Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #58: AI as the Great Equalizer: Entrepreneurship and the Coming Small Business Boom — Ross Buhrdorf

Transcript

#58: AI as the Great Equalizer: Entrepreneurship and the Coming Small Business Boom — Ross Buhrdorf · Love Conquers Fear

• 0:00
  Hey everyone, I want to announce that Love Conquers Fear with the
• 0:05
  subtitle Humanity, AI and the Age of Abundance for All is now
• 0:09
  available for preorder@loveconquersfear.org.
• 0:13
  It is such a beautiful experience to have this book in
• 0:16
  my hands. The version that you can
• 0:19
  pre-order now is hardcover comes out on June 23rd in honor of the
• 0:25
  solstice where the light overcomes the dark.
• 0:28
  It covers a very broad range of how we're going to transcend all
• 0:33
  the biggest problems and opportunities we have in the
• 0:37
  world to enter into that beautiful age of abundance for
• 0:41
  all. I hope you'll support the work.
• 0:42
  This is my love letter to humanity.
• 0:44
  This is my soul song. It's a deeply sacred book that I
• 0:49
  poured my heart and soul into. Tell your friends.
• 0:52
  Tell them about Love Conquers fear.org.
• 0:54
  Tell them about the podcast and ultimately tell them about this
• 0:58
  book because this is the manifestation of all the work
• 1:01
  I've done on this path, and it is my deep, deep prayer for all
• 1:06
  of humanity. Thank you so much.
• 1:08
  You know, I don't want to characterize IAI as always
• 1:11
  something, but you know, you do need to put it in the context of
• 1:14
  this is this next thing that that we need to respond to.
• 1:17
  And I think it's a response, not a react.
• 1:20
  And you're seeing a lot of reaction, fear based reactions.
• 1:23
  We attached to it early on. We didn't pick a horse.
• 1:26
  We bought everything and every technology and adopted
• 1:29
  everything. Our goal was get everybody in
• 1:32
  the company using it across all of the departments.
• 1:36
  We said, hey folks, you know, you, you need to adopt this or
• 1:39
  you don't need to be here. Fear or love, you got to pick.
• 1:41
  And so we picked AI and so we were all in.
• 1:44
  And so we had to act that way. Welcome back everybody to the
• 1:50
  Love Conquers Fear podcast. I hope you love the last episode
• 1:54
  with Chris Himes, the long time CEO of Indeed who's now teaching
• 2:00
  AI responsibility at Houston Tillotson University.
• 2:04
  You can follow along in that course.
• 2:06
  Anybody that has an Internet connection can audit the course.
• 2:11
  And I've been watching his classroom videos and I will tell
• 2:15
  you they are quite well done. You know, in that interview that
• 2:20
  I did of him on that episode, he asked me if I'd seen the AI
• 2:24
  documentary and still a fairly recent film.
• 2:29
  But I decided actually on the day that I recorded him to go
• 2:32
  ahead and make the time and go see it.
• 2:36
  And I liked it. It's a, it's a good film.
• 2:41
  I will tell you that. I really didn't learn anything
• 2:45
  new in it. But I think for people that
• 2:49
  aren't as into the AI space, which is probably most people at
• 2:53
  this point, it'll be informative for them.
• 2:57
  But it tends to really, like many movies, try to hit the
• 3:02
  dystopian emotional chords more than the utopian ones.
• 3:06
  And I get it. That's kind of the way Hollywood
• 3:09
  works. It really needs to kind of
• 3:12
  hijack the amygdala, which is the fear based center of of our
• 3:15
  brain. You've heard me talk about that
• 3:17
  many times on this podcast that, you know, we come from this
• 3:20
  evolution where we've only had electricity for .1% of the time.
• 3:25
  So 99.9% of our evolutionary time as Homo sapiens, we have
• 3:31
  gone with scarcity that you and I can't imagine today.
• 3:36
  And and so, you know, when someone says bear or fire, you
• 3:40
  know, we're going to pay a lot more attention.
• 3:42
  And there's utility in that. The ego has definitely kept us
• 3:45
  alive and there are times where we really need to be in a very
• 3:50
  fearful state. Let's say that, you know,
• 3:52
  something is happening, like a building is on fire and we're in
• 3:55
  it. But most of the time that isn't
• 3:58
  the case. Most of life is filled with a
• 4:01
  lot of love and a lot of connection.
• 4:05
  So I, I appreciated the movie. I, I thought they did have some
• 4:09
  people on like Reid Hoffman who were really making the case for
• 4:13
  abundance. Peter Diaminis was on there.
• 4:16
  I'm a big fan of both of them. They are both mentioned pretty
• 4:20
  extensively in the book I have coming out on June 23rd in honor
• 4:24
  of the solstice, which is called Love Conquers Fear with the
• 4:27
  subtitle Humanity, AI and Age Abundance for all.
• 4:30
  I would still encourage you to go see it.
• 4:32
  I do think it's got important messages, but I want to give an
• 4:36
  honest assessment on the documentary myself.
• 4:41
  And, and I'll say that I wasn't surprised by any means that I
• 4:45
  kind of expected what it would be and I got what I expected.
• 4:51
  It does have a human, a very human story woven through it and
• 4:55
  that the filmmaker is about to have their first child and
• 4:59
  really thinking about what the world is going to be like for
• 5:02
  them. And as I mentioned on the
• 5:04
  episode with Sol Rashidi, that was a two-part episode.
