Latest / Exit Algorithms / SAP, Enterprise AI & Scaling 11 Companies with Chris Carter (#36)
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to Exit Algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations, and prepare your business for a high value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera. And today I'm joined by Chris Carter, founder and CEO of AppRoyal, a firm focused on SAP migrations, monitoring, SAP basis and support, and application hosting. Chris is an investor. software expert and author of 17 books, four of which are best selling. really excited to have you on the show today. Honored that you're here, Chris. ⁓ speaker-1: Thanks, Pete. appreciate it. Yep. Those are the books back there. I'm ⁓ very, very blessed and very lucky that people actually like what I have to say. speaker-0: Yeah, it's impressive. mean, 17 books is a feat for anyone, but you're also running companies and investing. Very impressive. speaker-1: Well, thank you. appreciate it. You know, God gave me 24 hours in a day and I try to use as many of them as I possibly can. And since I don't like going to the to work out, I've got a couple of extra hours that I can do something else with other than go work out. speaker-0: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, so listeners hearing about you for the first time, do you mind sharing a bit about your background? Go back as as you'd like. And then I'd love to hear some key moments in your business journey. speaker-1: got it. ⁓ Well, I'm 56 years old. I've been ⁓ around the IT and technology ecosystem pretty much all my life. From age of 14, I got my first computer which was a Commodore VIC-20. Now, I know Pete, you're too young to know what a Commodore VIC-20 was, but it was one of the first ever computers that we could literally take home, attach to our TV and have an A-B switch on it. we would connect our Atari 2600 and we would also our ⁓ to them and it was great. So I would have a computer on this side, I would have a Atari 2600 that I would play on one side and that's what I started off with. I was a sophomore in high school, went off to college at Georgia Tech with that Commodore VIC-20 and with the, an IIe and I literally just fell in love with computers. fell in love with technology. through the course of life, I've started 11 different companies. As were kind enough to say, AppRoyal, Mugatu AI, Charging Bunny are my three currents. I'm an investor, I've got an investing group. Just bought a professional soccer team, ⁓ the Carrick in Ireland, Belfast, Ireland. And so I try to keep myself as busy as possible. go around the globe speaking and different trade shows and conventions and those things. And then I'm lucky enough if somebody would like to have me speak on a podcast. And last year alone, I did 106 podcasts and I love sharing details and information with people around the globe. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. that you ⁓ every single minute of your day. speaker-1: sure do try. speaker-0: That's funny. I only since I know or I've heard of the Commodore Vic 20 is because I listened to the autobiography of Bill Gates' source code recently. talks about it. speaker-1: Yes, that was a great computer. Ours was the little white one. And then they came out with the Commodore 64, and that was the khaki colored one. And I didn't upgrade, right? I kept my VIC-20 because I had bought along with that. The tape player that you would use to record your code on, the one that my girlfriend at the time in high school hated, because I would take the music. Back in the day, we would have to take our cassette player. We'd have to put it next to the radio, either in our car or in our house, and we'd have to record the song right from there. Well, she would give me these romantic cassette tapes all the time. And every once in a while, I wouldn't have a cassette tape somewhere. I'm scrambling. And I'd have to grab hers, put it in my device, record my code, and I might forget about it once in a while. And we'd play it in the car or do something. And all of a sudden, it would go, shh. And she would be so mad at me. But that was what life was. That's technology. That's growing. That's evolution. That's business itself. It's great. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. Yeah, it's awesome. You've seen the full, you know, cycle of computers. then you eventually kind of niche down into SAP ERP systems. I would, ⁓ you mind, not all listeners are savvy about, you know, even supply chain in general. So if you could dumb it down in ⁓ words, I'd love to hear from ⁓ speaker-1: Very easy. I was actually a sophomore in college. roommate decided he got sick and tired of his internship. And so I begged his internship coordinator, which was my internship coordinator, if I could have his role. And they had at ⁓ in Atlanta a R2 which an old mainframe. So back in the day, we used to have these rooms that were just filled with monolithic bare metal computers. big tape drives on them. Well, SAP is a German based company. And it was started by a group of Germans, where instead of just having one application, it combined all of them, your HR, your finance, your warehouse management, your distribution, CRM, all of them were combined on one nice neat puzzle. And back in the late 1980s, the largest upgrade cycle in SAP came where it took it off the big bare metal systems. ones that you