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Oscar Mike Radio – 511 – Cary Sparrow – WageScapes · Military Broadcast Radio | MBR Talk

0:05
Hello and welcome to OM Radio. My name is Travis, Marine Corps
0:09
veteran and your host OM Rios Co producer Sensible in
0:13
Productions. What's your podcast doing?
0:15
I want to thank my sponsors, TNT Pin company, Outright dot AI and
0:20
my supporters Case on Shaving Company, Exceptional Parent
0:23
Magazine and Forces Brands USA. We're rolling right along,
0:28
folks. This year is just going going
0:30
fast. And I'm I love getting to talk
0:34
to, you know, military veterans who do like how the ordinary
0:38
kind of stuff. And my next guest embodies all
0:41
that. He was a submariner in the Navy.
0:44
As you all know, I love submarines and even though I was
0:47
a Hawker, but it's about any further delay.
0:50
I want to introduce my next guest, Carrie Sparrow with
0:53
Wadescapes. Welcome to Ask Mike Radio Sir.
0:56
Hey, it's a pleasure to be here, Travis.
0:58
I I got the, you know, communication.
1:00
Hey, I'm, you know, Carrie Sparrow, I want to talk with you
1:04
and start digging into what wage scapes does.
1:06
So your submariner, I'm like, check, check, check.
1:09
Let's go. I get to have a different kind
1:12
of conversation, which is always cool.
1:15
So before we get into all the good stuff and it's all good,
1:18
give me a little background about your Navy service in the
1:21
Submarine Warfare Corps. Sure, sure.
1:26
So it starts way back. I mean, I came from a family
1:30
that had a lot of military in it.
1:31
My dad was, you know, in the Marines.
1:33
He was an artillery officer in the Marines back in the Sixties,
1:37
70s and 80s, retired from the Reserve.
1:40
So I was around the military the whole time and I went to an
1:46
engineering school and the Navy was kind enough to give me a
1:49
four year scholarship to, to that school.
1:51
And so I started, you know, the first time I ever set foot on a
1:55
submarine, I was a freshman in college and, you know, went to
1:59
visit one. I went to school up in the north
2:01
and went over to Groton, CT and, and went, you know, started
2:05
asking for tours. This was way before 911.
2:07
And so, you know, they, they don't, we had to show IDs in
2:12
order to get onto that part of the base, obviously.
2:14
But, you know, they once we get got on, they were pretty open
2:17
about giving us tours and, and fell in love with everything
2:21
about submarines. And yeah.
2:23
And then after my freshman year, I spent almost three months
2:27
underwater on a ballistic missile submarine.
2:30
And that was a real grown up experience, you know, away from
2:34
home. I started when I was 18.
2:37
I came on, you know, you know, standing watches and enlisted
2:42
guy had to earn my keep right away, had to learn the submarine
2:48
went and qualified submarines went through the whole
2:50
qualification program for enlisted in, in, you know, just
2:54
over 10 weeks. And so really got into it.
2:57
It was really like I said, it was real growing up period of
3:00
time. And so there, it wasn't really
3:02
any question where I was going to go as long as I could get
3:04
accepted into nuclear power school coming out of college,
3:07
which I, which I did. And, you know, so, so yeah, you
3:12
know, they gave me a scholarship and then we're kind of have to
3:15
give me a job, you know, afterwards.
3:19
And so I had to, you know, my commitment was, was originally
3:23
five years and then I extended another 3.
3:25
And so I was in for a total of eight.
3:26
I served on 2 fast tax submarines on each coast, you
3:33
know, deployed. The second one, I was a pank
3:35
owner on the USS Asheville 758, which is now 32 years old.
3:41
And, you know, time flies. But yeah, so, you know, I got
3:49
into submarines and had amazing experiences, got to do stuff
3:52
that I think about every single day of my life.
3:55
So no matter how much time goes by, I'm still it's still
4:00
ingrained in my memory and my my experience and.
4:03
Is, is is, I understand, you know, talking to other
4:06
submariners and reading about submarines is you get this real
4:11
appreciation for systems, procedures, checklist and how
4:15
it's all interconnected. And I'm curious because you
4:20
know, 30 year, 2 year old submarine.
4:22
It's my understanding now they don't a lot of it's automated
4:26
verses back then. How was your experience doing
4:29
with all those manual systems? Yeah, that's the way that we did
4:31
things. You know, I mean, automated
4:36
controls still had to be overseen by an operator.
4:41
You still had to know what happened if you pushed a button
4:44
or flipped a switch or turned a valve.
4:47
You had to know kind of everything upstream and
4:50
downstream of that procedures guided you in terms of, you
4:55
know, how things needed to get done.
4:57
We're very strict on on those procedures.
5:01
And then if something went wrong, there wasn't, you know,
5:04
time to pull out a book or a manual or a checklist, you know,
5:07
laminated checklist. You just did it, you did what
5:11
needed to be done and that's because it's just the way that
5:14
everything was was done. And so, you know, it worked,
5:19
worked really well and allowed allowed, you know, kids
5:23
basically, you know, a couple years out of of high school.
5:28
So through basic training and then through a school to come in
5:31
and be the technicians that operated nuclear power plants.
5:35
I mean, you think about that. I mean, it's really, you take a
5:38
step back, it's pretty amazing. At 18 years old, I had my hand
5:42
on the stick in the wheel of the submarine.
5:44
I was driving it and I had three other people around me, you
5:47
know, that were all backing me up and I was backing up the
5:49
other people around me. And you figured out really,
5:51
really quickly how to how to do things.
5:53
But it's that kind of system that allows people to come in
5:57
and start contributing right away and allows for a lot of
5:59
resiliency and a lot of effectiveness.
6:02
It also allows, you know, there's a basically a three-year
6:05
rotation in, in most parts of the military.
6:07
And that's true on submarines. And so every three years there
6:10
was a new commanding officer, new EXO, all the officers
6:13
changed out, all the chiefs changed out, unless the guys
6:15
changed out, you know, so all the technicians.
6:18
And that allowed for that kind of, you know, turnover and
6:21
rotation because you knew very quickly how to how to figure out
6:25
what needed to be done and how to do it.
