Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / The Death of 9–5: How AI and the Gig Economy Are Changing Everything with Brian Horwath and Arben Koliqi

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The Death of 9–5: How AI and the Gig Economy Are Changing Everything with Brian Horwath and Arben Koliqi · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

0:00
The days of working for a corporation for 35 years is not
0:05
necessarily what our children are going to experience.
0:08
The gig economy continues to grow.
0:10
As of 2024, there are approximately 78.4 million
0:14
freelance workers in the United States and growing.
0:17
By 2027, that number will be 86.5 million people.
0:21
The ability to work remotely and now the necessity to work
0:24
remotely. Those converged resources are
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the most expensive part of any business.
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So how do we optimize that for somebody?
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Oh my God, I can actually manage my sow spend.
0:34
I know where it's going. I can actually put my arms
0:36
around it and tell people for this much spend, here's what
0:40
you're getting. So sitting across me right now
0:44
are Brian Horwath and Arben. How might I put your last name?
0:49
Colici. Colici.
0:50
That's not that bad, actually. That's yeah, it's not too bad.
0:52
That's. A cool last name, founders of
0:54
BlackRock Innovations proprietary software is called
0:57
Lever, which we're going to get into some of this today.
0:59
But how would you guys sum up what you do in maybe a sentence
1:02
or two for the audience that doesn't know anything about you
1:04
guys? Lovely.
1:07
Great question. I think that what we've brought
1:10
to the table is allowing companies to recognize how to
1:15
work in this economy. If you look at how we used to
1:18
outsource, it really hasn't been empowered by much of the
1:22
technology. Technology is still lacking when
1:25
it comes to how do you use a global workforce strategically,
1:29
right? Everybody just says, oh, we're
1:30
outsourcing. So it, you know, saves US money
1:32
or we're using freelancers, sorry.
1:37
And and that allows us to not have that salary position.
1:42
But what does it introduce? What?
1:44
How do you make sure that these external, infrequent
1:48
participants are just as successful as your long term
1:51
employees? There you go.
1:52
That's the key. We're definitely going to get
1:53
into that today too. I want to start by just going a
1:56
little high level with where we're at from a gig economy
1:59
standpoint. I was doing a little bit of
2:00
research. You guys provided me with some
2:01
numbers to The gig economy continues to grow.
2:05
As of 2024, there are approximately 78.4 million
2:09
freelance workers in the United States and growing and it's
2:13
growing, representing over 36% of the US workforce, which is
2:17
kind of wild. By 2027, that number will be
2:20
86.5 million people. That's what they're projecting,
2:24
yeah. What is the gig economy and why
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is it growing so fast? Well, I think #1 you are part of
2:31
the gig economy, Am I doing right here, right?
2:34
You know, and, and I think we've all recognized that the days of
2:37
working for a corporation for 35 years is not necessarily what
2:42
our our children are going to experience, right?
2:45
And I think what you're seeing, I want to say the
2:47
infrastructure, the clients, everybody is now warming up to
2:53
this, right? And so, so then the network of
2:57
freelancers out there has been continuing to grow.
3:00
Now their application into industry is what's really
3:05
growing. There's always been these people
3:07
out there. They might have been working for
3:08
other people right now you see that they have been able to
3:13
establish themselves like you have and, and start with a
3:15
clientele. And I think some of that is
3:18
because of the Internet and our way definitely to source these
3:23
niche providers or niche providers and have access to
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them. That was the major limiting part
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in the past as you didn't know where they were, where they
3:33
existed, it was in your network and that was it.
3:36
Now that we've enlarged that network to globally, everybody
3:40
can market themselves now. So as an so an business owner,
3:44
entrepreneur, they they're considered part of the gig
3:46
economy. Oh yeah, OK, got it.
3:48
Because I always think like gig, I think like a side thing or
3:51
like an Uber driver or like a freelancer on Upwork or
3:53
something like that, which they they may be full time too and
3:56
they may have their own thing. But what you're saying is
3:58
basically anybody that doesn't get AW2 paycheck from a company?
4:03
Is that right? That's the way we define.
4:05
Yeah. And is the Internet the main
4:08
contributor as to why more people are flooding, you know,
4:10
to freelance work and why more companies want to work with
4:12
freelancers? Or is there anything else that
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we're missing on why you're just seeing like, you know, I think
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you go back 20-30 years, it was probably just very rare to have
4:20
probably a freelancer, maybe contractors and stuff, but to to
4:23
find a freelancer because it was hard to find them.
4:26
Is there something else that we're missing here that's
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changing the landscape a little bit?
4:30
Yeah, for sure. A big one is the fact of COVID
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and the the working from home demand just grew exponentially
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during that time, but also the advancement in technology doing
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teams calls was not a thing 1520 years ago.
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I mean, they had their means of communicating even
4:55
internationally, but the way it's done today, right, it's
4:58
definitely has changed. You know, it's so that's that
5:02
has a tremendous effect. Yeah, and I think you're
5:04
absolutely right. I think COVID taught us things
5:07
that we never thought could be done remotely now done remotely,
5:12
right? It kind of forced us into it
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too, right? Like I was like, the same thing
5:16
happened with content and video. I think we're all going this
5:18
direction, but it just like amplified everything by about
5:21
5:00, maybe 10 years. And we would have got there
5:23
eventually where people are doing remote video calls, that
5:25
kind of stuff. But Kobe was like, hey, one day
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we're doing this in person and now boom, the next day we're all
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going video. Yeah, it's, it's that the old
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demand, supply and demand thing that that that infuses that
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creativity that you have to create new solutions now because
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you're pushed into it, you're forced into it.
5:42
Yeah, that's right. I guess nothing, nothing good
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came out of COVID, but at the same time, there are certain
5:50
things that happened because of it, right?
5:53
Yeah, this is one of them. Yeah, I remember being a
5:55
corporate and one of the leadership team came in.
5:58
He was like, hey, we all knew COVID was starting to happen.
6:01
It was spreading, You know, it was kind of coming to America
6:04
and maybe it's just March 2020 somewhere around there.
6:06
And I remember him saying walking in the room being like,
6:09
we might have to work from home for about a week or two.
6:12
I remember that. And that was like unbelievable
6:15
news. We were because it was like we
6:17
might get it. You know, we had flexibility.
6:18
We were in sales so we could like drive in our territory and
6:20
like a little flex in our schedule, but just be, but you
6:22
had to be in the office. I mean, you had to report there
6:24
or like, you know, maybe a Friday you took off when we're,
6:27
you know, work from home or something like that.
6:29
But two weeks in the corporate world was like, I literally
6:33
remember it being like, no freaking way.
6:35
Like there's no way we're going to be.
6:36
And then it was two months, and then it was four months.
6:39
And then I was building my side hustle.
6:40
And then I quit that job and started doing this full time.
6:43
But it was, yeah, it, it, it was wild.
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Yeah, it was really wild. So I think those two, the, the
6:49
ability to work remotely and now the necessity to work remotely,
6:54
those converged right at COVID, right?
6:57
And we're now what we picked up on was what are the negative
7:03
side effects of that, right? So imagine yourself starting a
7:06
position during COVID. You don't have that office
7:10
cooler to go to and say, Hey, who do I need to talk to to do
7:14
this, right? I felt terrible for the new
7:17
employees that started, went to their Home Office, had no idea
7:22
of the culture or the tribal knowledge of the organization.
7:27
And then that's where we started to queue into as to saying, OK,
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if I'm a remote employee, I don't have that experience of
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sitting at a conference table and starting to absorb what all
7:40
these people know that are sitting around me.