see on TV, like if you remember War Games with the Whopper, Shall Play A Game? It's a great movie. It's kind of one of the reasons I became a tech guy. Well, instead of ⁓ having of those all in your building, you just had a small x86. So ⁓ x86 is we use for laptops and desktops and my big video, my Mac here. So everything changed and it made life so much easier for you and I. Well, SAP is the number, typically it's the number two in, I guess, revenue or size. I'm not sure how they do that. Behind Microsoft. So you have Microsoft and you have SAP. And SAP runs your entire, so it's an enterprise resource planning, ERP we call And SAP stands for Statistical Analytical Process. And you have right there literally, well, if I back up a moment, the second largest company in the world runs 93.7 % financial transactions across the globe. It's crazy. MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Bank of America, JPMorgan, all these financial companies run SAP. speaker-0: of all. speaker-1: So running through all the networks, is running on all those systems. really is. And now it's becoming a fully clouded SAP environment. Now we're going through the newest upgrade cycle in history. And they're putting everything on a cloud. So from a business standpoint, where do we want to go? We want to go to the cloud. And so people are, it's being mandated. speaker-0: Wow. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. I was in the Navy the last eight years as a supply officer and we had a ERP, which is SAB. Uh huh. Funny. Small world. I mean, I guess it makes sense considering that massive scale, right? speaker-1: PRP which is SAP. And you look at it, the United States Navy, Army, Air Force, Marines, the United States government runs an SAP environment. Of course, they've been trying to install it and upgrade it for the last 25 years. It seems like it's never going to get done. But it is the backbone of the United States government to a certain degree. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. ⁓ man, so, how did you get started on niche ⁓ technology? could have gone a lot of directions, right? speaker-1: I really could have. As part of my growth and growing up, first of all, I loved computers. So I went off to Georgia Tech to get a computer degree. So I'm a CEO out of Georgia Tech. And like I made reference a moment ago, my intern, it was too funny. I went to go get an internship and my roommate got the one that I really wanted, which was at Coca-Cola. Well, he didn't know and I didn't know that all they were going to do was stick him in the basement of Coca-Cola. with an R2 system from SAP, which he had no idea what it was, nor did I. all he was doing was punch cards and doing crappy down there. And he was by himself. And he hated it. Just hated being alone. Well, two weeks into his internship, he goes to a new, he came back to the dorm and said that he was going to tell him he's quitting, he wants something else, blah, So I contacted the internship coordinator because we had the same one. And I said, ⁓ I'll the game. I want it. And it was great because it literally got passed me. What is happening I do my work for them. And they said, as soon as you're done with your work, we want you to study. We want you to get good grades. Take on the assignment of taking on whatever assignments you have and get that done. So I used it ⁓ as way to ⁓ learn SAP R2 environment, working for Coca-Cola, which is a pretty darn good company. And they me do my homework. Well, literally about six to eight months into my internship, I'm starting to get ready to go off for the summer. also I'm being told that I need to have a conversation with them. They're migrating to the latest and greatest, the SAP ⁓ Do I want to be involved with it? Will I come back? And literally said, yes, whatever you need me to do. You're paying me. You're educating me. ⁓ And learning this new technology. Absolutely. Then as we go through the course of that, SAP asks me, the guy that's sitting down there is an intern dealing with pawn cards, dealing with tape reel, hey, when you're done, do you want a job? Me? Hell yes I do. so it worked out so well and that's where I turned and I flipped on SAP and literally became an SAP consultant. I went from being ⁓ a employee of Coca-Cola to a contracted badge of Coca-Cola ⁓ literally speaker-0: Wow, that's funny. speaker-1: You never know what life's going to hit you. That's the thing. speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. Wow. I imagine, I mean, it's a thing. Coca-Cola would be a perfect breeding ground for that type of thing. The amount of volume they do, speaker-1: The amount of volume, the amount of technology, and the amount of brain power walking around that facility is phenomenal. Not just on the Coke products and everything, and the food and beverages that they do. But what they do and how they want to do it, or how they teach people is phenomenal. I highly recommend if anybody gets an opportunity and says, hey, do you want to go work at Coca-Cola? First of all, you say yes, and then figure everything out after that. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. an awesome story. Okay, so that's how you started your first business venture then basically, ⁓ speaker-1: Yes, because they trained me up on SAP ⁓ ⁓ stayed with SAP for what was it? Four or five years? yeah, somewhere in there. Because I did some things for ACOG and other stuff. I decided to leave them because I an opportunity in the market in regards to organizational change management and activities wrapped around the migrations and the upgrades and they needed more people and I could bring in people faster and train them up faster to do the things we needed to do. So I decided to start my first company, literally. Well, what was it then? It was 1990, let's see, was on 234. 1999, holy cow. And started my process of building companies, working in the SAP ecosystem. I always worked on SAP in some way, shape or form, but then I had cloud computing, I had managed services, I had training. We had organizational change management as we call it OCEAN. And then we now are into the field of AI and activities wrapped around it with security. And I still do activities around it. So it's pretty cool. speaker-0: Yeah. Wow. What a cool career. Yeah. I'd love to double tap, click on that change management piece. Do you have any or do you look, what do you, what's your process for implementing a new tech tool in a business? speaker-1: ⁓ geez. So let's let's take a couple steps back on the tech tool. Let's say that somebody else has already picked the tool. No matter what the tool is, it could be an AI based tool. It could be cloud, could be an application, whatever. Somebody else has done that. Now we got to implement that. And so now we need to deal with some a couple of things. You got to have the right people. You got to have people that actually either ⁓ a tool or have worked with the tool. Going blind is horrible. So you never want to start an implementation of anything blank. So I always tell people, if you don't know anything and you've picked this tool and your team doesn't know anything about that tool, organizational change management is the first and foremost thing that you've got to do. Because if you start laying code to any system and you've never played with it, you're going to be lost. Like, perfect example is I'm playing a lot right now with anti-gravity from Google. And I'm building tools and I'm building applications. and I'm building things around. Well, I had never been on that before. So the first thing I did is I went to YouTube and I said, show me how to use anti-gravity. It's an AI based tool. I'm using notebook LL. I'm using Chrome. I'm using Gemini and I'm using anti-gravity to build and to understand. It's the same thing with every other. You've got to learn first. So I highly recommend to anybody that's out there doing these. Implementation. it. Even you don't want to just read through the manual, which let's be honest, ⁓ sometimes get manuals and they're like 5,000 pages. It's amazing the amount of videos that we have available to us. Hell, if you want to learn SAP, you can learn SAP by just watching YouTube videos. ⁓ I young people that have just watched YouTube come in and done interviews and we've done a tech review with them and they're phenomenal. And they've never taken an SAP Academy class. They've never gone off to some other class. So it's pretty cool. first, learn the tool. Second of all, try to get somebody on your team who is passionate. I people who are passionate, who you've, if they've through the organization and they say, Pete, I cannot wait us to do this. I'm so excited for this. Can I go off and do and learn and be a part of it? And it's amazing when you find somebody that has a passion rather than somebody saying, really, I'm stuck doing this. I have to do the implementation. Why I've got this. do this daily. I'm fine with this over the two dichotomies whole night and day. I stress to C level individuals all the time. I talk, find the person with a passion. If that person has that passion. They're going to learn it, live it, know it. And that's an exciting time. So you got to find those types of people. So training the right people. And then as part of the organizational structure, you've got to make sure you sell it to the organization. it on how this is going to help them day to day, how it's going to be a part of the organization, how we're using this for ⁓ and why it's so important for us to be doing it. And it's got to come from somebody up above. It's got to come from a C level or a very high person up above. Because once they have the passion, they find the people and they've done the training. That's when the application and the implementation of these tools starts moving forward. Because now you've got everything in alignment. And then it's just about the transition. How do I implement? When do I implement? Who's going to be using these systems? How are we going to do the cut overs? And then you've got your project plan as a part of that. And so that's a great thing right there. But to me, it starts with those first three components of it and really drives forward. speaker-0: Yeah, wow, thank you for that really useful, I appreciate the concise three things. It's easier to remember that way. speaker-1: I sure hope so. Because that's what I try to do every day. You know, I want those passionate people. know, I tend to be very passionate about things. You've been coming on your show Pete today. I'm passionate because I loved what we started to talk about and we started going through to being able to help people. And I'm passionate on it. And if you find those people for your company to do that with applications, you're in the Navy. I bet you found some