6:27
And then there was, you know, the oversight to make sure that
6:30
that's how things were happening.
6:32
So you you can't buy a beer, you can't rent a car, but you can
6:36
drive a, a, you know, multi million dollar piece of
6:41
equipment with people's lives in your hands.
6:43
I mean, what does it get better than that?
6:47
It was pretty cool. I got to tell you that.
6:50
That part of it was, was pretty cool.
6:51
And I'll date myself now, but I actually could buy a beer back
6:54
then legally. So that's.
6:58
What we couldn't when I was in so OK.
7:01
But I'll give you, I mean, another frame of reference.
7:03
By the time I was 24 years old, I was supervising an entire, you
7:06
know, nuclear reactor and the, the power plant that went with
7:09
it. So I was, you know, the guy on.
7:11
I was, you know, the watch officer responsible for that.
7:15
And understand. Yeah, understandably.
7:17
Understandably. Most corporations now won't let
7:20
you touch anything of significance until you've had,
7:22
you know, 10 or 15 years experience, which I think is way
7:26
overblown. I think people take they're, you
7:29
know, they miss completely the opportunity to tap into really
7:33
strong talent by making people, you know, just go through the
7:36
motions and so-called, you know, put your time in.
7:38
And I think that's a waste. And I think the military, not
7:41
just the Navy, proves it. You look at what gets people get
7:44
done at a very young age and in all branches of the military.
7:47
And and then when they get out, you look at the level of
7:50
responsibility that companies let them have and it's, you
7:54
know, it's night and day. It's really kind of a travesty.
7:58
You do get out. What was that like transitioning
8:02
from, you know, the submarines to civilian life again?
8:05
Well, so after my second boat, I did a short tour because I knew
8:10
that if I just got out, coming from a submarine, I'd go and
8:13
live with my parents and not know what I wanted to do.
8:16
And I would, you know, really like to have a little bit of
8:19
time to figure out what was out there to talk to other people.
8:23
I went into college to get a degree in computer engineering.
8:27
And, you know, one of the things that you don't do as an officer
8:32
in submarines is computer engineering.
8:34
You know, you're, you're an operator and you know, in an
8:39
engineering manager, but you don't actually do computer
8:42
engineering. So my, my bachelor's degree was
8:44
obsolete and computers were changing so fast.
8:48
And so I went back to school, got another engineering degree
8:50
in industrial engineering. I I went to shore command in in
8:55
Millington, TN outside of outside of Memphis.
8:58
I've ridden by there before. Yeah, and I had a great time
9:01
when I was there. Oh yeah, great time and and got
9:04
to do more interesting things. Actually, we were responsible
9:08
for all the technical training in submarine force.
9:10
And, and so, you know, that was, that was interesting.
9:13
But I did, I was able to go back to school and get a degree and I
9:17
started learning about kind of business processes.
9:19
Industrial engineering is kind of neat.
9:21
It's, it's, you know, if you're in an operations environment,
9:24
industrial engineering helps explain how it ought to be set
9:27
up and how to optimize it and so forth and, and how to think
9:30
about it. And, and so that was cool, but
9:32
it was also a pretty strong, you know, business focus on that.
9:36
And so when I got out, I started looking around and, and I, you
9:40
know, got hooked up with, you know, some folks that specialize
9:44
in placing junior officers when they get out.
9:46
And, you know, I had a whole bunch of interviews lined up and
9:50
I was really and, and kind of, I got, you know, a few offers and
9:53
they fell into, you know, largely fell into either an
9:57
operations manager in some sort of industrial setting or some
10:02
sort of sales engineer in, you know, in different kind of
10:06
setting. And then I had this one that was
10:10
for a management consulting firm.
10:13
And I didn't even know that there were such things.
10:16
I've never heard that term before.
10:18
And so, you know, I went and interviewed with the person who
10:23
who met me and who I'm, I'm still friends with this day.
10:26
And oh, wow, he, he's like, I don't know anything about what
10:31
you guys do, so why don't you tell me?
10:33
And so I started telling him I was like, we were going through
10:34
a big restructuring effort. This is during, you know, the
10:37
downsizing after the Cold War was starting to wind down.
10:40
And he's like, oh, I said, yeah, we got a we got a transition
10:44
from this number of training facilities to this number of
10:46
training facilities. Like, well, how you figuring
10:48
that out? And so I walked and I was like,
10:49
we were just kind of inventing it as we went.
10:51
But I walked him through the process and I said, but what do
10:54
you guys do? He goes, we do what you do.
10:57
And so we do other stuff too, like help companies figure out
11:00
what their business strategy ought to be, help, help figure
11:03
out how to grow. But one of the things we do is
11:05
help them set up their organizations kind of like what
11:08
you're doing here. And so that went really well.
11:11
And there was, you know, good chemistry.
11:12
And I went and met a whole bunch of other people in in Chicago
11:15
and, and that's where I ended up getting a job.
11:18
And, you know, then I, you know, spent 14 years and in
11:22
consulting, I started as a a junior associate, you know, they
11:26
brought me in pretty much right at the bottom.
11:28
I was like, but, but you know, I had all this experience in the
11:31
military, but nobody knew what that was.
11:33
And so I had to come in and prove myself and ended up, you
11:37
know, transitioning out of, out of that company as a, as a
11:40
managing partner responsible for, you know, a pretty fast
11:44
growing business, international business.
11:46
And so I got a lot of experience there and travelled a whole
11:51
bunch and was kind of sick of the travel after a while.
11:55
And I got a call one day from a company, from a headhunter
11:59
recruiting for a company here in Minneapolis, which is where I
12:02
live now. And yeah, they needed somebody
12:07
to basically revamp all of their workforce capabilities.
12:11
And that's the that was the business that I ran in, in the
12:15
consulting firm I was at and, and that I had helped really
12:19
grow. So I knew a lot about thought
12:21
about that. And so the headhunter was
12:24
calling me to see if I knew anybody that would be good for
12:26
this this job. And I was like you caught me on
12:29
the right day. I think I do know somebody that
12:31
might be interested in that and so started talking with them
12:35
and. So when as you're going through
12:37
this, though, you're you're, you're growing your skills,
12:41
you're getting used to civilian life.
