Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / What a 45-Year Tech Veteran Understood About Leadership That We Forgot | Jody Jankovsky

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What a 45-Year Tech Veteran Understood About Leadership That We Forgot | Jody Jankovsky · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  So Jodi, I appreciate you coming on the Founder Talk podcast.
• 0:02
  You have obviously 32 years in the trenches as an entrepreneur.
• 0:07
  And you know, we talked a little bit on the call beforehand, but
• 0:09
  you've gotten into a place where you can step away from the
• 0:11
  business. You've got the team, the
• 0:12
  leadership in place where the business can actually run and
• 0:15
  continue to grow without you being in the weeds.
• 0:17
  And a lot of what this show is about is that mission and
• 0:19
  helping other founders get to there.
• 0:20
  And I think even if you've been there, even if you're watching
• 0:23
  and you've been in your shoes, there's still just so much to
• 0:26
  learn from someone's journey and what they've been through,
• 0:28
  whether that's leadership, sales, growing the business,
• 0:30
  whatever it might be. So we're here today to talk
• 0:32
  about some of the challenges, some of the mistakes, some of
• 0:35
  the wins, some of the learning lessons, what you're up to now.
• 0:37
  And I think it'll be a great conversation.
• 0:39
  So welcome to the show. How you feeling?
• 0:40
  I'm feeling great. Thanks a lot.
• 0:42
  I appreciate it. It's been I loved our first our
• 0:45
  first intro part of the camera and there's one thing that I
• 0:48
  love talking about a lot and that's me.
• 0:49
  So not just kidding. Doesn't everyone right?
• 0:52
  That's why everyone loves podcast.
• 0:54
  Actually, it's really, it's great timing because part of my
• 0:57
  part of my career where I'm in right now is a lot of taking
• 1:00
  what I've learned, not just in my field, if you want to call it
• 1:03
  my career, but also just all the lessons learned from running a
• 1:06
  business and sharing that with as many people as I can, that
• 1:09
  purpose driven aspect of life. And I'm coming, you know, I'm
• 1:14
  getting close to a, I wouldn't call it retirement, but I'm, I'm
• 1:17
  in the, the stage where I'm taking my knowledge and I'm
• 1:21
  sharing with a lot of people, especially on my team, about
• 1:24
  what I've learned. So this is perfect conversation
• 1:27
  to have at this moment. I'm.
• 1:28
  Excited for it. I think I think you get to a
• 1:30
  point where you do have your own success and you grow a company
• 1:33
  and you build things and then you kind of feel compelled to
• 1:35
  want to give back, right? Because you're like, I've done
• 1:37
  it myself, I've been through it, I've reaped the rewards, I've
• 1:39
  been through the challenges and now it's like, what can I give?
• 1:42
  You know, how can I continue to give?
• 1:43
  So I appreciate you giving on this show today.
• 1:46
  So let's talk about because the 30 year journey that you're on,
• 1:49
  you know, 32 years, has it been since you started Black Line,
• 1:51
  which is an IT managed service provider based company, right?
• 1:55
  How long did it take you to build the company to where it
• 1:57
  could run and grow even if you stepped away?
• 2:00
  So my journey actually starts a little farther back than that.
• 2:03
  So the company itself is 32 years old, but I've been in the
• 2:06
  industry like 45 S and I was through college.
• 2:09
  It was one way for me to pay the bills and to pay for my college
• 2:13
  was to basically be an entrepreneur, solo entrepreneur.
• 2:17
  Wow, at the time, but I that was the way that I made money and it
• 2:22
  was really what? Were you doing?
• 2:23
  I was doing programming, so that's my background.
• 2:25
  I'm a computer scientist. So my background is building
• 2:28
  system. That's where I started with my
• 2:30
  dad building, building systems for small mid sized companies.
• 2:34
  So I was really focused on that market and it and my my dad was
• 2:39
  an entrepreneur, my mom was an entrepreneur.
• 2:40
  I was around the environment of the, the uncertainty of being
• 2:46
  paid and like, it was an uncertain world that I lived in.
• 2:51
  So I grew up in an environment already of, let's just call it
• 2:55
  the stress, if you will, the grind of running a running a
• 2:59
  business. What do you remember from that
• 3:01
  as a kid? I'm curious because I, I feel
• 3:03
  like I try to shield my kids from as much as, you know, if I
• 3:05
  am going through a challenging times, like everything's great,
• 3:07
  we're good, you know, but maybe sometimes it is good to get them
• 3:09
  in and show them, you know. It there was real, there was
• 3:13
  real friction in our life. And so I'll give you an example.
• 3:16
  It's a perfect one. So my mom was had a little
• 3:19
  advertising company where she would build menus that had ads
• 3:23
  on them and she would sell those to suit to restaurants.
• 3:27
  And so we would go on vacation and a time and this is where it
• 3:31
  really hits. So for us to go on vacation, she
• 3:34
  would first have to stop at customers that hadn't paid yet.
• 3:37
  So if we could get enough money for us to be able.
• 3:40
  To go and you're how old at this point?
• 3:42
  8 So you. Remember us having to stop and
• 3:45
  get the payments and it's just like on the.
• 3:47
  Way to the vacation. Literally we're packed.
• 3:49
  Oh my gosh, in the car going skiing or we were going camping
• 3:54
  and she's like, oh, I've got a few, few stops I have to make.
• 3:57
  And she was trying to be sly about it.
• 3:59
  But when it happened over and over again, it's like we're
• 4:01
  stopping at businesses and she's going in and she comes out with
• 4:04
  a check. Then we got to go to the the
• 4:06
  bank and cash it. My dad, in order to make ends
• 4:09
  meet, because he was a architect, he started the
• 4:12
  software company back in the late 70s.
• 4:15
  Software and hardware when you couldn't.
• 4:17
  That was like unheard of. That was up here.
• 4:19
  Yeah. You were building.
• 4:20
  We were building our own computers and programming them.
• 4:22
  And the reason we had to do that was because the recession during
• 4:26
  the 70s, you probably don't remember that the, the gas
• 4:30
  lines. the IT was, it was pretty like the world's ending kind of
• 4:34
  a thing. But to make ends meet, he had to
• 4:37
  start a whole new business. And it was that was great for
• 4:42
  me. It was great for me because I
• 4:44
  got an opportunity that nobody else had.
• 4:47
  Your, I was like 12 years old getting access to the most
• 4:52
  innovative technology to hit our world.
• 4:56
  I was at the dawn of it. Very few people get that
• 5:00
  opportunity. And I find it to be a blessing
• 5:03
  like it was. It was really unique to be able
• 5:05
  to be at the dawn of what we see today.
• 5:07
  And then I've been a part of it the entire time.
• 5:10
  So and then watching my parents go through that, watching the.
• 5:13
  Internet or what you talking about?
• 5:14
  I'm talking, I'm talking the dawn of information technology.
• 5:17
  So if you had mainframes that wasn't accessible to the for
• 5:21
  everyday people, mainframes were big companies, insurance
• 5:24
  companies, the government, NASA, they had mainframes.
• 5:27
  So wild we. Have a poodle in our pocket.
• 5:29
  We have like the, you know, a supercomputer.
• 5:30
  Yeah. So imagine APC which was the
• 5:33
  which is the start of it and those tools I was helping build
• 5:38
  the tools I was helping, you know, take the very little tools
• 5:42
  and tooling that was available and then create an application
• 5:45
  that an actual business could use.
• 5:48
  And very simple data entry, very simple databases, very simple
• 5:52
  spreadsheeting, very, very simple word docs or the
• 5:56
  equivalent of a word processor. And it that watching that happen
• 6:02
  real time and then seeing it evolve.
• 6:05
  And I've seen every generate, every generation from computers
• 6:10
  to computers that had more processing power and more
• 6:12
  memory, which is by itself its own evolution.
• 6:15
  And then they became interconnected through
• 6:17
  networking and that was just the beginning was networking them in
• 6:20
  a building. Then came the Internet, which is
• 6:22
  just a longer wire and interoperability and the ability
• 6:26
  for us to communicate as a, it's a larger culture and community
• 6:30
  and world. And then you added cloud, then
• 6:32
  you added all the security stuff that naturally came because I've
• 6:36
  seen, I've seen it all the different database technologies
• 6:39
  and and user interface technology.
• 6:42
  Which we'll talk about here in a little bit.
• 6:43
  I don't want to jump there yet, but we're definitely because I
• 6:45
  know you have some unique takes on that too.
• 6:46
  And when we talked on the phone, I appreciated that you kind of
• 6:48
  talked about creating new categories.
• 6:50
  And I think that's that's a challenging thing to do, but it
• 6:53
  can also be very rewarding when you're someone that is the kind
• 6:55
  of new category of things where the market doesn't really know
• 6:58
  it yet. It's like, what is this?
• 6:59
  I'm not familiar with this, right?
• 7:00
  It's almost easier to go to something that everyone knows,
• 7:02
  right? So, so back to the question
• 7:03
  then, and did you feel like it was an advantage growing up in a
• 7:07
  household where you had entrepreneurs?
• 7:10
  You be. Do you think you would have been
• 7:11
  an entrepreneur had you not grown up in that house?
• 7:13
  I, I don't think so. I, I think that the, the natural
• 7:18
  tension and uncertainty that I just grew up with, I had to
• 7:23
  adapt into that kind of, if you want to call it like a little
• 7:25
  mini culture. The idea of starting my own
• 7:28
  business was absolutely not alien to me whatsoever.
• 7:32
  It wasn't like, Oh my gosh, I'm doing this.
• 7:34
  This crazy thing that that nobody does.
• 7:37
  It's like, I've seen it real time and I know what I'm in for.
• 7:39
  I already knew what I was getting in for.
• 7:41
  I already knew that this was going to be something that was
• 7:44
  not a straight pathway because I watched it happen.
• 7:46
  Then I also had an opportunity to see my mom and dad not do it
• 7:51
  very well. And we end up figuring it out
• 7:53
  eventually and having a good business or no?
• 7:55
  They they they had a lifestyle business.
• 7:59
  OK. They both did they they they
• 8:01
  made money doing it their own way.
• 8:03
  It created at the time essentially a lifestyle, work
• 8:08
  from home, flexible life. They made enough money to have,
• 8:12
  you know, not worry about bills and.
• 8:14
  Yeah, they made it exactly. They made enough money to be
• 8:16
  able to live and, and have the benefits of being an
• 8:18
  entrepreneur, which is that's the, you know, that's the, let's
• 8:24
  call it the, the demo part of being an entrepreneur.
• 8:27
  That's what everybody sees as, Oh my God, that's so sexy.
• 8:29
  I can, you know, I can. I have my own time, my own
• 8:31
  schedule, my own. I get to dictate what I do.
• 8:34
  Sure, yeah. That's the demo, yeah.
• 8:37
  So in a way you do, but in a way.
• 8:39
  Yeah, in a way you do. But then what comes with that is
• 8:41
  you're responsible for every single outcome.
• 8:44
  Yeah. In the business, Yeah.
• 8:45
  So yeah, so it was easier. So did you look at, because I
• 8:48
  think people look at businesses in two ways, like lifestyle
• 8:51
  business versus the I'm going to build a business as an asset, be
• 8:54
  able to sell it, walk away from it continues to run.
• 8:56
  Did you early on identify that I don't want the lifestyle
• 8:59
  business. I want, you know, a business
• 9:01
  that becomes an asset because of your what you saw or was that
• 9:04
  even in your mind? Were you thinking I'm just going
• 9:06
  to do a lifestyle business like my parents maybe have be a
• 9:08
  little bit more successful? Yeah, I think it was a combo.
• 9:11
  So I started with the intention of growth, OK, not necessarily
• 9:16
  life's, you know, not having it as a lifestyle.
• 9:18
  I, I went into the intention of I'm going to build something
• 9:20
  that grows as opposed to maybe what I saw actually, my brother
• 9:23
  is well, was an entrepreneur, like there was multiple people
• 9:26
  in my family, aunts, uncles. So I wanted to grow something,
• 9:32
  not just be, you know, a couple of people, you know, kind of,
• 9:36
  but I know what that even meant. I just knew that that's what I
• 9:38
  wanted to do. So, and it was about 90 years
• 9:45
  ago, it was when I got the vision that said I actually want
• 9:49
  to build something that scales that I could step away from.
• 9:52
  That's an asset and. Well, where did that come from?
• 9:56
  Why? I turned 50.
• 9:59
  Is that a big milestone? Yeah, it was it was like, what
• 10:02
  am I going to do with the rest of my life kind of decision.
• 10:04
  There's a lot of entrepreneurs that are that I've talked to
• 10:06
  that are kind of in the same boat 100%, which is what do I do
• 10:10
  now? So here I am, I'm, I'm, I'm
• 10:12
  staring at retirement or whatever that is supposed to be.
• 10:16
  Yeah. What?
• 10:16
  50 you are. Yeah.
• 10:17
  I'm like, that's going to be the next day.
• 10:19
  Like that's only, you know, 15 years away.
• 10:21
  I mean, yeah, at that time. But yeah, it could be 20 years.
• 10:25
  I don't know. Yeah, Yeah.
• 10:27
  But I already had a business up to that point, like 25 years.
• 10:29
  I. Mean I I was.
• 10:31
  Already had a whole career or. I had, I already said I already
• 10:33
  had it. I almost had two careers, three
• 10:35
  careers at that point. So excuse me.
• 10:40
  So there's a purpose aspect of it, like what's my, what's the
• 10:43
  purpose of what I've been doing? It's great to be an
• 10:45
  entrepreneur. It's great to have a career in
• 10:48
  tech, which I love. What's starting at 12 years old,
• 10:52
  I got a vision for what I wanted my life's work to be.
• 10:55
  Very, very few 12 year olds see their life work and be able to
• 11:00
  be exposed to it. As soon as I made a computer do
• 11:02
  what I wanted it to do, I knew that that this is what I wanted
• 11:06
  to do. And from that moment on, that
• 11:07
  was all I wanted to do. OK.
• 11:09
  So very few people get that opportunity, OK.
• 11:11
  So I saw that as my calling to do something.
• 11:15
  A lot of entrepreneurs got the same thing, Whatever it is that
• 11:18
  they're they're focused on, they want to do something and leave
• 11:23
  the world a better place because of what they know.
• 11:25
  That's at the core of it. I know something that you don't
• 11:28
  know or somebody else doesn't know.