• 5:08
  She's amazing. You know, I'm doing this project
• 5:11
  for the love of all humanity, including, of course, my
• 5:15
  children and thinking about the future that I want them to have
• 5:18
  in this age of abundance for all.
• 5:20
  And, and I've laid out the risk many times on the podcast and in
• 5:25
  the book. And that I'm 95% certain that we
• 5:28
  make it through this, this very fateful decision as a
• 5:33
  collective, as humanity, to make it to the other side of it and
• 5:36
  have abundance for everyone on the planet.
• 5:39
  And that's never been more possible than it is going to be
• 5:42
  in this exponential of exponential curves.
• 5:45
  Anyways, Go check it out today. I'm super, super happy to have
• 5:50
  Ross Burdorfand, who's the CEO of Zen Business, a company that
• 5:55
  we've been early investors in. And I've gotten a chance at
• 5:59
  several moments to help Ross with it.
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  But he is a extremely capable CEO.
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  There's been very little that I've needed to help with, so I
• 6:10
  just want to make that clear upfront.
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  And it was really an honor to be with him when he won the ENY
• 6:18
  Entrepreneur of the Year. So, Ross, it's good to have you
• 6:21
  here. Brother.
• 6:22
  Yeah, I thought this was going to be a coaching session, right?
• 6:25
  You did. I like coaching session.
• 6:28
  Who's coaching here though? That's the question.
• 6:30
  I don't know, You know, I'm so just honored and humbled to be
• 6:34
  here, Brett. Thank you.
• 6:35
  And I think everyone should know, you know, I would still
• 6:38
  feel very much a soft spot in my heart for this guy.
• 6:43
  I remember. Let's see, it wasn't our first
• 6:46
  office. First office was one of my
• 6:48
  wife's rental houses. And then we were downtown,
• 6:50
  remember in that junky building downtown.
• 6:53
  I remember. And you were helping me with the
• 6:55
  first pitch deck. I've been just doing Angel
• 6:59
  rounds. And you said, Ross, I think this
• 7:02
  is Unicorn. I think this is a billion dollar
• 7:04
  business. And you were the first person to
• 7:06
  say that. And it's true, you know, it's
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  true. So you know, I, I thanks, thanks
• 7:13
  for believing in US and thanks for all your help.
• 7:16
  That there's there's still a few.
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  You can still see in our deck some influence from you even in
• 7:22
  the, the, the deck that we use today.
• 7:25
  Well, for, for the entrepreneurs listening to this, and there's,
• 7:27
  there's quite a few, you know, you without coaching for me, you
• 7:34
  just needed someone to tell you that this was a really good
• 7:37
  idea. You were laying out multiple
• 7:39
  scenarios of how the revenue could play out.
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  And you're like, look at these are all like really conservative
• 7:45
  and I'm pretty confident I'm going to beat all of these.
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  I was like, I was like, first of all, I know you're rooted in
• 7:53
  humility. So Ross, like if you beat all of
• 7:57
  these, this is a Unicorn. And it was just obvious from the
• 8:01
  numbers. And I told you the story about
• 8:05
  bizarre voice. And now when I was raising money
• 8:08
  in our series, AI laid out multiple fundraising scenarios
• 8:13
  or multiple scenarios of how our revenue could play out.
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  And I did that saying, look back the business on scenario one,
• 8:22
  because it's already a good business.
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  You're going to make a great return if that scenario plays
• 8:26
  out. But of course, I was hopeful
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  that scenario 3 or 4 would play out and like you would beat all
• 8:34
  the scenarios and became a Unicorn as well when we went
• 8:38
  public. And, and it's rare.
• 8:41
  It's just rare to see that. And I love the fact that you had
• 8:46
  kind of stumbled into it without coaching from me, but you just
• 8:50
  need to hear from me. Actually.
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  Your approach is like really well done.
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  And, and you know, we, we talked about the rest of the deck and,
• 8:57
  and, and, and, and had a lot of fun doing that.
• 9:00
  But that was the key because, you know, you had these, you had
• 9:06
  these ambitious goals from an investor standpoint, but to you,
• 9:12
  they were modest. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this
• 9:14
  is so exciting, you know? Thanks, I appreciate it.
• 9:17
  Yeah. Well, I appreciate you a lot and
• 9:19
  thanks, Thanks. Thanks for letting us in.
• 9:22
  You know, you, you, you get to pick who becomes an investor.
• 9:26
  That's right, and I remember I called you multiple times about.
• 9:29
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked a lot over the years.
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  So I'm, I'm curious, like with, with, with what you've got going
• 9:37
  on with Zen business and other things in your life, you know
• 9:42
  that you're passionate about. Let's go in The Time Machine and
• 9:46
  go backwards to talk about the young Ross.
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  And how do you you know you know the Steve Jobs commencement
• 9:51
  speech you gave at Stanford? How do you connect the dots in
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  reverse to what you're doing today and why you're so
• 9:57
  passionate? I mean, I have a book coming out
• 9:59
  this time next year. Awesome.
• 10:01
  And, you know, it's funny when I heard what you were doing, you
• 10:05
  know, that the, the title of my book is Fear is a Liar.
• 10:08
  Oh, cool. You know, and I don't know if
• 10:10
  the the video, if you can pick this up, I've got this.
• 10:13
  Yeah, the video that we'll see that I got this a little tattoo
• 10:16
  on my arm here. Oh cool it.
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  Says fear is fear is a liar. That's awesome.