12:44
You know, what did you see in the business world that was
12:48
besides the fact they didn't understand what you did in the
12:50
Navy, but what were the parallels and what were the
12:53
things that just didn't make sense to you?
12:57
Well, I was really fortunate going into consulting right out
13:01
of the Navy. I started working with lots of
13:03
different types of companies. And so I got to see lots of
13:07
different ways that work gets done, lots of different
13:09
industries, lots of different business strategies, lots of
13:12
different cultures. And you know, one of the, one of
13:17
the things that that surprised me coming out of the, you know,
13:20
environment that, you know, you teed up at the beginning where
13:24
things were pretty, you know, laid out and, you know, in the
13:28
Navy. And that's not true in business
13:32
at all. If you've got, if you, you know,
13:35
if you're in an environment where it's a high production
13:36
environment, then yes, absolutely there are procedures
13:39
and so forth. But in terms of like how you
13:41
develop talent, how you hire people, you know what leadership
13:46
means, how leaders are, are trained and then selected.
13:49
I mean, the Navy and, and the military in general, the Marine
13:52
Corps does an even better job when it comes to leadership
13:53
development, I think. And, and all of them do
13:56
fantastic jobs. But all of that was codified.
14:01
It was a, you know, almost like a science.
14:03
It was, you know, you can hold the military up, the US military
14:06
up as, as, as an example to the rest of the world on how to
14:09
develop leaders. And none of that existed.
14:13
Even the companies that were really known for leadership
14:16
development, you know, I think would have aspired to have the,
14:21
the kinds of system and culture around it that that the military
14:25
has. And so that was kind of a big
14:26
shock. And, and some people, you know,
14:28
there's some other people that joined, joined my firm that, you
14:33
know, came out of the military that really struggled because
14:36
there was no structure being in submarines, though submarines
14:39
are, you know, once you get underway, there's a lot of
14:42
latitude in terms of, you know, how you perform the mission.
14:46
And so, and there's also you could get a call on Monday that
14:50
you need to be pulling out on Tuesday, you know, for places
14:54
unspoken and you don't know when you're coming back.
14:57
And so there's a flexibility that you got to, you know, you
15:00
got to lean into and be able to thrive in.
15:02
And I really did and, and consulting, you know, kind of
15:05
gave me that kind of same, you know, type of experience because
15:09
we would get consulting jobs on on short notice.
15:12
And I could be, you know, my first big job was up in
15:14
Saskatchewan, Canada in the middle of winter.
15:16
And I just like had to fly up there and figure out how to make
15:19
it through immigration and everything else.
15:21
So you got to be kind of, you know, steady on your feet.
15:25
But but I would say that kind of the whole notion, you know, you
15:28
asked me and, you know, the, the systems and structures are just
15:33
not the same. They're not, they're not really
15:36
there. The unfortunately, there are
15:41
parts of, you know, the business world where the ethical
15:44
boundaries are, you know, not as sharply defined, I would say.
15:48
But that's really the rare kind of exception, I would think.
15:52
I've run into it a couple of times, but for the most part
15:56
companies you know do a pretty good job of being clear on
15:59
what's ethically acceptable and what's not.
16:02
And. Talking.
16:03
Talking about companies. When did you decide, You know
16:07
what, I've got the idea, start my own company, wage Scapes and
16:12
and move this forward because it's not like, hey, I'm starting
16:15
AT shirt business. I think it's T-shirt businesses
16:18
or coffee businesses or being a car dealer.
16:21
What like this is wage and data collation aggregation, very
16:27
highly skilled technical thing. You saw something in the
16:32
business world that said, you know what?
16:34
I can meet this need. Yeah.
16:36
How'd that? How'd that come to be?
16:38
Well, let me, I'm just going to take a, a second here and
16:41
describe what Wadescape does. So you know, kind of where the
16:43
destination is in this, this anecdote.
16:46
So, you know, for, for the listeners benefits, Wadescape is
16:50
a company that I founded 11 years ago that compiles data on
16:57
who's hiring for what jobs, what skills they're looking for, how
17:00
much they're going to pay them. And we collect that data every
17:03
single day from about 800,000 different career websites around
17:09
the world, over 200 countries, 240 countries in major
17:12
territories. We do it every single day,
17:14
millions of jobs that we're collecting data on.
17:17
And then we compile it. We do something called
17:20
normalization, which means that if we take, you know, 2 jobs
17:24
that are called something different, but they're actually
17:26
the same job, we give them the same name so that people can
17:29
kind of see the through a common lens.
17:32
We clean it all up and then we make it available for other
17:36
companies to analyze or to build into their, into their systems.
17:40
And so we, we sell to a lot of different kinds of companies,
17:44
big, huge corporations, big huge consulting firms, universities,
17:48
financial services companies for reasons that I can get into
17:51
that's pretty valuable for them and, and so forth.
17:54
So that's, that was the opportunity I saw and that's,
17:57
that's what I jumped. And the reason I saw it is
18:00
because you know, when I, you know, when I jumped on the
18:04
corporate side, my job was to help build the HR infrastructure
18:08
worldwide. And at that point, people had
18:11
pretty much figured out how to, how to redesign processes and
18:14
put in common processes. HR technology had already moved
18:19
to the cloud and so figured out how to get, you know, efficient
18:22
and, and flexible technology that could span a global
18:26
footprint. The, you know, being able to get
18:29
the data to all, you know, look the same and, and be viewable
18:32
through a common lens was something that we spend a lot of
18:35
time on. And by doing that, we, we
18:39
created instead of like what amounted to hundreds of small
18:44
tiny labor markets where, you know, the way that you manage
18:48
talent was based on who you knew and who you had exposure to,
18:52
which was how a lot of companies were, you know, were doing
18:55
things and frankly still do things.
18:58
We were able to create a common vocabulary, a common set of
19:01
lenses to be able to look at the whole talent pool.
19:03
So we went from, you know, lots of little, you know, 20 or 50,
19:08
maybe 100 person micro labor markets in the organization to
19:13
140 thousand person labor market.