• 11:29
  And it's my my life's work is to help you get there because I
• 11:34
  have a valuable thing that I believe I want to share with the
• 11:37
  world. So I wasn't really doing that at
• 11:41
  age 50, you know, I was. What was the business?
• 11:44
  Like that we were, we were smaller.
• 11:46
  We were like 15 people. We were, we were disjointed.
• 11:49
  We really weren't growing with purpose.
• 11:51
  It was we lacked mission. What if you would have stepped
• 11:55
  the way back then? What did it felt?
• 11:56
  Oh yeah, I wouldn't have. It would have gone nowhere.
• 11:57
  Why? What were you doing?
• 11:58
  I was doing everything I was. I was kind of the central,
• 12:03
  central, they were, they were billing or they were doing
• 12:06
  service delivery, but every other operational aspect of the
• 12:09
  business had my fingerprints on it.
• 12:11
  Operational aspect, the accounting, the finance, the
• 12:16
  insurance, the HR, the legal, the fill in the blank of all the
• 12:21
  other disciplines that you have to have when you're running a
• 12:23
  business. I had, I had my, you know, my
• 12:26
  hand and all of that. Is that because you felt like
• 12:29
  you needed to do it or wouldn't get done right?
• 12:31
  Or is it you were scared to let go or?
• 12:32
  Like, no, it was, it was, it wouldn't have got done right.
• 12:36
  It was it was the truth or you think that was what you the
• 12:38
  story that you had in your head. I, I believe that I did not
• 12:40
  empower my team in order to be that, which is what the that's
• 12:44
  what came out of that self reflection and like evaluate
• 12:49
  what, what am I doing? It sounds I'm just going to what
• 12:52
  am I doing? Why am I doing this?
• 12:54
  What does the future look like? Why do I care?
• 12:55
  Like literally why do they care? Yeah, that's a great one.
• 12:58
  Yeah. And so the answer became, this
• 13:01
  isn't for me, this is for them. I if I want to have people work
• 13:06
  for me, they need to have a purpose and they need to know
• 13:09
  where we're going. They need to be LED.
• 13:12
  They need to understand why we're what's the, why do they
• 13:16
  want to be here? Because we had a, we had a lot
• 13:18
  of turnover. A lot.
• 13:20
  And it's very expensive to have turnover in.
• 13:21
  People you know. And I think a part of it was
• 13:24
  just how we provided a culture and an environment than the work
• 13:30
  in. And why were they even here?
• 13:32
  And that vision wasn't there. It's.
• 13:34
  Really interesting because it's like almost going back in time
• 13:36
  with you and being able to dissect the moment you realized
• 13:39
  because you know, you have 15, a 15 person company.
• 13:41
  That's not like, I mean, that's not easy to do, right?
• 13:44
  Like to build 15 people and build a real company that
• 13:46
  provides services and you've been around for decades.
• 13:48
  Like that's not in my mind, that's a very good
• 13:50
  accomplishment, right? But then you're saying, all
• 13:52
  right, turn 50 light bulb moment, what am I doing?
• 13:55
  Teams kind of fractured turnover.
• 13:57
  I can't walk away from this business.
• 13:59
  I feel like I want more purpose. And what was the next moment
• 14:02
  like? Like what then?
• 14:03
  You know, what do you go and do after that?
• 14:05
  Like you have this vision and are you traveling somewhere?
• 14:07
  Are you at home? Like where is this vision coming
• 14:10
  to life if you remember? And then what do you do next?
• 14:12
  Because then you got to go back to this fifteen person team and
• 14:14
  it's like they're like, who's this Jody?
• 14:16
  You know what I mean? That is exactly what happened.
• 14:19
  Think of it like, so that happened.
• 14:23
  I'll tell you exactly what happened between March and June
• 14:27
  of 2017 is when this happened. This, this journey started at
• 14:33
  that moment, which was light bulb.
• 14:36
  Light bulb goes on. This isn't what I, I want to do
• 14:41
  or there's not clarity of what I want to do.
• 14:44
  All those things we just were talking about.
• 14:47
  And so I kind of went to my mountaintop.
• 14:49
  I went into my, I went on a, you know, the whole concept of a, a,
• 14:54
  of an emotional walkabout. And was it emotional?
• 14:57
  Yeah, it was, it was absolutely emotional.
• 14:59
  It was more about grappling with who we are as humans.
• 15:02
  This is what we all do as entrepreneurs.
• 15:04
  We're, it's, it's part the, let's call it the operations,
• 15:08
  the tactics, the we're intelligent people and we can do
• 15:12
  really, we can do all kinds of things that we, but we have to
• 15:15
  direct our energies at something.
• 15:18
  And directing our energies means that we have to have purpose of
• 15:21
  what that direction is, because we can put them in a lot of
• 15:23
  different places. We can be really successful.
• 15:25
  All kinds of things, right. It just so happened I built up
• 15:29
  all this knowledge and this, this institutional architecture,
• 15:33
  if you will, around service delivery of tech like, well, I'm
• 15:37
  not going to, you know, pivot into making music.
• 15:41
  Or something like that. I got AI got a whole another
• 15:43
  journey ahead of me if I was going to do that.
• 15:44
  I love music, but I'm not, you know, making a career out of it.
• 15:47
  So I'm like, OK, I'm going to do it within the context of what
• 15:49
  I've already done and why did I get into this business to begin
• 15:52
  with? And it was really just kind of
• 15:53
  going back, distilling all the rest of it.
• 15:56
  And actually at the time, I had a couple of partners and there
• 16:01
  was the real partners and I had team members that had been
• 16:05
  brought in, if you want to think of it like brought in or under
• 16:08
  the context of one company with one way of doing business.
• 16:12
  And I was just about to pull the rug on everyone.
• 16:16
  And there was the real risk that when I brought this new vision
• 16:21
  to the company that they were going to all quit.
• 16:26
  I was going to lose partners, I was going to it all could have
• 16:28
  evaporated. And I knew that was a real risk,
• 16:30
  but it was worth taking. What was the vision?
• 16:32
  What in your mind like when you're going to speak to them?
• 16:34
  What are you? What are you telling them?
• 16:36
  OK, so it was called the moon shot.
• 16:37
  So the moon shot was a way you. Called it that.
• 16:40
  Yeah, so the moon shot is a common term.
• 16:42
  Right, I've heard of it. Yeah, it's the, it's the, it's
• 16:44
  the big hairy audacious goal concept, right?
• 16:47
  Like you're shooting for the stars, right?
• 16:49
  And it so our moon shot, I'm like, OK, and I use Kennedy, I
• 16:54
  use space analogies. We got all kinds of cool nerdy
• 16:57
  ass stuff around that. Did you?
• 16:59
  Just call the meeting with everyone.
• 17:00
  Just called the meeting. So I called the meeting.
• 17:02
  First of all, of course, I structured all this.
• 17:03
  I went into the I went into the lab and I'm like, what am I
• 17:07
  going to call this? Why do I want to do what, what
• 17:08
  are we doing? And so I brought it down to
• 17:10
  three pegs and this, so this is what now shapes everything that
• 17:15
  we do. The three pegs were the to be
• 17:18
  the best place to work, the best technology company to work for
• 17:22
  in the small mid size space. We are we are hyper focused on
• 17:27
  being the best and this is what it means.
• 17:29
  And we have a set of values and we have a set of criteria.
• 17:32
  What that means you're going to be clear, equipped, guided and
• 17:35
  valued and that is our that's our one of our North stars.
• 17:39
  The three pegs of this stool is going to be the best place to
• 17:42
  work and be very intentional about this.
• 17:44
  So we're going to you're going to come to work everyday and
• 17:47
  you're going to be like this is the best company to work for bar
• 17:49
  none. The second one was to be the
• 17:52
  gold standard for technology services and small mid sized
• 17:54
  business. The gold standard that they're
• 17:56
  going to look at my company black line and they're going to
• 17:58
  say whatever they're doing that is nobody is doing it this way.
• 18:04
  OK, So to be the gold standard, to be the gold standard for the
• 18:08
  way technology products and services are deployed to the
• 18:11
  small business. And then the third is to expand
• 18:15
  and scale to serve the underserved.
• 18:18
  Because I believe and what I've seen in all my this all these
• 18:20
  years are doing all this work. And the reason what gets me up
• 18:23
  everyday is that I look across the table from another
• 18:26
  entrepreneur and I see them struggle with technology.
• 18:29
  I see their businesses struggle. I see their people struggling.
• 18:32
  And not just struggling pain, value loss.
• 18:37
  They don't have to live that way.
• 18:39
  And I want to expand my business with these two other pegs and
• 18:42
  say those those entrepreneurs, those companies deserve a better
• 18:48
  outcome. And I'm going to focus on that.
• 18:51
  So if I'm going to be the best place to work and I'm going to
• 18:54
  be the gold standard. And then I got a scale.
• 18:57
  Yeah. With purpose.
• 18:59
  Yeah, with purpose. So I came to the team and I was
• 19:01
  like, this is the moon shot. This is this is what, this is
• 19:07
  what Black Line's going to be about.
• 19:09
  And at the time, I have to have a really good coach, a business
• 19:15
  coach. And she's like, I love this
• 19:18
  vision. I love what you're doing.
• 19:20
  I love how you've taken the work that we've done and you've
• 19:23
  you've crystallized into something which is truly unique.
• 19:27
  And if you really want to stand out in this world, that's the
• 19:29
  kind of things you got to do. He's like, yeah.
• 19:31
  But the problem is that you've got a group of people who don't
• 19:34
  who who you don't know whether or not they want to be in that
• 19:38
  mission with you. And there's a real risk there.
• 19:40
  But the only thing you can do is invite them into that mission.
• 19:44
  You can't tell them this is where we're going.
• 19:46
  It's like the way that I approached it was, this is where
• 19:50
  I want to go. Do you want to come with me?
• 19:56
  I believe that we can be the best place we can be this place
• 19:59
  that everyone loves to come to and loves the work that they do.
• 20:04
  And they got this career that they just, you know, they're
• 20:07
  like, I love it. They're one I don't ever want to
• 20:09
  leave, right? And it's like, and we are, we're
• 20:12
  recognized as this elite company that people look at and go, man,
• 20:17
  whatever the hell they're doing, I want it.
• 20:20
  I don't even know how to match it because they're doing
• 20:22
  something so crazy good or whatever.
• 20:24
  Do you want to be part of that? And do you want to take what we
• 20:28
  know and what you know because you guys are great technologist
• 20:31
  and do you want to serve people who need you and do you want to
• 20:35
  feel that? Do you want to be part of that
• 20:36
  with me? Because that's what I want to
• 20:37
  do. What are their faces like when
• 20:40
  you're saying all this stuff? Are you reading the room saying
• 20:42
  like? Yeah, into it or Oh my God,
• 20:44
  their eyes was like where like moon shot is right?
• 20:49
  Did you already have a twin? That came in what?
• 20:50
  What planet did we just step on to?
• 20:52
  It was. It was.
• 20:54
  Before that, you weren't, you didn't have any of this vision
• 20:56
  stuff. It was just kind of like we got
• 20:57
  a project, do it. Everyone's doing a job right?
• 21:01
  Very tactical, very Hey, we're, we're, we're really good.
• 21:05
  Let's you know, let's, let's help some people do some
• 21:09
  technical stuff. Hey, we're here to do really
• 21:11
  good technical work, you know, And that just doesn't, people
• 21:17
  don't, don't, they're not inspired by just making money,
• 21:22
  right? And they're not inspired by a
• 21:23
  company that just wants to make money.
• 21:25
  Right. And I've I learned lessons from
• 21:30
  lots of, you know, read a lot of lot of books that good to great
• 21:33
  right there by Jim Collins is one of them.
• 21:35
  One time I was asked who, who are my mentors?
• 21:37
  And I'm like, may I start, you know, naming off, you know,
• 21:40
  Drucker and Collins and Daniel Pink and Elon Musk and I just
• 21:45
  named off all and they're like, Oh, these, these are your
• 21:47
  mentors. I might not read all their
• 21:48
  books. And they provide context of
• 21:51
  doing great things like what, what does that even look like?
• 21:55
  And it requires A and this is for all the entrepreneurs.
• 21:59
  Maybe they're listening to this. Definitely, but the the amount
• 22:02
  of leadership change that needed to come through me was
• 22:07
  tremendous. Let's talk about it.
• 22:09
  I want to break these three pillars down because I'm
• 22:10
  listening. I'm like, wow.
• 22:12
  First of all, thank you for sharing this.
• 22:13
  It's not often that we have a whole episode that I think just,
• 22:16
  like, so perfectly follows a story.
• 22:18
  But there's so much insights and every little aspect of it.
• 22:22
  So go back to the meeting. You, you give this big vision
• 22:24
  speech. You know, their eyes light up.
• 22:26
  They're like, who the hell is this guy?
• 22:28
  Yeah, they did. What happens next?
• 22:29
  And then I want to get into those pillars.
• 22:31
  Like, how did you start making that change?
• 22:33
  That's your point. Now comes the challenging work.
• 22:35
  We're like, OK, the vision's there.
• 22:37
  I'm excited. Everyone's pumped up.
• 22:38
  And then it's like, but now we got to like, do some real shit.
• 22:40
  OK so here here's how it started the play out.
• 22:42
  Number one is I use the NASA moon, moon shot that I use that
• 22:48
  as a framework, believe it or not.
• 22:50
  So NASA, I'm not sure if you knew this, the NASA, the NASA
• 22:53
  program was split up in the three programs, Mercury, Gemini
• 22:57
  and Apollo. Were you aware of?
• 22:58
  That I was not aware of that I know Apollo, Apollo 13 Apollo.
• 23:01
  13 But Apollo was the third phase of actually a three phased
• 23:05
  approach where Mercury had a very specific mission.
• 23:10
  It was, and this is true, literally get up off the Earth
• 23:15
  with a person and get back down again with nobody dying.
• 23:19
  That was it. I'm not sure if you, if you want
• 23:21
  to study anywhere, watch the movies.
• 23:23
  It was just get them off the earth.
• 23:26
  They had no rockets. They didn't have any tech around
• 23:29
  it. The only rockets they had were
• 23:30
  ICBM's. They had to now convert ICBM
• 23:33
  technology into a rocket that had a human on it.
• 23:36
  They had to build a spacecraft that housed a human.
• 23:39
  It could support them. That could be controlled.