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  And so I think it really speaks to what you know, what what
• 10:26
  you're talking about and and you know, we're not Cavemen being
• 10:31
  chased around by Saber toothed tigers, but it isn't ingrained
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  in US. And you know, you can harness it
• 10:39
  or you can, you know, cave to it and and and react to it.
• 10:43
  So coming back to your original question, you know, I was always
• 10:49
  an entrepreneur. I think my parents were
• 10:52
  entrepreneurs. They had side hustles.
• 10:53
  Sounds like we have that that in.
• 10:55
  Common my you know, my parents were rehab.
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  I remember at a young age they were rehabbing houses and I was
• 11:00
  helping them do do that on the, on the side.
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  And my, you know, dad was doing, you know, he bid on old
• 11:09
  buildings to, you know, tear him down and then sell the stuff.
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  And so he was always doing a side hustle.
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  And my mother was also, you know, hanging wallpaper on the
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  side. So it was always a entrepreneur.
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  And I even remembered a young age.
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  I grew up in Lincoln, NE. And so it would snow and once it
• 11:29
  would snow, then, you know, I'd get my shovel and I'd walk
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  around at houses and shovel snow for money.
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  So I was always that entrepreneur.
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  And I do, you know, it, it there's some of this little bit
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  in the book, you know, there, there is a part of that that now
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  in hindsight, I reflect on, you know, that was kind of fearless,
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  you know, as a young kid to go around and ask people knock on
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  the door, knock, knock, knock, knock.
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  Hey, can I shovel your, your lawn?
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  Or you know, through the university course when I was
• 12:08
  going to school, I had a regular job, but I was side hustling,
• 12:11
  cutting wood on the side and selling firewood too.
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  So I always had a side hustle. And then so anyhow,
• 12:20
  entrepreneurship ran deep in our family and, and I think I
• 12:24
  inherited that and, you know, I had pretty humble upbringing.
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  So there's probably a little bit of, you know, I just needed to
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  do it right, right. You know, necessity in in
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  addition to, you know, there's nothing but get you moving more
• 12:43
  than necessity. You you know that as an
• 12:45
  entrepreneur, that's one of the the.
• 12:47
  Necessity is the mother of invention.
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  That's right. You know, here's here's a cool
• 12:51
  synchronicity. Actually, you, you don't know
• 12:53
  this, but episode 41 I had Jay Wilkinson on and he lives in
• 12:58
  Lincoln, NE and he's a publisher of the book.
• 13:02
  It's called Do More good. It's the name of the publisher.
• 13:05
  And I have a conference May 27th through the 29th, which is
• 13:09
  called the ROYY. And the theme this year is love,
• 13:12
  conquer sphere Together we rise. And we, we talked about on that
• 13:17
  episode, but it, but it's a, you know, in the past, I would have
• 13:21
  just been like, Oh, it's a small world, but Lincoln is a very
• 13:25
  small place. And it's I, I really believe in
• 13:29
  synchronicities. I'm a big fan of that book, the
• 13:32
  Celestine Prophecy. And this is so it's so cool to
• 13:35
  hear that come out of here. Yeah, I grew grew up.
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  It's a good place, you know, that just talking about, you
• 13:41
  know, I think we we look at education, you know, and we're
• 13:45
  here in Austin and you know, not it's not all great in Austin and
• 13:53
  education is not all great everywhere.
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  But I feel so very fortunate growing up in Lincoln, NE
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  because, you know, you can almost go to school anywhere and
• 14:00
  get a great education and only with, you know, aged can you
• 14:05
  look back and say, wow, that was a really good primary education.
• 14:09
  That then launched me and I went to University of Texas here.
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  So my arc was from, you know, you know, always entrepreneur.
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  My parents really instilled me with hard work.
• 14:23
  And do you know, and, and virtue, we talk about that.
• 14:29
  I'm talking about philosophical virtue, which is a good setup
• 14:36
  for entrepreneurship. So I always saw them and, you
• 14:39
  know, I think if you see it and you can model it, then you're
• 14:41
  not so scared of it, right? It just seems seems like a
• 14:43
  natural thing. And then went to UT and
• 14:48
  graduated from there with a computer science degree.
• 14:51
  And almost, you know, again in, in hindsight, it's almost
• 14:54
  laughable. It's like immediately I'm, you
• 14:58
  know, in the companies I am, I'm working on the entrepreneur
• 15:00
  projects, you know, they naturally, I naturally go to
• 15:04
  them and I'm doing side hustles, right, right.
• 15:07
  In addition, you know, because I'm learning the craft, but I'm
• 15:10
  also doing, you know, side hustles and you know, and then
• 15:17
  you know, my first job was at data General.
• 15:21
  Probably you're the. Only one I remember, Data
• 15:23
  General. Data general and then some.
• 15:25
  People recognize. It's like people recognize.
• 15:27
  It and then, you know, via that network, you know, I ended up at
• 15:34
  Tandem Computers and then Tandem I ended up at my first and even
• 15:38
  in Tandem. It was a startup internally.
• 15:40
  We did a first fault tolerant Unix box and then from there I
• 15:46
  went to Hal computer systems, which was the last computer
• 15:48
  company from the ground up right worked with Andrew Heller, you
• 15:52
  know Andrew and and then really was off from there on it was
• 15:57
  man, I had the bug. I was always going to be working
• 16:01
  on venture back startup. It was more exciting and, and
• 16:05
  you know, I really felt, and I talked about this in my book,
• 16:10
  there's a lot of myths around. And, and I think it, it, it
• 16:14
  speaks to this fear versus love that, you know, when, when I was
• 16:20
  coming up, it was get a job with a big company.
