Latest / Matt Brown Show - Conversations That Power The Business World. / MBS988 - The AI Advantage: Scale by Choice, Not by Default with Shay Prosser

Transcript

MBS988 - The AI Advantage: Scale by Choice, Not by Default with Shay Prosser · Matt Brown Show - Conversations That Power The Business World.

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everybody, and welcome back to yet another cracking edition of the MapRound Show.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is the AI Advantage series.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: We are talking to business leaders all about AI and the impact of that technology on their business and industries.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: And with us in the hot seat today is none other than Shay Prosser.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: She is the CEO of a firm called North Twelve Partners.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Shay, welcome to the show.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Matt.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Good to be here.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, man.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: So what's the elevator pitch for uh North 12 Partners for our audience around the world today?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, really North Pro 12 Partners.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: We do two things.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: One of which is I'm a fractional chief marketing and strategy officer for small businesses, particularly helping leaders once they get to that point, they need another executive in the room, a little another adult in the room.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the other side of the business is I am the regional cohort leader for a program called Birthing of Giants, which helps small businesses grow from that five to 10 million range to that hundred-ish million range by building value in their company.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: So really it's all about helping companies with their strategy, their positioning, and getting them um to where they can really accelerate their revenue.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, AI plays a bit in that.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: How do you do things better, faster, stronger and get things moving?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'll never get over uh the definition or classification of a small business here in the US.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like five, five to ten million small business, you know, five hundred people.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, really?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean that that whole definition is so weird because it depends who you're talking to.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you talk to bankers and they're like, well, that's a little hundred million dollar business, and they've never started anything, right?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Or then, you know, anybody who's started and runs something, it's like, oh, it took a lot to get there.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's uh it's fascinating.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's an interesting thing.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I had a small business loans uh marketplace uh back in South Africa.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So everybody, every every small quote unquote business um needs financing at some point, you know, whether that's debt consolidation or for inventory or whatever, or just off ex.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um anyway, so you'd be able to come along, connect your business, uh, you know, QuickBooks as an example, and then it would map the lending rules for lenders and then present you with a marketplace of offers.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so it was COVID and um so I looked for uh basically the impact of COVID on uh small business loans.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I found this SBA report here, um, and they showed the distribution by revenue of all companies in the US as a percentage uh against the pyramid.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I could I was shocked to see that in the top if top top top 10 cents, uh if you and it was like a million dollars in revenue a year, you're in the top 10% of all businesses that exist in America.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Not not five, not a hundred like a million.
• 2:54
  unknown: Yeah.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you're in the top ten percent.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's crazy that kind of, you know, you hit that mark and you think that like, oh, everybody's done this.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no, it's so many businesses fail well before that or you know, stall out for whatever reason, or they they decide not to, you know, but a lot of them might be a decision, might not be.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: 100%, man.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you've obviously not just been, you know, a fractional CMO in North 12.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: What what sort of, you know, what have you been doing before then?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been in small business leadership for my whole career.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: So um, you know, I like to say I've worked for every size of company or built every size of company that there's been around.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: So have a little insight into what it's like to sell to Microsoft or be inside of it.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: So my last organization that I was not in charge of was about an 80 person, about 15, 20 million dollar organization.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: So running sales and marketing for that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: So really I've been in the kind of the messy middle of small businesses where you don't ever get to wear just one hat, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: If you're wearing one hat, you're you know at a fairly large size of business, especially if you're in leadership.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: So um helped with product development, helped with positioning and marketing, or led that piece of it, you know, repositioned sales teams.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: So when you hit any business that hits a certain point, you go, all right, what are we gonna do?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: What are we gonna do next?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: How are we gonna build it to the next stage?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you've been there, done that, talked with millions of entrepreneurs that have done that.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: Not millions.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: Not millions.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say millions to god damn it, if I'd done a million episodes.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you've reached people who've reached millions, right?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: We were talking about money now, it's talking about number of people.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: How much would that actually be?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: One million divided by ten.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: That would be if yeah.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: How many years would it take you to get there?