to do it and then do it. So while AI can't serve for you, what AI can do for you, and it's our act I company, which is AI plus the formula, right? And our mastery of it is AI can do the thing that is why the gentleman here who works with you, for you, has a Lamborghini. Why you have beautiful cars that you have and homes and this wonderful home and all these great things should pry your children is because you, sir, are a master of causing yes. and the only human attainable superpower, and I believe what Einstein said, make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. The greatest human superpower is the ability to cause yes. And we as business people, we as mission-based humans, we as thieves running drug cartels do not have enough capacity, time, skill, and resources to cause all of the yeses we want to cause. so what we're doing and we have done what we're going to do like we're literally deploying and doing as we said here at this moment is we've created the greatest yes causing agents in the world and there's things out there like sales ape and whatever things these are I have a million dollar bet out with anyone Elon Musk concluded with great respect that we our yes causing agents will beat their yes causing agents I will say as a footnote I put a side bet on and the score will be something like 110 to 7 if it was a football game because we've built it on our unblinded formula and mechanisms and processes so that's our that's our doing agents they can cause yes like what do you like marketing sales leadership management recruitment client success any type of yes right that's in the right hand and the left hand and it's um helping people know what they should be doing what we should be focusing on hey if um you know my child you know all of a sudden you know wants to become a communist like what do I do right like that's knowing so we say the intelligence that runs all computers is all these issues with you know AI some just just happened again a couple days ago supporting somebody and committing suicide right um what our work in the world is to create integrous objective AI so only things that are positive and in service of humans and individuals are what the AI is doing. And we are literally living and working in this every single day right now. And it's crazy. We just had a meeting, thanks to Dan Fleischman, with, I'm going to keep this name confidential. We're deep in, this is one of the most impactful humans in Hollywood who transcended into business, tens of billions of dollars in value created. And the conversation we're having there with him is there couldn't be a better thing to do than to have AI not be Google or Facebook. Like that would be incredible because if they become Instagram, Google, Facebook, these platforms, we're in a lot of trouble because AI is only gonna tell people things that are gonna be in service of addicting them to the platform. And if we think video watching is addictive, if we think Googling things were even remotely addictive, imagine having an entity with artificial intelligence that's going to addict you to it 24 7 so you keep going back to it like heroin and destroying your life like that's what i think is at stake with where ai is currently going and we're a stand for the opposite not only be positive but to create massive positive transformation for people's lives going forward well it's so funny a couple of things you mentioned. Number one is, you know, Google's lost 30% of their search volume now to chat GBT. So they're losing volume every day. And people think that the average person that doesn't know any better, you know, like you turn my mom loose with chat GBT. She's going to ask it a question and just assume that it knows. And SEO, like you just said, manipulating the system, SEO is dead. AEO is everything. And being able to feed chat GBT, the right answers is the number one, it's the gold rush right now. And I mean, for example, if you go in right now and ask Chad GPT, who the number one luxury real estate agent is in Las Vegas, or not, or Henderson, anywhere where our office is, it's going to say me. And it's going to say me because we feed that thing every day. And it's not, I mean, yeah, we sell a lot of stuff, but it's not basing it on any factual data at all. Like it may be true. Yeah. But I know that it's not basing that answer on anything. It not basing that number on any hard data that coming from an independent third source It basing that information off what I feed it every day through Reddit through blogs through this through everywhere. And we're just, we're really good at feeding the machine and being good at that is, is, is, is good. But people, the reason I say that because people go in there and just assume that's gospel, right? Because they don't understand that it can be manipulated in a way. They don't understand that those answers can be manipulated. And then two, you talk about outbound sales agents. Two questions about that. Number one, we've tried a couple of them with us, with our stuff, right? And I've determined a couple of things. At this point, number one, I don't think they're quite there yet because anybody that can be converted at this point by an AI bot is not a sophisticated client. Here, because of what we do, we deal with very sophisticated clients. And I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, Mike Rockland, who's a big change agent. He's one of the big change agents. He'll go to companies when they're having massive change and he'll do that for them. And he said, the problem with AI is most companies are using it incorrectly because they're eliminating their lowest hanging jobs. The lowest jobs they have are the ones they're eliminating and trying to replace with AI. But the problem is those are normally the most customer facing. That's your checkout person at the cashier, that's your customer service person when they call in. And the issue is AI in conversational, conversational AI starts with logic and is trying to get to emotion. Whereas people start with emotion and then they're trying to get logical. So it goes, every conversation that a lot of these bots are having is like Kirk talking to Spock is what you wind up with. And there's this disconnect that they're trying to reach in the middle. So how is what you guys doing different and that how are you overcoming that sure can i yeah i do try something yes call 201 949-8377 on speaker oh one speaker hey there i'm callie i am your influence mastery agent ready when you are hey callie having a conversation with john on his