• 16:23
  They'll take care of you, you'll retire there and you'll have a
• 16:27
  career. But you know that almost
• 16:29
  immediately when I went to data general, they had, you know, a
• 16:34
  billion dollars in revenue. They that they did and they
• 16:38
  handed out these plaques to everybody and then six months
• 16:41
  later they're laying off half of the workforce became a parent.
• 16:45
  It became a parent. That's not the that's not the
• 16:48
  avenue for the risk reward. And so I've always been venture
• 16:54
  and you know, I have a, a saying when I tell the staff, it's
• 17:01
  like, there's, there's nothing, nothing I haven't been able to
• 17:04
  get through. So if we're not through it,
• 17:06
  we're not through it yet, it's not over.
• 17:09
  And I think, you know, that part of that is really are you going
• 17:13
  to go with the fear based part of it or are you going to, you
• 17:16
  know, go with the love based part?
• 17:18
  I do think there's those two two options, and.
• 17:24
  It is always a choice. As a leader, it is a choice.
• 17:26
  It's a choice of like, what do you want to lead with?
• 17:29
  And if you lead with fear, it's highly toxic to you as a leader,
• 17:33
  not just everybody else. That's right.
• 17:36
  That's. Right.
• 17:36
  And and there's enough fear already getting pushed at
• 17:39
  everybody to not try to pile on even more.
• 17:43
  I mean, we live in a in a society where the algorithm seek
• 17:48
  has been to maximize engagement. And that means social media is
• 17:53
  going to push lots of fear to us because it's easy to hijack the
• 17:56
  amygdala. It means that, you know,
• 18:00
  documentaries like the one I was just talking about is going to
• 18:02
  primarily push that narrative. It means that the media is going
• 18:07
  to primarily push that negative. Even though I'm a fan of the
• 18:10
  Free Press, there's a tons of articles in the Free Press which
• 18:12
  are like high utility and tons of scientific articles,
• 18:16
  etcetera. But the business model is going
• 18:19
  to algorithmically seek like to keep you click, click, clicking
• 18:23
  and that you know that that is a choice.
• 18:27
  I mean, it's a very explicit choice.
• 18:29
  And you know, I made the choice very young in my career.
• 18:33
  I was a 24 year old CEO where I was kind of like figuring out my
• 18:39
  style. And I'm like, you know, I'm
• 18:41
  going to choose to lead with love because that's congruent
• 18:47
  with my soul, with the way I was raised with a mom that just
• 18:51
  completely unconditionally loved me.
• 18:54
  And I'm so glad I made that choice.
• 18:57
  I mean, honestly, the the reason that bizarre voice was rated the
• 19:01
  number one place to work in Austin when when when we're
• 19:04
  running it is that we were leading with love.
• 19:08
  That's really what Brandt and I were trying to do as Co founders
• 19:11
  was like manifest more and more connection love inside the
• 19:15
  company. You know you got to have a good
• 19:17
  business model too to have a great outcome like Zen Business
• 19:22
  is having. Or you know where you were at
• 19:25
  before with Home Way, which was another Unicorn.
• 19:29
  Yeah, I love that. I love that.
• 19:31
  And I agree with that. I mean, I think, you know, the
• 19:36
  folks we work with, they can work anywhere.
• 19:39
  And I, you know, you can't. I mean, I, I do think there's
• 19:44
  something fundamental about, you know, this fear, love, fear
• 19:52
  versus love saying in that I have a belief that people can
• 19:56
  tell. I mean, now you can, you can
• 20:00
  really tell that the emperor has no clothes.
• 20:03
  And you know, I talk about it. Big part of my book is really of
• 20:12
  everyone has frailties. And, you know, how do you lean
• 20:16
  into them? Do you try to hide them?
• 20:18
  Do you go to the dark side with your frailties and defend them
• 20:23
  when everyone around you knows that you're defending?
• 20:26
  Or, you know, you just kind of like, hey, this is me.
• 20:30
  I need to hire people around me. That can.
• 20:33
  Support me in these areas and, you know, make damn sure that,
• 20:39
  you know, my Co founders absolutely know what those
• 20:43
  frailties are. And then I don't really try to,
• 20:46
  I don't try to, you know, defend them.
• 20:50
  I go for my strengths and and I have other people that go for,
• 20:55
  you know, can can handle those things where I could be
• 20:58
  impulsive and, you know, go tackle the hill and have a few
• 21:04
  people around me. Like I'm not sure about that.
• 21:06
  Maybe we ought to slow down a little bit or you know, so I,
• 21:12
  and I do think that's, you know, we've all kind of worked for a,
• 21:15
  a boss that has bought an, into a, a, a, a frailty that's
• 21:21
  catastrophic for the company, right?
• 21:23
  And they'll defend it to the bitter end.
• 21:26
  And, and that reflects in their, in their business.
• 21:29
  And I mean, it's catastrophic. It doesn't always have to be
• 21:33
  catastrophic, but it can be it, it usually is.
• 21:37
  And I think, you know, this, this tenor you're talking about
• 21:42
  of, of love versus fear. I think it, it, it, it has to
• 21:45
  exist in the business. Why?
• 21:47
  I'd like to ask you a question. I asked you a question.
• 21:49
  I'm a little, you know, I kind of try to come at it from the
• 21:55
  side because some people get uncomfortable with it.
• 21:59
  You know, at the executive team, my C team, they know everything
• 22:03
  about me. And I always tell them if you've
• 22:07
  got any suspicions, here's my wife's number, you can call her.