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Can AI should be able to like, you know, get that back to you in like a heartbeat.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: How many years it would take of Matt Brown's life to get away from the city?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I would have had to have done a hundred thousand interviews a year.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, sometimes I feel like that.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean you've been in business development and grown things too.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like, don't you feel some days like you've talked to a million people and uh some of it's good, some of it's not?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've spoken to a million people today.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I know that for you.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I get you.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: I get you.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's uh obviously this is all about AI and stuff.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh it's curious.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I mean, you know, like any transformational technology, it's it really does open up a whole new sort of paradigm on how to approach things like scale uh and growth, uh, and and even just you know competitive differentiation or you know, pricing strategy, um, you know, using deep research for GPT or GROK or whatever.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so the technology in and of itself opens up these new ways of of thinking.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um, you know, new thinking differently is oftentimes the precursor to any kind of great outcome, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you see and you know, are you like an AI protagonist?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Are you against it, job displacement?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where are you with the initial AI adoption?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm all about let's figure out what it can do beyond generative AI.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying that I'm there in the sense that, you know, I'm like everybody else trying to learn it, but I uh truly in kind of the marketing side of the house, I believe that marketing is gonna is gonna shrink from the bottom up, right?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna some of the the rote tasks um are easier, but that still means you have to have smart decision making and you have to have, you know, if you're having somebody write all your generative stuff, all your content.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're we're all contented out.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but if you're still not sure who your target market is or why you're going after that market, that's the stuff that AI might help you with in the research, but they can't make those decisions for you.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I think figuring out how to use AI in any industry to make much better decisions is something that we're all struggling with and figuring out how that's gonna be more than just, all right, I can do deep research here or I can get it to make me a list or I can get it to do outreach for me.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm absolutely a protagonist in the ways that, you know, ideally we wouldn't be at a 40-hour work week anymore.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: I know people say that jobs are gonna be gone and that's one piece of it, but you know, the 40-hour work week came out of the industrial era.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: So why do we think that that's what we're supposed to do?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: And some other smarter countries than you know, some of us in the US already have figured out that we don't need to work that many hours.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I I kind of look at it as how can we be smarter and still get the the job done and you know, help us do what we're best at, which is being discerning, making decisions, being creative, and how do we fuel that through AI technology?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm obsessed with this whole idea of this t how do you have a tiny epic business?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: So a small business that gets paid a shit ton of money that's very leveraged because it does epic work so that you can have a big, simple life, you know.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and I think it's especially true in America because um, you know, this is a very big, especially if you're in the like technology uh space, you know, like there's a very big Silicon Valley narrative, isn't there?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, you know, you need to have a CTO, a CEO of co-founders, you have to have technical capability, and then you have to have someone who's a visionary.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, you gotta build an MVP, and then you gotta get some initial traction, and then you've got to prove your unit economics, and then you gotta go to a VC, and then you've got to raise a shit ton of money so that you, you know, so that when you get to product market fits, you can put more gas into the into the engine and then you know, fucking IPO the thing in five years, and then become the next unicorn and glamour kids of you know uh of the startup uh sort of ecosystem.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you know, if you go to TechCrunch and you see the the media headlines, you know, blah blah bike share fucking riding startup has raised such and such a lot of money, da da da with no customers, you know, and stuff like this.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and it's just like and it creates this perception that you have to do that, like you mentioned, five, how do you take go from five to ten to a hundred million, you know, but should you?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for every one of those um, you know, those headlines, there's hundreds of thousands of crush dreams, you know, of guys, men and women who try to do this whole startup thing, and then they failed at it, you know.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and I do think, you know, to your point, like AI, yes, it's great, and yes, maybe it does uh create uh an outcome like a one-person unicorn in the future.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: But again, like is that something we should even be aspiring to?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because it it it might work like that will probably happen for 0.0001%.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: But it what about everybody else?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so I think it's it's also about like getting the the marriage or the balance between what is opportunity versus what is cost, which is why you know I've had big businesses, you know, and I hated it.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh my god, performance management, this and that, and people and culture and blah blah.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I hated it, you know.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so now you even tiny epic is an idea.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you think about the role of AI in that, then you know, you don't need to be a unicorn.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: But why can't you have, you know, like four people in your business or less than 10 and make a million dollars a year?