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Then you start to say, OK, that's the guy I need to go to
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for this, and that's the guy I need to go for for this.
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That's no longer there. So now you have, you know.
7:52
That's a big one. Yeah.
7:53
That that I, I still call it the water cooler or the tribal
7:57
knowledge, but it is so important.
8:00
And how do you capture that and how do you allow people that are
8:03
remotely positioned to experience that?
8:06
I remember just feeling kind of disconnected too.
8:08
It's like, oh cool, we can all work from home.
8:10
This is great. There's a lot of good perks with
8:11
that. But it was also like, man, I
8:13
don't feel like I talked to anyone anymore.
8:14
You. Can't just turn around and.
8:15
Yeah, and like you'd come in a little early from work, you grab
8:18
coffee, be talking to somebody about their day or the weekend
8:21
or what they're up to or what's going on their business plan or
8:23
whatever it is. And like, I don't know, all of a
8:25
sudden the the the in person is so much different than the
8:28
screens. And I say the same thing with
8:29
the podcast. Like if we're remember our video
8:31
call, we got on a call, it was good.
8:33
Nothing wrong with it, but it didn't feel like this.
8:35
Yeah, of course, just didn't. It was still sanitary.
8:38
Yeah, right. In a way. 6 feet digits.
8:41
Yeah. Yeah, you can't.
8:42
You can't bond necessarily to the screen, right?
8:45
You can't do a point. But there's still we we say we
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have not sold anything without at least being in person,
8:54
pressing flesh, whatever you want to call it.
8:57
We still haven't sold anything solely without that level of
9:01
relationship. Yeah, yeah.
9:02
Well, we're not selling little tiny tchotchkes and whatnot.
9:06
This is different, right? Different product.
9:09
You need to build relationships. You need to get without it.
9:11
Yeah, it's not going. To happen.
9:13
Longer deal cycles and stuff. So is it safe to say and do you
9:16
guys think that the 9:00 to 5:00 is dying?
9:20
Because I heard Reid, Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn, the one
9:23
of the Co founders of LinkedIn, he's moving on since then, but
9:26
he predicted that the death of the nine to five job was going
9:29
to come by 2034 because of the AI, because of AI and then the
9:33
gig economy because of those two things and maybe some other
9:36
factors, but primarily AI gig economy.
9:39
He's like, there's going to be no more at 9 to fives.
9:42
I completely agree with that. Same timeline, 2034.
9:45
If not sooner. Yeah, I was going to say I.
9:47
That seems like a long time away, doesn't it?
9:50
I think we're closer probably, but.
9:52
Yeah, because let's, let's go back and say why did we have to
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be there 9:00 to 5:00, right? It was because we had to answer
9:59
the phones, had to open the mail, and you had to
10:02
collaborate. And every that happened in
10:05
person up until 2000, I'd say the early 2000s, right?
10:10
And so that's ingrained in US that nine to five that we have
10:16
to be in the office to collaborate.
10:17
And now you've empowered people with the tools and the
10:20
abilities. And if you're working somewhat
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remotely, why does it have to be from 9:00 to 5:00?
10:25
I mean, most organizations have gone global, especially the
10:31
larger ones. We're not about all the retail
10:33
places though, you know, I think it makes sense for like
10:35
business. Yeah, I was just going to say
10:37
yeah, walk into. A store, it's like going to have
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people. I mean, although now I've seen
10:41
on LinkedIn, there's a guy that there's a few companies now that
10:43
do humanoid robotics and they're not where they need to be today
10:47
to like service a customer and walk you around the store.
10:49
But they're, man, they're starting to do laundry.
10:51
I mean, it's starting to get weird.
10:53
Yeah. So that's probably 10 years.
10:56
That's probably 10 years where you walk in and you have a robot
10:58
saying, hey, thank you for coming in, Ryan, you know, let
11:00
me show you around. And that's that's going to be
11:02
common practice, I think. But that's probably 10 years,
11:05
5-10 years. It literally depends on a
11:07
business model, depends on what your service, your product is.
11:11
Yeah. And some of that will never go
11:14
away. So most ask if it's repetitory,
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if you can do it, if you have, if it's if you have a process
11:21
flow and you can repeat it time and time again, then those will
11:23
be taken over by AI, by robotics.
11:26
But if it's a you're crafting a unique solution for something,
11:31
which that will always be the case because that says humans,
11:34
we want to do things better every day.
11:37
And those things are probably going to stay as is, or they
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can't be yet configured by an AI, and hopefully never.
11:45
But. Yeah, cool.
11:46
Otherwise, what the hell are we going to do right?
11:47
I mean that's why I always tell people look, if it gets so
11:49
advanced where like even the creative problem solving jobs
11:52
are gone, then I guess we just what do nothing.
11:54
I mean, I don't even know what we do.
11:55
I always I. Always the movie.
11:57
The movie. Wally.
11:58
I don't know if you Yeah, yeah. It comes through my mind like,
12:01
Oh my God, let's do that. But it does.
12:03
Do you guys ever, like, take it a step further and go a few
12:05
decades out, maybe 50 years out, 100 years out.
12:08
You know, we'll be gone in 100 years, obviously, But it's kind
12:12
of weird. I don't know.
12:13
I don't know what the world is going to look like because you
12:15
think, OK, now it sounds like, oh, the creative jobs, the
12:17
problem solving jobs will still be there.
12:19
Yeah. We also said that about some of
12:21
the other intellectual, you know, white collar jobs that we
12:23
thought would always be there and like the machines would do
12:25
the robotics and the factory stuff.
12:27
And now it's like almost inverted.
12:30
Yeah, yeah. And, and the people that
12:32
developed AI almost engineered themselves out of a job, right?
12:35
You know, very true. You don't want the guy tell
12:37
people they're like, I use AI for this.
12:39
Now I use AI for this. I use AI for this.
12:40
I'm like, that's great. But if all you do is you use AI,
12:43
the company's going to go, what do we need you for?
12:45
What are, you know what I mean? Like there's no, you don't
12:47
provide any value to the company now you just use an AI.
12:50
And so an AI agent's going to come in and replace you pretty
12:52
pretty soon. I like to defend the human race
12:55
and say, look, AI can only look in the rearview mirror.
12:58
That's true. Can it really, you know, look
13:00
forward and develop new products that we need, that, you know,
13:04
we've dreamt up it. I still think there's still use
13:07
for the human being. You know.
13:10
I mean, thankfully, you know AI just look at US1 day and go, why
13:14
don't we you guys even here? I don't even know you know a.
13:17
Battery in a matrix. Yeah, exactly.
13:19
Yeah. I always tell people I remember
13:20
watching the Terminator movie as a kid and I was like, that's so
13:23
crazy, That's so crazy. That would never end.
13:24
Now it's like. No, no, no.
13:26
Go back further now. I was watching the Jetsons.
13:28
Well, yeah, now you're like, holy cow.
13:30
Yeah, it's coming. Yeah, do.
13:32
You think cars are flying already?
13:34
But do you think AI would ever be able to look into the future
13:37
and not just the past? Eventually, yeah, I don't see a
13:40
reason why not, but it's kind of where.
13:44
We're to get the information right.
13:46
It had to be like a it had to have its own thoughts.
13:48
But if you think about a lot of our thoughts come from our
13:50
experiences, our past, you know, typically you come up with an
13:53
idea. It's like, I had an idea to do
13:55
this podcast that didn't come out of thin air.