• 22:12
  She'll confirm. She's got a list already of
• 22:14
  everything, right? Any confirmation and?
• 22:18
  Like me, you've been married a long time, so that's a long
• 22:20
  list. It's a yes over.
• 22:22
  Four or sometimes they'll pull something out I'm like baby
• 22:25
  that's 15 years old like you know that was if I could totally
• 22:28
  I don't even remember that guy. You know, a different version of
• 22:30
  me and I like the Buddhist principle where where every day
• 22:38
  when you wake up, you know, from your dreams, you can choose to
• 22:43
  be reborn. You're reborn and you can choose
• 22:46
  like you can take what you want that serves you and you can
• 22:49
  discard everything else that didn't.
• 22:51
  And and so I tried to remind her like, Hey, I'm, you know, I went
• 22:56
  identify that I'm a Buddhist. But, but I would say that I've
• 23:00
  looked for the common spiritual root between all religions.
• 23:05
  You know, I'm Jewish by, by background, but, but I, I found
• 23:08
  so much to love in this in, in, in the common rude and, and some
• 23:13
  of the practices that surround these.
• 23:15
  But I love that principle from Buddhism because it lets you
• 23:18
  live so free and it really is true.
• 23:20
  You, you don't have to, you know, we have this consistency
• 23:23
  bias as human beings because of how much scarcity we dealt with,
• 23:28
  where we needed to act quote UN quote in a very consistent
• 23:32
  manner because of how dangerous the environment was, you know,
• 23:35
  pre electricity and with with the Saber toothed tiger and you
• 23:39
  know, the Ice Age we went through and all of that.
• 23:41
  And and you know, you don't have to be consistent about practices
• 23:48
  that didn't serve you or didn't serve others right.
• 23:50
  You just don't. You can just let them go.
• 23:52
  And I mean, I, that's, that's fabulous.
• 23:55
  I, I agree with that. The, the, the trick comes in,
• 24:01
  in, you know, and I, and I'll just share my experience is
• 24:07
  that, you know, we don't have the burning building, but we do
• 24:14
  have childhood trauma which which causes folks to react out
• 24:21
  of that when that situation replays in the, in, in the world
• 24:26
  and it naturally replays. So, you know, this this Zen
• 24:31
  Buddhist principle of, you know, suffering is attachment, right?
• 24:37
  And so, you know, are you going to attach to that childhood
• 24:43
  trauma? And we all have it some worse
• 24:45
  than than others. Like, you know, parents were
• 24:50
  great, but you know, there was a lot of poverty and a lot of drug
• 24:54
  addiction and and that cost for lots of trauma.
• 24:58
  And, you know, I do think, you know, my sister's the same way.
• 25:05
  We have been very successful financially because of our
• 25:09
  childhood trauma. It's like, man, we're going to
• 25:11
  have money. If anything, we're going to have
• 25:13
  money. But you know, you can't just be
• 25:15
  going after money. That becomes a God in itself.
• 25:18
  That's. Right.
• 25:19
  And so I do think, you know, the folks have to deal with those
• 25:29
  deep seated traumatic experiences and, and and we Zen
• 25:37
  business, we work with The Mavericks.
• 25:38
  You know, Mark Cuban's our spokesperson.
• 25:42
  So one of the things we do is The Mavericks and they've got to
• 25:44
  give back program and I should have you there.
• 25:47
  We we coach they, they bring 100 individuals in Dallas area that
• 25:54
  have small businesses. And I'm telling you right, you
• 25:57
  know, we go to all of these startup things with these right,
• 26:00
  pretty well funded venture backed, you know, very a lot of
• 26:05
  privileged folks, I would say. And man, you go to those things
• 26:08
  and I mean, you can't make it through without crying.
• 26:12
  You know, these the, I mean, you talk about grit and talk about,
• 26:16
  you know, the facing their demons and getting through it
• 26:21
  regardless. Anyhow, you know, that really
• 26:24
  inspires me. I, you know, I've got a, I'm on
• 26:28
  a board at a bank in the Dallas Fort Worth area.
• 26:30
  And there's, I won't mention his name, all the board members know
• 26:33
  who I'm talking about. But you know, he's very
• 26:36
  successful and he's very humble. And I've seen him at the
• 26:39
  retreats. I'd seen him.
• 26:42
  He's got the, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and
• 26:46
  the Dallas paper, and he reads them every morning.
• 26:51
  And this guy didn't make it through high school.
• 26:53
  And I sat down with him again, you talk about the love and
• 26:56
  compassion. Guys like you and me would sit
• 26:58
  down with this guy and say, hey, what's your story?
• 27:00
  Other people might ignore it. And I asked him story, you know,
• 27:04
  And then this guy is very, very, very wealthy.
• 27:08
  And what's your story? And he tells his story.
• 27:10
  Hey, listen, you know, my mom died when we were young and with
• 27:14
  10 kids with my dad. And we'd go out in the morning
• 27:17
  and work in the field. And then he'd take us to school
• 27:20
  and we'd get off school and go work in the field.
• 27:22
  And he said, you know, at 15 years old, you know, I dropped
• 27:27
  out of school and, you know, joined the rodeo and would hike,
• 27:31
  take the train and and a Long story short.
• 27:33
  And then he ended up, you know, joining the army because he
• 27:37
  wanted to make something of himself so he could come back
• 27:40
  and marry his high school sweetheart because he felt like
• 27:42
  he didn't have anything to offer.
• 27:43
  He gets through the service, comes back and marries her.