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: I love where you're going with that because I think what I try to help entrepreneurs and business owners with this, what I don't want is for them to be at the end of the day and find out their business has no value because they've been in it and they didn't make a decision, right?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, like tiny epic, I think is an awesome decision.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: What I hate is when people go forth and they think they're doing something and they get 10 years down the line and find out that they don't have something valuable, they don't have something saleable, and they never decided that, they just assumed things.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I think at any point, and we make different decisions.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think what we forget is that different decisions for different points in your life.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've probably both seen entrepreneurs who build it to a certain level and then they go, this is where I want to cap it.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that I'm doing with this Birthing of Giants, which is a program out of Princeton, is that we really help them think through this.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: So with a team of experts to go, okay, if you want to build it big and you want to, you know, go from 5 million to 100 million, we've got the ways to help you get there in a way that's smart, that that really does build value in the company, that, you know, you are uh whether you want to keep it forever and or send it, you know, give it to the, you know, bring the next generation or whether you want to sell it, you know what you're doing.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Or you can also decide, like, hey, I want to like five million is awesome.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: I want to run it faster in terms of I don't want to work as much, or I want to, you know, make a, you know, sell it to my employees.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: So all of these decision points, I think that we equate, you know, being up at three o'clock in the morning and um worrying about business with success in certain ways.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you've been there, I've sat and thought, you know, if I'm sitting here at three o'clock in the morning when I'm on vacation with my family and I am worried about internal crap at an organization that I am, you know, either leading or with, because we all have that that comes up, you know, somebody quits that you didn't expect, or something happens, and you know, you you think, do I want to be sitting up at three o'clock in the morning when I'm on vacation and thinking about this?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: Is this the best use of my life?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, everybody makes a different decision, but I I like the tiny epic idea of going, this is a real thing.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: This is not a you didn't grow big um because you you just failed at it.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's no, you made a decision to have an actual life that you can see your children and maybe enjoy and still have a very nice living.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and I do think age matters.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I'm 46.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh, you know, and I I had like fuck you motivation, you know, to build a big business because of my father, because he never gave a shit about you know acknowledging my achievements.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I've always been very achievement driven.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was in my 20s, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna build a mic, because he was a business owner as well, and I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna build a much bigger business than he will, you know.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I was in my 30s, I was like, Yeah, you know, I'm not gonna build a billion dollar business, but maybe I'll take like you know, 500 million.
• 13:39
  unknown: Yeah.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you get into your 40s and you're like, nah, you know, does it does it really matter?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, you know what I mean?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's like, yes, okay, fine, you get, but you could still buy all the toys and have the lifestyle as, you know, in other words, if you're doing like let's say two mil a year, like that's that's a lot of money, man.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I was literally doing this with a with so I just turned 50 and I was with uh, you know, an entrepreneur that's 50, and he like somebody I've known for a while, and I've always just kind of like advised him as a friend, and he's like, no, I want like to sit down, we're gonna do a day like consult, and I want you to help me figure out what's next.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: And we literally mapped out all the things.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: His his business brings in about a million a year.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: He's got like two people who work for him at the, you know, he pays them appropriately for what they do, but it doesn't take much with a million dollar revenue, and he's got a great business.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: And we went through down the paths and we're like, okay, this is the this is the path.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: And we're gonna write them down, whiteboard them, talk about them, and you know, I'm gonna pro, I'm gonna press pretty hard on some of the emotional pieces on both sides.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, are you gonna be able to live with yourself in 10 years if you don't build the thing?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: And we're like, what does the thing involve?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: The thing involves about a we decided it was gonna be about a half million dollar investment in people, branding, marketing, you know, to uh real estate, just the things that he would need to take it to the next level.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then it would end up being probably 10 to 15 people in the next, I don't know, year and a half, two years.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, two years from now, we might have a five million dollar business and have you know 10, 15 people working in it.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I was like, what are you gonna be able to do what you like to do?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, no, I like to do this.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: I like to be with people and I like to be, you know, in the business with them.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, well, are you gonna be okay with somebody else running it?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, no, except for if it's you.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, well, I'm not available.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not, or I I I don't want to run your business.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, No, I'm gonna I would never trust anybody else.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I literally went down the path.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it was funny because he called me like two days later and he was like, Thank you.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: The path that we opened up is he wants to keep that tiny epic business because he has a personal passion to build a nonprofit piece that is around his personal and family passion.