13:57
I saw the podcast, I saw it working.
13:58
I saw a lot of like this sounds fun, right?
14:01
So I think we take a lot of things from the past too there
14:04
and mold it together and we say we start, we start of something
14:07
new kind of, but it was kind of done before and different
14:10
aversion or something like that that's.
14:12
A good point, yeah. I I have two kids that are
14:14
graduating school and I try to give them advice through my
14:18
experience in college. Yeah.
14:20
What are they graduating? In Purdue, one is sales and
14:24
sales management. All right.
14:28
And the other one's geology and planetary science.
14:32
So interesting. Yeah.
14:33
You know, it has opened my eyes to many different things other
14:38
than what I was aware of. Right.
14:39
Right. So it is fascinating.
14:42
And then when you start talking about AI, but I wanted to go
14:46
back for a minute because you had asked me about the 9:00 to
14:48
5:00. Yes, I want to go back to that.
14:50
Too. And I think the number one thing
14:51
that affects 9 to 5 going forward is AI like you had said,
14:55
do you really need 8 hours to conduct the tasks that now AI
15:00
can do 30% of right? Is that going to erode into our
15:04
eight hour work day and say really you can get this
15:07
accomplished in six and. Don't you think companies would
15:09
say, but we still need to do, still need?
15:11
To pay you for eight? Yeah, well.
15:13
Well, no, I think they'd say, OK, you're you're doing it in
15:14
six. What else can we use you for to
15:16
get it? You know, two more hours out of
15:17
you and. Now, you know, come in full
15:19
circle, there's your gig, there's your gig economy,
15:23
because people are paying you for the deliverable, right?
15:26
Not for the hours in which you're providing.
15:28
So there'll still be positions in which hourly is going to be
15:31
required. You're going to have to maintain
15:33
that shop, the factory, whatever for 8 hours.
15:36
But I think those of those of us that work on intellectual
15:41
strengths, not the strengths of my back to make a living.
15:45
Yeah, there there is a threat to that.
15:47
But the the gig economy, I think as we move forward, we'll
15:51
continue to morph into more niche applications where a we
15:58
got to fix that. We'll call a guy that
16:00
specializes in just that if I had to hire somebody.
16:05
Well, so if the 9:00 to 5:00 is gone in eight years, let's say,
16:09
or 10 years at the Max according to what people are saying, what
16:13
do you say to someone in their 20s or 30s that's working a nine
16:15
to five now? I mean, what do you, cuz you got
16:18
to, you're still really young. Like you got a long ways to go.
16:21
So it's like, and maybe this happens and it's not like in
16:23
eight years the 9:00 to 5:00 is gone.
16:25
All of a sudden it's going to be a work up to that or 10 or 6,
16:28
whatever it is. But what do you say to the
16:30
people that are working 9:00 to fives?
16:32
So I, I think cuz I, our kids are similar ages and I, I was
16:40
asked, I was asked that question.
16:43
So what? What advice do you have right?
16:46
Yeah, your kids ask you that. Oh yeah, all the time.
16:48
And it's, I always try to tell them in many different ways.
16:53
It's not about no one wants to pay for the effort.
16:57
Everyone wants to pay for the result.
17:01
I mean, even think about we, we have so many sports analogies we
17:04
use all the time. But I mean, you know, you're not
17:05
watching the, the team practice, you're watching the game, right?
17:12
But what's being done in the background, of course it
17:15
matters. So those are all the efforts.
17:16
But it's about what, what is it that you're selling or producing
17:21
or making or whatever that is. So which has the effect on the
17:25
9:00 to 5:00. So I don't care how many hours
17:28
is sitting here is what are you, what are you making?
17:31
What what difference are you making?
17:33
What value you bring to the table essentially, right.
17:36
So that's when you when you speak in those terms and all of
17:39
a sudden 9:00 to 5:00, it's not that important anymore.
17:42
Yeah. It's more so like we have one of
17:46
our team members calls themselves a night owl.
17:49
He just prefers to do things at night, late at night.
17:54
That's fine. That's again, it's great for us
17:57
because he's a phenomenal talent.
18:00
They all are. But you know, those are unique
18:02
cases where I don't care what time of day you work you.
18:05
Operate once you get it done, yeah.
18:08
Get it done and you get it done right the first time and all
18:10
those things and who cares? The best advice that I've ever
18:14
been given actually came from my father who spent his life in HR.
18:18
And when I graduated, he said, look, you have to focus on your
18:22
life and look at it as you're carrying a toolbox with you.
18:26
That's right. OK.
18:27
And you come out of school, you get your toolbox and you go from
18:31
job to job and you have to make sure that you're putting tools
18:35
in that toolbox. You're learning things, you're
18:38
you're understanding the business of it.
18:41
And then eventually, after you've amassed these tools, you
18:46
will turn around, open your toolbox and start making your
18:49
own living with the tools that you've amassed.
18:51
Yeah, that's from your previous experience.
18:53
So always make sure that in your younger, I'll say your younger
18:58
career life, that you're constantly gathering tools,
19:02
right? You will not know what tools
19:05
will be used later. That's right.
19:06
Right. That's the, that's the magic of
19:09
it is we've all been involved in things and and I've heard it
19:13
from my kids. Well, when am I ever going to
19:15
use that? And you really don't know until
19:19
you turn around, you open that toolbox and you say, now I got
19:22
it. Well, we've said it too.
19:24
Oh yeah, definitely. Oh yeah, I'll do.
19:25
Like, why the hell am I wearing calculus?
19:27
You know, it's like, yeah, yeah, we faced.
19:29
All those lessons. Let's hire a freelancer.
19:32
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I
19:33
always say skills pay the bills. You know, if you if you are out
19:36
in the marketplace right now, you got to think about yourself
19:38
as like your own business, whether you are or not, you got
19:41
to say how am I marketable and how do I bring value to the
19:44
marketplace. And if you're not thinking like
19:46
that, because in the old, old methodology was I'm going to get
19:49
it into a good company, get a job, potentially work my way up,
19:53
advance the company will help me grow, provide opportunities.
19:56
And now it's like it's not quite the path anymore.
19:59
You know, it's more like, what skills do you have that would
20:02
contribute to the team or the company?
20:04
And then based on that, you can kind of level yourself up if you
20:07
increase your skills over time. That's right.
20:09
So I always look at, man, what skills am I building right now
20:11
that are going to be valuable today, but also five years from
20:15
now, 10 years from now, whether that's sales, marketing, video,
20:19
podcast, you know, whatever. How to tell a story, how to
20:22
communicate well with other humans, clothes, do whatever it
20:24
is. That's the key is that you, you
20:27
mentioned earlier, if you're doing something that's very
20:28
repetitive, you're analyzing data all day, you're putting
20:31
numbers in a spreadsheet or you're even customer service,
20:35
you're just kind of taking calls and answering basic questions.
20:37
That is the first thing that's gone.
20:39
As. Soon as the company can say we
20:42
got a software, we don't need 50 people, we need 5 and those
20:45
people they don't got to manage those people.
20:47
So the management structures down now lower than it was
20:49
before, the benefits, all that stuff, They will make that move
20:52
immediately, no questions asked, right.
20:55
But it, it seems like it takes a little bit for companies to kind
20:57
of move with the times. It seems like I think a couple
21:00
more companies are moving towards obviously freelancers
21:02
and we'll get into some of this stuff.
21:03
But seems like companies are just kind of slow.