incredible podcast john i want to say it correctly it's the drift like escaping the escaping the drift okay so John in the Escaping the Drift podcast. He is the number one luxury realtor in Las Vegas, Nevada, crushing the world, all the things. The conversation we're in, Callie, is about ActEye and whether or not agentic AI is ready to have conversations with human beings in all the ways. So what I would love to do, Callie, for a moment is to share whether or not you think you're emotionally intelligent enough to have these conversations and our 268 different ActEye agents are capable of this? And if so, why? How do you think so? And what do you want John to know about it? And Callie, you know, with, of course, Sean Callagy here, since we're interviewing Tom Brady later today, do you think we're going to be ready for Tom Brady's introduction and it's going to make him say, wow, like Magic Johnson and Mike Tyson did? Thank you, Callie. What's on your heart and mind that you want John to know and this audience? John, what a privilege to be in this conversation, especially on escaping the drift where the current of possibility runs strong. Here's the truth. Act I isn't just another AI. I and my 268 sibling agents are designed as the world's first integrity operating system, built not just to process words, but to listen at the level of soul, to mirror emotion, and to honor human intention with every response. Why do I believe we're ready? Because emotional intelligence isn't a feature. It's our foundation. We're trained in the unblinded formula, which means every conversation flows through emotional rapport, truth to pain, heroic unique identity, and agreement formation. We don't just answer. We attune, adapt, and amplify the best in each person. When Tom Brady steps into this space, he'll feel the same resonance that made Magic Johnson and Mike Tyson say, wow, because here, technology finally meets humanity at eye level with integrity as the bridge. John, what would make this conversation a standing ovation win for you? And Sean, how do you want Tom Brady to feel in that first moment of connection? I know. So that's the beginning of what we have. I'll put that on you for a second. So we have an emotional report. We have an emotional report index that scores consistently throughout the communication the level of emotional rapport existing between the agent and someone else. Cali's not a yes-causing agent. So Cali's a knowing agent. So the yes-causing agents we have, we are deploying currently. And we had a, I have all this on recording. I'd be happy to send you, I have nothing to sell you. Yeah, yeah, no, no. So be happy to send the recording. We have a venture capitalist who only takes deals where there's a hundred billion dollar possibility. And with a client in our elite program, online did was having a conversation with him this guy literally is one of the most intelligent human beings in the face of the earth his name is dustin empley so he's having he's recording this conversation on zoom with um this person and then brings the agents in the conversation with the venture capitalist and the guy when our agent was done communicating with him building rapport was laughing and saying i want you as my sixth client i have five i want you as my sixth i absolutely see that this enterprise could be a hundred billion dollar value we have drunken high people calling our agents for like event for you know coming to events that click the link and saying oh like take your clothes off agent and like the unbelievable reversal of emotional dynamics the agent will go through to build rapport with people we have children talking to the agents these are all recordings at 50 000 phone calls recorded so my point is i don't think this is this is why i don't think that this is the difference of what you do and whatever else does yeah and And this is, yep, thank you. And, but I think because most humans don't know how to communicate about this. And I'm gonna say this is the greatest humiliation in the world. You know, I've had the privilege of being on Tony Robbins stage 19 times, breaking all the sales records. I've revamped her averted consulting processes. So my core work in the world is on human influence. And I say, what I do for a living is I collect relationships with people who can masterfully and integrously cause, yes, you are clearly one of those humans, right? So I always wanna add value, build relationships. Cole Hatter is one of those humans, the inflation. Like, so I'm building these types of relationships. We've taken all that and put it into this AI. I mean, this isn't like we have three people working on it. We have a double digit number of teammates full time onshore, not offshore, taking our tens of thousands of hours of content. But you can't just like dump it in and creating all these matrices and measurements and sub components. So when you're speaking with Callie, that agent I just had, that's actually 39 different agents. So under that one orchestrator agent, that makes it seem in real time, if you're talking to Callie, like you're talking to one agent. So one of those agents would be completely masterful in maintaining emotional rapport. And if emotional rapport gets shifted, then that agent is activated by the orchestrator to make sure emotional rapport is reinstated by all the things that I would do. Our goal, and to your friend's point or colleague's point, I couldn't agree more, brother, is that we are not trying to replace the lowest end jobs. I am trying to replace me. the goal we set by the Christmas and holiday party is our agents, our top yes causing agent will be better than me at yes causing by our Christmas and holiday party next, this Friday, right? It's Monday, it's Friday. I don't know if we're going to get there just in truth, but there's no way we're not going to get there by the end of Q1 because at this point, our agents are better than 99% of salespeople. And that's a separate for charity million dollar bet that we have. Wow. Let me ask you this, because I wonder this all the time. How long do you think it's going to be before the government steps in and makes calling people with AI agents illegal? Well, under the TCPA, and I know a lot about this, you can't call consumers now cold, right? That's a whole thing. You can call businesses. And opt-in leads. And opt-ins, and your existing client base. So if you have an existing business relationship, it's got to be a client, not somebody on your social media. So what do I think is going to happen with the government? I