19:16
And in doing that, the flexibility to manage and build
19:19
talent and deploy talent where the business needed it and also
19:23
build a much, you know, much greater bench strength of of
19:27
talent went through the roof. You know, there's obviously
19:32
there's, you know, you're doing it one step at a time.
19:36
So it doesn't always feel like it was, you know, as
19:39
transformational as it ultimately was.
19:42
But but that was a huge step. And I looked around and I said,
19:45
well, the biggest, you know, this is the company spent a huge
19:49
amount of money on data, which they do.
19:52
They, they have to go to economic, you know, data
19:55
sources, salary data sources and so forth.
19:57
And they spend a lot of money doing that.
19:59
And in most cases, they just can't get the data they need
20:02
about what's in the, in the market.
20:04
The labor market's the biggest market, you know, that that
20:07
touches every person in the world, every family, every
20:11
community, every organization, every government touch, touches
20:15
and cares deeply about the labor market.
20:17
And the information's awful, so. I just connected the dots on
20:21
that. I said market's huge, the
20:24
information's awful. Companies spend a huge amount of
20:26
money on it. And there's a better way because
20:28
we just proved it. You know, the information's
20:30
getting consolidated in the cloud.
20:32
We know how to tie it all together from a data standpoint.
20:35
So there's got to be a business opportunity there.
20:37
And so that's, that was the, the germ of the idea that was, you
20:42
know, that was what, what I kind of incubated.
20:44
And then I spent a little bit of time kind of testing that out
20:47
and thought there was something there and turned out, you know,
20:51
when I jumped, when I, when I found out the company, one of
20:53
the things I, I learned really quickly to embrace was the fact
20:55
that I'm, I'm wrong every single day.
20:59
There's, you know, sometimes it's in little degrees about
21:02
how, you know, I think something ought to be done or what some
21:05
opportunity is. And sometimes it's really big,
21:07
like I'm completely wrong in my assumptions about, about
21:10
something. And you got to get, if you're,
21:12
if you're an entrepreneur talking to the kind of the
21:14
segment of folks that think they may want to go and start their
21:16
own business, you better get used to being wrong and then
21:19
embrace that. Because if you think you know
21:21
what's going on, you don't know what's going on.
21:24
Well-being wrong. You almost it almost phrases
21:27
like it's one of your super powers.
21:29
Like I know that I can be wrong and benefit from them.
21:33
Right, you have to kind of lean into it.
21:34
You have to put it right through it and view every time you learn
21:37
something that contradicts what you thought you ought to know
21:39
then that you just want because now you know something more and
21:43
now you know. But in, in like a corporate
21:45
world, as you know, a manager at any level, which anyone coming
21:50
out of the, you know, out of the military can certainly move into
21:54
management roles across a wide range of, of companies, then
22:00
like most people in the military don't even realize what kind of
22:02
supervisory and leadership experience they've gained.
22:05
They think they haven't gotten anything just because, you know,
22:07
they're E4 and E5. That's just not true.
22:11
And so, you know, but on the, in the corporate world, you
22:14
generally, if you're a leader, you get paid to take risk out of
22:17
the situation, right? You, it's always safer.
22:22
The status quo is always safer than to try something new and
22:26
fail. Unfortunately, yeah.
22:29
When you're starting your own business though, like when I
22:31
started Wadescape, the the biggest risk was not succeeding
22:35
fast enough, not getting enough success fast enough.
22:38
And so. Wait a minute, are are you one
22:41
of those patent S people at the imperfect plan now versus the
22:44
perfect plan later? Oh yeah, you have to live by
22:46
that. And why is that?
22:49
Well, first of all, there's no such thing as a perfect plan,
22:51
right? Because the world changes.
22:53
The world changes dramatically, even in just sometimes in days.
22:58
But if you want to say, I want to put another, you know, three
23:00
months into figuring out what to do or I'm just wait, going to
23:02
wait till the next budget cycle. Well, good luck because the
23:06
world will have changed. And everything that you thought,
23:08
you know, was going to be a benefit of what you wanted to do
23:11
or all the areas of uncertainty that you wanted to be able to
23:13
kind of fill in and bring more certainty to are being replaced
23:17
by a whole bunch of other areas of, of uncertainty that have
23:19
cropped up. And so, you know, it's, it's a
23:22
lot better and it's a necessity in a small business to know
23:28
enough and then move as opposed to know not, not everything and
23:35
try and, and know a little bit more before you move, right.
23:39
Because you know, the, you know, my view on risks still is there
23:44
are certain things that will kill this company, but I have no
23:46
control over them. So I'm not going to try and
23:48
manage those, you know, competitors size, they want to
23:51
do what we do and they're going to charge nothing for it.
23:53
I can't control that. If they're well capitalized,
23:56
then, you know, we just got run over by a big ship and that's
24:00
the end of that. So you can't, you know, in a, in
24:03
a small business, you have to know what you can control and
24:07
you have to know what you can't control and you have to move
24:09
fast. So let's let's go kind of cool a
24:11
little bit because you're sitting there telling me you get
24:14
all this data every day from all these data sources and normalize
24:18
it. And I'm like, wait a minute,
24:19
wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on.
24:21
How do you get permission? I'm thinking, wait a minute,
24:23
does he have an, he has to have an API connect to like a cloud
24:28
data store, extract the data or, or have access to their data
24:32
store, extract the data, bring it back to his system,
24:35
normalize, which I understand what that is.
24:38
And it has to work all the time without fail.
24:42
And that's not easy to do. First of all, Carrie just
24:46
getting the permission to do it. Well, we're really careful on
24:50
the kinds of data that we collect, right?
24:52
So for example, we don't collect personal data.
24:56
At all. At all?
24:58
Yeah, there are companies out there that do.
25:01
We don't collect it. We don't buy it, we don't store
25:04
it because there are enormous regulatory requirements on top
25:08
of that and they vary across countries and municipalities and
25:12
that that situation is changing constantly.