21:06
You still think they're finding, they're kind of looking at when
21:08
they need to hire or there's something that needs to be done.
21:10
They still look at like W2 kind of traditional route before they
21:14
say could we solve this problem in a more unique innovative way?
21:18
I think there's something bigger in.
21:20
In most organizations you'll see a matrix, at least the ones that
21:24
really understand the difference between like outsourcing and
21:27
offshoring and. What's the difference between
21:31
offshoring and and what is it offshoring and outsourcing?
21:34
Yeah, yeah, and most. I didn't know that.
21:37
To me they kind of sound the same.
21:38
Most people will use them interchangeably.
21:40
We're. Outsourcing or we got someone
21:41
offshore doing work. Yeah.
21:43
And the biggest disappointment is a lot of people understand
21:46
outsourcing, but then they want to do this offshoring and
21:49
they're disappointed because they're not receiving the same
21:54
level of throughput. They're finding coaching that
21:57
they have to fill gaps. And they just really didn't
22:01
understand the key difference between outsources.
22:05
You are, it's the gig economy, you are looking to augment your
22:10
skills, fulfill a gap, anything like that.
22:14
And outsourcing, I'm sorry, offshoring is really more
22:19
towards a repeatable task that you're sending to a different
22:23
location. That's going to be a value, you
22:25
know, a value stream benefit. You're going to save money,
22:29
you're going to have 24/7 coverage, that type of thing.
22:34
So are they work is a difference, they're more part of
22:37
the team versus actually outsourcing to a different
22:39
company that's doing the thing that you need done?
22:42
It might be easier just to compare it to content.
22:44
OK, right. So when you offshore expect very
22:50
structured content. When you outsource, you're
22:54
looking for somebody to provide you content.
22:57
You know, if you're outsourcing to an A attorney firm, they're
23:02
going to come back and give you their legal advice.
23:05
Accounting, they're going to deliver something.
23:09
Offshoring is they're still delivering something, but it
23:11
doesn't typically change. It's structured, they
23:15
predictable, repeatable. And that's where people say, oh,
23:19
I can save money by outsourcing this to a low cost country.
23:24
And they're trying to force the two together, right?
23:28
They're trying to get content at a lower cost.
23:31
It is possible, but like I said, 9 out of 10 people or 10
23:35
companies are disappointed in what they get in return and it's
23:39
simply because they just didn't understand.
23:41
So those nuances between. OK, so to make sure I'm clear
23:44
here and for the audience sake, if I'm, if I hire a video editor
23:47
and they're in the Philippines, let's say or somewhere in a
23:49
different country and they're doing, they're doing my video
23:52
edits or maybe they're editing this podcast, let's say.
23:55
And they're doing it consistently.
23:56
And I've kind of taught them what we want done and we've got
23:58
an SOP they're following and whatever it might be.
24:01
Is that offshoring? Yeah, that's a good, that's a
24:05
good blend because there's a little bit of talent in there.
24:07
Yeah, right. They're using a skill that not
24:11
everybody has. Go ahead.
24:13
Yeah. I think when it's something that
24:19
you can write the script and they'll deliver what's in that
24:23
script, that would be offshoring versus if you are to open an
24:29
office that does exactly what we're doing here today, you're
24:34
going to need a lot more. You can need a lot more
24:39
conversational interactions. It's not a script anymore.
24:44
There's a different skill set that you cannot just write on a
24:47
script and give it to someone to, you know, provide the
24:50
results. That's it.
24:52
That becomes more challenging to to accomplish.
24:56
It's very you can accomplish it, but it's not the same, right?
25:00
There's a lot more dialogue back and forth.
25:02
I mean, we're literally talking about there is something very
25:05
similar, an opportunity that's coming our way.
25:08
Like, yeah, we can do this, but just make sure that you
25:11
understand that the dialogue needs to be there.
25:14
It's not a here, take this. I'll come back in a week and
25:17
I'll give you the results. No, we got you got to check
25:20
every single day, make sure that we understood each other, the
25:25
requirements are set and they're golden.
25:27
You just do that. Well so the way I so let me use
25:31
a call center example. This is how I understood it, but
25:33
I may not be right. If I want a call Center for
25:37
customer service, if I'm outsourcing, I'm going to find a
25:41
company that does. They have call centers and I'm
25:43
going to say I'm outsourced to this company.
25:45
They're going to handle all our customer service.
25:46
They do everything. We really don't touch much
25:48
except maybe give them some onboarding stuff.
25:51
They do it. Because there's a script.
25:52
There's a script right? And offshoring in my mind was we
25:56
have the person kind of interacting with our team, but
25:59
they're some in a different country where the cost is lower,
26:02
so the pay is lower, but they're still kind of integrated with
26:04
our team is something like a separate company.
26:07
That's how I understood it. I don't know if that is very
26:09
close. It's close, very close.
26:11
OK, what's missing on that one? It's, I mean it's missing.
26:19
What's missing is what eventually we're going to talk
26:21
about Lever here, but probably the most important thing on on
26:28
anything that you do what two of them really is having a really
26:32
good solid plan, a script, right?
26:35
But now who's going to do that is, is forming the team that
26:39
makes this thing successful and it's making it's it's it's
26:45
making creating the the the right team.
26:50
That's very difficult. No one has the right formula,
26:55
right? Putting together 1520 machines,
27:00
it's easy because they are set. You know exactly what they're
27:04
capable of. Humans, it's not like that,
27:08
right, Right. There's so much, just all I got
27:11
to think about is there's emotions involved and that's all
27:16
you need to know the difference between a machine and a human.
27:18
So now instead of putting together 10 machines, you got to
27:21
put together 10 humans, right? To do something.
27:24
And they all have variables, yeah.
27:26
And so that's why I want to go back to your video editing,
27:30
because I've done the exact. Same thing.
27:32
So yeah. You know what I'm talking about
27:36
so. Sounds like there's a story
27:38
here. To introduce Lever, we said it's
27:41
going to take us 15 minutes. Or I can put together a 5 minute
27:43
video, right? I'd never done videos before.
27:46
So I sat down, I got some tools. It took me 4 months, yeah.
27:51
Jeez. Four months to do 5 minutes.
27:54
Yeah, OK. And I outsourced it.
28:00
I went to Fiverr, OK, and found a guy that does corporate
28:06
videos. You know, he is a video editor.
28:09
Here's what I didn't know. Video editing is only a
28:13
fraction. Totally.
28:14
Yeah. Of what?
28:15
Yeah. So I am giving this guy scripts,
28:23
video clips, screen captures, the everything that I can do.
28:28
He's still not good. Still not.
28:31
There's no script, right? And the storytelling aspect is a
28:34
different skill. Putting it all together total.
28:36
Trust me, I know. Yeah.
28:37
But that's he It is. There's no expectations of him
28:40
to know. Either No, absolutely not.
28:41
They don't know what we do. So they're usually not going to,
28:44
like in some cases they will, but they're probably not going
28:46
to say I, I'm not qualified, I can't do that part.
28:48
They're saying, yeah, I'll do it.
28:48
I'll figure it out. Right.
28:50
Yeah. Right.
28:50
And now you're getting into that, that tribal knowledge,
28:54
right. So the script is talking about
28:57
apples and he's showing video clips of oranges, right?
29:01
And I'm pulling my hair out, but I'm like, how is he going to
29:04
know? He doesn't know our tool, He
29:06
doesn't know this. So four months into it,
29:11
outsourced, four months, I am writing, I have a spreadsheet
29:15
and each line is one second of the video.