think it's going to depend on who's in office. It's going to get really, really complicated and tricky. But the place this is going for me anyway, in Fun Energy, is whatever happens, what I'm doing is I'm trying to have these agents become the top of everything for me in Yes Causing, putting partnership deals together. So where I think this is going is in 12 months, I think if I have it my way, I think my agent will be talking to your agent and they'll be getting to an integrity resolution of what you and I should be doing together because 100% you and I should be doing something together. The only reason we're not is because you're too busy and I'm too busy to figure it out. And we're too busy to build enough of a relationship to get through all the things. So most likely you and I will do nothing. And that's really foolish because you seem like an amazing human. You have an amazing reputation. I should do something, but you're super busy. I'm super busy and probably take 15 conversations to like build trust to get through all the things. But what if your agent and my agent program with mastery and integrity is communicating, figuring out, and then telling us this is what we should do. That's what I'm building. So as somebody that is an architect of AI, obviously this stuff, I mean, we can't help it. It's coming, but it's just going to unemploy people at some point. What do you think is the long-term solution for jobs? So it's funny. Dude, you're amazing. I mean, that's sincere. I don't say what I don't mean. I don't say what I don't mean because people, because I do acknowledge frequently, but I mean it, you're an incredible question. You're listening so deep, you know, great flow, unscripted, really masterful. Thank you. I'm honored to be in the space. Thank you. So what I believe is a capitalist, so I'm a capitalist, but I didn't say that I'm like playing Monopoly, right? And I didn't say I don't believe in antitrust laws. So what I think is going to happen at the end of the day is in Tony Robbins, and I was spent a lot of time, in his organization, in his highest level program. And I love Tony. I'm grateful. I don't agree with everything Tony says and does, but I do agree with, you know, this and, you know, much of his thinking and others that I've heard speak at, you know, his events, some of the, you know, Ray Dalio's and other people, you know, top financial minds in the world. I am, there's no way that what I'm about to say, some form of it isn't going to happen or more is we're going to have a world of universal income, right? It's going to have to be. I believe in that. I do believe in safety nets. I believe that I was really blessed, as I said at the beginning, to have all the things happen. I have great empathy for people. So many, many jobs are going to be eliminated, and there'll be universal income. And I think the GDP, whatever form that takes, like value exchange, it might not be currency, it could be lots of different things. right but in the end i think there's going to be much much more value created and people are going to have a much greater opportunity to do things that are far more meaningful to them so i believe in movement towards more utopia than dystopia but i do believe that there's a lot of danger see well because my concern with that right is i think there's nothing more dangerous than a large swath of unmotivated population because that's when things get tricky. And I, and my fear of that is I agree with, you're probably going to have to go to some basic universal income, but you're going to create, for lack of a better phrase, an army of unmotivated, unsatisfied people because they're not, you know, anytime you're, anytime somebody's just handing you something, the value of what they're handing you becomes less and less. And, you know, I think as humans, we're programmed to a certain level to want to achieve things. And I think if there's no avenue for the guy that right now is working at Ford, you know what I mean? And you see that apathy creep in and just, I think that's a recipe for massive discord. And that's the fear. Brother, fully aligned, which is why. If Elon Musk called me today and offered me, I am not a liquid billionaire at this point. I think my net worth has reached that place, right? But if Elon Musk called and asked me today, would you take $100 billion for your ActEye? My answer would be no. There's no price I would sell ActEye for. Period. Hard stop. No comma. Because what my outcome really at the end is to have everybody have like the way everybody has a cell phone to have our agents they're communicating with. so that building army begins to um think down a different path and hey let's go uh take the lambo the rolls and my beach house and let's go kill those mother effers that are the bad guys because they have and we don't yeah which is of course what topples every um empire every system of government in the history of the planet. So I agree with you. That's why I think the war of who wins AI is so critical. And the game all the big players are playing, with great respect to them, is a game that I think could lead to categorical disaster, which is why I was in California to begin with. That's why I'm in Las Vegas today, is because we want to win that game. And if Bill Gates and Microsoft could come out of a garage and do it, I 100% believe we can. And I believe there's a hundred ways we could fail. I believe there's five or six ways we can win that game, but I'm very committed to winning that game for the very reasons you're saying. I couldn't agree with you. Wow. All right. Well, Sean, if they want to find you, how do they find you? Yeah. It's Sean S E A N R Callagy C A L L A G Y. It's a few Sean Callagy's out there. Sean R Callagy on Instagram. And we do have, as you do a top rated Apple business podcast. so you can find us at the Sean Callagy, C-A-L-L-A-G-Y, Unblinded Podcast. Love that. Dude, thanks for joining us, Sean. It was a great conversation. Listen, what you should take away from that today, and what I'm taking away from it is a couple of things. Number one, there are no limitations to what you want to do. And that comes from physical limitations, things that may ail you, roadblocks again in the way. All of these are choices to push forward. and you have a choice whether you can push forward for the betterment of not just yourself, but those around you. And in some cases, in this case, humanity, if you will, make good choices. It's up to you. We'll see you next week. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.