25:15
So we focus on data where the fact that the data exists
25:21
indicates that the companies have already given permission
25:24
that people can pick it up. And so I'm talking about like
25:26
job ad data, for example, or publicly available government
25:29
data is, you know, another source and the job ad data,
25:32
you're, it's an advertisement, you're telling the entire world,
25:35
I'm hiring this position, you're making it, you know, visible to
25:39
anybody who shows up on a website with no restrictions
25:42
whatsoever. No, there's no expectations of
25:44
privacy, you know, no, no legal protections for private.
25:47
So if there's a wreck open and it says, hey, I'm looking, you
25:51
know, I have this wreck at this salary range for this function
25:54
that's in the open. Right.
25:56
If it's, if it's visible through like a career site, you know, a
25:59
company's career site, which if you have a rec open, you know,
26:02
you want to hire for it. So you need job seekers to be
26:04
able to know what's there or could be, you know, one of the
26:06
bigger sites or whatever. Like I said, we collect from
26:09
over 800,000 career sites worldwide.
26:14
So, so building that out is technically a challenge, right?
26:17
You have to have a way to figure out where the sites are, how
26:21
they're structured, how to pull the data in.
26:24
You've got to figure out where there's duplicate data across
26:26
sites, which there's a lot of and, and how to kind of weed all
26:29
of that out. And, you know, so there's a
26:32
whole kind of technical piece that, you know, is kind of
26:36
evolving, but but frankly that's, you know, that was the
26:39
first thing that we had to tackle and.
26:42
Are you using Oracle, Mongo DB, Hadoop?
26:45
Can you tell me if you can't? I understand.
26:47
But now, now I'm thinking, OK, this is big data.
26:50
It's it's. It's not SQL or something small.
26:54
Yeah. So there's a, there's a number
26:59
of kind of cloud based platforms that have pretty much every
27:03
capability you need in order to build what I'm talking about.
27:07
It's just a question of how good you are at building it and how
27:10
much you want to spend on it. But you know.
27:14
We own the cloud. No, no on Prem.
27:16
Nothing. No, that was yeah, I mean, when
27:19
I set up the business, I was like, well, let's let's set it
27:21
up with some boundaries, you know, built into it or some
27:24
principles built into it. And one of them was I don't want
27:27
to own any hardware, you know, at all.
27:30
And the cloud is robust enough that we can do that.
27:34
It's not a price that also. Carry, carry, carry, carry.
27:37
Now, now that's you. I like having that server in my
27:42
hot little hand where I can touch it, see it and feel it.
27:47
So it's a big like trusting me. I've been, I've been told to let
27:50
it go, Travis, let it go. If you you just let it go from
27:53
the beginning. Right, right.
27:55
Yeah, I I did because I, you know, started asking.
27:57
I didn't even know this was possible.
27:59
But when I was thinking about wage scape, one of the big
28:02
things I was thinking about was, OK, I don't know, you know,
28:04
it's, it's been a long time since I've like built computers
28:08
and, and run computers, you know, as, as like an operator.
28:11
And so how do we do that in today's age?
28:16
And I looked at people that built their own server stacks
28:18
and had their own glass rooms and I saw all the people around
28:22
that to make it work. And I saw the price tag of all
28:24
these things. And I was like, this is never
28:27
going to happen. And then I learned about the
28:30
cloud and I learned about, you know, the platforms like we use
28:35
AWS, but there's others, you know, there's Azure, right?
28:38
Azure and and Google. You know.
28:40
Or yeah, and and so there's others.
28:42
So I'm not so and I was like wait a minute.
28:47
So you're telling me that literally in 2 minutes I can go
28:51
run a server and it's it comes totally configured.
28:56
And then if there's a time down the road where I figure out that
29:01
that server doesn't have enough memory or it doesn't have enough
29:03
speed, or there's a new processor on the market that is
29:07
going to be better suited for what we want to do.
29:08
It's going to take me 5 minutes to turn and decommission the
29:12
server I have and Commission a server, you know, with all the
29:15
features that I need. And I'm going to pay dollars a
29:20
month for that thing and, and not 10s of thousands of dollars
29:24
plus I don't have to buy, you know, the people, the
29:27
technicians to maintain it. I don't have to build in all the
29:30
control systems to monitor it all that comes with it.
29:34
And I'm like, yeah, sold. That's sold.
29:36
That's what I want to do. And so I.
29:39
Hear the same thing, Carrie. I don't.
29:41
You want to just let it go, Travis.
29:43
It's hard for me. It's hard for me.
29:45
Yeah. So, well, there's probably a lot
29:49
of that already in your life and you know, other things that that
29:53
you do. I mean, the, the other big thing
29:55
that a lot of a lot of other CE OS, because, you know, one of
29:58
the things that I did real quickly was I went and started
30:01
meeting other, other start-ups, CE OS and CE OS that had been
30:04
through the whole process and sold their companies and things
30:07
like that to learn as much as possible from them.
30:10
And, you know, one of the things I realized that I was really
30:12
comfortable doing that nobody else was comfortable doing was I
30:15
had no problem whatsoever hiring somebody over in Ukraine or, you
30:19
know, in, in Spain or down in Argentina or Brazil or Mexico
30:26
and working with them entirely remotely.
30:30
And a lot of. Folks, you don't have to have
30:34
them in the office right under your thumb.
30:37
You can just work remotely. Yes, entirely.
30:40
And so this was, this was, keep in mind, this was well before
30:44
the pandemic, right? And this was something that,
30:48
well, you know, I would say the, the majority of other CEOs just
30:52
could not get themselves to a, a, a place of that.
30:55
And I've been doing that. I had run a global consulting
30:58
business and I worked in a global environment on the
31:00
corporate side. And, you know, you got to get
31:02
used to being able to give direction and, and, and hear
31:05
what's going on and, and collaborate and effectively and
31:10
build relationships without ever meeting people.
31:12
And there's some people that just, you know, weren't, weren't
31:15
there and, and didn't think they were ever going to get there.
31:18
And then the pandemic kind of forced everybody's hands on
31:21
that, I think. But the, yeah, that was
31:25
something that we did right away.
31:26
I remember I, I talked about how we, I built in some principles.