• 23:43
  Was this the 50s or when with the the 60s, sixties. 61 is when
• 23:47
  all this started. OK, so I use that as a frame
• 23:50
  that there was mercury, which is very basic goals.
• 23:54
  Yeah, one step at a time. One step at a time.
• 23:56
  Then came Gemini. So that was the Mercury and I
• 23:59
  did something similar inside of black, which is like, we're just
• 24:02
  going to start with defining some roles.
• 24:06
  Let's just, if we want to do all the things we're talking about,
• 24:10
  everything can't go through Jodi, we need to start
• 24:13
  separating this company into some roles, into some functions.
• 24:17
  So let's just start there. Let's just start defining it.
• 24:20
  Let's just start like rallying around the idea that what what
• 24:24
  are some of the missing components?
• 24:25
  And let's start there. Let's just did.
• 24:27
  You get their first consensus on who wants to join me.
• 24:29
  Did everyone raise their hand? Anyone not?
• 24:30
  Join I what I did was I, I'm like I, I I didn't ask for that
• 24:36
  in the in the kickoff. Actually, I got a video of it
• 24:38
  when I did. No way.
• 24:39
  Yeah, I do. You have a video of you giving
• 24:41
  that speech. Yeah, I do.
• 24:42
  Yeah, I, yeah, that's. Really, you got to share that
• 24:45
  with me. I got to see it.
• 24:46
  We're going to play in the for the.
• 24:47
  Can we play for the? Podcast, yeah.
• 24:49
  Like clips of it? Yeah, that's actually a really
• 24:51
  good idea. It'd be.
• 24:52
  Cool, right? Maybe it goes in the teaser.
• 24:53
  I'm trying to get more creative with our teasers.
• 24:54
  You know, trailer teasers for the show.
• 24:57
  OK, I'm doing some. Skit stuff.
• 24:58
  Now I'm posting a skit video tomorrow to like just try to
• 25:01
  change it up because I think the industry has the same teaser for
• 25:03
  every podcast. And I think that could be
• 25:05
  something crazy. Like what if we could go back in
• 25:08
  time and actually watch you give that speech to your team?
• 25:11
  Wait a second, we can and then it goes to that, right?
• 25:14
  Yeah, I had the 4th thought to how did.
• 25:16
  You record Wait. How did you?
• 25:18
  I can't remember how I did it. I don't think we had.
• 25:21
  I think I had a a video recorder because we didn't think about
• 25:25
  the the cell phones were not as great as that's true.
• 25:29
  Back then, 2017, it wasn't like they are today.
• 25:32
  No, yeah. So didn't ask for people to.
• 25:36
  I just invited them. And then came like the time
• 25:40
  after that, which is what does this mean, Jody?
• 25:43
  Because then the one partner exited, which was like, man, the
• 25:47
  whole world's going to come down because he left.
• 25:50
  So after that he was like, I don't want him to go on this.
• 25:52
  Ride. It was kind of like I didn't see
• 25:54
  him culturally matching with what we were trying to.
• 25:57
  Do was he a Co founder or what? No.
• 25:59
  Oh yeah. He was brought in later and then
• 26:02
  I met with the other partner that I had plus one that I
• 26:05
  wanted to bring in and it was. Like investors or what are they
• 26:08
  like? Who's like 1?
• 26:08
  They're both employee. They were employees that were
• 26:10
  key, people key. They were engineers, very key to
• 26:13
  the operations. And it was bring them in because
• 26:17
  I needed that stability without we didn't want these core
• 26:20
  technical resources to go away. So I made them, you know, some
• 26:22
  equity to keep them. It was like a golden handcuff
• 26:25
  kind. Of a thing got.
• 26:27
  It but one of them wasn't going to fit.
• 26:28
  So we had to do that at the exact literally the same day.
• 26:32
  I exited him in the morning and then I did this presentation in
• 26:36
  the afternoon. Pretty high stakes.
• 26:39
  Like here's what happened. He's not I'm not going to use
• 26:42
  his name. He's not here anymore.
• 26:44
  This is why this is what's going to happen next.
• 26:47
  These are the people who are in charge.
• 26:49
  This is what I want to do. Think about this and let's have
• 26:51
  conversations afterwards. Let's have conversations over
• 26:55
  the next couple weeks. It was like, OK, share with what
• 26:57
  what this is about. Like this is not, you know,
• 27:00
  Jodie normally like what is blah, blah, blah, What does this
• 27:03
  mean? How does this look?
• 27:04
  What does this mean to me? How do I fit into this?
• 27:08
  That's what that's what all of the best place to work stuff is
• 27:11
  all about. It's not about what I want.
• 27:14
  It's about what everybody else wants.
• 27:16
  That's how good leadership, I believe good leadership focuses
• 27:19
  on is finding the pathway for each individual person to fit in
• 27:25
  with whatever your vision happens to be.
• 27:27
  And it has to be Co creation. It has to be, it has to be
• 27:31
  alignment that you want to do it with me.
• 27:34
  Because if you that's like you're making a choice just like
• 27:37
  every other relationship, right? If is you're making a choice to
• 27:41
  be in a relationship with me because there's there's
• 27:43
  something you're getting out of it.
• 27:44
  That's that's just human nature. This isn't the old school.
• 27:48
  I'm running the company. I tell you what to do and that's
• 27:51
  kind of how it was like this chain of command and I've got to
• 27:53
  be the leader and I've got to tell you guys what to do and you
• 27:56
  execute what I want you to do. And it just turned that and it
• 28:00
  and it took me years. It's been years to flip that
• 28:04
  mentality to go from, you know, edict driven to collab driven
• 28:11
  movements. And that's where the, the
• 28:15
  concept of the moon shot and the framing of those, those vision
• 28:22
  items because they became, we call them rally points, they
• 28:26
  became rally points inside the business.
• 28:28
  So for example, and I know it kind of skipped a little bit in
• 28:31
  terms of the moon shot, it's multiple phases.
• 28:34
  But in the Gemini phase, the Gemini phase was from the NASA
• 28:40
  perspective that I'm going to bring it to my company.
• 28:42
  So the Gemini phase was now that we've can successfully get
• 28:45
  somebody into space and NASA decided on a three spaceship
• 28:53
  approach to getting to the moon. The Russians had a one spaceship
• 28:57
  approach launched this massive thing that gets all the way
• 29:00
  there and then land some component of it and, and, and
• 29:04
  then come back. NASA had, you got this main
• 29:08
  Saturn 5 rocket, you had a command module, you had a
• 29:12
  service module and you had the the lunar module, and you had to
• 29:16
  connect all that together and take that to the moon, right.
• 29:19
  And then when you came back, then they left the lunar module,
• 29:23
  you had your service module and your command module came like.
• 29:26
  So that was very complex. Yeah.
• 29:28
  So you had to prove all of that. This was all new.
• 29:31
  You got to remember this was nobody knew how to do any of
• 29:33
  this. Right, scary stuff too.
• 29:35
  Just going to space. I have no clue what's.
• 29:36
  Going to happen. You know what?
• 29:37
  They had to walk outside the spacecraft.
• 29:39
  They had to dock and undock 2 moving objects in space at some
• 29:44
  these ridiculous speeds. They had to test all of that.
• 29:47
  They had to test the math. They had to test the science,
• 29:50
  the materials that they were using, the space suits, the
• 29:54
  they. And they did that during Gemini.
• 29:56
  You know what most people don't know is that the Earth, I don't
• 29:58
  know if you know this or not, but I'm sure you do.
• 30:00
  The Earth actually moves. So it spins obviously once a
• 30:02
  day, right? Like 1000 miles an hour or
• 30:04
  whatever it is. But it's also moving through
• 30:06
  space. At a very high rate. 10s of
• 30:09
  thousands I think. I think maybe the whole Galaxy
• 30:12
  or I can't remember what Earth is.
• 30:13
  It's like 56,000 mph. It's it's ridiculously moving
• 30:17
  fast around the sun. So imagine what we're on right
• 30:19
  now. This piece of rock is moving 10s
• 30:21
  of thousands of miles an hour right now.
• 30:24
  So you'd almost think if you go out in space, how do you stay
• 30:27
  with the Earth? And obviously the gravity pulls
• 30:29
  it. But I think when you're out
• 30:30
  there, you don't feel like you're moving, just like we
• 30:32
  don't feel like we're moving here.
• 30:33
  Is that right? Yeah.
• 30:33
  Yeah. Like, and then if you go to the
• 30:34
  moon, I guess the gravitational pulls are strong enough from
• 30:37
  bold. Even if you're in between, it's
• 30:39
  still holding together. And it's.
• 30:40
  Moving. That's why they're.
• 30:42
  It's wild to. Think that's how gravity
• 30:43
  operates right? How far would you and mass?
• 30:45
  Could you go outside the Earth and moon far enough to where you
• 30:48
  lost? Yeah, that's the.
• 30:50
  The gravitational orbit of the our Galaxy, cause at some point
• 30:53
  if you're out of the Galaxy, it's gone.
• 30:55
  Like you're not catching that thing.
• 30:56
  Yeah, yeah. And then the Galaxy actually
• 30:58
  moves. Yep, the Galaxy is moving, is
• 31:00
  moving. 500,000 mph which I I looked in all stuff one day the
• 31:04
  entire sun, earth, Merck everything is moving 5. 100
• 31:08
  That's our solar system. Right, our solar system is
• 31:10
  moving 500. 1000 inside of the Inside the Galaxy.
• 31:14
  Inside the Galaxy. And then the Galaxy is also
• 31:16
  moving right? Most people do not know it's a
• 31:18
  mine F. When you look this stuff up,
• 31:21
  it's Y. The physics are incredible.
• 31:24
  The physics in itself are luckily we got really, we got
• 31:28
  really intelligent people doing that kind of work and they had
• 31:33
  to solve very difficult problems in that in in the Gemini phase.
• 31:38
  OK. And so we looked at the Gemini
• 31:40
  phase, we did the same thing is that we had the test systems, we
• 31:44
  had to deploy resources, create processes that weren't there.
• 31:49
  We had to shore up each of the different functions in the
• 31:53
  business so they could operate independently.
• 31:55
  We had to build the entire best place to work infrastructure.
• 32:01
  I'm curious about that one. Because we had to, we had to
• 32:03
  break that down. We had to breakdown.
• 32:04
  What does it mean to be the best place to work?
• 32:06
  What's the real, if we say it's clear, equipped, guided and
• 32:10
  cared for, each of those four has a very specific application
• 32:15
  inside the business. So if I'm going to be clear, if
• 32:18
  I want to have my team when they come in and I'm like, you're
• 32:21
  going to be clear, You're going to be clear, you're going to
• 32:23
  have clarity in what you're supposed to do.
• 32:25
  So if I'm saying, if I'm telling you that I'm going to provide
• 32:28
  clarity, that means I've got to take action and my team's got to
• 32:31
  take action to put in place what is necessary to take a role in
• 32:35
  the business. Make sure people are clear that
• 32:37
  that's what they're supposed to do in a business that didn't
• 32:40
  have that, it was figure it out, man.
• 32:43
  Like you're in a business, bro. Like figure out how that's
• 32:46
  supposed to work. That's where the that that was
• 32:50
  one of the leadership changes. The leadership change was it's
• 32:52
  my job to provide that clarity to the team.
• 32:54
  It's not their job to figure it out and try to read my mind.
• 32:58
  That was a big move. It's a big move of mine as well
• 33:02
  as my partners where how come they're just not how come
• 33:06
  they're just not doing like that was a very common like
• 33:09
  conversation we'd have in the media.
• 33:12
  I can't believe they just don't know what that is.
• 33:14
  And the and and we had to spin that and go, it's not their
• 33:17
  problem. This is our problem.
• 33:19
  We're no longer we're not going to delegate the responsibility
• 33:23
  of the success of this company. It is our job to equip them.
• 33:28
  It is our job to keep them clear about what they're supposed to
• 33:30
  do. That was a that's a culture
• 33:33
  change. It's also a leadership change to
• 33:35
  and and then reinforce that. So in the during these missions
• 33:40
  was it was very specific each year what will be going to do to
• 33:45
  get closer to that objective? What were the components We
• 33:48
  called the bad ass team experience, the bait, the bat.
• 33:52
  It's like the bat experience. So the bat experience is we, we,
• 33:57
  we took and said, if this was the most ideal from the time you
• 34:01
  interview and to the time, God forbid, you have to exit, what's
• 34:05
  your experience going to be like?
• 34:07
  If it was the most ideal, if it was, if we're going to be the
• 34:10
  best place that everybody like that is by far the best place to
• 34:13
  work. Well, then what, what does that
• 34:14
  look like? You can't just say it.
• 34:17
  So entrepreneurs out there, you, it's great to cast a vision.
• 34:20
  It's great to say this is what we want.
• 34:22
  But then you've got to broil your sleeves up and do the hard
• 34:24
  work of every month, every quarter, every year, decide and
• 34:31
  define what does that mean? And then refine and refine and
• 34:36
  refine over. So we do you.
• 34:38
  Feel like your company is the best place to work?
• 34:40
  Yeah, absolutely. Oh, no, no, no, not now, you
• 34:43
  said. That so confidently and happily
• 34:45
  you. Just no.
• 34:46
  Absolutely. I love my people.
• 34:48
  I the average tenure or something like 8-9 years about
• 34:52
  almost 40 person company. Like people stick around.
• 34:55
  There's a reason they stick around.
• 34:56
  I believe they stick around because they believe in what
• 34:58
  we're doing. And I and we treat them and I
• 35:00
  treat them aligned with the expectations that I told them
• 35:04
  they'd be treated. It's like any other
• 35:06
  relationship. And I've got to be held
• 35:08
  accountable that because if things don't go that way and
• 35:11
  it's my job to correct it, it's not their job to try to figure
• 35:14
  out what needs to get done next. If I see a gap where we're at,
• 35:18
  if somebody exits, God forbid, why?
• 35:20
  What was going on? What did we miss?
• 35:22
  How come he's still not here or she's still not here?
• 35:24
  What and it was, it was that was maybe not a great hiring
• 35:27
  decision. We cut some corners.
• 35:29
  We didn't do what we needed to do there.
• 35:31
  When they came on board, we weren't as clear that they
• 35:33
  needed to be. They didn't get the guidance
• 35:34
  they needed. We kind of left them out on
• 35:36
  little edge there. We didn't really engage like we
• 35:40
  had to solve, solve, solve those problems that was.