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: And also we realized that building the the big thing was going to mean he was gonna be doing HR or I was gonna be telling him about HR and you know, just kind of all of the headaches.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, people don't often get the opportunity to sit down and have somebody who will like map it out with them from having been there done that and you know, make the choice.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: And he felt great about the choice.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a couple months and uh he's like, Nope, pretty, pretty good with where we're going.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I mean, if he's not prepared to let anyone else run his business, he's never gonna get that thing to scale anyway.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, people don't think about that thing until you sit to sit them down and like push on.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: Are you gonna be okay with somebody else doing it?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's it's and it's also it's freeing.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you actually come to terms with what's enough, you know.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh because otherwise you just keep chasing the dragon.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because you know what happens, right?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like you spent two decades, 26.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I sold my first business when I was 26 as a record label in London.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I could walk and water.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then luckily the universe fixed all that for me.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh then I went for a series of failures, you know.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so, but it was always in the pursuit of the dragon, you know, it's like oh the ego and whatever and whatever labels you want to use.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: But but now I'm like, yeah, tiny epic, man.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very, very, very happy with that as an idea.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's enough, man.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so like and you know, it's sad to think that people would spend so much of their lives chasing something that isn't really what they're about, you know.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think it's gonna take for us to shift to a place where people understand that tiny epic is uh is a really really good thing.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: What's it gonna take?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um consuming less media you know.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm serious because like okay, so who do you feel is uh Elon Musk?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right, so he's got the boring company, he's got SpaceX, Tesla, Solar City, you know.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And now, okay, so you put anyone else in that position.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think's gonna happen with the stock price if something happens to him?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, and of course, you know, this being South African, obviously he's from there as well.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so so now it's like, oh well, it's possible, isn't it?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I can do that.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's possible, but are you gonna make it?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And even if you did, would it would that be, you know, is that is that actually what's gonna make you uh happy and stuff?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know how that guy, you know, he like it's just next level to think of all the things that he's somehow making work and then the Mars story.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think and just being those and that intentional about choices, I think that you know, because of media, I think you're right, it's media because we're so overloaded with these stories that I mean, let's be honest, most of what you read isn't true.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, most people's Facebook pages aren't true.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: They're you know, flying yeah, absolutely.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: The Instagram.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: But think about there's so many businesses that people don't hear about.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, my grandpa built a truck, truck rental business and sold it in the 80s and lived for 30 more years on, you know, the that made a nice amount, but it wasn't an a$10 million business.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: He made enough that he had a nice life and lived in a little house in Florida and had another lake, you know, just kind of lived for the next 30 years and could pay for himself, get anything he ever wanted, which he didn't want much, because you're right, we build these lives that are involving big things and lots of junk.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, one of my businesses was a financial education business.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I spent seven years teaching people to do financial literacy, like really dig in people's finances, and also did probably not a million because we've already done this math, but I've definitely done at least a thousand sit-downs with people talking through their finances.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of the day, nobody really cares at the end of the day about the stuff they have.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: They care about the status that it it that portrays to others.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I interviewed uh Bo Birdingham.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he was edited for Ink Mag for like 30 years.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: So he's uh he's one of the uh he's uh small giants, birthing of giants, burling game.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: The whole book was like, okay, so you know those small quote unquote businesses that have been around for at least 20 years that no one knows about.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly what birthing of giants is.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's based on, I mean, he's one of our um advisors on the on like panels of experts.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, to be like, you did you decide to move that business to a different level?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Did you decide to be this the small giant?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's most of them are not in sexy things out in Silicon Valley.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: They are, you know, you know, you know the two things that are getting the biggest multiples right now, right?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Is pest control and HVAC.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: There was this guy uh interviewed the other day.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: He built a$13 million HVAC company in eight in 18 months.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: 18 months, eh?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: From nothing.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of crawling under crawl spaces.