• 27:47
  And then he, he tells a story about how he would buy single
• 27:52
  bottom plows and they'd come on the train and only guys from
• 27:57
  Nebraska and know what a single bottom plow is, but it's a big
• 28:00
  ass piece of steel. And he would lift those things
• 28:05
  with boards and get them on his pickup and then sell them at
• 28:07
  the, the, the, the, the, the market.
• 28:11
  And that's how he got his start. And then he worked at A at a
• 28:14
  John Deere dealership and ended up owning it.
• 28:17
  And then, you know, he's one of the biggest auctioneers in the
• 28:20
  the country now and owns a lot of real estate.
• 28:24
  And I asked him, I said, well, what was your story?
• 28:26
  And he looked at me and said, Ross, I didn't have a choice.
• 28:29
  I had to go. I had to make it work.
• 28:31
  And you know, I certainly feel that way a lot of times.
• 28:36
  You know, I have to make it work.
• 28:38
  And if I'm making it work out of fear, it's the wrong answer.
• 28:45
  It's corrupted, it's distorted, it's in some ways truly sick.
• 28:51
  And you know, you really have to when you're dealing with your
• 28:56
  customers, with your employees. I mean that all, as you well
• 29:00
  know, that all flows downhill. We, you know, we, we have the
• 29:05
  best Trustpilot score in the industry at our company.
• 29:08
  And, and the people ask me, why is that?
• 29:10
  I said that's because we treat our, our CS people as if they
• 29:14
  are the number one customer, then they treat our customers
• 29:18
  like they're the number one customer.
• 29:20
  And if you do the inverse, hey, I'm worried about money and how
• 29:24
  we're going to do this or that and, and save a few bucks, then
• 29:28
  we end up with a corrupt sick system.
• 29:31
  Now we use AI for everything and and we have very cost effective
• 29:35
  in our CS and we have great support.
• 29:38
  So I mean, I think all those things matter and the way you
• 29:42
  deal with your customers and your employees and are you
• 29:45
  acting out of fear on, on or are you acting out of love and
• 29:50
  compassion? Yeah.
• 29:51
  You know, you just, you just reminded me because you and I
• 29:54
  one year went to a Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit and one of
• 30:01
  the people there was Kid Tendall.
• 30:03
  I used to serve on the board of directors of Conscious
• 30:06
  Capitalism alongside, alongside him, John Mackey, some other
• 30:09
  people, some people have been on the podcast.
• 30:11
  John was on episode 30. We helped recruit the new CEO
• 30:17
  who at the time was Alexander Makovan.
• 30:19
  He was on episode 19. Kip told me a story one time
• 30:24
  about culture because he was founder of the Container Store
• 30:27
  and the longtime CEO. And I said, out of everything
• 30:32
  you did, this isn't my favorite question to ask CEOs.
• 30:37
  I'll actually ask you this question, but but I'll tell you
• 30:40
  what his answer was. I was like, out of everything
• 30:42
  you did to change your culture or do something culturally that
• 30:51
  increased your performance, what was it?
• 30:53
  If they if you could just name one thing?
• 30:55
  And he said he thought about it and he said, OK, I've got it.
• 31:00
  He said we trained our in store employees 30 times the amount of
• 31:08
  hours than other retailers did. And he said, and the reason we
• 31:13
  did that is because we explicitly made the decision
• 31:16
  that we'd put the employee first because if the employee was
• 31:19
  first, they would take care of the customer because they felt
• 31:26
  that from us that they were #1. And I thought back to, you know,
• 31:34
  my time at the Container Store, because, you know, Deborah and
• 31:37
  I, when we got married, we had no money.
• 31:39
  I had $1000, she had $2000. I used to joke with friends.
• 31:42
  I married the wealthier woman and, and you know, we'd go to
• 31:46
  the Container Store and man, those people knew, like they
• 31:48
  knew the products and they've been, they tend to be really
• 31:52
  nice people and stuff like that. It's, I think, I think it's
• 31:55
  changed now He's, he's not there anymore.
• 31:57
  It's like private equity owned and all that.
• 32:00
  But but that that that stuck with me a lot.
• 32:03
  Yeah, I agree with it. Yeah.
• 32:05
  I fundamentally I, I, I agree with that, yeah.
• 32:07
  What do you think that sort of be for you Zen business because
• 32:10
  I mean you, you built? It all the culture made the
• 32:13
  difference. I mean, I think there's AI don't
• 32:18
  I'm never A1 per one thing answer.
• 32:20
  I think it's, you know, we can talk about the institute, the
• 32:23
  Santa Fe Institute I'm on. I think it's a bunch of agents
• 32:25
  and so you really need to look at your business or anything as
• 32:30
  you know a complex. It is complex.
• 32:33
  Agent based model and So what pieces do you you push on?
• 32:38
  I mean, I think we know a pillar of our businesses has been
• 32:42
  customer success and we don't view it as a cost and we view it
• 32:45
  as a pillar of the business and the the people know that.
• 32:50
  And you know, and I talked to him every day, I see every
• 32:55
  single review comes back past my e-mail.
• 32:58
  All right, that's cool and that's really cool.
• 33:00
  You know, I'll leave it. That's got to be a lot.
• 33:02
  That's a lot and. Do you use those like?
• 33:07
  When you read those, do you sometimes use those as call outs
• 33:10
  with? Oh my God, I had the team all
• 33:11
  the time, 5 star ones I put them into, I bunch them up, put them
• 33:14
  into Slack. Nice, great job.