• 35:43
  Interesting. Jody, is that all the stuff
• 35:45
  you're talking about now? Is the stuff that I've been
• 35:48
  there, you've been, we've all been there, is that we try to
• 35:50
  like go, go, go, go, go and we sometimes bypass core values,
• 35:55
  the vision, the mission, all these really important.
• 35:57
  What's the expectations being clear because we're like, we got
• 36:00
  to go, we got to go to the next thing.
• 36:01
  We're busy, we got a lot of stuff to do and we think we're
• 36:04
  saving time. In reality, we're losing so much
• 36:07
  time because in the back end, because we weren't clear,
• 36:09
  because we didn't have the values, because we didn't give
• 36:11
  the direction, because they didn't get the onboarding
• 36:13
  experience. Now they're not there or they're
• 36:15
  not doing a good job or there's misalignment.
• 36:18
  And it's funny that we actually can think we're saving time, but
• 36:21
  actually we're doing so much damage to the business by not
• 36:23
  slowing down. You got to slow down.
• 36:26
  Yeah, and and. I'm, I'm talking to myself.
• 36:28
  What I'm? Saying, yeah, so, you know, so
• 36:29
  slowing down is like, it's like taking the time to understand.
• 36:32
  Sure. It's really what slowing down
• 36:34
  is. And it all.
• 36:35
  And here's where here's the uncomfortable truth.
• 36:38
  The uncomfortable truth is that to accomplish a moon shot, which
• 36:43
  is a grand thing, is hard and you got to be willing and ready
• 36:49
  to to look at hard things all the time.
• 36:52
  Yeah, that's it, man. And and then just work through
• 36:57
  that with a spirit of what the vision and the values are
• 37:02
  telling you. So if our values are happy to
• 37:06
  come to work, happy to leave, hungry to learn, humble and
• 37:12
  you're going to care for people So those values carry through
• 37:17
  like we're going to, we want you to be happy to come here.
• 37:20
  We want you to be like, I can't wait to work.
• 37:22
  What does that look like? What is I can't wait to work.
• 37:24
  And if it's I don't want to, then we got to find out what
• 37:28
  that is and why you feel that way.
• 37:30
  And we got to do something about it.
• 37:31
  You can't just pin that. You can't pin that on the wall
• 37:34
  and not go through with it. And then I want to be happy to
• 37:37
  leave, which is I did a great day's work.
• 37:40
  I, I accomplished something, my purpose was served.
• 37:42
  People are happy. And I'm re engaging with my
• 37:45
  community and my family in a better place because work is
• 37:48
  just part of my life. It's a big part, but I want to
• 37:51
  be able to. And that comes with that's the
• 37:54
  work from home. That's the work life harmony,
• 37:56
  all that is built into it. We're, we're in a field that
• 37:59
  people just would suck up all their time and energy and it
• 38:05
  would interfere with their lives.
• 38:07
  And it's like, that's just how, that's just how they, you know,
• 38:09
  welcome to the tech world. You're just going to have to
• 38:12
  live that way. And I'm like, no, they're not
• 38:13
  going to live that way. OK, So what are we going to do
• 38:15
  about it? How are we going to, how are we
• 38:17
  going to approach that? Let's make the hard decision
• 38:20
  around taking what we believe in and we've set as a value that
• 38:25
  was basically a commitment and a promise that I made to somebody
• 38:29
  and then turn it into an operational reality.
• 38:32
  So for example, we have a, we have a unlimited time off
• 38:37
  policy. Very few organizations can do
• 38:40
  that because you have to put around that all kinds of other
• 38:44
  guardrails and, and expectations.
• 38:47
  And but I want people to be like, I don't want to have to
• 38:52
  worry about this keeping track of what my score is.
• 38:54
  If I'm doing good work and I'm taking care of clients and we're
• 38:57
  doing the services that we're supposed to be doing, I'm taking
• 39:01
  an afternoon off because I got something to do with my kids.
• 39:04
  And how much on average do you think people take time off with
• 39:06
  an unlimited policy like that? What would you say?
• 39:08
  Is it 3 weeks a year, 4 weeks a year, 2 weeks?
• 39:11
  It's probably 3 to 4 weeks, yeah.
• 39:13
  It doesn't matter what your, what your tenure is.
• 39:15
  There's we got to clamp down on a little bit of it because the
• 39:19
  we need to maybe add some seniority because around
• 39:23
  holidays and stuff, it's like there's nobody working.
• 39:27
  We need somebody who's going to work.
• 39:28
  So we got to put some like, OK, seniority's got a guide and
• 39:31
  somebody. We can't have nobody here when
• 39:33
  we got to still service people. So that's the kind of thing you
• 39:35
  work through which it's done intentionally.
• 39:38
  So we make moves that affect them.
• 39:40
  We do it intentionally. We don't just we've decided that
• 39:43
  this is what we're going to do. It's like, man, we're, we're,
• 39:46
  we're going to, we're going to stress, we're going to agonize,
• 39:48
  but we're going to really reflect on how does this work
• 39:51
  inside of their worlds and how do they perceive it?
• 39:54
  It just doesn't come down from on high.
• 39:56
  It it there's, there's more that we learned over time.
• 40:00
  Is that you, you there's, it's a relationship.
• 40:02
  You just don't change the relationship on somebody without
• 40:05
  you having a little bit of conversation about it.
• 40:07
  So. And how long?
• 40:09
  How long did it take to get this thing turned around?
• 40:12
  And were there times where you doubted it were the times where
• 40:15
  you said I don't know if we can do this thing?
• 40:18
  All the time. I mean you're think about the
• 40:20
  moon itself and how many setbacks the you don't realize
• 40:23
  how many setbacks that were in the Apollo and the Gemini
• 40:27
  blowing up rockets, people dying, tech doesn't work,
• 40:32
  disasters after disaster. How many astronauts who almost
• 40:35
  lost people aren't even aware of because of stuff failing.
• 40:39
  So, and of course, I want to go back to my, you know, kind of my
• 40:43
  roots as I expected it to be difficult.
• 40:47
  What my hope was is that by having more heads on it, on the
• 40:51
  problems and giving empowering people that the, the solutions
• 40:55
  wouldn't all fall on me. And they and they haven't that
• 40:59
  got better overtime is that the solutions don't always have to
• 41:03
  emanate from me. Some do just because I'm a
• 41:07
  member of the team just like they are, and I've got a whole
• 41:12
  like depth of experience and judgment that a lot of people
• 41:16
  don't have. So I'm a part of the team from
• 41:18
  that perspective. I can help surface and question
• 41:22
  and that's my job as a leader, which is I want ideas and
• 41:26
  innovations to come from below, but then I've got to apply the
• 41:29
  judgement of running and growing a business to say that's going
• 41:31
  to work and that's not going to work For these reasons.
• 41:33
  Or did you, did you think about this or do you think about that
• 41:37
  and and change the language around the way that we approach
• 41:41
  problems? And what about the gold
• 41:42
  standard? So we talked a little about
• 41:43
  making this the best place to work the gold standard.
• 41:46
  What does that mean for you guys?
• 41:47
  Like, how do you become the best company in the industry and what
• 41:50
  does that look like? So being the gold standard is
• 41:52
  like, in some ways we have to define it in more abstract terms
• 41:59
  as well as terms that relate almost to the way we're
• 42:04
  perceived. So the gold standard to us would
• 42:06
  be there's some magic that's happening at this company that
• 42:14
  when you in with that, when you engage with them, you're just
• 42:17
  like, I just love working with these people, OK, That's the
• 42:22
  reaction we want. And and in that is a relentless
• 42:27
  pursuit of excellence. OK, in so the experience we want
• 42:32
  is just like, don't even talk to me about what you're doing
• 42:36
  because I got I'm covered. OK.
• 42:39
  We call it gravitational dominance is what we call it.
• 42:42
  The more mass that we have in our relationships and it's it's
• 42:46
  so it's come so natural. I love it, yeah.
• 42:49
  So think about mass. And we just were kind of, we're
• 42:51
  talking so mass, you know, tracks.
• 42:55
  Right, bigger than masses. And and and then, and then
• 42:57
  there's a gravitational dance that occurs, right?
• 43:00
  So the more mass, the tighter the gravitational pull between
• 43:04
  objects. So our goal is to have our
• 43:07
  clients and their experience to be keep every time we do
• 43:11
  something really, really well, it adds a little bit of mass and
• 43:14
  some. And when we fail, it takes a
• 43:15
  little bit away. And the goal is to add more than
• 43:19
  is taken away on a consistent basis.
• 43:21
  And and that keeps them in orbit around us.
• 43:25
  It's very, very intentional. And the way that you do that is
• 43:28
  by giving them an excellent product and an excellent
• 43:32
  experience. And when something fails, we
• 43:35
  automatically determine it's our fault.
• 43:40
  Put it in a way, it's our job to solve.
• 43:43
  That's what I meant by our fault.
• 43:44
  It's our job to solve it. It's not to throw up our hands
• 43:48
  and say, oh, that's their problem.
• 43:50
  That's the client's problem. It is always our challenge to
• 43:54
  address. It's because it's our job to
• 43:57
  build more mass and create that experience, which if you keep
• 44:01
  doing that a long enough time and you're doing it already and
• 44:03
  the clients that you have and these entrepreneurs that are,
• 44:05
  they are doing that naturally, they and usually smaller
• 44:09
  organizations can do that really well because there's an
• 44:13
  attention by the leader that drives that behavior through the
• 44:17
  rest of the company by setting it as a goal that the company
• 44:22
  agrees to. This is where the setting of
• 44:26
  back to something you said earlier, setting of the values,
• 44:29
  setting of the vision, setting of the mission provides you as
• 44:34
  the leader in the room when they're operating and, and
• 44:38
  you're not in in the room, like it's like you're not in the room
• 44:42
  and they have to make a decision about something they've got,
• 44:45
  they've got principles that guide them.
• 44:47
  And that's why really good companies that do really great
• 44:50
  things, it can spout out what the vision and the values and
• 44:54
  the mission happened to be because that guides their
• 44:57
  everyday anyways. So what happened was it took
• 44:59
  maybe probably three years, maybe four years.
• 45:03
  Is that the best place to work? The gold standard and scaling to
• 45:08
  serve the underserved became part of the the language of the
• 45:13
  company 4. Years.
• 45:14
  Wow. It took time to be like, guys,
• 45:18
  that's the gold standard and that's what I would do.
• 45:20
  Like, that's it right there. You know, we were talking about
• 45:23
  the gold. That's it.
• 45:25
  That's the gold, that's the gold standard.
• 45:27
  You got to talk. About it all the time.
• 45:28
  You live it, yeah. That's not.
• 45:30
  Does that look like, does that look like gold?
• 45:33
  No, man, it ain't the gold standard.
• 45:34
  Like that's not the gold standard.
• 45:36
  So good, right? And So what ends up happening,
• 45:38
  we even have like every month we're like gold standard in
• 45:42
  action. And it's very specific like
• 45:45
  here. And that is taking on a life of
• 45:48
  its own inside the culture. So the culture has embraced it,
• 45:52
  not because I do anything, it's because they're doing it.
• 45:56
  And they should be recognized for the fact that they are
• 45:58
  providing what is considered the best in the business.
• 46:01
  They're providing that to, to, to people every single day and
• 46:04
  that should be recognized as such, right?
• 46:07
  That is, I believe that's how the organization can then
• 46:12
  accomplish some of the the the third part of the mission, which
• 46:16
  is to serve the underserved in scale.
• 46:18
  That's where I was going next. Yeah, I know some of that
• 46:20
  probably leads into that. But what were some of the
• 46:22
  specific things that you did to scale the company, you know,
• 46:25
  while serving the underserved? OK, so serving the underserved
• 46:29
  is what does. That mean?
• 46:30
  So we're a service company and we're we're in a relationship
• 46:34
  with our our clients that we have and our job is to serve
• 46:39
  them. So they get the outcomes from
• 46:41
  their technology, the right amount of value out of their
• 46:44
  technology to serve their business.
• 46:46
  That's all. That's only reason we're there.
• 46:48
  So they can take this leverage of tech and just go to their own
• 46:53
  moon shot, accomplish their own right, their own objectives and
• 46:56
  their goals. We want to be part of that with
• 46:58
  them, right. So we've seen, I've seen through
• 47:02
  my entire career, decades and decades of watching companies
• 47:06
  just have this awful tech experience.
• 47:09
  Service is awful. The technology provided doesn't
• 47:13
  match, doesn't fit, wrong configuration.
• 47:16
  It was sold by people who shouldn't have been selling it,
• 47:18
  and it's the wrong fit. It's all kinds of like, like we
• 47:22
  call that the tech, the technology industrial complex
• 47:25
  descending upon these small midsize organizations that do
• 47:30
  not have the language or the technology leadership
• 47:32
  capabilities to defend against it.
• 47:35
  And we're that company and they, they, they get that they,
• 47:40
  they're underserved from what they're getting today.
• 47:43
  That is, that is 99% of the, the marketplace for technology
• 47:48
  products and services is underserving the small
• 47:52
  businesses or mid sized business, actually even the big
• 47:54
  business on the other side. So our vision is to say, let's
• 47:59
  take all these great things that we're doing, let's go to all
• 48:02
  these companies and let's help them have a better life.
• 48:05
  Let's transform their lives, let's transform their businesses
• 48:08
  with technology. And, and that is that's why
• 48:11
  that's part of the vision, because we can be the great,
• 48:14
  great place to work. We can be doing so well, but we
• 48:18
  don't want to do that just in the Chicago area because then,
• 48:23
  you know, these other companies are missing out on how great it
• 48:25
  can be, right? And what's really challenging
• 48:29
  about scale now? OK, now you get in the scale.
• 48:31
  That was part of our Apollo mission.
• 48:33
  So part of the Gemini was building the systems around
• 48:38
  supporting gold standard and the best place to work, building the
• 48:43
  the muscle memory around that. Then we got into Apollo.
• 48:46
  It's like, OK, now we got a scale, and scale is a whole
• 48:50
  other challenge as an entrepreneur, absolutely
• 48:55
  different challenge of scale. How did you scale the company?
• 48:58
  So 15 to what, 4050? We're at like 38 or something
• 49:02
  like that, right? And we just added two people.
• 49:04
  I think we're close to 40. So.
• 49:06
  So how do you so think about scale?
• 49:08
  So what scale? The way I see scale, it's the
• 49:14
  hamburger from McDonald's tasting the same in Chicago that
• 49:17
  it does in Denver. Or Boy.