31:31
So one of the principles was I'm never paying rent.
31:34
Rent is got an ROI of -100%. And so I want the whole business
31:40
to be, you know, a virtual business, which means then, you
31:44
know, that I got the systems in the cloud and I'm doing a
31:46
virtual business. I can hire from anywhere in the
31:48
world. And as long as then, then you
31:52
select based on values, technical competence and, and
31:55
kind of, you know, interpersonal chemistry and, and behaviors.
31:59
And so, you know, that's all stuff I was used to doing.
32:03
And so you know. Was able to see yourself more as
32:08
because we're talking and it'd be easy for you to talk about
32:13
wagescaped exclusively and and we are to this effect.
32:16
But throughout this whole conversation, this has been a
32:19
combination of leadership slash building a business and maintain
32:24
a business more than just about your business.
32:27
Are are you at a different point in your life now, Carrie?
32:31
Oh no. As soon as as soon as you know,
32:33
we click off here, I'm going to be in really deep into the
32:37
issues of my business. So don't know, you know, I, I
32:42
live that every day And so, but I would say that I definitely
32:48
benefit from having a pretty, you know, diverse career
32:52
background. So I mean, if you think about
32:54
it, I, you know, went to engineering school, then I got
32:57
in the Navy, I was in submarines and then I did a, you know, a
33:00
desk job in the Navy for a couple years.
33:02
And then I went into consulting and I worked literally with
33:04
about 200 different companies during that time.
33:07
And then I went on a corporate side and, you know, in a global
33:10
corporation. And then I founded my own
33:12
business and I've been able to keep it going now for 1111 years
33:17
and, and finding new ways to grow and changing markets along
33:20
the way and so forth. And so I've had a pretty diverse
33:23
career, career experience. And so you pick up things along
33:26
the way and with that, and as a result, I take, you know, I
33:30
would say, you know, I bring, am I at a different point in my
33:37
career? Yeah, of course I am.
33:39
You know, because of those experiences, I'm definitely at a
33:45
different point in my life, you know, so definitely, you know,
33:48
kind of seen the different life stages that that folks go
33:51
through and and consider myself extremely fortunate from from
33:55
that standpoint. So, yeah, you know, but but
33:59
along the way, I'm pretty mindful of what experiences I
34:05
can tap into, what new experiences I'm, I'm gaining,
34:11
which ones I want to gain as well.
34:13
I'm able to put those experiences in a perspective
34:15
that kind of transcends how I dealt with them at the time.
34:19
And so that's why you're hearing, you know, a lot about
34:21
leadership. Plus, you know, anytime we're
34:23
talking, you know, 2 military folks get together, we're going
34:25
to talk about, you know, some areas of common ground, I think.
34:28
And leadership is a big one. So I don't, I don't.
34:31
Like assumptions then, but I have to figure, you know,
34:35
you're, you're kind of ahead of the curve when it came to remote
34:38
work. You, you kind of understood, you
34:40
know, what cloud could do for you to save money, time,
34:43
processes, materials, right. I have to feel that you've seen
34:48
the change in AI and how AI manages data.
34:51
I have to feel that you're utilizing AI at a high to a high
34:54
degree. Oh yeah.
34:56
Oh, absolutely. AI has brought huge leverage to
35:00
our team. We operate, you know, we're a
35:04
small group. I mean, when we count the
35:06
contractors that work with us, we're probably only about a
35:08
dozen people now and AI is a force multiplier.
35:14
AI allows us to operate 3 to 4 times the capacity that we have
35:20
with, with our, our team members and, and saw the potential for
35:27
AI as a, from a, from a product standpoint, when we started
35:33
getting a previews of what ChatGPT could do.
35:36
And then when we start to see how quickly, you know, how
35:38
effective it was and how quickly it was being picked up.
35:40
But then with the whole move around a Gentek AI and building
35:46
AI into, you know, work tasks, work, you know, you know, work
35:50
priorities, work processes, We just went all in.
35:55
We went all in because there's stuff I can do.
35:58
I can get products out the door now that would have taken, you
36:01
know, half a year. I can, I can get them designed
36:04
and built in a week and then another month to actually get
36:08
them rolled out and communicated to potential, potential
36:12
customers. And, and we can do all of those
36:14
things, you know, simultaneously.
36:16
So instead of dealing with one, you know, one kind of
36:19
cumbersome, you know, consuming project at a time, we now have
36:23
whole portfolios of, of initiatives that are going on.
36:26
So we can go way faster. The other thing, though, is that
36:29
we're in the data business, so that's how we make our money is
36:33
by selling data that people would have a very difficult time
36:37
getting on their own, if they could even get it at all.
36:40
That is critical for what they're doing.
36:42
Well, who's buying data in a world where AI is playing, you
36:49
know, a huge part? Well, companies know that in
36:54
order for their AI tools to work effectively, they have to be
36:57
current. So any tools that need to
37:01
understand what's going on with things like jobs and pay and,
37:04
you know, skills and, and, you know, insights into individual
37:07
companies and and so forth. They need that kind of data and
37:10
they need it up to date and they need it tailored for, you know,
37:14
the specific question that that they've got.
37:16
And oh, by the way, those questions span all industries
37:20
and all, you know, all types of departments and functions and in
37:23
companies and so forth. And so, so who's buying that
37:26
data? Well, there's data buyers in
37:27
companies that have come up and increasingly it's going to be AI
37:31
agents themselves who are going and finding that data.
37:34
So our entire business model is going through.
37:37
We've been through several changes as the market has
37:39
changed and we are in the middle of a huge change right now to
37:45
deal with the fact that AI is itself a customer segment.
37:49
Yeah, it's not that big right now.
37:51
The technology to allow commercial transactions driven
37:54
by a, you know, agents has, you know, we're talking in in July
37:58
of 2026. It just came out within the last
38:01
month or two. But you know, it's the trend.
38:05
It's easy to see where the trend is going to be on this.
38:08
And so we are right in the middle of of aligning ourselves
38:12
to that trend and we see a huge opportunity there.