29:20
And I am putting. Here's what's being said.
29:23
This is the the graphical information.
29:25
I mean here is the screen capture you should be playing.
29:29
Right. And at that point, you're like,
29:30
you might as well do it yourself, almost right?
29:32
And this, this is a little different because now you're
29:36
talking that you have a gentleman that you've already
29:39
worked with, you have a rapport with, and you can send him these
29:43
things and he understands what you're trying to do, you know,
29:47
and that's really that hybrid between offshoring and
29:50
outsourcing. OK, right.
29:52
Got it. Yeah.
29:53
Really, there's no magic to. It Yeah, it has.
29:56
So what? The lines have blurred.
29:57
What happened with the video? I'm curious.
29:59
Still not done yet. Still not done all right.
30:02
Well, yeah, I got a few more screen captures to send him.
30:06
Yeah. And I mean, don't get me wrong,
30:07
he's been very attentive, but he just people do exactly what you
30:11
say. And if he will not step outside
30:16
into that creative order, he doesn't have a leash.
30:19
And that's, that's an important concept we talked about with our
30:23
outsourcing customers. So we do engineering work,
30:25
right? And BlackRock does two different
30:29
things. We do engineering product
30:31
development and we do lever as the software.
30:34
And on this side, what we try to figure out is how much of a
30:39
leash do we have to make decisions on designing or do you
30:44
want us to come back to you? So again, for the the case of my
30:49
video editor, very short leash, right?
30:52
You hire somebody that knows what they're doing, the leash
30:55
gets longer and that leash is representative of the value you
30:59
provide, right? If if they have to go sit over
31:04
your shoulder and say OK, you got to do this and do that,
31:07
there's not much value. You hire somebody that knows
31:09
what they're doing. The leash is longer.
31:11
You can get from A to C. So much value there.
31:15
Yeah, Yep. So yeah, I mean, I saw that too.
31:19
We have some clients that will maybe bring on an editor for
31:22
them that will edit short from clips or like social media
31:24
content and then they'll be like, we want to give them the,
31:26
you know, a podcast or an event that we did.
31:28
And I'm like, well, it's a different skill set to be able
31:31
to go through and find because you got to know marketing now
31:33
you got to know who's the customer that and what we should
31:35
we put in the first second or two of the video to make that
31:37
clip even worth it and perform where an editor's going to go.
31:41
Most of them are going to go. I know how to put captions,
31:43
animations, that kind of transitions, but curating the
31:46
clip and finding what's good and what's going to perform based on
31:49
what platform and things like that or what you need it for.
31:51
If you need a video for an investor pitch or something,
31:53
that's a different problem project than a social media clip
31:56
that's 30 seconds potentially. But that was my.
32:00
That was my perfect example of I was offshoring.
32:03
Yeah, yeah. But my expectations were
32:06
outsourcing. Yeah, totally.
32:08
So where do, where do companies go if they say, all right, I
32:11
want to start using more of that, utilizing more of the gig
32:13
economy doing, you know, offshoring, outsourcing, where
32:16
do they start? Where do they start going to
32:18
look for the talent to bring people on to start this process?
32:21
Most companies have started with their own internal network.
32:24
The retirees, the, the, the consultants that have come in to
32:30
do small assignments, they'll start there and start working
32:33
their way out. The biggest challenge is is when
32:36
a company is working with another company, those
32:39
individuals have been vetted, right?
32:42
You know, they're employed, they're insured, they're.
32:44
They know the company already in the processes.
32:46
Yeah, right. Now when you freelance, there's
32:49
a whole new exposure. To.
32:51
That if it's an untested, unproven, so how do we build
32:56
confidence in those resources that you access infrequently,
33:01
right. And that's one of the things
33:03
that we had come with with the lever is to to look at what a
33:08
person has done over his career, his or her.
33:11
Sorry, I do that by default and making note of their
33:16
accomplishments, but doing it in the background, not making
33:21
someone actively record. This is my skills matrix.
33:24
This is what I've done. It takes a lot of work and
33:28
nobody does it right. And so that's where we had
33:32
looked at, is there a system that's going to kind of watch
33:36
what these individuals have accomplished, what they're
33:38
contributing to projects, right? And then from there we can start
33:43
to understand credibility of a resource or a freelancer and how
33:49
they could be best used. And that's what your software
33:51
lover does, part of what it does.
33:53
But would would it that process start when they're working for
33:56
you though? Because if they didn't work for
33:57
you, how would you gather that knowledge, right?
33:58
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
34:00
And we we've gone back and forth.
34:02
The number one thing resumes are flawed, right?
34:05
Don't use a resume to start building the the skills gap or
34:10
the skills matrix of it of an individual.
34:13
We found a lot of flaws and in the resume process, one of the
34:18
one of the fun ones is a guy said, oh, if you want to get an
34:22
interview with that company, you take the job description, you
34:26
put it in a .1 font in white color at the bottom of your
34:31
resume and all the bots see all the trigger words and it gets
34:35
you right through. It's actually kind of smart,
34:41
though. Oh, they'll catch on eventually,
34:42
but that's actually clever. Isn't it?
34:44
Clever to think of that. Isn't it So that's why we say
34:46
because. AI is scanning all the resumes.
34:48
Now and they're just looking for the the keywords, right?
34:50
Wow, don't do that if you're listening.
34:52
And all those keywords are in the job description.
34:54
Yeah, so. Wow.
34:57
Yeah, that we learned that early on.
34:59
Yeah. And said, yeah, as much as you'd
35:03
like to trust these individuals, if they're coming from the
35:05
outside, they have nothing to lose.
35:08
Whereas an internal employee, they're going to state what
35:11
their capabilities are. So we've kind of said, OK, if
35:14
they're coming in from the outside, we don't use their
35:16
resume. If they're in the inside already
35:19
part of the organization, we can read in some of their work
35:22
history, some of the projects they've done.
35:25
But that's what we focus on is not skills.
35:29
And I'll, I'll explain the difference because a skill is
35:33
kind of like you do public speaking.
35:35
You can edit videos and it's really in my mind, it's
35:39
two-dimensional. You sit down with HR or your
35:43
manager and you go through your skills matrix once a year and
35:45
you fill it out and you say, hey, here's what I want to do
35:47
next year. We look at what's called, what
35:50
we like to call proficiencies. And proficiencies is really
35:54
what's the frequency that you use that skill, right?
35:59
So if you do public speaking or I like to say I play piano.
36:05
That's really cool, I wish I could play.
36:06
Oh, I stink at it. OK, yeah, you didn't say you
36:09
were good at it. You just.
36:10
Didn't say I played the piano. That is a distinction.
36:13
I bet you're probably pretty good though.
36:14
And we have a a personal friend that really plays, like, in
36:18
front of such a thousands of people.
36:20
So cool. He and I can both claim playing
36:24
piano as a skill, right? I can do chopsticks.
36:28
But he can rock out Madison Square Garden, right?
36:31
Yeah, there's a little difference in proficiency there.
36:36
So that's really what we wanted to accomplish with levers, not
36:39
manage skills. We wanted to see proficiencies.
36:41
How many times has this individual encountered this
36:47
attribute? It's literally how good are they
36:50
what they do, right? That's what we want to capture.
36:53
Yeah. It's.
36:54
Kind of just a level of skill, right?
36:55
It's like from 100% to 0%. Where are they at?
36:59
Well, the whole objective is to find that sweet spot where
37:02
somebody, it's obvious they enjoy it, they excel at it.