• 49:20
  It does. It like a cheeseburger in
• 49:23
  Chicago tastes almost exactly like a cheeseburger in Cancun,
• 49:26
  Mexico. I'll tell you that right now 1/4
• 49:29
  pounder, you know, in New York tastes the same as it does in
• 49:33
  Germany. Like actually maybe in a little
• 49:35
  better in Germany because they their meats a little better.
• 49:37
  But anyways, the point being is in order to create the, the
• 49:43
  experience of the gold standard in a different location, now
• 49:48
  you've just you, you, you've now extended the, the, the culture
• 49:54
  to a location that it's not used to being.
• 49:57
  So how do you create a culture and a, and the systems and the
• 50:01
  people and the process and the methods that you can take
• 50:05
  anywhere and they'll still get the same experience?
• 50:07
  That is a lot harder than it sounds, especially in the
• 50:10
  service business. It's a lot harder.
• 50:14
  And so we've been working on that diligently so that we can
• 50:17
  scale like we're, we just opened up an office in New York.
• 50:20
  So we got a group of people that are in New York, right.
• 50:22
  The idea is we take what we've learned and this is part of the
• 50:26
  early Apollo missions, is that that's an Apollo mission.
• 50:30
  It's not 11 where we land on the moon.
• 50:32
  We're in Apollo 6 where we're we're testing a new market to
• 50:37
  see if we can have the hamburger taste the same.
• 50:39
  And how long has it been since you open the?
• 50:42
  Office. It was just December.
• 50:43
  OK. It's going well.
• 50:44
  So. Far so we're still yeah, and
• 50:45
  we're in the early stages of like, oh, we didn't think about
• 50:48
  that. Oh, what about that?
• 50:49
  Oh, that's gonna oh, OK. And that's the object like
• 50:54
  that's the. The way that condenses our
• 50:58
  efforts is why it's important because it creates, again, a
• 51:02
  clarity in the vision of why we're doing it.
• 51:05
  We're doing it so that and we and I need the team to be
• 51:09
  looking for gaps that would say that's not the gold standard,
• 51:14
  that's not being the best place to work because we want those
• 51:17
  people who live in that city to have the same experience or as
• 51:21
  best the same experience that they're at the team has.
• 51:23
  That's that's in orbit of me. It can't work that way if people
• 51:29
  if I somehow am the linchpin to the best place to work.
• 51:33
  This has to be culture. Not there, right?
• 51:35
  Yeah. If I'm not there, if I'm not in
• 51:37
  all these different States and their the, the culture has to.
• 51:40
  That's why culture is king. That's who said that.
• 51:44
  I think that's a Drucker, Peter Drucker.
• 51:47
  That culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner or
• 51:50
  whatever. Like breakfast or lunch.
• 51:52
  That's a good line, yeah. Yeah.
• 51:53
  And I found that to be 100% true because the culture are the
• 51:57
  peep. It's really another way of just
• 51:58
  saying it's the people who are executing the vision and you've
• 52:01
  given them a framework that everybody understands and agrees
• 52:04
  to what it is that you're offering and when you're doing,
• 52:07
  and that protects itself. A good culture will protect
• 52:11
  itself even if I'm not in the room.
• 52:12
  Now, how did you as part of the scaling, you got to grow, you
• 52:14
  got to win more clients, right? Keep the ones you have, grow the
• 52:17
  ones you have. What was the client acquisition
• 52:19
  strategy to scale the company because you had, if you're
• 52:22
  going, especially if you're going in a new market or even
• 52:23
  existing markets, you got to find ways to grow.
• 52:26
  You got to create opportunities for your team.
• 52:27
  People, people want raises doesn't come out of nowhere,
• 52:30
  right? You have to continue to grow.
• 52:31
  So what was the strategy behind that?
• 52:34
  Yeah. So the strategy behind that was
• 52:35
  is kind of like threefold acquisition.
• 52:39
  So we've done multiple acquisitions over time.
• 52:42
  That is a stair step if you will, to get into a market as
• 52:46
  opposed to building it slowly. The other one is through
• 52:51
  strategic partnerships is another, another possible
• 52:54
  pathway. And what we've landed on is the
• 52:58
  marketing, OK, marketing and sales, those two motions we've
• 53:04
  focused probably of the seven years of the Moon Shot 5 are on
• 53:12
  that alone, OK, you're in that business.
• 53:15
  Yeah. Reverse engineering marketing is
• 53:19
  a very, very difficult thing to really understand what marketing
• 53:22
  is about. Understand branding, marketing,
• 53:25
  advertising, messaging, the tool sets that do all of that.
• 53:30
  That's taken me a long time as an engineer to understand
• 53:34
  because marketing up to this point has been like this
• 53:38
  mysterious black art that gets implemented by people like
• 53:43
  yourselves. And we've tried.
• 53:46
  We tried every Ave. Yeah, I've had 678 agencies that
• 53:51
  have worked for. Me over the time, right?
• 53:53
  Most are terrible. Providing strategy and vision
• 53:57
  they're trying to help with. And what it turned out to be was
• 54:02
  we're offering something unique to the world, which requires a
• 54:07
  certain understanding of that messaging and then dial that
• 54:10
  messaging it going through all the right channels.
• 54:14
  And I decided that I had to understand that just like, and
• 54:18
  this is another Segway about for entrepreneurs that are growing a
• 54:23
  company. So this is what I've learned.
• 54:26
  I'm not going to do a pause real quick and just kind of do a
• 54:29
  conversation about that. Is that what I've seen over
• 54:32
  almost 33 years now of being in business?
• 54:36
  Is that you ever heard of the E Myth, the book, The E Myth?
• 54:40
  I don't. Think so.
• 54:42
  Yeah. So it's a interesting book about
• 54:44
  entrepreneurship and it's the E myth, the entrepreneur myth.
• 54:47
  And one of them is the is basically delegation slash
• 54:50
  outsourcing. That's another Drucker ISM,
• 54:53
  which is for every backdoor activity that you do, you should
• 54:57
  be partnering with a company that that's a front door
• 54:59
  activity, right? That's the whole concept of
• 55:02
  outsourcing. And so you should be outsourcing
• 55:05
  things that you're not good at. And I'm like, that's right.
• 55:09
  I'm going to outsource the things I'm not good at.
• 55:11
  I'm an outsource legal, I'm an outsource accounting.
• 55:13
  I'm an outsource insurance, I'm an outsource HR, I'm
• 55:16
  outsourcing, all of it finance. And So what I learned was the
• 55:24
  hard way is how much of A marketing I learned, how much of
• 55:26
  A disaster it was if I didn't understand the language, the
• 55:32
  objectives, the outcomes that I needed to know.
• 55:38
  Excuse me, as a business person, as a business leader, if you're
• 55:42
  an entrepreneur, you have to understand the blocking and
• 55:45
  tackling of those disciplines. That sucks because I just wanted
• 55:50
  to build systems and deploy technology and say accountant
• 55:56
  figure it out. Thank you.
• 55:59
  You know, check. Yeah, unfortunately it's not
• 56:03
  that it's not that easy. You have to understand it not to
• 56:05
  the level that the expert does, but to understand it enough to
• 56:09
  know when something's off or when something's right or not
• 56:11
  you know for sure. Yes, that's the I'm sorry,
• 56:14
  you're good. It's like AI think it's a algae
• 56:20
  thing with the spring. Probably.
• 56:24
  And the amount of pain and suffering that I've had by
• 56:28
  blindly outsourcing. OK, it's called what's the?
• 56:35
  I just had the term. It is called irresponsible
• 56:40
  delegation. It was irresponsible.
• 56:43
  I was delegating it to check it off my list, not delegating it
• 56:47
  responsibly. I had to 1st get the domain
• 56:51
  knowledge so that when I did outsource it, it was within the
• 56:54
  context of what I needed to be and I could call bullshit
• 56:58
  exactly on whatever it was they were telling me.
• 57:00
  So now when I now I know enough about those domains that when
• 57:06
  somebody comes to me with a solution or potential solution,
• 57:11
  I, I can evaluate it. And, and business leaders need
• 57:16
  the ability to evaluate. And that is how you get to scale
• 57:20
  as well where you can. Like I've got a CFO that's
• 57:22
  outsourced, but I know enough about it because I've had to do
• 57:24
  the work myself, the financial kind of analysis that needed to
• 57:29
  be conducted and, and why something was showing up and,
• 57:32
  and my gross margin that now had to be addressed in my pricing of
• 57:36
  my different products or services.
• 57:38
  That is not something you get taught in computer science
• 57:42
  school, Yeah. OK, right.
• 57:45
  Even I was a a double major computer science and accounting.
• 57:48
  I was going to get my CPA that actually my first corporate job
• 57:52
  out of college was working for Arthur Andersen doing oh wow,
• 57:55
  doing running tech software. So I had this great tax
• 57:58
  accounting. You spent some business Q center
• 58:00
  yeah yeah, yeah. All right now down the stream.
• 58:02
  Yeah, did absolutely. And so, so I had that background
• 58:07
  which helped me because I had some foundational knowledge
• 58:11
  about accounting, but then it was way not what was needed to
• 58:17
  actually run a business. Like it was just, I had to learn
• 58:20
  so many things about cash flow, cash management, a commercial
• 58:25
  banking and even talk about banking.
• 58:28
  And that came through the pain and suffering of having a
• 58:34
  failure and then having to do something about it.
• 58:36
  So that's where I, I wanted to quit multiple times in my life.
• 58:38
  Just just the, the amount of, of, of change that I had to go
• 58:42
  through. That's just me.
• 58:44
  I'm a dense guy in a lot of ways and I need it.
• 58:47
  I need to learn a certain way and I can hear something, but
• 58:50
  maybe until I experience it, can I do something Well, so it's
• 58:52
  taken me a long time, these two, these 30 years to get better and
• 58:57
  better and better at those disciplines so I can properly
• 58:59
  outsource it. So that was kind of my little
• 59:02
  and marketing was just kind of like one of those.
• 59:04
  I had to go through enough of that like waste and like, OK, I
• 59:08
  have to now I have to understand this because every time I
• 59:11
  outsource it, I get screwed or I didn't get the outcomes and I'm
• 59:14
  like, what should I expect? What are the let me get the
• 59:17
  terms and the terminology and the, and the, the, the
• 59:20
  disciplines around marketing and the tool sets and why they
• 59:23
  matter and the metrics and blah, blah, blah.
• 59:27
  So I like, I'm a student now of marketing gurus and technologies
• 59:32
  and I just listen to them and I like install that in my business
• 59:37
  the best I can in our processes that we do and we're staying.
• 59:41
  Away, by the way, like I don't know how to edit videos as well
• 59:45
  as our team does, but I understand color correction, I
• 59:49
  understand lighting, I understand makes and audio and I
• 59:52
  set all this stuff up myself, you know, so it's like, I know
• 59:56
  it enough to be dangerous to know when this isn't right.
• 59:58
  And I could jump in if I needed to to a degree, but they're like
• 1:00:01
  better. And you know, that's their their
• 1:00:03
  thing. You know, they do a nice job of
• 1:00:05
  it. And so it's like they stay in
• 1:00:06
  their lane and I stay in my lane.
• 1:00:08
  But you got to know enough because I, I hear you on that.
• 1:00:10
  I come into companies all the time.
• 1:00:11
  Like we've been working with a marketing agency for the last
• 1:00:13
  two or three years. I'm like, well, how are they
• 1:00:15
  measuring success? And it's just like, I don't know
• 1:00:19
  if you do our posting for I'm like, no, no, I know what
• 1:00:21
  they're doing post. It's not doing.
• 1:00:22
  It's not performing. But what are they actually
• 1:00:24
  measuring in terms of success? What are the outcomes and are
• 1:00:27
  they accountable for them? And have they done a review
• 1:00:29
  recently? And and.
• 1:00:31
  This is the yeah, this is the stuff you need to know.
• 1:00:33
  Like, have we generated revenue from this shit?
• 1:00:35
  Because anyone can now, especially with AI, you can hire
• 1:00:38
  Ava in the you can do whatever you want to have someone post
• 1:00:41
  for you. But activity is not outcomes or
• 1:00:44
  results. Yeah, good.
• 1:00:45
  And that's one of the things I gotta, I'm trying to change in
• 1:00:47
  the marketplace too. It's like posting is nothing
• 1:00:50
  like, you know, just like going to a network event or calling
• 1:00:53
  people. It's like that's an activity.
• 1:00:55
  But if you're not doing it the right way, it doesn't build the
• 1:00:58
  brand. You're not the gold standard.
• 1:01:00
  You don't generate revenue from it.
• 1:01:02
  And that is a mindset shift. But you as the owner, as the
• 1:01:04
  founder, you have to know enough about it to call the bullshit to
• 1:01:07
  say no. We've been posting for a year.
• 1:01:10
  What's the plan? What's what results have we
• 1:01:13
  gotten? Have we got any leads?
• 1:01:14
  Do we even know how to track leads or, you know, incoming
• 1:01:16
  calls and things like that? The whole, I think there's a an
• 1:01:20
  AI is actually exposing this faster because now more people
• 1:01:23
  can do their own stuff with AI. Not the AI is like the end all
• 1:01:26
  be all, but I want to actually talk about that in one second.
• 1:01:29
  But it's, it's actually, I think closing the gap because people
• 1:01:32
  can figure things out much faster now and do a lot of the
• 1:01:35
  things much faster. And you don't necessarily need
• 1:01:37
  an agency to do everything for you.
• 1:01:38
  If you don't want to, you can bring it in house.
• 1:01:40
  So. But it's the why that you bring
• 1:01:42
  to it the language you're talking about language.
• 1:01:45
  What what I picked up on is it's the outcome that they really
• 1:01:50
  ought to be concerned with, which also drives a different
• 1:01:54
  level of knowledge and understanding about.
• 1:01:57
  Why? Totally.
• 1:01:58
  OK. It, it's the exact same thing in
• 1:02:01
  our business. Yeah, exact same thing.
• 1:02:03
  So what? And, and it probably is in a lot
• 1:02:05
  of other industries as well, especially in a service business
• 1:02:08
  where you, what you're doing is unique and distinctive as if
• 1:02:14
  you're just in the business of activities.