38:15
So AI is something that I get asked about in almost every
38:18
conversation. And the conversations have
38:20
shifted because it used to be like, what is you know, what do
38:24
you, you know what, how is AI impacting jobs?
38:27
How is it impacting the workforce?
38:29
How should leaders be thinking about AI?
38:32
And all those questions still exist.
38:34
All those questions are very poignant right now.
38:37
People want to know what does this mean to me?
38:40
And it's really interesting because there's one segment of
38:43
folks that see nothing but doom and gloom as it relates to what
38:46
AI is going to do for them. And there's another set of
38:48
folks, which I'm in the second group, which is, man, the whole
38:51
world just opened up. We can do all kinds of stuff
38:53
with this. So there's, I get asked about
38:55
all that stuff. But the new thing is how's AI
38:58
going to change the way businesses actually operate?
39:01
And we are right in the middle of that.
39:04
Well, I have to think right. You know, you, you talked about
39:06
you're able to scale up your capability.
39:08
If you can scale capability without adding human capital,
39:12
then you need less capital. It's just the, the brutal truth.
39:15
But also in your mind, if that is happening, what other
39:21
opportunities are coming out there because of the advent of
39:24
AI in business? So there has never been a better
39:27
time for someone to start up their own business.
39:30
And this doesn't matter how old you are, there's a ton of, I
39:33
have a ton of friends that have gone entire careers, you know,
39:36
made it to very senior executive roles that started all over
39:40
again as fractional executives. And they run their own business
39:43
now. And they're, you know, they're,
39:44
you know, an army of 1, so to speak.
39:48
And there's never been a better time to do that because you have
39:49
so many resources available to you.
39:52
You have marketing, you have finance, you have sales, you
39:55
have content creation, you have the ability to get out and, and
39:59
you know, manage, manage new relationships and so forth, all
40:02
mediated by AI agents that are super easy to learn and use.
40:06
By the way, I kind of find it amazing how much, you know, ad
40:09
space is going into, you know, in 30 days, we'll teach you how
40:12
to use whatever the platform is. And I'm like, I learned how to
40:14
use it in about two hours. So, you know, and I'm still
40:18
learning, you know, as we go. So to be able to pick that up
40:21
and then dive in, it's never been an easier time.
40:24
To do that and so I think that, you know, my own view is, you
40:29
know, we're we're going to look back at this time it's like the
40:32
world is is opening wide up to wide open to new possibilities
40:37
and there's going to be people that grab hold of of those
40:41
possibilities and there's going to be others that just kind of
40:44
move past it, you know, and, and let let you know it's like I
40:47
tell people you either, you know, get in front of AI or AI
40:51
is going to get in front of you so.
40:54
You know, going through this story with you, let's just say
40:59
I'm a company and I want to do business with you.
41:02
How do I, what's the, what's the process like?
41:04
I see that you offer this data. I reach out to you directly and
41:08
and how's the onboarding process work?
41:10
If you're listening to this right now and there's any
41:13
inclination that you want to learn more about what we do or
41:15
you want to do business, you can just reach out to me directly.
41:18
I'm on LinkedIn. You can go to our website and
41:20
learn more about about Wadescape.
41:22
Most of our business we have a direct sales, a direct sales
41:26
arm. We have a number of partners in
41:29
the industry that embed our data into their products.
41:33
And so you know they work as a as a sales extension and then we
41:36
get a lot of referrals and a lot of a lot of folks that seek us
41:39
out. So it's kind of a multi, you
41:42
know, multi pronged, multi channel approach that we take
41:44
all with just a handful of people.
41:48
Then what's next for you? I mean, in, in, in some schools
41:52
of thought, you, you've, you've checked all the boxes.
41:55
You have nothing else to really do except for scale up to more
41:58
to more, more is more. But I'm like, OK, if you're
42:01
doing that many data calls a day, you've, you've kind of hit
42:04
the, the Mount Everest of business in a way.
42:06
So. So what is next, Carrie?
42:08
Well, I'd love to see, you know, I'd love to see the business be,
42:11
you know, at least 10 times bigger than it is now.
42:15
And I think that the changes going on that are driven by AI
42:17
may allow us that opportunity. And so I'm pretty excited about
42:21
that. I see, you know, so there's
42:23
different phases that Wadescape has been through.
42:25
We are right at the very beginning, the first pitch of
42:28
the first inning of a new entire phase and we're treating it as
42:32
an entirely new business opportunity.
42:34
We're, you know, reorienting everything about the business
42:38
around that and that's pretty exciting.
42:41
It's really exciting. What is that you're orienting
42:44
room? Well, we've got entirely new
42:47
notions of customers. For one thing, we have no brand
42:51
boundaries anymore because because of that, right.
42:54
And so we don't, you know, we have a business that's that's
43:00
branded by Wadescape that's known for you know what we do.
43:04
But going forward, we don't, we have an opportunity to create an
43:10
entirely new and much bigger brand in the world that where
43:14
data is being consumed to support AI models and AI, you
43:17
know, AI first operations. And so we're leaning into that
43:21
and you know, we're doing it extremely lean.
43:27
We've got, you know, if I were to, to like enumerate the FT ES,
43:31
I would say that we've got 2 1/2 that are working on this
43:35
opportunity that are actual people and another dozen that
43:38
are AI agents. And so, you know, the back to
43:41
the point of the force multiplier, I mean, and that's
43:43
really exciting and interesting to be in the middle of.
43:46
And, and we're starting with a big advantage because we have a
43:48
huge, you know, you know, like world leading data asset that we
43:53
can commercialize. But, you know, so, so there's
43:57
that, but also, you know, one of the reasons why I set the
44:00
business up the way that it is so that I could, you know, we
44:03
could still take vacations, we could still travel.
44:06
We could, you know, I could be, you know, a geek dad and, and be
44:11
the one who picks, you know, my son up from school every day
44:13
and, and drops him off at whatever activities, you know.
44:16
And so, you know, I work just as many hours as anyone else.
44:21
I work way more efficiently than than most people in doing that.
44:24
But I also build in lots of, you know, lots of things that other
44:28
people would have to forsake for a career as it relates to kind
44:32
of family and, and activities. I mean, we're planning and, and
44:35
I can do that entirely because we're a virtual company and you
44:40
know, I can, I can literally work anywhere in the world.