37:07
And how do we then allow a company to identify that and
37:12
then reap the benefits of aligning somebody's sweet spot
37:16
with the work that they have on hand?
37:18
And so how do you put that data together?
37:21
If someone's, you know, like walk me through a scenario,
37:22
someone's coming on site to do some project work, they're, you
37:26
know, part of the gig economy contractor or whatever it is.
37:29
How do you, they start day one and maybe they do 3-6 months
37:33
with you with the company. How do you figure out
37:36
proficiencies and you know, the behind the scenes stuff?
37:40
That's that's the magic, yeah. I mean, I know you're gay.
37:43
Maybe you can't reveal all of your secret sauces.
37:45
No, we'll, we'll keep it at high level.
37:46
Keep it non-technical. Yeah, yeah.
37:48
Essentially when you do something, you obviously that
37:55
you show proof by delivering whatever that something is and
38:01
the tool captures that information for your next gig.
38:07
So now when they, when you're being assigned for the next gig
38:11
or your next job or your whatever, depending on whether
38:14
you're a consultant or or full time employee, now the system
38:18
knows what you're capable of without you having to fill out.
38:22
A That's really cool. People are not good at
38:25
documentating all that, you know, And I'm not either, you
38:27
know? It's like you just wouldn't do
38:28
it. So, and the system is, you know,
38:31
set up that way that that information is captured.
38:34
And but it's, that's just one iota of, of what the what the
38:40
exciting part is, because it's at a much grander level as
38:46
imagine if you are a leader of a huge credit organization, you
38:50
have 100,000 people across the globe.
38:53
What are you good at? Would you like to know?
38:55
Yeah. Would you like to know how?
38:56
What are you good at? But with with actual proof and
39:00
facts, Yeah. Otherwise, it's just some we're
39:02
hey, we're pretty good at this and but are you though?
39:05
You know I. Spoke a little bit because a
39:09
what lever does is it, it focuses on demonstrated
39:13
proficiencies. There you go.
39:15
OK. Yeah, I got you demonstrated
39:17
right. And that's how we keep it
39:20
accurate. Right.
39:21
Right. We don't allow people to build
39:23
their own profiles. We don't allow people to bring
39:25
in their resumes like. Blockchain, it's very
39:28
decentralized. See my Bitcoin size, I saw that.
39:31
Yeah, I'm into that. I'm into it.
39:33
Yeah. Are you?
39:34
Yeah. Are you guys?
39:37
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, yeah.
39:38
Do you think it's the future? Seems like it not.
39:42
Live without it, just give it a few more years.
39:44
I know. It's being regulated soon, so.
39:47
Blockchain technology in general now Bitcoin I think will be
39:50
around for a long time, but the different altcoins and stuff,
39:52
we'll see how it all plays out there.
39:54
I think it's, it's similar to what you know, AI is happening,
39:57
gig economy happening, the financial institution are
39:59
getting disrupted with the blockchain and it's just faster,
40:02
cheaper, safer, it's quicker. It's what customers want.
40:04
I can trade at 9:00 PM on a Saturday.
40:07
Right. It's just the old models.
40:08
Old. I heard a guy say it the other
40:10
day. He's like, we have an update.
40:11
Like Wall Street and how you trade stocks hasn't been updated
40:14
in decades. I mean, it's the same way you
40:16
did 20 years ago as what you do today.
40:18
It's like that's not good. And that's that's how we looked
40:20
at even how do people work globally because Lever is geared
40:26
for a gig economy, but it specializes when you have
40:31
distributed resources around the world.
40:34
That's where it becomes very powerful.
40:35
That's, that's the focus of it is we'd work both worked for
40:39
very large companies, thousands of people scattered throughout
40:44
the world, all very smart. Nobody has a clue of what
40:47
they're capable of. And that's really the mission we
40:52
set out to accomplish was to allow managers to appreciate the
40:57
capabilities of their remote resources.
41:01
And that I see is a major struggle right now because we
41:07
actually jokingly call it globalization induced myopia or
41:12
near sightedness where you cannot fully understand the
41:17
capabilities of a remote team unless you actually are with
41:20
them. And so how do we build that
41:22
credibility? And that is one of the things
41:24
about Lever is it it starts early on and it starts to
41:28
compile your accomplishments, right?
41:31
So when it comes time to look for resources to do a project,
41:35
you can see what they've accomplished previously,
41:37
building your credibility and also giving you better insight
41:41
on how to apply these people, right, Right.
41:45
Many people will organizations will set out to do a project and
41:49
they'll blast it out and they'll get it done and they'll be very
41:52
disappointed in the results they get and simply because the
41:54
interpretation of the instructions is different.
41:59
Brian, what were you guys seeing in the marketplace that made you
42:02
guys so bullish and wanting to develop lever?
42:05
I mean, what what about it was what were you seeing?
42:07
And we talked about a couple things.
42:08
You guys must have been seeing a big disconnect with what's
42:11
happening with, you know, global talent, remote teams,
42:14
freelancers. And some of the, I don't want to
42:19
say games that were played, but some of the misconceptions I
42:22
think is that's. Probably a good.
42:24
Word, the best piece, you know, there's certain companies that
42:27
will just embellish and say, yeah, we can do everything.
42:31
And how do you know you have to try it and fail.
42:34
Figure out what they are good at.
42:36
And I truly believe every company, let's say a service
42:40
company is going to go out there and say, hey, we're good at
42:43
everything. Give us all of your business and
42:46
in truth they're good at this and another company is great at
42:50
this. How do we get to tap or exploit
42:55
the best pieces of each partner, right?
42:58
Understanding that. And so when we would sell
43:01
engineering services like you, our our goal was to go in and
43:05
dominate that division or to dominate that department so we
43:08
can do everything from soup to nuts for saturated.
43:11
Baby. Right, we got it all.
43:13
Of course I can do that. I'm an export at yeah.
43:15
And the truth is, is you know, your team is really solid in
43:20
this and really solid in this, right, even though that and it's
43:23
your sales just nature to say that.
43:26
But on the company side, we want to empower them to say, I'm
43:30
going to take the best from that guy and the best from that guy
43:32
and the best from that guy, right?
43:34
And without lever, it's very difficult to do that manually.
43:38
So how long has Lever been out there in the marketplace and
43:41
what results are you seeing from companies using this so far?
43:44
Yeah, we're still relatively new.
43:47
We have scratched the surface with many large companies
43:49
because. That's your target, right?
43:52
Yeah. I mean the cost of Labor,
43:55
globalization, even the the recent changes in H1 visas have
44:03
deployed a different strategy for companies to work globally.
44:05
And that's that's why I think we're we're set at it's a
44:09
perfect time, a perfect tool and a perfect need that's out there
44:14
for lever is how do we rationalize our global teams.
44:18
Resources are the most expensive part of any business.
44:21
So how do we optimize that for somebody?
44:23
And that's really the, the theme that gets us into these
44:26
meetings. And we show them the tool and
44:28
they're blown away because what we've done is we, we've really
44:31
taken project management and combined it with resource
44:34
management. But at a level where the
44:37
resource is defined to a very granular level, we're not doing
44:45
the skills, we're doing this guy can do this right.
44:48
And that's where we're starting to bridge the gaps of confidence
44:52
in remote teams and actually utilizing, and I like to say
44:57
this, aligning the complexity of the project to the appropriate
45:01
resource. So you're not paying APHD to do
45:05
right. You know, trivial things.
45:07
Could this apply towards W2 teams and regular?