• 1:02:16
  Like you said, we're going to deploy across these social
• 1:02:19
  channels, we're going to get views, we're going to get
• 1:02:22
  followers. But why and what's the message
• 1:02:26
  and what's the conversion? What kind of a, what, what kind
• 1:02:30
  of relationship do you want to try to build with this person on
• 1:02:34
  the other side? And is that a I need 100,000
• 1:02:37
  followers thing or it's like, no, I probably not.
• 1:02:40
  I just need a couple hundred really good quality people to
• 1:02:43
  watch my content, then be like, I want to do something, I want
• 1:02:47
  to take some. Well, that's a total.
• 1:02:49
  Those are totally different, different strategies, right?
• 1:02:52
  Different strategies. Yeah.
• 1:02:53
  It's up to you could take that exact same idea and you could
• 1:02:56
  put technology in it. Like do you really need this
• 1:02:58
  kind of technology? AI is one of them.
• 1:03:01
  Do you need that tool, that level of technology when you
• 1:03:04
  really need this outcome today? Well, who's who's reconciling
• 1:03:10
  that asymmetry in the language? And it has to be somebody to do
• 1:03:14
  that. And business leaders need to be
• 1:03:18
  very focused and honest with themselves about what language
• 1:03:23
  and what they don't understand. And they have to spend the time.
• 1:03:27
  They can't delegate that even if they they're going to try to
• 1:03:31
  delegate it to you, an outsourcer, or they're going to
• 1:03:34
  try to delegate it to an internal person who doesn't have
• 1:03:36
  any idea either. And then they're going to go to
• 1:03:38
  the marketplace, right? It is.
• 1:03:42
  There's a, a CEO that we worked for and he admitted he's like, I
• 1:03:49
  don't really know anything about this technology.
• 1:03:50
  I got my CFO here. He's going to be the guy that's
• 1:03:53
  going to run things, the wrong person to put in charge of
• 1:03:56
  anything strategic. The CFO has got a completely
• 1:03:59
  different. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:00
  Line items, it's like, yeah. Yeah, the only there's only one
• 1:04:03
  lever CF OS got apologize to any CF OS out there is the lever of
• 1:04:08
  cost. Bottom line.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah. That's the only lever they've
• 1:04:11
  got. And technology is, is way more
• 1:04:14
  multifaceted that there's opportunities that can take take
• 1:04:18
  advantage of. Yeah, there's efficiencies, but
• 1:04:21
  this is not a cost to be driven down.
• 1:04:22
  This is a a cost or a an investment of value.
• 1:04:26
  Now they haven't been getting the value.
• 1:04:28
  Yeah, I get why that. Let's just drive this to the
• 1:04:30
  bottom because we're not getting value.
• 1:04:33
  But it's up to the CEO once then then they had a disaster because
• 1:04:37
  they went with other vendors that were telling them they're
• 1:04:40
  going to get all kinds of technology, which is going to do
• 1:04:42
  all kind. It's like, don't you?
• 1:04:44
  Aren't you spotting the BS here? Oh, no.
• 1:04:46
  Well, we hired this guy. He's going to like, and we were
• 1:04:48
  only handling, you know, infrastructure that I'm like,
• 1:04:51
  this is not, this isn't a good plan.
• 1:04:53
  Yeah, of course you're going to say that because you want.
• 1:04:55
  This is like, no, this isn't a good plan for you.
• 1:04:57
  Like this is not. Sound like me and Mark and I'm
• 1:04:59
  like, you realize what you're doing.
• 1:05:00
  It's just like. Not, not not.
• 1:05:02
  It's not been working. For two years, three or five
• 1:05:04
  years, it's like it's not going to continue to work.
• 1:05:07
  Yeah, that's interesting. So let's talk about AI.
• 1:05:09
  OK, Where do you think we're at from an AI standpoint?
• 1:05:12
  What? Because I think we have a lot of
• 1:05:14
  anxiety as I talked to founders too around should I be using AI?
• 1:05:18
  Should I not be using ish? What do I need to put in place
• 1:05:21
  first? Should I, the founder be
• 1:05:22
  learning about AI? And I think to a certain point
• 1:05:24
  you need to understand it. Do I hire people to come in?
• 1:05:27
  Like what is the state of the state with AI right now?
• 1:05:30
  OK, AI, it's it's got a marketing problem.
• 1:05:35
  First of all, I'm not sure if you've seen that out there.
• 1:05:38
  Like AI is less popular than ICE and and ICE is pretty unpopular.
• 1:05:42
  Is it really? Yeah.
• 1:05:45
  In America, in in China, it's completely reversed.
• 1:05:48
  AI is this incredible driver of all things good about the world.
• 1:05:52
  In the United States, it's it, it's being demonized and there
• 1:05:55
  isn't really a voice to help unravel the, you know, the FUD
• 1:06:01
  around it. OK, there is some FOMO kind of
• 1:06:04
  tied to it as well. But the, the direction that we
• 1:06:09
  give to our clients is there is 1st a level of mindset.
• 1:06:15
  We call it mindset and understanding about what pool
• 1:06:20
  they're swimming in first, because this powerful tool can
• 1:06:25
  do an incredible amount of things to revolutionize every
• 1:06:28
  business. But there needs to be a
• 1:06:30
  foundational knowledge about it just like we've been talking
• 1:06:32
  about with every other aspect of the business, OK?
• 1:06:36
  Not a necessarily a technology focused 1A technology leadership
• 1:06:42
  focused one. So the things you were talking
• 1:06:45
  about understanding just enough to know to call BS, that's
• 1:06:49
  technology leadership. That's the framework that we use
• 1:06:53
  that I wrote is called technology Intelligence TQ.
• 1:06:57
  It's a framework of a leadership competency framework around
• 1:07:01
  making technological decisions. OK.
• 1:07:04
  So why that's important is because what I tell business
• 1:07:10
  leaders right now when it comes to AI is start first with the
• 1:07:14
  outcome that they want, which hidden inside of that outcome is
• 1:07:21
  the reality inside the business of what challenge challenges
• 1:07:24
  they have, which are things not working as they need to be or
• 1:07:28
  intended. That's where something has to be
• 1:07:30
  transformed. What they've already got or
• 1:07:31
  corrected, which isn't working or it's opportunity that is the
• 1:07:37
  Ford facing. I want to capture new market
• 1:07:40
  share. I want to be, I need in my
• 1:07:42
  business to do something competitive that gives me a
• 1:07:46
  competitive advantage because that's where the future is.
• 1:07:49
  That's where we want to be. What's an example of something
• 1:07:51
  where an example of companies using AI to create new
• 1:07:55
  opportunities in the marketplace?
• 1:07:56
  Because I hear a lot of efficiency type things like
• 1:07:58
  saved US time, but you know, we no longer have to do this manual
• 1:08:01
  task. We got agents doing this, but
• 1:08:03
  where's AI being used to grow a company?
• 1:08:05
  OK. So I'll give you an example of a
• 1:08:07
  logistics organization that I spoke with recently.
• 1:08:10
  Young guy that's running it, very tech advanced understands
• 1:08:14
  how the tech works. But what he saw as a market
• 1:08:18
  opportunity was that there is a gap.
• 1:08:22
  There's an arbitrage opportunity inside when a person who needs a
• 1:08:27
  truck or some kind of delivery and the time that people get
• 1:08:31
  them actual dollars that they can make a decision of there.
• 1:08:34
  It's too big of a gap because of the because of the latency and
• 1:08:37
  the way the systems operate inside of the entire industry.
• 1:08:40
  He's like, I'm going to use AI to shorten that to almost
• 1:08:43
  immediate that they can give us the load, the route, the weight,
• 1:08:48
  the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:08:49
  And I can spin of a quote very quickly around that outcome.
• 1:08:56
  And I'm going to build a business around that and I'm
• 1:08:57
  going to leverage that. That's a market opportunity.
• 1:09:00
  OK, that's that is because it's getting.
• 1:09:02
  The customers faster, it's getting a deal faster.
• 1:09:04
  Yes, because it's it's revenue generating, it's on, it's on the
• 1:09:07
  front end, it's. Not saving time from the current
• 1:09:09
  trucks they have. Yes, exactly, exactly.
• 1:09:11
  So instead of OK, take OK, so you just sold my point, right?
• 1:09:16
  So there's technology is in general, I've broken down into
• 1:09:20
  two main buckets, OK, And it actually follows honey bees
• 1:09:27
  called the waggle dance. Have you ever heard of the
• 1:09:28
  waggle dance the honey bees do? OK, so the waggle dance in honey
• 1:09:32
  bees, it's an evolutionary process that they go through,
• 1:09:36
  they've gone through for millions of years, is that 80%
• 1:09:40
  of the hive are going and searching for nectar that is
• 1:09:44
  already known. No nectar sources.
• 1:09:46
  Think of that is like they're they're maximizing the amount of
• 1:09:49
  production inside of the nectar sources that they're aware of.
• 1:09:53
  The waggle dances, they come back and they say this is where
• 1:09:56
  it's at. They do some kind of a dance and
• 1:09:58
  it's like it's this direction, this distance, this is where you
• 1:10:01
  want to go get more nectar. How do they know that that
• 1:10:03
  that's the dance? I don't know.
• 1:10:04
  So they do some kind of a weird thing and they then scientists
• 1:10:07
  have found that's what's happening.
• 1:10:09
  Now 20% of the hive ignores that and they go off in all different
• 1:10:13
  directions. Explorer bees that are going off
• 1:10:17
  in all directions, OK. Those bees are necessary for
• 1:10:22
  opportunity maximizing. They need to find their prospect
• 1:10:26
  and they need to find new sources of nectar, because if a
• 1:10:32
  herd of cows moves into that field, eats all those flowers,
• 1:10:35
  they need to know that they can go, they can to survive.
• 1:10:37
  They've already got another source of Nectar.
• 1:10:40
  OK, so that's opportunity maximizing as opposed to take
• 1:10:46
  what we already know and efficiency maximize.
• 1:10:49
  So efficiency maximization or opportunity maximization if that
• 1:10:52
  concept flows right into the technology decision making.
• 1:10:56
  And So what we just described is as a leader.
• 1:10:59
  So now let's come back to into a business leader.
• 1:11:01
  What domain are you operating in?
• 1:11:04
  And then you apply your creative intelligent minds to say, do we
• 1:11:10
  need to maximize for efficiency with our technology, which means
• 1:11:14
  we need to fix something or need to take that we've already got
• 1:11:17
  to make it better, make it more efficient, create more value
• 1:11:20
  out. We've already invested in.
• 1:11:23
  That's a good decision to make. If as the business later, I'm
• 1:11:26
  going to come back to AI here essentially eventually is what
• 1:11:29
  can we do to make more value, create more value out of what we
• 1:11:32
  already have. That's maximization of
• 1:11:34
  efficiency, but do we want to invest potentially in market,
• 1:11:40
  market impact, be competitive in a new place that nobody else is
• 1:11:44
  that requires a different decision making.
• 1:11:47
  If I, if it as business agents will know they're like, well, I
• 1:11:50
  could, I could invest in that, but the, the problem is the risk
• 1:11:54
  goes very high because it may not manifest in the value that
• 1:11:58
  OK, well, guess what, you're an entrepreneur, that's what you
• 1:12:01
  do. Yeah, literally.
• 1:12:02
  Right. You take you, you, you, you
• 1:12:04
  balance everything. Unknown all.
• 1:12:05
  The time unknowns all the time, right.
• 1:12:07
  But if you're driving it, but if, but you're also saying, man,
• 1:12:11
  what we're currently doing, I could capture the 10% of value
• 1:12:14
  across. I can, I could really generate
• 1:12:16
  more profit if I took AI and I could help fix some of these
• 1:12:22
  efficiency problems inside of an operating business.
• 1:12:25
  Those are different. It's different mindsets and
• 1:12:27
  different expectations of the value that you may get or not
• 1:12:31
  get for the investment you make. OK, So with that being the
• 1:12:34
  frame, that's what I would recommend to business leaders.
• 1:12:39
  What domain do you want to operate?
• 1:12:41
  And do it from the perspective of what you need in the
• 1:12:43
  business, not what the tool vendors are telling you that
• 1:12:45
  they can sell you and what you're missing out on and what
• 1:12:49
  it could be. Think first about your specifics
• 1:12:53
  that you need to be successful. That ought to be the first step.
• 1:12:57
  Which seems obvious, but it's not because you just get, you
• 1:13:00
  know, the, the shiny object syndrome, you know, it's like,
• 1:13:02
  we could be doing this and this and this and it's like, but
• 1:13:04
  let's pause and figure out where is the real opportunity in our
• 1:13:07
  business And then can tech help us accomplish that?
• 1:13:10
  Can AI help us? Accomplish that.
• 1:13:11
  OK, there. That right there, that decision
• 1:13:14
  process is not how 99% of the business leaders that we talked
• 1:13:18
  to operate. What has happened in the field
• 1:13:21
  and this is part of the technology intelligence
• 1:13:24
  framework that I've that I've built and that I've written
• 1:13:26
  about and that we deployed at our company.
• 1:13:28
  It's part of identifying that tendency of business leaders to
• 1:13:35
  allow the tick, the technology industrial complex to sell IT
• 1:13:38
  tools and solutions that they don't need.
• 1:13:42
  OK, they that you just mentioned one of them, the shiny objects
• 1:13:45
  syndrome, the innovation treadmill that you're just.
• 1:13:49
  Just imagine Jodi. No, it's like, now that I told
• 1:13:54
  you this, wait a second, you need this now?
• 1:13:56
  Oh, wait a second. Now you don't need this.
• 1:13:57
  Oh, now you need this, right, That's innovation treadmill.
• 1:13:59
  And then you got the IT graveyard, which is the the
• 1:14:02
  graveyard of of well-intentioned tools that are sitting unused
• 1:14:06
  and under deployed. And anyways, the tick loves to
• 1:14:09
  do that because they're going to take that unsuspecting business
• 1:14:12
  owner and they're going to descend upon them with a bunch
• 1:14:14
  of FOMO and FUD and they're going to get them so turned
• 1:14:18
  around that they're like buy 100 licenses right now.
• 1:14:22
  I want we need this with absolutely zero tie back to the
• 1:14:29
  outcomes that their business actually needs nor the the
• 1:14:34
  realization of what the impact's going to be to the the people
• 1:14:39
  that have got to use those tools that change management nightmare
• 1:14:43
  around a is. And that's a big one most people
• 1:14:45
  don't talk about is a change management, which is you got to
• 1:14:48
  get all these different people moving and now different
• 1:14:50
  directions with different tools. Do you think about your, do you
• 1:14:53
  worry about AI in your own business in terms of, I know
• 1:14:55
  you're very forward thinking and you guys are in this in the
• 1:14:57
  weeds with all this, but do you think it's hard not to think
• 1:15:00
  about like, how's my business going to be disrupted?