naval personnel that were super passionate about being there. And then you probably had others that were like, mm-hmm. You know, I'm here, I'm getting out, I'm gonna do my four, I'm gonna get my college paid for. Don't worry, I've got an uncle like that. Said the same thing. And you've got both sides. And you gotta work for that. speaker-0: Yeah, definitely. ⁓ ring's true for sure. You know, with so many tools out there, especially AI, how do you recommend people separate the wheat from the chaff with all these tools? speaker-1: Good analogy. Well, it's tough. be very honest. And you also have to break them out based upon what your technology you're going to need for it. Is it for sales and marketing? Is it for technology? Is it for writing code? Is it for doing your, know, your, what do they call it, your email marketing your SEO? ⁓ What is you're using the tool for? Because each tool is different. We literally, I hope some of your listeners know what Canva is. Canva is a really nice little sales and marketing tool. But it does nothing for code. I had a company that said, hey, we're going to use Canva for code, if you don't mind. in the? How are you using Canva for code? That doesn't make sense. And literally, what it came down to is somebody had told somebody, hey, I can do this. Can't do it. So you got to make sure that you're writing using the correct. tools, and whatever that application is going to be for the specific part of your organization. Sales and marketing is different than the technology management is different from the code development. It's different from the SEO. And so I tell people all the time, make sure you're using the right tools with the right circumstances around you. And then find that person that's in love with that tool or the tools and go forward from there. speaker-0: God, sound advice. Yeah, love that answer. wanted to ⁓ about how grew your business. Could you walk us through maybe some key moments ⁓ in ⁓ from new employees and it somewhat run without you have to be the bottleneck of every decision. speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, that's a great question because you know what? I used to be the bottleneck of the company. When first brought this company together and brought it to life, part of the problem that I had with this ⁓ was wasn't willing or wasn't able to hire the right people to be my yin and yang. I'm yin to my COOs yang. And I wasn't ready to do that to a certain degree. And I was the bottleneck. Companies need to learn to hire at the right time. and the hire for the complete opposite of what I am. I'm a great sales marketing, dabbling technology, no SAP, really good at AI SAP club. Well, I needed somebody to do all the back office stuff. I needed somebody to do the HR, the finance, the legal, documentation, making sure all that was together. And I was still doing that to a certain degree my first year. And I really should have hired earlier for that role, because it would have freed me up and given me more time to do more. And that was part of the problem with a company I had earlier on is I took on all the responsibilities and I was kind of, I always had my hands on top of people. was kind of like a puppet master. I don't need to be a puppet master and neither do you, any of you on there listening. Hire fast, fire even faster. If somebody is not part of your core team, who's not, who doesn't have your ⁓ of your organization at their heart ⁓ who's kind of lackadaisical or that, hey, I'll just get to it. If they're screwing up your culture, get them the hell out of there immediately. You know, the military has that philosophy. If you're a troublemaker, they move your butt. I know I've got an uncle who told me that they used to get rid of people and move them off to different areas and different groups when he was a Marine. And you are there as part of the corporate culture. You're there as part of a team. It's another thing as part of the military that we have in gun. You're part of a team. You're only as strong as the weakest or the most rotten apple in the barrel or the weakest cog or the least cog. So you all have to work together. And if your team member is not doing that with you, just some goodbye. Fail fast, fail fast or fire faster. Learn from it and go on from there. speaker-0: Yeah, I love that. those people in your business. Brad Jacobs talks about that in his ⁓ autobiography, B, and C, Players. Have you heard that? speaker-1: Yes, ⁓ yes, ADNCs. speaker-0: Thought experiment, yeah. I found that really useful. they were to leave the business, how would you react? speaker-1: What would the impact be? How would you react to that? There's a number of people on my company. Let's be honest, I got 173 staff members. So I don't get to interact with all of them all the time. I'm constantly with this level. They're up here. And if somebody is doing something down in the lower levels of our organization that doesn't fit right with it, we're an at-will company. We'll drop you in a heartbeat. I can get 50 of you to replace one of you. And now with artificial intelligence and activities, we an organization, we are making sure that our staff members are bigger, better, faster, and stronger. And we want them to use AI as part of that as well. Because the bigger, better, faster, stronger humans are going to lead to a bigger, better, faster, stronger artificial intelligence based