44:44
When wage escape. When, when the the op, the
44:47
technical operations went live. That started where we started
44:50
collecting data. It was at about 10:30 at night
44:55
in a 300 year old farmhouse up in the Veneto in Italy
45:01
overlooking, you know, this huge olive Grove.
45:06
And I remember when it went on, it was the biggest thrill in my
45:08
life when the data started coming in.
45:09
And it works the way that I was envisioning it.
45:12
And, and I'm sitting there going, yeah.
45:14
And I'm in the middle of Italy while this thing is, is
45:17
happening because we were on vacation, you know, when that
45:19
happened. And so there's a lot of
45:21
flexibility that I, I have from that standpoint.
45:23
And then there's a lot of things that, you know, are still in
45:26
front of us in terms of, you know, life experience.
45:29
So I think so. Kind of winding this down, you
45:33
you've lived this very technical, business focused
45:36
professional life. Do you have any other areas in
45:38
your life where you're a self professed geek that you want to
45:41
share with us? That's it's, it's, it makes me
45:49
reflect actually, you know, there's a few things that I like
45:55
to do. I have a son who's about to turn
45:59
15 and he and I love spending time together.
46:02
We love travelling. We've been in lots of different
46:05
places. He has more frequent flyer
46:08
miles, you know, at 15 than I had by the time I was 40.
46:11
And so, you know, so travel's an area that I'm, I'm, you know,
46:15
really adore. My wife does too.
46:17
We love planning trips together and, and seeing and seeing
46:20
things. We like playing geeky games.
46:24
We like spending time together as a family.
46:26
There's a lot of, you know, really we get a lot of deep
46:29
pleasure and fulfillment from pretty mundane things.
46:33
I would say I love riding a bike.
46:35
I don't get to do it as much as I want to anymore.
46:39
And you know, I'm kind of a student of, of business and, and
46:43
business opportunities. So, you know, unfortunately
46:47
there's a, a big part of my interest that are kind of
46:49
wrapped up in what I do for a living.
46:52
Fortunately, and unfortunately, I mean, at least I'm not in a
46:54
job that I hate. I was.
46:56
Going to say, I mean, again, it's like you checked every box
47:00
and that's that's really cool. You can enjoy that with your
47:03
with your family. You know, Minnesota gets cold in
47:07
the winter time. I mean, are are you, are you,
47:10
you love Minnesota? Oh, yeah, So we live in
47:13
Minneapolis, and Minneapolis is a fantastic city in a, in a fast
47:18
part of a fantastic region. Yeah, it integrates all Four
47:21
Seasons phenomenally. Well, generally, I think most
47:25
people in Minneapolis or the Twin Cities would admit that by,
47:29
you know, at some point in in January and definitely in
47:32
February that we're ready for winter to ready to take a break
47:36
from winter. Now that was a personal
47:39
preference in the past, but at some point you get to an age
47:42
where the winter can actually start to take a toll on you, you
47:45
know, respiratory problems and so forth.
47:48
So I do foresee that we will start to spend more of our time
47:54
personally in some place that's a little bit more amenable from
47:59
a climate standpoint. So we're we're still thinking
48:03
about what that would would look like, but you know, easing into
48:06
something that you know, we can see a little bit longer term
48:11
well. I, I just learned a whole lot in
48:14
a short amount of time and we I mean, I on the technical side
48:17
that I could go fully deep with you on, you know, cloud
48:21
engineering. You know how you done load
48:23
balancing of your data backups and restores.
48:26
I mean the whole gambit and you got to come back on, but I'd.
48:31
Be happy to be happy to. But again, this is just part of
48:39
the military experience, Kerry, that for some people would never
48:42
know about. Again, the typical thing is, oh,
48:45
I started this business or that business.
48:47
Nothing wrong with that, but you've done it a different way.
48:49
But it's still the same thing. You took a lot of your your
48:52
naval experience and got yourself going the civilian
48:56
world and now you have your your own business and you're doing
48:59
this thing very well. Last question, is there any
49:04
nugget of of of advice you would have for somebody who is trying
49:10
to start their business and maybe not sure they're doing the
49:12
right thing? So the number one thing I tell
49:16
people is get, maintain and grow a network of of peers and
49:22
mentors. Do it aggressively and
49:24
consciously and don't be afraid to do it.
49:27
Don't be afraid to ask for help of total strangers.
49:30
I mean, total strangers have have contributed to my entire
49:36
life, but my my business in particular in ways that they'll
49:39
never fully realize. And that won't happen if you
49:42
don't go and ask for help and you don't reach out and say,
49:45
hey, you look kind of interesting.
49:47
I would love to pick your brain on on XY and Z.
49:49
Here's what we're doing. And the thing that's amazing is
49:52
that when you, when you position it pretty gently, especially
49:55
with people that have been, you know, walked in your shoes and
49:58
they're a little bit further down the road, the vast majority
50:01
of them will say, yes, no problem.
50:03
I'm happy to talk with you. I don't know you from Adam, but
50:06
I'm more than happy to, to help out in whatever way I can.
50:10
And then at some point people are going to start coming to you
50:12
and always say yes, always offer to, to help.
50:15
But that's the number one thing is get help and grow, you know,
50:20
grow a network of folks that you can, you know, you can tap into
50:23
and they will be happy to do that.
50:25
And and please then be happy to, you know, pay that forward to
50:28
others. Amazing advice, awesome,
50:31
awesome. Look, ladies and gentlemen,
50:34
Carrie Sparrow with Wagescapes. I'm going to have his LinkedIn
50:38
link and his corporate link in the awesome Mic radio show post.
50:41
You know, Carrie, again, I've learned a whole lot.
50:43
And again, there's a whole other side of this that I want to dig
50:46
into. So, so we'll see about doing
50:48
this again. Thank you for joining me.
50:50
Hey, it's been a pleasure. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
50:53
Hey, I'm trust. Awesome Mic Radio.
50:54
I'm with Carrie Sparrow from Wagescapes.
50:56
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