• 1:15:02
  And instead of having 4038 people, are you going to have 15
• 1:15:07
  again and AI agents are doing the job of 15?
• 1:15:10
  You know, do you think about like kind of the old models like
• 1:15:12
  build overhead, build employees, scale that way?
• 1:15:15
  And now it seems like is that the model anymore or is it, you
• 1:15:18
  know, leaner team with AI and technology, you know, to grow
• 1:15:22
  the company? I mean, you would know best, but
• 1:15:23
  I'm curious if you process that because I know people listening
• 1:15:26
  are thinking about that. Oh yeah, like the that is the
• 1:15:32
  prevailing message. Evil.
• 1:15:35
  It's coming to take jobs, right? Let me reframe what I believe to
• 1:15:40
  AI. It's halting jobs I think.
• 1:15:41
  I don't know if it's taking a lot, but it definitely is
• 1:15:43
  halting hiring it seems like. Let's break it down to 1st.
• 1:15:46
  Person OK, let's do it. Let's get.
• 1:15:47
  Into it. I think this is where you'll be
• 1:15:49
  able to distill some of that. OK, so the first principle
• 1:15:54
  concept of what AI is or what automation is, forget the term,
• 1:15:58
  it's just automation. It is a technology that
• 1:16:01
  automates and it does things for you.
• 1:16:04
  Yeah, there's some cool magic into it, right?
• 1:16:06
  That looks like magic, but ultimately, what is it doing?
• 1:16:10
  It is automating things that humans don't want to do, aren't
• 1:16:14
  good at, or it can do faster. That's all.
• 1:16:18
  That's technology through the entire human race, through the
• 1:16:21
  history of human race, from I have to use a shovel to dig a
• 1:16:25
  hole to now I've got a backhoe that can do that.
• 1:16:29
  You know, I had 20 guys that needed to be working on this to
• 1:16:31
  make a trench. I got one guy driving a backhoe,
• 1:16:34
  and I can do that like that. It's the same leverage, OK?
• 1:16:38
  Technology just provides you leverage, OK.
• 1:16:41
  AI, it's just another version of that.
• 1:16:42
  This is just moving much faster and it's and it's it's much more
• 1:16:46
  powerful. Very powerful, yes.
• 1:16:48
  It's where maybe your typical information technologies were
• 1:16:52
  fifty, made you 50 percent, 25 percent, 35% better.
• 1:16:56
  AI is making you 5 * 10 * 20 times more efficient.
• 1:17:00
  That's a big multiple. OK, so back, bring it back down
• 1:17:04
  again. What is technology doing?
• 1:17:06
  What is technology always done? I've seen that go from PCs that
• 1:17:09
  could barely do anything to where we are today.
• 1:17:12
  It is task automation. It is taking a task that a human
• 1:17:16
  that normally has to do and it does it faster and better and
• 1:17:20
  more accurate than than you could do.
• 1:17:22
  That is no, that is not changed in this new era.
• 1:17:26
  So think of it as not job replacement, but task
• 1:17:29
  replacement. So the human has less mundane
• 1:17:34
  low function, low judgement tasks that have to be performed.
• 1:17:41
  If you if you broke, if you broke apart, what normal
• 1:17:45
  knowledge workers do today in any business, there's a
• 1:17:47
  tremendous amount of like mind numbing movement of data or
• 1:17:53
  tasks that need to be performed that are just like you.
• 1:17:56
  You're the only thing to do is the human is the only one who
• 1:17:59
  can do it. Well, AI is now going to
• 1:18:01
  eliminate that, which then puts the human in the position where
• 1:18:04
  they always have been, the creative judgment processing
• 1:18:08
  engine of the modern business. That's really what knowledge
• 1:18:12
  workers are. They're they're it's a judgment
• 1:18:15
  that's at the score and and AI at this generation is not
• 1:18:20
  replacing judgment. But the problem is a lot of
• 1:18:22
  those jobs, those tasks, a lot of people have just task driven
• 1:18:25
  jobs where it's just like, you know, they're analyzing, putting
• 1:18:28
  stuff in the spreadsheet or they're doing, you know,
• 1:18:30
  whatever their function is. A lot of those jobs, it could
• 1:18:33
  even be, I think editing videos at some point will be you'll
• 1:18:37
  just plug in the raw video and like, what do you want?
• 1:18:38
  Do you want to be a podcast short form video?
• 1:18:40
  Now, again, you'll need, I always tell my team, you'll need
• 1:18:42
  a creative mind making the judgement calls, the styles,
• 1:18:45
  right? But you won't have 100 video
• 1:18:47
  editors anymore. You'll have, you know, a team of
• 1:18:50
  10 and each of them have 10 different AI or projects.
• 1:18:53
  Right. So that's.
• 1:18:53
  Going to reduce it from 100 to 10.
• 1:18:56
  But those that we are talking about is like you're, you're
• 1:18:59
  it's almost like a 0 sum game. That's not how the that's not
• 1:19:02
  how businesses work. People that do that one job that
• 1:19:06
  now use AI in order to do it, that frees them up to do either
• 1:19:10
  more volume, OK or other tasks which are are are needed inside
• 1:19:14
  of an organization and business. I think it's going to be just
• 1:19:17
  like every other tech that's ever displaced anybody.
• 1:19:20
  It's just going to shift the displacement to another area if
• 1:19:23
  you're if you're in the age of steam engines, right When steam
• 1:19:28
  engines first came out, the reason they used horsepower as a
• 1:19:30
  metric is because the first guy that was selling engines was
• 1:19:34
  trying to replace horses. Wow.
• 1:19:35
  And. He had said this is like similar
• 1:19:37
  to how many? Twenty horses.
• 1:19:38
  This is a 20 horsepower engine means you don't need 20 horses.
• 1:19:42
  And guess what? That means that there's a person
• 1:19:44
  who raises the horse, sells the horse, cares for the horse,
• 1:19:48
  feeds the horse, shoes the horse, cleans up the poo for the
• 1:19:52
  horse. Think about all those people
• 1:19:53
  that like. Yeah, those people cleaned up
• 1:19:54
  shit in the middle of the street.
• 1:19:55
  Those jobs, those, those were real jobs.
• 1:19:57
  So now if you look at that and say the world's coming to an
• 1:20:02
  end, you're going to wring your hands about AI.
• 1:20:04
  It's like those people then had to find jobs, like, Oh my gosh,
• 1:20:07
  I can work on a steam engine. I could be part of the steam
• 1:20:09
  engine manufacturing, distribution.
• 1:20:12
  I could be part of the the economic economics of funding
• 1:20:16
  and financing steam engine. I mean, there's a whole.
• 1:20:19
  A crop of other things popped up.
• 1:20:21
  There could be prompt engineers now that we're going to be
• 1:20:23
  using. There's going to be integrators
• 1:20:25
  of AI technologies. There's going to be data clean
• 1:20:28
  cleaning and data wrangling that has to get done.
• 1:20:32
  There's all kinds of other jobs that now are going to, though I
• 1:20:36
  can't even anticipate. But don't you think?
• 1:20:39
  Overall, there's going to be a less of a workforce or do you
• 1:20:43
  think no, like if you look at your company 38 people now, do
• 1:20:45
  you think in five years it's going to be 100 or you think
• 1:20:48
  it's like you were 20? No, I had 45.
• 1:20:51
  I said just opposite. I think so.
• 1:20:52
  Oh yeah, yeah. I think I'm going to have the
• 1:20:55
  people that I do have are intelligent, creative, just.
• 1:21:00
  You have to be to have a job, right?
• 1:21:01
  I mean. They are.
• 1:21:02
  And these tool, they're just tools.
• 1:21:04
  They're just going to make them. They're going to have like this
• 1:21:07
  highly competent apprentice that sits alongside them.
• 1:21:11
  Our coders are doing this now. I got 5-6 software developers
• 1:21:15
  that work for me and they're using clawed code as as kind of
• 1:21:18
  companions to the work that they do.
• 1:21:20
  Oh, I use all of them that. Creates less low value work for
• 1:21:26
  them, so they're focused on high value work, which translates
• 1:21:29
  directly to the customer who now can iterate the needs in their
• 1:21:33
  business faster. You see how it's compressing the
• 1:21:37
  time? Yes, I think, I think it will.
• 1:21:40
  It's hard to see it not taking jobs, but I think to your point,
• 1:21:44
  you as the individual have to learn how to adapt.
• 1:21:47
  If you can learn how to adapt and use the technology and use
• 1:21:50
  the creativity, decision making, all the things that are innately
• 1:21:54
  human, I think you're going to do just fine.
• 1:21:55
  And they ask going to be great. It's a sidekick to me.
• 1:21:57
  I use it all every day. It's like, it's like my creative
• 1:21:59
  sidekick assistant that I pay like, you know, 100 bucks a
• 1:22:01
  month for, you know, it's like it's amazing.
• 1:22:03
  And then we're doing more and more stuff with it every day.
• 1:22:06
  And, you know, I had somebody on talking about consulting, like
• 1:22:08
  consultants are in trouble. And I'm like, if they're shitty
• 1:22:12
  consultants, you know, if like their whole they're like, hey,
• 1:22:14
  here's 50 grand and we'll send you a strategy document.
• 1:22:17
  That's all we do. Well, now maybe you can use the
• 1:22:21
  do that for a lot less or you know, but the real value is can
• 1:22:24
  you implement the strategy? Are you going to help execute?
• 1:22:27
  Are you going to make pivots and changes?
• 1:22:29
  Are you going to be able to know where they should go down this
• 1:22:31
  path or not this path? Are you going to, you know, one
• 1:22:34
  month in, look at the what's happening and know should we
• 1:22:36
  keep going or should we do something different?
• 1:22:38
  Are you going to know how to tie it into results or revenue?
• 1:22:40
  Those are things are the things that are most important, right?
• 1:22:43
  And that's not, so you actually just surfaced something which is
• 1:22:45
  really important, which is it's if you categorize job
• 1:22:52
  replacement is just like this technology, you no longer need
• 1:22:56
  that person. It's actually more nuanced than
• 1:23:00
  that. It's actually what you just
• 1:23:01
  said, which is the amount of value that you're currently
• 1:23:05
  creating and the, and the capabilities you currently have
• 1:23:08
  that's going to be impacted if you're a shitty consultant from
• 1:23:11
  McKinsey, right? Or some of these other, I call
• 1:23:15
  them white collar technologist in the in the tick, right?
• 1:23:20
  They're they're sorry. Anybody out there they're
• 1:23:23
  they're kind of worthless. I've seen that, I've watched
• 1:23:25
  them in action and they will plop that thing down that has no
• 1:23:31
  operational or implementation value whatsoever.
• 1:23:34
  It's, it's a, it's an empty analysis without really
• 1:23:37
  understanding the context of what the business is trying to
• 1:23:39
  do. But it it creates revenue and
• 1:23:43
  and the greatest, if there was a group, it's going to be the
• 1:23:47
  people who aren't adding value to begin with.
• 1:23:49
  I would agree, yeah. Great, let them lose their jobs.
• 1:23:51
  Well, but no, no, I, I know. What you're saying though, no,
• 1:23:56
  but it's it's somewhat true. It's like if you were just
• 1:23:58
  charging a ton of money and not really doing shit for people.
• 1:24:00
  It's like that's not really cool, right.
• 1:24:02
  But I think there's also going to be probably people that are
• 1:24:04
  just like, and I know analysts like people that just their job,
• 1:24:07
  you know, maybe they're making 5560 KA year.
• 1:24:10
  They're sitting like a big center with other people,
• 1:24:13
  analyzing data, checking things, put in a spreadsheet.
• 1:24:16
  I mean those jobs, like those type of jobs are going to be
• 1:24:20
  gone. Yeah, so, but those tasks were
• 1:24:23
  going to be gone, correct? That task going to be gone.
• 1:24:25
  So let's take that same analyst. Yes, please.
• 1:24:27
  So I I love because you're right that taking this dropping into a
• 1:24:31
  spreadsheet, having it compute that isn't where the value chain
• 1:24:36
  is. The value chain is in somebody
• 1:24:38
  analyzing whatever the results are, right.
• 1:24:41
  But that AI can do that the, well, maybe, maybe not.
• 1:24:44
  Yeah, depending on. What it is, it can, maybe it can
• 1:24:47
  surface things, but there's still the humans got to look at
• 1:24:49
  that and say, are we going to let at this juncture, at this
• 1:24:53
  generation, I'm not going to let an AI take all of that and come
• 1:24:57
  up and say, and here's the decision you have to make.
• 1:25:01
  That's not going to be there, right?
• 1:25:03
  Because there's all this context which it doesn't have that only
• 1:25:05
  a human really can understand. But the rote process that you
• 1:25:09
  just described, absolutely that task goes away with AI.
• 1:25:12
  Absolutely. And it should.
• 1:25:14
  It's it's again, it's automation.
• 1:25:15
  And I think that I think the risk is that you got a lot,
• 1:25:18
  probably a lot of people out there that are doing very task
• 1:25:21
  level jobs. That is the risk.
• 1:25:24
  And so again, those people have to adapt and not tomorrow, not
• 1:25:27
  next week like today. You got to be thinking about
• 1:25:31
  that. And most, I mean, most people
• 1:25:33
  watch this are founders, entrepreneurs or highly
• 1:25:34
  ambitious people. So they get it there in the
• 1:25:36
  world. But I just think it's yeah, you
• 1:25:38
  and that's just life. You got to adapt.
• 1:25:40
  You adapt or perish. I mean, it's just kind of how
• 1:25:43
  it. Is or you're you're left the
• 1:25:45
  last blacksmith that. Right.
• 1:25:48
  Yeah. Putting shoes on horses, Yeah,
• 1:25:50
  there's only And maybe there's a few of those and.
• 1:25:52
  Maybe that's why you're valuable, because like, no one's
• 1:25:54
  doing it anymore, you know? Actually, there is, there is.
• 1:25:56
  That's why COBOL programmers are so like they have been for a
• 1:26:00
  long time making bank because nobody else knew COBOL.