• 33:16
  You know the one star reviews? We've got a process on dealing
• 33:21
  with those. And I'll tell you a story about
• 33:23
  Cuban just to give you a sense of Mark is he gets complaint
• 33:29
  emails, you know, if people do not like, like Mark, what the
• 33:33
  hell are you doing with this company's in business?
• 33:35
  They did this that and the other they come to me and then we we
• 33:39
  handle them and and, you know, touch wood.
• 33:42
  We're 100% in, in handle them with Mark.
• 33:45
  But what's great is that Mark sends them to me.
• 33:48
  Yeah, that he still this, this guy, this, you know, icon.
• 33:54
  And then everyone should listen to this.
• 33:55
  If you get nothing out of this, this podcast, other than that,
• 33:58
  that's the difference that makes the difference, right?
• 34:01
  This guy is still dealing directly with the customer and
• 34:06
  still has enough, you know, spirit and energy.
• 34:14
  Yeah. And wherewithal to pass those on
• 34:17
  to me? Yeah, I bet he's doing the same
• 34:19
  with cost plus drugs with his own business.
• 34:21
  You know he is, you know he is. And so, you know, I, I have that
• 34:25
  same experience. I know you do too.
• 34:30
  You must too. People asking for your time.
• 34:32
  I never turn people down. I always, unless it's they need
• 34:36
  to be turned down. But but, you know, in most
• 34:40
  cases, I'm always willing to talk to people and, you know,
• 34:42
  give my time and energy. Yeah, I started my morning with
• 34:46
  with three of those. But that's what we're supposed
• 34:48
  to do. I mean, that's what it's about
• 34:51
  it. I think it's about and that
• 34:52
  always comes. That's what I would say that's
• 34:54
  what humanity is about is that we're here to really lift each
• 34:59
  other up and do it in a very selfless way.
• 35:02
  And there there is for sure a force called karma that plays
• 35:07
  plays itself out. You know, one thing that that I
• 35:13
  want to just shout you out for is during the pandemic, you
• 35:17
  know, you and I were both running companies.
• 35:19
  I was running dated out world. You're running Zen business,
• 35:21
  still running Zen business during the pandemic.
• 35:24
  And occasionally I would ask you how you're keeping it fresh.
• 35:27
  And one thing you said to me is it was hard.
• 35:31
  I mean, it's hard. It was just hard.
• 35:33
  It was like hard being physically separated and you
• 35:36
  know, and not feeling like you could get together and you know,
• 35:41
  this is like pre vaccine, all that stuff.
• 35:44
  But you know, you said to me on your Friday calls that you would
• 35:49
  have every single person need to speak and kind of give their
• 35:53
  update and that that created a lot of attention, right?
• 35:59
  Where we're both actually paying attention to the meeting, you
• 36:02
  know, that was on Zoom and it created a lot of connection to
• 36:09
  between people. I'm curious, like what are some
• 36:12
  of the practices you're doing today to to really keep the
• 36:15
  culture fresh and strong? We're, we're still 100% remote.
• 36:19
  We're in, you know, 35 plus States and eight countries and
• 36:24
  we've stayed remote. There's downsides, as you know,
• 36:28
  and you've got to. There's a difference, though,
• 36:31
  between being remote and being able to get back together.
• 36:34
  That's right. And we can get back.
• 36:36
  That's right. We were at the big.
• 36:37
  Fully remote and we have, we, we did it at at home away and we,
• 36:45
  we carried that over into Zen business.
• 36:47
  We have at Wednesday meeting, it's 1/2 hour meeting, it's
• 36:51
  highly scheduled and everybody shows up.
• 36:54
  We've got an agenda and it rotates through the various
• 36:57
  departments. But it's, you know, 30 minutes
• 37:02
  it's there and, and we're in and out.
• 37:06
  And I think the things that that happened there, as you know,
• 37:09
  it's on, we use Google technologies, the Google meets.
• 37:13
  So the chat is open. There's a lot of rancorous chat
• 37:17
  going on, you know, in there. I'm always there early, you
• 37:23
  know, picking up the conversation.
• 37:25
  The whole C team is is there. So we we do that.
• 37:30
  We also do what we, you know, Xenopalooza.
• 37:34
  So we bring the company in once a year and everybody gets
• 37:37
  together and then, you know, now post COVID, we encourage people
• 37:43
  to get together in various locations and, and you know,
• 37:48
  because I do think that the FaceTime is in is important.
• 37:52
  And you know, when we when COVID hit, we were around 50 employees
• 37:58
  and we were already in that model of, you know, outsource
• 38:04
  development about half and half. Now half the company is all, you
• 38:09
  know, we have external partners. So we were already geared up for
• 38:12
  remoteness. You know, COVID just accelerated
• 38:15
  that. So we bring on people.
• 38:17
  It's already, you know, first nature.
• 38:20
  So that's part of the, the, the culture getting together as part
• 38:24
  of the culture regularly. And then I think it is important
• 38:30
  we have executive coaches. We have two women that we work
• 38:36
  with at the C team and our concept is the number one team,
• 38:40
  which is the C team. That's all we're responsible
• 38:43
  for. Of course we have our
• 38:44
  departments, but you know, my my team is the executive team and
• 38:49
  we coach that way. So, you know, that drives a
• 38:53
  culture of connectedness. And it's not always perfect, but
• 38:59
  it's honest. And I think, I don't think I
• 39:03
  know that that carries down through the, the, the rest of
• 39:07
  the company. And because we're remote, Brett,
• 39:10
  everything is so explicitly, you know, with all the technology,
• 39:16
  everything is explicitly we, we, we should literally have one
• 39:21
  list that we execute against. Now there's a process of how
• 39:26
  everything gets into one list, but we have a list of, you know,
• 39:29
  15 things we're working on, and that changes on a monthly basis.