45:10
Because it seems like I'm, you know, I come from the staffing
45:13
world many years ago and I think man staffing and recruiting
45:16
companies would eat this up. They don't have a good way to
45:18
you know, it's pretty you're presenting a candidate, imagine
45:21
and now you're able to say this is what they're proficient in
45:23
and they've done and this is how that well they've done it right
45:25
versus someone else is like, here's a resume.
45:27
Yeah. So you just.
45:28
On here there they did AutoCAD. It's like, OK, like how well and
45:32
how? Check in the box.
45:33
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
45:34
This would be such a strategic advantage.
45:36
It would be so you have your applicant tracking system is
45:39
what you use for the storage candidates, right, right.
45:42
But really levers targeted at those projects, yeah, with
45:47
established resources. OK.
45:49
So these people are vetted their approved suppliers or they have
45:54
a, you know a contractual obligation to the the company
45:58
and then we list their profile and they maintain their
46:01
profiles. And then as projects are, I'll
46:05
say sourced, their profiles are flagged if there's matching
46:10
attributes. And then we actually compare
46:13
side by side. And as we get into the future,
46:18
that side by side comparison is going to be really cool because
46:21
we're looking at how do we not just the cost of saving money,
46:25
but like let's offset that and say, hey, if you did this
46:29
project in the UK or if you did it in the US, there is an R&D
46:34
tax credit available that's going to offset 10% of that.
46:38
So not just thinking of, hey, this guy is, you know, $5.00 an
46:41
hour cheaper. It's hey, if we're doing R&D and
46:45
there's different benefits that I don't understand as an
46:49
engineer and I'm just looking for somebody to get this done.
46:52
We can guide some of that sourcing behavior based on even
46:57
like I said, R&D tax laws or we, we get into a lot of ITAR
47:03
filtering. So ITAR is international traffic
47:06
and arms. So that is the US government
47:10
saying, hey, this propeller that you've made for the submarine
47:15
that's completely silent. Yeah, you can't, you can't ship
47:19
that overseas. We don't want our enemies to
47:22
understand this technology. And it's really a requirement
47:25
that if a company exports anything digital, that it has to
47:30
be evaluated for its impact to ITAR.
47:35
And what that means is are you sending munitions information?
47:40
To a unfriendly adversaries. Friendly, yeah.
47:45
They list on probably a weekly basis the countries that you can
47:49
ship to or. Piss someone off?
47:51
Exactly, exactly. It's digital now.
47:54
It's not even a list. It's just, yeah.
47:57
This company is in good stand. Never mind.
47:59
Yeah, never mind. We're out.
48:01
Yeah. So yeah, I know we've been all
48:03
over the place on this call and it's no shortage of our typical
48:08
conversations. We are.
48:09
I think these are the real conversations that happen with
48:11
business people and founders and you know.
48:13
Yeah, yeah. And and honestly we, we started
48:19
with a few elements of this tool just to test it out how it's,
48:25
how it's working, is it, is it working?
48:28
And we also had a personal need. We run our business on our tool.
48:33
We use our tool to that's cool to run our business.
48:37
We have extremely low overhead. One of our advantages that we
48:41
provide as a as a as a supply to our customers.
48:44
Yeah. And then we noticed that, well,
48:48
there's there's many, many tools out there that they'll do
48:53
fantastic on this one thing that do great in this one thing here.
48:58
There's a lot of companies that are that try to put special
49:03
solutions to integrate these tools.
49:08
And we figured, you know what, what if there's something that's
49:12
already integrated that does all these little things and may not
49:17
do it phenomenally, but it just needs to do it good enough to
49:23
give you a competitive edge. And how did you guys meet?
49:28
Oh boy. He interviewed me.
49:30
He hired me. Really.
49:32
Yeah. 15 How many years ago now? About 15-16 years ago.
49:35
Wow, yeah, that's crazy. Well, what?
49:38
What are been brought to the table?
49:39
You guys known HR a long time. Yeah.
49:41
And you're in town. You're not even from here,
49:43
right? Well, I lived here for a while,
49:45
right? Still miss it.
49:47
Believe it or not, I'm in North Carolina now.
49:49
Right. It's beautiful.
49:50
Remember that from our call? Yeah.
49:51
Yeah. But I come here and feels home
49:55
like. Yeah.
49:56
But then you know up in the morning and.
50:00
Yeah, yeah, January this morning.
50:02
Like, yeah, maybe I don't miss this place.
50:05
This morning he's walking out and I'm like, it's Chicago, this
50:09
is fantastic. Yeah.
50:10
No, it is. Yeah.
50:11
He's over there with bundled up. You guys just don't have the
50:14
swings low. Yeah, we do.
50:17
Yeah. It's not.
50:17
It's not severe. Nothing is severe here.
50:20
Delta is here. It's insane.
50:23
Yeah. It really I always tell people
50:24
all the time like cuz if you're not from around here you may
50:26
think like oh the summers are probably cooler cuz it's like no
50:28
dude the summers are hot as hell in Chicago area, humid as hell
50:33
to the point where you can't even sit outside some days.
50:34
You haven't lived in Saint Louis and then?
50:36
Well, I'm from Springfield, so actually, yeah, I'm not.
50:38
Yeah, there you go. So yeah, it's even worse down
50:40
there. But then the the flip side is
50:42
like the winter's like extreme cold someday.
50:45
It's not always but. And so it's like you just get
50:47
this like, yeah, the pendulum switch.
50:49
It's wild. I was explaining this is that of
50:53
somebody in the South, the fact that the schools were closed
50:57
because it was too cold. It's just the concept that just
51:00
people don't hard to be hard to understand.
51:02
Like, what do you mean? The fact that you're still up?
51:04
No. Did you get a frostbite?
51:05
Frostbite. It's real.
51:08
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
51:09
You stayed long enough. You will die.
51:11
Yeah. No kidding.
51:12
Yeah. I always like that first day
51:14
where it hits like 35. You call me and like people are
51:18
losing their minds. Yeah, You know, see that's not
51:20
there's warming centers. What you're talking about is
51:23
like the -15 negative, yeah, windshield, it's -3040 and so
51:27
with that wind hits you. It's like you don't have, you
51:29
really don't have a lot of time before you start, you know,
51:31
having some serious effects happening.
51:33
Yeah. So that's that's why I'm there.
51:35
Now people are jumping in ice baths, so you know.
51:39
Yeah, maybe it's a, you know, hey, if you're out there for a
51:40
couple minutes, maybe it's actually beneficial, right?
51:42
You know, so where do you guys want to go from here?
51:44
What's kind of the plan? You know, I'm in terms of just
51:46
the business, you know, do you want to work it for a while and
51:49
then sell it? Are you planning to stay with it
51:51
long term or you have any plans at all just kind of working on
51:54
it? You know, we've talked about it.
51:56
We haven't talked about it recently, but you know our
51:59
strategy was as we wanted to bring lever to market, but we
52:02
wanted to do it under our terms. Yeah, that's cool.
52:04
I like that. We set out many years ago and
52:08
started doing engineering services and the revenues from
52:12
that drove the development of the application.
52:16
And so it gives us, it gives us a beautiful opportunity.
52:20
We're here with no debt and no investors.
52:24
That's amazing. So.
52:25
Make it for you guys. And I think that that's part of
52:27
our core DNA is most softwares that you see are developed by
52:32
software companies, yeah, and designed to be open and flexible
52:37
to so many different. Applications, right, which makes
52:40
it not good for the thing it should do.