• 21:18
  unknown: Dude.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh it's crazy.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was uh there was a uh rugby tournament here at uh sevens thing.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um so obviously rugby's a big thing in South Africa.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um anyway, so I was uh met this Irish guy.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, hey dude, what's going on, you know?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh I said, you know, he's like, I said, this is the first time here, and he goes, No, you know, I've been here now for a few years.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, why is that?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Well, that's that's my building over there and it looks over the field.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so um I'm like, Oh, cool, what do you do?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, No, we provide pilots to uh airplane, you know, cargo carriers.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I never would have thought about that.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Your staffing agency essentially for airlines.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: But not the, but like pilots, just pilots.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: They do cargo and anyway.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like fuck, okay.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's the things that nobody thinks about.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, oh, this is this one like need that nobody else has like figured out how to fill.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, another one.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: So um we're not really talking about AI, but we'll get there.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh I met uh Mickey Agrawell.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: So she founded um this business called uh Tushy.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so what she hated was uh going to the toilet and having a number two and then dealing with just toilet paper, and she felt like it was it wasn't clean clean clean cleanliness enough or clean up, whatever.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So she basically decided on a bidet.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you you know she built this thing, designed a thing, and it's a hundred million dollar year company.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I said to, and she did not her first success either.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I said, so so how how is it that you know you've been able to repeat this?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: So she goes, Well, there's two things that you need to figure out.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So one is does this suck for you?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then if it does, does it suck for a lot of other people?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because, and again, going back to questions, right?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: So if you know uh what those answers are, then you can probably scale a business, you know.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: Figuring out who it sucks for.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's that's actually thinking about that problem or, you know, well, I mean, uh Sarah Blakely being one of the you know ones that got told no.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I love her, and also she's done a great job of kind of presenting that same idea, which is, you know, no guy was ever gonna be like, you know what, do your do your panty lines show in jean in in your white pants?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: And she was like, no, this is a this is an actual problem.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: This is a thing that you know women are are having issues with, and she solved the problem.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: And but knew exactly who she was talking to.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: So um, just going back to AI for a second, are you what are you most scared of about AI?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm most scared of people not understanding it.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I'm also most scared of people thinking it can do things that they that it can't.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm most scared in general, and this has something to do with AI, but just something to do with our society in general, is critical thinking.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: And how are we, you know, making sure that we are we are teaching our children to think critically?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: And um, how are we making sure we're we're honing our own skills at at thinking critically?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because AI can be a great tool, but you still have to have a human leading whatever it is you're trying to build with AI, whatever it is that it's doing.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: We need a human to be um thinking critically about the the the both what it can do and also the the potential risks of it.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, I've I've got two daughters, right?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: I've got, you know, two high schoolers and you know, trying to look at where I can help them in life.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not about um, do I make them do some of the old school things?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, do I make them write their papers long?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, no, you, you know, you can use some AI.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: You can you just have to be able to use it intelligently and you know, don't don't use it to do your work, use it to see if you can make your work better.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you should still be the judge of whether your work is good or not.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of what I'm scared of.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: What do you what are you scared of most?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for asking me a question.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine, it's good, it's refreshing.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um what am I most scared of with AI?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Not much really.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I suppose I'm I'm all for it.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, great.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: If if it can create new elements, solve cancer, predict, you know, you know, uh healthcare car crashes or reduce less, you know, uh car crashes through autonomous driving, whatever, dude.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm like bringers.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think it'd be more prod positive than negative.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not really on the the negative train uh with AI, but it is generational, I suppose, you know, um, and who knows what what might happen.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: I do think it's just more like it's probably regulation around this stuff.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's like literally the Wild West.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's my concern.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Some a-hole in a garage, you know, with access to the world's compute decides that this person or this in you know whatever is bad, you know.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it's just regulation, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because who's deciding on what gets modeled or not and what data gets trained on, or how do you prevent uh biases being built into the model?