Better Living Through AI: “Adventurepreneur”, “Growth Hacker,” and Best-Selling Author Danny Flood
by Sean Colligan
"No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is but the world as it will be."
- Isaac Asimov
That quote may be decades old, but its truth still echoes today. In fact, Asimov's advice may be more relevant than ever in the era of ubiquitous AI. As Large Language Models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and other programs change the way we work, study, learn, and create, it's essential to prepare for "the world as it will be." While many remain skeptical about AI, there are others who see it as an opportunity. Not just for generating greater wealth, but greater freedom.
One such individual is best-selling author, serial entrepreneur, digital nomad, lifestyle designer, podcaster and all-around adventurer Danny Flood. His newest book, Unlimit, seeks to demystify these technologies and share the ways that we can use them to the fullest. Danny likens the usage of AI to “the discovery of fire”; some may see it only as a source of destruction, but others recognize its potential for illumination.
While he may be a big proponent of technology, Danny spends much of his time outdoors. Currently based in Nepal, he hosts retreats through one of his travel businesses, Nomadhaus. Danny spoke to Publishizer from a hammock on an open deck, surrounded by lush trees and rice fields. He’s been dubbed an “adventurepreneur”, having spent more than 15 years between over 40 countries in 6 continents.
Growing up, Danny may not have imagined motorcycling through Vietnam or hiking through Nepal. But at an early age, he learned how to hustle. Danny says his first employers were his parents.
“My dad told me to go knock on people’s doors and take out people’s trash for tips. My mom was a realtor, and she hired me putting notepads on people’s doormats with her picture and contact information. That was my first time learning to do prospecting. So I was hustling from 9 years old.”
He also started small “businesses” with his friends and even dabbled in the high-stakes game of selling custom POGs.
As he prepared to enter the job market, however, Danny felt disappointed by the corporate world.
“After I finished at the army and went to university, I felt really depressed with the life path that was set before me. I didn’t want to spend 40 years working in an office. I’d started a freelancing business, and I went to these business networking events, and I saw people in there who were like 75 years old. I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m ready to come to these meetings for the next 50 years.’”
So, he changed course and didn’t look back.
“I decided I would try to do something different. I read about lifestyle design and The 4-Hour Work Week and ‘life-hacking’, and I’ve tried to live my life that way every day.”
Danny has gone on to make countless successful business ventures, happy clients and lifelong friends around the world.
Of all the countries to which he’s traveled, Danny is particularly fond of Thailand.
“When you’re in Thailand, you don’t feel stressed about anything. You feel like a weight is off your shoulders. So I really like their gentle approach to life and how easy everything feels there.”
Danny also did a great deal of writing while riding the elevated sky train in Bangkok.
“I remember reading about this guy Scott Turow. He worked at a law firm in London, and he wrote all of his novels while commuting to his day job. So, I learned the value of harnessing that spare time, especially as a traveler. What I found was that I get a lot of writing done just sitting on the train. Sometimes, I’d just take it to the last stop, then take it back. And I had no Wi-Fi or anything, so I wasn’t distracted.”
Danny says distractions aren’t always external, but internal as well.
“You have these great ideas, and you just gotta get them out, and you can’t worry about whether the ideas are good or not. That’s where a lot of people make mistakes, especially writers. They critique themselves; ‘am I choosing the right word?’, ‘is this idea really what I want to say?’ I think you gotta get past that and just let everything out because your subconscious is trying to speak to you. You can look at what you wrote later and decide if it’s any good or not. So that’s one of my biggest tips for other authors on the Publishizer platform!”
One of Danny’s biggest claims to fame is the concept he calls “growth hacking”. It may sound like an esoteric buzzword, but he explains the concept simply.
“It’s like hacking marketing. Most people spend a lot of money on marketing, and they don’t really know if they’re getting good results. Growth hacks are basically for the small person; like the ‘sling’ David uses to fell Goliath.”
Danny describes the path of a starting business with another image: “It’s called a ‘hockey stick curve.’ Any time you start a business, you start out with a flat line. Eventually you reach a point where you break through, and your business starts to go up, so it looks like a hockey stick. I try to help people reach the end of that flatline in the shortest amount of time possible.”
Danny is constantly experimenting with ways to simplify tasks. He’s always seeking more time in life for exploration, real learning experiences, and, most of all, fun. In his latest book, Danny shares what he believes to be the next big thing in growth hacking: AI.
“Technology, AI, these are black box advantages, competitive advantages that can help you shorten that [hockey stick] curve.”
While AI may be feared by many to be a “replacement” for humans, Danny sees it as a tool that could help us take more time to be human.
“My last business,” Danny says, “had around 45 clients, and it was all automated. I spent maybe 1 or 2 hours setting up the campaigns, they paid me every month, and that’s a lifestyle business right there. That’s what I want to help people do because that’s the kind of business that sets you free rather than being a slave to your business.”
While Danny’s intentions are to use AI to improve lives, not everyone shares the sentiment.
“There are some writers that are really anti-AI, or they’re kind of afraid of it like it’s gonna make them irrelevant, kind of like a competition. But I think that’s the wrong way to go about it. I always want to find these hacks to make my life easier. To get more done, to reduce the time I spend working so that I can enjoy myself out in the forest surrounded by the rice fields. AI can really help there. It helps me get 10 times more done and do my work so much faster, so that’s why I love it.”
Danny maintains that when it comes to AI, like any tool, the most important factor is the person using it.
“It starts at the individual level. You have to have that hunger to grow, to improve yourself. Because AI’s not a coach, the will comes from you. You have to have that motivation to grow. AI is basically like a genie in a bottle. It does whatever you ask it to. If you have a vision for where you want to go, where you want your life to be, AI is the facilitator to help you get to that point, to where you want to be.”
For anyone wondering, Danny did not use AI to write any of Unlimit. But like many things in his life, AI lent him a hand in the process. “I wouldn’t let [AI] represent me and my writing and my voice, but it does a very good job at coming up with facts, coming up with bulleted lists, statistics. It’s very good at teaching me things that I want to teach to other people. It’s like Google on steroids.”
As for Unlimit, Danny wanted to reach as many readers as possible while still using his creativity and involving his audience. We’re happy to say that’s exactly what he found with Publishizer.
Danny says, “It’s a great asset for authors. I think that every author should crowdfund their book, one way or another, because it’s a great way to see how the market is responding to your project before you actually publish it and put it out there. You can figure out who’s the target market, ‘how do I refine the message so it actually resonates with people and they want to buy it’. It’s really helpful to understand all this stuff before you launch. Also with Amazon and platforms like that you can only sell at one price point. But if you do crowdfunding you can sell different packages. So people have more options for how they want to support the book.”
As Danny says, “Businesses grow from conversations.” With Unlimit, he stokes the conversation around AI, and how to thrive in the “world as it will be.”
Order Unlimit today!
Questions? Please email us at hello@publishizer.com