52:42
The structure sales force is very there's a lot of
52:44
applications. We do everything for everyone,
52:46
you know, it's kind. Of like, and that's how they
52:48
make their money. They come in and say, we have
52:50
this science kit called SAP. It'll do whatever you want,
52:54
right? But it's going to cost you
52:55
money. And we've gone into it with
52:59
we've done product development our entire life.
53:01
Let's make a product development platform that takes care of
53:06
everything from the, you know, the, the initial design to, to
53:12
warranty and follow it, right? And the value that that single
53:18
platform provides is what's really that's the excitement
53:22
about it because you may not see it.
53:24
We go into we were just at a customer this morning and they
53:28
make big machines and they rely on spreadsheets teams e-mail
53:37
that gets deleted after 60 days for Sarbanes-Oxley, right.
53:41
And so all of the their core DNA of why that project is
53:47
progressing, it is scattered around the organization.
53:51
There is not one repository of. Here's our projects, right?
53:56
As as a project, right, That's that is so key because there is
54:03
absolute information and and legacy that they have sure, but
54:08
it's in buckets. That's right, right.
54:10
Yeah, it's just like we we can, we compare it to the, you can
54:15
have amazing ingredients, but if the recipe is wrong, right, it's
54:20
not going to taste right. Exactly.
54:22
So that's the difference between what we bring to the table.
54:27
We focus on those recipes because one, this incredibly
54:33
intelligent gentleman once told me that if you want to be
54:36
successful, this is back in my automotive base.
54:40
If you want to be successful in this industry, in automotive,
54:44
you got to treat the car as your customer.
54:48
Not the person, not the manager, not the VP.
54:53
The car is your customer. The car needs to be happy.
54:56
Yeah, that part needs to fit on that car and it's got to work.
54:59
And all those things, you, you you focus in that direction.
55:03
So essentially customer focus. But it sounds, it sounds.
55:06
Funny, I got it. No, because it makes the
55:08
customer happy if it's running. With it exactly right make the
55:11
product excel expectation or exceed expectation then you will
55:15
not have a problem. Yeah, What's what?
55:18
Yeah, what's what's like the biggest misconception that
55:21
people have about starting a software company that they don't
55:23
know, unless you get into it and you're maybe a couple years into
55:26
it, that founders should know if they're going to start a
55:28
software company. Seems like it's not all roses
55:32
and rainbows and sunshines, right?
55:34
We could write a book. Where is it?
55:36
I think the number one, the number one thing I like to tell
55:39
people is that we founded a software company.
55:42
My beta machine is still flashing 12:00 because I have no
55:45
idea how to figure it out. But that's what I think makes
55:50
our situation unique is we went and we gathered some really
55:54
talented software folks and said, look, we know nothing
55:57
about software. You know nothing about
55:59
engineering and product development.
56:01
We have spent probably since 2017 educating each other, and
56:07
we give them a complete line of freedom, which they love.
56:12
So we hired a bunch of guys from Ubisoft, Grand Theft Auto, you
56:15
know, Cool. Yeah.
56:17
But that comes in because we know that the young kids, if
56:21
they see ASAP screen or an Oracle screen, it's, you know,
56:24
monochrome. Yes.
56:26
They're never gonna. Yeah.
56:28
So. That's not their vibe, right?
56:33
We need to elevate the. Look, and so that was our
56:38
initial piece, but what we found is these software developers, if
56:43
you take the chains off of them and say here's what I need, you
56:46
can come up with however you think it's best to do it.
56:50
I'm not going to tell you how to do it.
56:51
I want it to do this. They come back and they have
56:54
ownership in it and they feel like they're contributing and
56:58
this is their baby. We've had 0 turnover with that
57:02
approach. We don't delegate, they almost
57:05
delegate to us. We just tell them the endpoint
57:09
and he. Needs to do this.
57:12
Because we the secret is we have no idea.
57:15
Yeah. They think you may be doing
57:19
they. Think well, we, we, we, we all
57:22
know our craft. Yeah, that's right.
57:24
That's right. We are a group of people that we
57:26
all bring something to the table.
57:27
That's right. Yeah.
57:29
And that's that's the simplest way to put it.
57:31
Yeah. Well, this has been a great
57:32
conversation guys. I really appreciate you coming
57:35
on, doing the show. Where can people find connect
57:37
with you, learn more about what you guys are doing, and then
57:39
maybe even mention who's the right customer for you guys?
57:42
Right, right. Blackrockinnovations.com Yeah.
57:46
Yeah, so it. We want to get up in the show
57:49
too for you guys. Yeah.
57:50
And then the software is under lever dot work and like I said
57:56
it'll be released formally in 2026.
57:59
We're looking for early adopters that are interested in steering
58:03
some of the future development of it.
58:04
We have several customers, all very good sized customers that
58:08
I'm happy to be running with. But we also need some of those
58:13
smaller companies because their needs are different and we want
58:16
to make a solution that can start with a a younger company
58:19
and grow with them and make sure that it can handle all levels of
58:24
organizational size. I'm gonna make an introduction
58:26
to you guys for someone I had on the show.
58:28
His name is Brian as well. Must be cool, I think.
58:30
Must be cool. Might be I think it's worth the
58:32
conversation for you guys Yeah yeah, so like 40 something W
58:36
twos, but then they have 200 plus contractors perfect and
58:39
they do hourly stuff and they want to track and they're big
58:41
and yeah it's. We could go he's.
58:42
Right here, he's he's close. OK.
58:44
We could go on another hour, but if you have a customer that is
58:47
dealing with statement of work or SOW, yeah, it is probably the
58:53
most difficult category in a purchasing person's, I'll say a
59:01
portfolio to manage because it's all contractual.
59:04
It's it's not a part, you know, you're buying a service which
59:09
has to be defined and how do you know that you're receiving this,
59:14
the service. And that's the biggest challenge
59:16
with SOW from a purchasing standpoint is you never really
59:20
get that receivable are that, hey, it showed up, we're done,
59:24
we're happy we can close this out, right?
59:26
And most SOWS are abused to be converted into a makeshift
59:31
staffing engagement, right? What Lever does is it keeps them
59:35
engaged. They have to continue to update
59:37
their progress. And then when they're done with
59:39
the project, they hit done. The the company representative
59:45
provides feedback. We keep feedback on performance,
59:48
value add, communication of all of our suppliers, all the sow.
59:53
So when you start talking about the gig economy, that's where we
59:57
start to pull this all together is we bring in the gig, we see
1:00:00
where they fit. It's just like an sow, you know,
1:00:04
it's the same thing. And there is a lot of room for
1:00:09
sow improvements and that's the, that's the, that's the
1:00:13
outsourcing, not the offshore necessary.
1:00:16
And so. One of the largest appreciations
1:00:20
we've getting or we've gotten in lever is purchasing organization
1:00:25
saying Oh my God, I can actually manage my sow spend.
1:00:28
I know where it's going. I can actually put my arms
1:00:30
around it and tell people for this much spend, here's what
1:00:34
you're getting. Yeah, it's needed to, Yeah.
1:00:37
Yeah. So, well, thanks again for being
1:00:39
on the show, guys. I appreciate you coming on.
1:00:40
If you're listening and you think you might be a fit for
1:00:42
what we talked about, we'll put the your guys's e-mail and
1:00:45
website in the description of the podcast.
1:00:47
So definitely reach out and I've got a couple connections to make
1:00:49
for you guys. Thanks again for being on the
1:00:51
show. This was amazing.
1:00:52
Nice guys, Nice to meet you.