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what about you know, um hallucinations and stuff?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, well, okay, so let's feed it, you know, a hundred thousand or a billion CAT scans.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, cool.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: So now you can predict, is it?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you mispredict, you know, it causes harm.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't actually improve things.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: To your point on on biases, I mean, I think I'm also concerned about biases.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was in a presentation recently that I'll I'll stat the stat will be wrong, but the idea will be right.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like that, you know, men use um, you know, AI 70% more than women do, or something like that.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of those, I feel like I use it, but that at the same time, you know, if if things are being built on any population, just any population and not having enough input from, you know, rep that's representative of the world population, I'm I'm scared of, you know, I'm scared of that.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that's something we can we can build for or you know, look at.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I also agree with you, the regulation, it's the people who don't have any understanding doing regulation.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think we saw that with the internet, you know, they couldn't even tell you what the internet was and they were doing regulation.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, they're like it's a thing in the sky.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh my god, you people are you know too stupid to even understand how this how this works in concept.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: So well, I mean, it's like take social media, man.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let's connect the world together, Facebook.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and then of course you're gonna serve ads.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I mean, if you watched that series on Netflix, what was it called?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Cambridge Analytica.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Saw that.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you see what I'm saying?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not there's it's there's always a downside, and there's no regulation for that stuff.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: No one was policing Facebook and what what what ads people were buying and what content was being putting uh put out there.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how do you control it?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: The thing is too big.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can have a content policy team on steroids.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh uh like that'd be a hundred thousand people strong, and that wouldn't wouldn't be enough.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then now then you put AI on that to go, well, I'm not gonna pay 100,000 people anymore.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna use AI to s to police.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: So then what are you who's who's programming that?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, who gets to see what?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: And who's policing Facebook on that shit, you know?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I'm saying.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same, but now you have you know AI is just bigger, right?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah than social media, at least potentially anyway.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: So well, I think that's where I go back to the kind of decision making.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: Who are who's making decisions and how are they how are they making them and how are they regulating things?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm um one of my friends is CFO of a company called Bark, and I've done some work with them in the past and um great, great company.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: What Bark does is it's a technology platform that you know is available for you to put on your kids' phones, on your cli kids media, so that it can alert you for you know anything.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And they've been around probably 10 years, so they've you know, they can alert you to what's happening.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: Are your kids on group texts that they, you know, you should be aware of?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: Are they on you know, on different sites?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, some of it's funny.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like I used to get messages that said, you know, my kids were listening to music that um that I was like, oh crap, there's a lot of bad things in like 90s rap that I was like, oh, I've listened to all of that, you know, or I'd be like, ooh, that's okay.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I might that might have been something I sent them that, you know, has words I didn't even think of in it.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I'm not super um contained with what my kids watch.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: So it was nice to have some of those controls, you know, look up.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, they've got people that have to look at that content and see what kids are seeing and what they're um and then make judgments on, hey, is this something that is appropriate and appropriate based on you know the content levels that the that the parent puts in it and doing it on a mass scale.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but AI doing that is maybe helpful, but also maybe very scary.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: And but it's also scary to have people have to look at some of the things that you know that's bad for the psyche sometimes of the people who are the content viewers.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's it's not just um cut and dry how we choose to filter intro information.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: But on the on the flip side, I think that you know AI is incredibly um able to let us free us free up our time and energy to do the things that we do best as humans, I think is about connecting to other humans or spending time regenerating ourselves through, you know, if we're a more solitary person and spend a little more time outside or yeah.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that goes back to the big simple life idea.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because if every you know, if everything manually is automated in the near future, you know, and you did have a you could automate, let's just say, so Google builds this small business agents in a box story, right?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you feed it the whole, like I want to build, uh, you know, this isn't the cut problem, this is the customer, and then basically it has all these pre-built agents that can automate like whatever sales, marketing, operation, blah, blah, blah, finance, legal, da-da-da.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so now let's just say that's in five years, worst case scenario.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so now you have this opportunity to have this million dollar a year business and work 20 hours a week.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, is that a bad thing?