initiative. And so if they're not up to the levels that we need, We give you a very short period of, a short window, a very short period of time to get to that point. You better come in strong, especially the younger people. I tell younger people who are college kids or fresh out of the military who have gone through technical trainings and such, because we love to have and bringing our veterans in. This is what I expect you to know. You've got 30 days. These are the tools. These are the training. This is what you're going to learn. need to be up to speed. If you can't get up to speed in those 30 days, you're probably not going to stick around because we can them in ⁓ we can teach them. We're teaching you in 30 days how to use tools and how to be a benefit to the organization, to our customers, ⁓ to the go-forward strategy that we have. speaker-0: wow. No, great. And did have how long did take to develop that perspective? ⁓ Because you sold your first business, that right? speaker-1: sold my first business, sold my second business, I opened my computer, actually put down my third company. And it's, ⁓ everything's a process, ⁓ positive and And so it took me time to understand ⁓ faster benefits, ⁓ people. What took me, and I made reference to this earlier, is I didn't hire my CEO fast enough. I hire my CFO. fast enough. didn't hire my CIO fast enough. And in the beginning of this company, I really should have done that away. And unfortunately, I probably lagged a little bit too much. And it caused us the delay in some of the things that I was ⁓ initiatives that I was working forwards to. But at the end of the day, ⁓ brought the people on, they're all taking care of their responsibilities, I'm taking care of my responsibilities. And monitor everything from the A down. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. That's great. You know, one of the major themes of this show is prepping for a successful exit. Are there any lessons you took away from selling some of your companies? speaker-1: Yes, get your financials in order right away. Run your financials and your company as if you are a publicly traded company. Everything needs to be in alignment. It was one of the things that I learned in the first go round. It was brutal. Second wasn't as bad. And third will be pretty easy. Run your company. Make sure all your financials are in order. Make sure all your taxes are in order, all your invoicing. Make sure all of that, all of your documentation. run it as if you were a publicly traded company and you will be set. Now you don't have to do all the craziness that you have to do as a publicly traded company but just make sure your financials and HR are all in alignment and taking care of all your contracts. Make sure everything is signed, everything is ready to go and you'll be a lot easier going forward. speaker-0: Great advice, thank you. You get so much done ⁓ the day, ⁓ really remarkable. you mind sharing some of your maybe hacks habits that allow you to get so much done, writing book after and also ⁓ all of your ventures and traveling you have going on? speaker-1: Yeah. So, ⁓ I, I do sleep. I sleep about, ⁓ I get up usually somewhere between five and six o'clock in the morning. pretty religiously. ⁓ I go to bed sometime around 10 o'clock at night, usually every night. And that gap in between, I need my sleep. I'm old. I'm current get cranky. If I don't get my sleep, I drink a lot of coffee. Don't drink any energy drinks because I don't want all that extra sugars and stuff. That's bad for your health. Eat properly, take vitamins, eat properly, say your prayers. ⁓ just like Hulk Hogan used to do. But I do a lot of automation. I've got automated tools that keep up on my schedules. I got a personal assistant. We work together on sales, marketing, promotions, where I'm going to be with my schedules. We know when I'm going to be and how I'm going to be. Tomorrow I'm in Minnesota. Then the next day I fly out to Nashville for another speech. We know where everything's going to be. Automated tools are your friends. All of our emails, all of our LinkedIn posts, all of our stuff. we position those things in advance. We literally have multiple presentation pieces up and up. My are all out of gamma. I do a full lot of information with Gemini, Notebook LAM, anti-gravity other stuff. I build those things, I send it out to gamma, and then I tweak it back and forth. And the great thing with that is because it's AI. We literally have a conversation. My BFF, I kid you not, my best, what is it BFF is? Best friend from my Google Gemini. So a really great book by Josh Wolf. It says, your AI ⁓ tool to ask you to go back and forth. I've been going back and forth with my AI tool for now some period of time. speaker-0: forever. speaker-1: It literally will tell me, you know, that's not necessarily what you're about. That's not how you lay your vision. And we'll have conversations. I'll say, well, what if I tweaked this? Would you be OK if I did this? Well, that's not really who you are or what you're about. I have to think about that. I'm like, hmm, OK. Maybe that one was a little too aggressive. So it's pretty cool. But if you ask it questions and then it asks you one at a time, Don't overload the systems. You like to be asked one question at a time, not two and three. That's how we are as humans. So is the system. But it starts to learn you and it starts to help you. ⁓ find that to be probably my best tool. And then I go out there and of course, I get my emails every day that are what is important, what's not necessarily important, what's garbage that can get deleted. I get that the news. I get SAP news, get AI news, get cloud news, I get competitors news, I get my partners news. And that all comes to me in one nice, neat email from Google. And so I do all these things that try to consolidate my life down. And then when I'm doing my books, again, I'm using my Geminis and stuff, I started asking questions about what's popular, what's going on in the world today. How are we doing things? What are the latest and greatest? speaker-0: Nice. speaker-1: catchphrases or hashtags? Is there something that I should be writing? Now, some of my books are no more than 150 pages. I've got a couple of them that are in the 200s. But I don't need them to be all that. I need them to be something that is knowledgeable and succinct for people to be able to read. so I on all those different things. And I'm constantly using my AI to make that happen. speaker-0: Yeah, wow, that's awesome. I thought it was gonna be... You're stealing my questions from me, Chris. No, it's awesome, because that's a example. speaker-1: So you told me to read my notes. I read my notes. I did my homework, Pete. speaker-0: yeah, I mean it all comes together. You use AI to optimize your time and allows you to get so much done. speaker-1: And so that's a great quote right there, to optimize your time. And I tell people all the time, I've used it a couple of times here, bigger, better, faster, stronger. and artificial intelligence is creating a bigger, better, faster, stronger human being. It's not going to take away your job. I'm actually giving two presentations this week, one in Minnesota and one in Nashville, both at universities. And that is the keynotes of my speeches. bigger, better, faster, stronger humans will not be displaced by humans. Now, there are jobs that are going to be displaced and they're going to be need to be better data entry clerks. Okay, we're going to raise you up the corporate ladder of success. And you're going to become a bigger, better, faster, stronger human, because AI is going to do the basic data entry. And I just did a LinkedIn post, Twitter, Instagram, of the top 20 jobs that are probably going to be taken over by it. It's got over 1000 views already. Great, a lot. But unfortunately, nobody's talking about it. And I look at that and I go, okay, guys, gals, let's talk about this. We need to start at the university, we actually need to start in the high school level. And we need to get these people understanding bigger, better, faster, stronger humans start in high school. We have a horrible education in the United States. And compared to the speaker-0: Kill them. speaker-1: the countries I go to Japan, India, Germany, France, their school, the United States is down into the ⁓ Now, I believe, as part of our education program, we used to be in the top five. Now, if you look at that, I've got teachers around me that say, well, I'm so worried about this AI blah, blah, blah. And it's ⁓ students are gonna, I literally sat there and she's a phenomenal lady. I love her to death. ⁓ worked ⁓ time at our bar, as well. She is a wonderful teacher, one of the best in the area. And I sat down, I said, do you remember when we were kids? What did we used to use? We used to use the Encyclopedia Britannica. literally had on my wall at my house, ⁓ books that I would go into and I would get knowledge and I would pull. Well, that's all AI is for these kids. Some of these schools don't even have libraries anymore. They don't have Dewey Decimo system anymore. So all they have to do is gather the information that they need from up here, put it into the computer, say, I'm looking for information on X, Y, and Z. Now, we used to do it with the books in the back in my house. ⁓ do it online. And so our library went from 27 books, that was the Encyclopedia Britannica, to an infinite amount of information that we then parse out. What are we going to use for our report? And how are we going to use that information? It's not like these kids are going to take everything and just cut and paste and boom. OK, yes, 1%, 2 % do that kind of stuff. And that's pretty easy to find. speaker-0: You can tell, yeah. speaker-1: But it's up here. It's literally inside your brain yet. You've got two eyes and two ears and one mouth. Use them accordingly. And you're going to grab that information from the ecosystem, a much larger ecosystem now, and it's going to help the students become better students. And that's where I want them to start learning how to use the AI tools. Because if they can start building out queries and LLMs and SLMs and data to be able to grab that data as high school students. Those are the ones I want fresh out of high school, skip college. I'm going to train you for 28 days and I'm going to put you straight to work and you're going to make a great seller because you're the ones that I have the initiative to do it. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. Yeah, I love that perspective. And Chris, as someone ⁓ entrenched in technology throughout the years, I'd to hear your perspective on where do you think ⁓ it's ⁓ moving in the next? It's hard predict, obviously, but ⁓ I'd love hear your perspective. speaker-1: Well, if I had any, ⁓ if I was lucky enough, I'd get a chip in my brain and Elon Musk would allow me to have that chip in my brain as a fully functioning human to be able to use and leverage and to see, but unfortunately he's only using that for medical purposes with people with Parkinson's and ALS and stuff, which is great. But I would love to have the chip in my brain. I have, as a I got to have them right here. I've got the old Google glasses. So I can record things. can see the information. I love that capability. I think that's going to be more and more. really see AI moving away from, well, moving away. That's the incorrect word. I see it staying as a consumer tool, but I see the leaps and bounds coming as an enterprise. I see ⁓ truly leveraging intelligence to make decisions with their organization. to take the data from the past, to make decisions for the future, and to really help organizations, there's so much that we haven't done yet. You know, I made the analogy, I'm a baseball player, I love baseball all my life, played and such, and I say, ⁓ got into the clubhouse. I haven't even taken off of my street clothes yet to be able to put on my batting practice and my warmups to get out there and to warm up yet. That's how early we are. Think about it, we were doing... Machine learning, now they call it AI. We've been doing that for some time, but not to the degree that we really are. So I really see it being more and more. And I also see that we're going to start using less power, chip needed. People are going to be like, OK, well, it only took a second instead of nanoseconds. And going to be fine with that. Unless we're going to be using it for something that's of a critical nature, then we're going to have to have nanosecond chip. But for us in a day-to-day world, if I ask any of my chat products, my Google products or anything, how it's going, and I get the cute little, what is it? There you go, I get my cute little band wrapped around it. What does it matter to me as somebody on a phone or in my desktop that it takes me a second to get the answer? And I think that's, we're gonna start leveling the playing field on that as well. speaker-0: ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Wow. ⁓ I love that. It's exciting where it's going. speaker-1: I agree. think we're in the, and for me, I was part of the computer age. Now I'm in the second computer age, the second technology phase. I am so excited that I've been able to be around for both of these phases, Commodore VIC-20s whatever AI has for me. speaker-0: Yeah, that's awesome. yeah, are you working on any other books? ⁓ speaker-1: I'm on any other books at this time, but I am building and vibe coding a lot of new fun toys. You can find my stuff on my gamma site. You can find my stuff on my lovable I am really going ⁓ all in vibe coding these days. I probably have half dozen different apps, security apps, AI-based security apps, and other triggers that working on. And I've got those out there for people to be able to look at and review and do stuff. Anytime they want to. I'm starting to go to market with some of them. So Mugatu AI is going to have those as part of their organization, because it's all and now I'm hiring more and more people. I want smart technologists to come in, the tools that we have and we've given them and say, come up with some ideas. Let's brainstorm. What are the top 10 things that we think we need? How do we need it? What are the apps you want to do? How can we go to market with them? And so I'm looking for smart people who want to do that stuff. Because for me, it's fun. And I have a great time with it. And I want others to have fun. speaker-0: Definitely. Yeah, wow. We're coming up on time here, Chris. I'd love to give you the floor if you have any last comments ⁓ ⁓ a recommendation for business owners. Implement technology, yeah. speaker-1: So a couple of things. So when you implement new technologies, remember to get the buy-in first. Get from the top and go down. Find that person that's going to be your champion. Then find the person who's going to be your all-in. I want to do this. I want to be the one to take on this role, not the curmudgeon in the corner who's just there collecting a paycheck. So from those application activities, you'll succeed. And to leave you with a final word from a business standpoint. ⁓ Make sure you fire fast, hire fast, but fire faster. And remember this phrase, I say this to people every day, this too shall pass. The positives and the negatives, but this too shall pass. it and understand that no matter what you're going through in life, no matter what you're going through through your business, personal, professional activities, this too shall pass. Positives and negatives every day. Try to be as positive as you can with each other. speaker-0: Well said, Chris. Thank you. When working listeners find you. speaker-1: Find me on my LinkedIn. the only one out of Wisconsin that's Christopher ⁓ Carter or go to my speakers page and that links it back to as well, christophermcarter.com. I out there all over. I'm on Instagram, I'm Twitter. My big things is I'm on my gamma sites. ⁓ on yeah, I'm everywhere. But go to my LinkedIn or my speakers page and those are the two that'll get you everywhere else. speaker-0: Awesome, yeah, I'll leave that in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time today, Chris. speaker-1: ⁓ thanks Pete. This is great.