• 1:26:04
  This is a true thing, especially during when we were converting
• 1:26:07
  all this code. But now these AIS can do that on
• 1:26:10
  those people. They don't have jobs anymore,
• 1:26:11
  but they they were already kind of out of the workforce anyways.
• 1:26:15
  But the idea being whatever tasks that computers can do,
• 1:26:19
  you're right. People have got to adapt, but
• 1:26:21
  we've been adapting as humans for since the beginning of time.
• 1:26:25
  It's not so you can't slow this down.
• 1:26:28
  This is not going to slow down. So what's the the end result is
• 1:26:32
  exactly what you said, you adapt to it.
• 1:26:34
  You adapt to. And if you don't, if you have a
• 1:26:37
  task that you know, job, just be aware like you're going to have
• 1:26:41
  to retool. Yeah, I mean, I'd say if you're
• 1:26:43
  not using AI at least every single day, you better be
• 1:26:47
  figuring. Out that is my primary.
• 1:26:49
  Tool. You better be figuring.
• 1:26:50
  Out how yeah, Mike, that's I'm in it all day long and if Claude
• 1:26:53
  is down it literally it's like what do I do?
• 1:26:55
  It actually literally screws up my entire I got everything in
• 1:26:57
  there. Dude, same here, same here.
• 1:26:59
  And it like, you know, to go back to it too, like I use it
• 1:27:01
  for developing certain marketing tactics or strategies or you
• 1:27:05
  know, maybe it's a website or a podcast thing.
• 1:27:07
  We're wanting to think through a name for a podcast or a
• 1:27:10
  strategy, build out, whatever it might be, but it can't, I can't
• 1:27:12
  just go to it and say, hey, build this thing out for me.
• 1:27:15
  You know, it doesn't work like that, right?
• 1:27:17
  I have to, I have knowledge of how podcasts can run and what's
• 1:27:20
  actually going to drive revenue and what's the experience we
• 1:27:22
  create for people to come in and how do, what do we do on the
• 1:27:25
  back end? Who do we need to hire to
• 1:27:27
  fulfill the back end process of this?
• 1:27:29
  And what does that look like? And how do we use AI in the
• 1:27:31
  marketing right in the right way, not sounding like a robot.
• 1:27:34
  All of those things I have to work with Claude or AI, whatever
• 1:27:38
  I'm using to be able to, if I'm not there, that thing doesn't
• 1:27:40
  work right as well. Like I can't just you know,
• 1:27:43
  because you're like, oh, I'm just going to go on chech petite
• 1:27:44
  and like write my business plan, content strategy and like do all
• 1:27:47
  my contents. Like if you know how that stuff
• 1:27:49
  works, but if you don't, how are you going to know which is the
• 1:27:52
  right path or which not? Because I use it all the time
• 1:27:55
  and it's still sometimes frustrating where I'm like, no
• 1:27:58
  dude, that's not why would we ever do that or say that or that
• 1:28:01
  would not never be a direction we go down and it gets smarter
• 1:28:03
  and it's going to get better. But I think the human working
• 1:28:06
  side by side with it is is where.
• 1:28:08
  The that, that is the move, yeah.
• 1:28:09
  That's the most I can put pull someone in here with all this
• 1:28:11
  equipment and go, all right, go. They may not be able to turn it
• 1:28:14
  into the founder talk podcast and be able to do what we've
• 1:28:16
  done right in the middle. Like I don't know how this shit
• 1:28:18
  works and I don't know how to turn on these cameras or record.
• 1:28:20
  Oh, you got to have this type of memory card for this that Oh,
• 1:28:23
  how do you get keep on the show? I don't know that process,
• 1:28:25
  right. What should the boat show be
• 1:28:26
  like? Right?
• 1:28:27
  Oh, you need to have a promise for your show.
• 1:28:28
  I didn't know that. And so I think, yeah, the
• 1:28:30
  equipment, the tool is one thing, but knowing how to really
• 1:28:33
  use it and amplify it is a whole different thing.
• 1:28:35
  Yeah. So, yeah, that's, that's exactly
• 1:28:38
  the the insight that you should have.
• 1:28:41
  I mean, I I believe that and that's the you kind of tied it
• 1:28:44
  right back to the original idea of if you're going to trust your
• 1:28:49
  business to an outsourcer, you have to have the knowledge
• 1:28:53
  enough to be able to call BS and whatever came out of it.
• 1:28:56
  It's no different with AI totally like you.
• 1:28:59
  That's the experience I get all the time is, yeah, you can
• 1:29:03
  refine the knowledge and the instructions that you give it.
• 1:29:06
  That's part of the the process. But you have to know to do that,
• 1:29:10
  right? This isn't a magic vending
• 1:29:12
  machine and running. The business definitely not if
• 1:29:14
  you just don't know anything about anything and just.
• 1:29:17
  Make it like you just said, give me a podcast and a business plan
• 1:29:20
  to be able to do this and then go it's like.
• 1:29:22
  Terrible, terrible. It's not going to work and
• 1:29:24
  you're not going to execute it. Just like if I said, if I never
• 1:29:26
  built the house before and I said, help me build this house,
• 1:29:29
  I'm going to run and it's going to give me the basics.
• 1:29:31
  It'll give me like, these are the supplies.
• 1:29:33
  You might want to hire a couple people.
• 1:29:34
  It'll give me some good stuff. But then when I go build that
• 1:29:37
  house, I'm going to have a rude awakening that oh, wait a
• 1:29:39
  second, it didn't tell me about this.
• 1:29:41
  I ran into this problem. This wasn't something I even
• 1:29:43
  anticipated. You know, wait, the house is
• 1:29:45
  crooked. Like, you know, you're going to
• 1:29:47
  have issues because it just, it doesn't, that's not what it
• 1:29:49
  does. It's to be the assistant.
• 1:29:51
  It's to be the person working alongside you.
• 1:29:53
  Well. I just kind of proved my point,
• 1:29:54
  which is the judgment part. Of it.
• 1:29:56
  Judgment right. That judgment piece that doesn't
• 1:29:59
  go away at least at this version until we get to AGI or whatever
• 1:30:04
  that I don't, I don't know enough about the tech and the
• 1:30:08
  and the generations to say, well that we can be at AGI and AGI is
• 1:30:12
  intended. It's general intelligence.
• 1:30:14
  Artificial General. Intelligence, is it really going
• 1:30:18
  to have the capability of a human It it comes down to
• 1:30:22
  judgement. Again, judgement comes from a
• 1:30:25
  combination of skills that you have experienced and the
• 1:30:29
  iteration, iteration process of problem solving that generates
• 1:30:33
  judgment, right? Because you've gone through it,
• 1:30:35
  you've iterated enough, you've seen enough variations of
• 1:30:40
  whatever the topic happens to be.
• 1:30:43
  And then that creates for you the ability to say, I want to go
• 1:30:46
  this direction as opposed to that direction.
• 1:30:47
  I don't see AI giving us that. I see it being a companion for
• 1:30:51
  you to get there because you're talking to it and you're saying
• 1:30:55
  help me understand this, go get some information for me for
• 1:30:57
  that, help me craft. But then when it comes out, it's
• 1:31:00
  like, I don't know if that's really the way I want to go.
• 1:31:02
  That's judgment. I see that going not going away.
• 1:31:04
  I. Want to end on this?
• 1:31:06
  If the Jodie or founder of a business that's maybe six, 5-10
• 1:31:13
  years into the third entrepreneurial journey was
• 1:31:16
  sitting here in front of you, which one is?
• 1:31:18
  I've been six years in, what would be the one?
• 1:31:21
  You can leave me with one piece of advice, five years in 10
• 1:31:25
  years in whatever it is before you had your, you know, we've
• 1:31:27
  talked about some of the things that you might say, but what
• 1:31:29
  would be the one piece of advice that you'd give someone, maybe
• 1:31:32
  even yourself at five years, six years, 10 years, you got like 30
• 1:31:37
  seconds to deliver something and then boom, you're back in the
• 1:31:39
  future where you, where you're at, you go back in time and you
• 1:31:42
  get, hey, we're going to be 30 seconds.
• 1:31:43
  So make it count. I would say if you're serious
• 1:31:46
  about being an entrepreneur, expect the need to change and
• 1:31:50
  they expect the need to adapt. And it's going to be painful.
• 1:31:53
  But if you're willing to get through that pain, there is a
• 1:31:55
  great outcome on the other side. Because all of what you're doing
• 1:31:59
  as an entrepreneur is rooted in the fact that you don't know
• 1:32:04
  what you don't know. And embrace the suck around
• 1:32:11
  learning that if you're, if you're committed to that, you'll
• 1:32:16
  be successful because it's just one challenge after another in
• 1:32:21
  entrepreneurship 1 And you're learning, you're reading, you're
• 1:32:25
  watching and listening to the podcast.
• 1:32:27
  You, you, you, I call it installing intelligence into
• 1:32:31
  your operating system. There you go.
• 1:32:33
  I do that daily. I just did it today.
• 1:32:36
  Yeah, thank you. So you're installing something
• 1:32:38
  and then when it becomes intuitive and then it helps you
• 1:32:41
  with decisions in the future, right?
• 1:32:44
  And then you do that over and over and over again.
• 1:32:46
  It's work. It's not a if the end game is to
• 1:32:49
  become rich, just just hit the eject button right now because
• 1:32:53
  you're going to go through a whole lot of pain and suffering
• 1:32:55
  and there's a good chance you're not going to be because getting
• 1:32:58
  the financial outcomes that you want really are tied to purpose
• 1:33:02
  and a whole other set of the metrics that most people don't
• 1:33:07
  tell you about. Yeah, that's so true.
• 1:33:09
  Well said. It was in 30 seconds though.
• 1:33:11
  Well, that's. OK, a little bit longer, you
• 1:33:12
  know, we squeeze it in there. So Black Line obviously has been
• 1:33:15
  the company that has been running for the last, you know,
• 1:33:17
  32 years and then you've got J Squared.
• 1:33:20
  Tell me a little bit about what you're doing cuz I'm curious.
• 1:33:22
  Like you got this company now, it's kind of running, it's doing
• 1:33:25
  well, You're expanding still, you're leading it, but obviously
• 1:33:27
  it's day-to-day, it's running. What is J Squared?
• 1:33:30
  Yeah, J Squared really is just my, it's my initials like J, you
• 1:33:33
  know, double JJ Squared. It's really just me taking some
• 1:33:37
  of the things we're talking about and creating a personal
• 1:33:40
  brand around it. And why I decided to do that is.
• 1:33:44
  It a company or are you starting?
• 1:33:45
  To that's not really a company, it's just me.
• 1:33:47
  It's a way of framing what I'm trying to do.
• 1:33:50
  That's really that's why it's a website.
• 1:33:52
  It's almost more like a a link tree.
• 1:33:55
  It's like, here's where you can find stuff about me.
• 1:33:57
  Like here's Jody, this is what I do.
• 1:33:59
  This is what I'm about because you do business with people, you
• 1:34:03
  know, like and trust, right? So get to know me a little bit.
• 1:34:07
  Like this is kind of what I'm about.
• 1:34:08
  This is my little, you know, little spiel about I like to do
• 1:34:11
  hard things. I like to, I'm a pilot, I like
• 1:34:13
  to do triathlons, I'm running a business.
• 1:34:15
  But then I also learned all these lessons about life.
• 1:34:18
  And my hope is that I can pass it down and, and have people
• 1:34:22
  find value in it. It's another experiment.
• 1:34:25
  It's another entrepreneurial experiment, which is I think
• 1:34:28
  that this framework will change the lives of the people who want
• 1:34:31
  to understand it. They'll become better, just
• 1:34:35
  better leaders, technology leaders making decisions about
• 1:34:39
  technology, so they'll improve their technology leadership
• 1:34:42
  capabilities. That I believe is what's
• 1:34:44
  missing. What's missing?
• 1:34:46
  And it isn't knowledge of tools like you just kind of described,
• 1:34:49
  like you don't have to know the knowledge of tools.
• 1:34:51
  You have to understand enough about these tools to know how
• 1:34:55
  they get your outcome that you want and be able to hold people
• 1:34:58
  accountable to that and be able to protect yourself against
• 1:35:00
  people who want to take advantage of you in this space.
• 1:35:03
  That's what this framework was about, and I want to teach
• 1:35:05
  people about it. Love it.
• 1:35:07
  Jody, thank you so much for coming on the Founder Talk
• 1:35:09
  podcast. Man, this is a blast.
• 1:35:10
  We could keep going for hours, but unfortunately we do have
• 1:35:12
  lives and things to do. Where can people find you,
• 1:35:14
  connect with you, learn more about what you do?
• 1:35:15
  So my the LinkedIn, so Jody Jankowski, it's a very unique
• 1:35:19
  name. So you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 1:35:21
  You can connect with me there. My J squared, J squared dot AI.
• 1:35:25
  That's the website you that's kind of my link tree.
• 1:35:29
  Of course you can contact me at black line.
• 1:35:31
  So that's easy to find. Get the gold standard.
• 1:35:34
  And where do you get the gold standard every day?
• 1:35:36
  And we got the best, most brightest and happy people to
• 1:35:40
  serve you. Very cool.
• 1:35:42
  Yeah. It's been a pleasure.
• 1:35:43
  It's been a pleasure. And I yeah, I could do this for
• 1:35:46
  a long time, too. I know that.
• 1:35:47
  Like I can see why Rogan can go for three hours.
• 1:35:49
  Oh, it's easy. Yeah, just.
• 1:35:51
  You can just keep good we. Just probably blew through over
• 1:35:53
  an hour or at least an hour and it's just like that.
• 1:35:55
  Just like, wow. So really appreciate giving me
• 1:35:58
  the opportunity to even talk about some of these.
• 1:36:00
  Things, my pleasure. I mean, one of the benefits I
• 1:36:02
  have from being on the show and hosting it and you guys have
• 1:36:04
  this benefit too from listening is that you get to soak up all
• 1:36:07
  this knowledge and wisdom. And part of it's like humbling
• 1:36:10
  too. It's like, man, I have a lot of
• 1:36:11
  work to do, but it's exciting too, because it's like I feel
• 1:36:14
  excited to go do the next thing, to go be better for my team, to
• 1:36:17
  be better for the business or family, all that stuff.
• 1:36:19
  So it's cool, really, really cool.
• 1:36:22
  Thanks again for being here, Jody.
• 1:36:23
  Appreciate it. Thank you guys for listening and
• 1:36:24
  we will see you on the next one. Thank you.