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then you know, what would you do with that other 80% of your time?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I think that's the opportunity to your point around like human connection.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: You could do things like contribution.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: I met so many dudes who build these big businesses, and then it's always an afterthought.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, when I sell my business, then I'm going to do this nonprofit thing.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, then I'm gonna give back to the other entrepreneurs and this.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you can do both at the same time, you know.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I do think I think this whole AI thing is gonna compound human connection.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna remove it.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because one, people will never trust AI as much as humans, and if AI becomes as proliferant as what people are projecting it's gonna be, then, you know, it's gonna it's gonna create this need for trust and connection to s into something that is actually real, you know.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because as great as AI is, like, you know, I don't give a fuck what Mark Zuckerberg tells me around personal intelligence for his, you know, his whole user base.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who care who gives a shit about that?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah you know what I mean?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you care.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: We don't give a fuck about personal intelligence.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we can control which ads we get served?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, come on.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's more like I think you're right though.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like, first of all, we have this like box of hours and we've done so much in business around, especially services businesses around your training your time and energy.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't, I mean, I don't build my business based on exact time because if in 10 minutes we can solve a problem and get what that business owner needs and really dig into it, like I shouldn't get paid any less than, you know, for solving that problem.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not trying to fleece them at the same time, you know, it's a do I need to keep them on the phone for 10 hours, you know, to to make the money I want to make.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: And also, if you can take business knowledge and leadership and then use your other time, if if you know, you and I can make a good living on X amount of hours, but we have double of X amount of hours that we want to dedicate to giving to society, well, that extra, can I can I go like you, like you, I serve on boards.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: I love doing that.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: I give my time and energy to them.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, instead of one board at a time, which is my current load that I enjoy, because I like to be on a committee, run a committee, you know, be in it.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: But can I serve on three boards and really help those, you know, executive directors or CEOs and do it for free and still have my life balance in a way that is workable and is what I want.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the, you know, with all the noise in AI at the moment, I think just you know, figuring out what is enough for you, you know, um, and what role does AI or what can what problems can I assolve, you know, what what problems can I AI remove in order for me to get to that outcome?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: So whether that's tiny epic, big simple, or whether that's the next hundred million dollar unicorn, you know.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you and I are sp at a specific age too, where, you know, the runway is is out in front.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean I I plan on living to 100, but I don't think I'm gonna be at the same e even if I'm physically great, you know, still uh the things I'm gonna want to do at 80 or 90 are very different.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the runway to be with your kids and be with family and you know, travel the world and do those things is very different.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe there's a 30-year-old who's, you know, they're not as concerned with their s smaller amount of time.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: But they wouldn't appreciate it as much either.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you don't have responsibilities like going back to when I was 26, you know what I mean?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was just I was the center of my universe.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then when my son got born 10 years ago, then you realize you're not.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to go through that stuff to And you have to be there literally looking at your own child or whatever you've built and be like, it really is a blink.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, that is people older will always tell well, people older will always tell people younger that.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: But until you, you know, have a kid at whatever else, whatever milestone it is, you know, that the first time they go to kindergarten middle school, you know, my daughter's a senior in high school, and it's unfathomable that, you know, even as she's ready, but it's unfathomable that I've got a child that could actually leave the house and you know be sustainable on her own.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because we've built that she can and she'd be amazing, but for me, I'm still she's like, how's this three-year-old now at a point that she could exist in the world?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, your relationship.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it happens quickly.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh, yeah.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's nice, man.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Shay, look, let's wrap this up.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one fun question for you.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you were to predict a fun or surprising way that you think AI is gonna affect everyday life, not just, you know, business and stuff, uh, what would you say that's gonna be?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh I'm not sure how it will, but I would really love to find some way that my house can be continually clean um through through AI and not have a million robots doing things all at once.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, but some way to to create a level of uh structure and cleanliness that uh needs this one less thing for anybody in the household to do.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's funny how that's come up a few times.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's like how do you manage uh your busyness with kids?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, gotta be at this place this time, pick this one up at this, then gotta do that, then you're gonna do that, then you're gonna do chauvinaire.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you manage that whole um shit show?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'll ever share thanks for coming on the show, man.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoy chatting to your lights and um yeah, congrats on all your success and uh wishing you the best of the future.