• 39:33
  Yeah. It's very kind of OK R, right?
• 39:35
  Yeah, very OK, R. Objectives.
• 39:37
  Key, we've moved away from OK Rs.
• 39:39
  We have, you know, you know, business objectives are very
• 39:45
  much OK Rs and and a single list and people love that, you know
• 39:49
  that execution. So everything is very
• 39:51
  transparent and you know, we haven't talked about, but with
• 39:54
  with AI, you know, we've completely moved away from a
• 39:58
  road map. We do not have a road map
• 40:00
  anymore. We are, you know, I say we're AI
• 40:04
  first company. We weren't, you know, we didn't
• 40:07
  originate with AI, but now we are 100% AI all in AI first
• 40:12
  company. And we've launched a product,
• 40:14
  it's called Velo, stands for Velocity, and it's a agent that
• 40:18
  does everything for a small business.
• 40:21
  And we see, we have all the infrastructure in the bank, We
• 40:25
  see everything that's happening. That's our road map.
• 40:29
  So we literally, I mean, it's the, you know, we, we haven't
• 40:32
  gotten into AI, but the, the, the thing for me as a product
• 40:37
  and engineering technology person and wanting to deliver
• 40:41
  value for the customer, never in my career have I been able to
• 40:46
  get feedback from my customer in 15 seconds and never have I been
• 40:51
  able to use AI on the AI, the, the, the conversations and the
• 40:57
  actions. Our agent does stuff for you,
• 41:00
  right? We can say, well, what should we
• 41:03
  build next, right, right. This is what this is what this
• 41:08
  is what your customers want. You can do whatever the hell you
• 41:10
  want, but this is what you should build next.
• 41:12
  I mean, it's, it's amazing at how quick we can go and how
• 41:19
  quick we can develop software now.
• 41:22
  And you know, you and you and I have suffered through our entire
• 41:26
  careers building out platforms. And then we have to make this
• 41:30
  decision. Well, where are we going to go
• 41:32
  vertical? Which vertical are we going to
• 41:33
  go after? Let's do a bunch of research and
• 41:35
  figure out, right, that's gone, right, right.
• 41:38
  It is a completely customized platform for you and we have the
• 41:44
  advantage of having, you know, all of the birth of the company
• 41:50
  data and you know, we had to do all the banking and the web and
• 41:55
  all the marketing and the, you know, the formation and
• 41:58
  compliance. We have all that information.
• 42:01
  So it really makes for our agent to, to be very defensible and to
• 42:09
  literally say you should do this next, would you like us to do a
• 42:11
  push a button, right. And, and then getting that
• 42:15
  feedback immediately. We can, we can go off and, and,
• 42:19
  and do that. So, you know, I, I, I, I want to
• 42:23
  be clear. I just saw a post on X, you
• 42:28
  know, you know, there's there's no.
• 42:33
  What's the weight loss drug? GLP 1?
• 42:35
  Is that what's GLP one? Yeah.
• 42:36
  GLP one, yeah. Zetabic and Wingovia and all
• 42:39
  that. Yeah, we got to be.
• 42:40
  Careful, yeah, yeah, you know, AI is not going to be the you
• 42:43
  know, the Wagovia for or Zet bound for every problem.
• 42:47
  That's right. That's for sure there.
• 42:49
  But it's going to help a lot on the you know, I think on the
• 42:54
  individual tasks it it's a programming being being one of
• 42:59
  those that is completely dominated.
• 43:01
  I think there's a lot of complexity that, you know, it's
• 43:05
  still going to take we're we're way a ways away from.
• 43:08
  But yeah, this is the start. Let's go into AI.
• 43:12
  We've kind of been bouncing around it.
• 43:14
  You know, the reason I'm doing what I'm doing with this is that
• 43:20
  we are, I mean, I, I imagine you also grew up reading science
• 43:25
  fiction. We are in science fiction times,
• 43:27
  you know, we're in the exponential of exponential.
• 43:29
  So right now, and I think that this is the time where we can
• 43:38
  create abundance for everyone on the planet if we if we get it
• 43:42
  right. And I'd love to dive deep with
• 43:44
  you on that. But maybe first, it's really
• 43:47
  fascinating that you have gone through this change while
• 43:51
  leading your company. So let's dive a little bit
• 43:56
  deeper on how much it has changed in business because
• 44:00
  that's going to be super fascinating case study.
• 44:03
  I mean, I mean, we were, we were all in on it since the since the
• 44:07
  launch of ChatGPT at data dot world and you know, built a lot
• 44:14
  of IP around that, which which ServiceNow enjoys now with the
• 44:19
  team there after acquiring the company.
• 44:23
  But I mean, I saw so much change in that time and, and, and
• 44:27
  you've got to be seeing a ton of change.
• 44:30
  And you know, I wasn't, I wasn't running the company, you know,
• 44:35
  ServiceNow bought it on 7/7 last year.
• 44:37
  I wasn't running the company when the latest cloud code came
• 44:42
  out in February and everything else which is totally different.
• 44:46
  You know, now it now it really is, you know, to the point where
• 44:51
  with very little prompting, you can, you can really automate A
• 44:55
  tremendous amount, you know, and of course, quad cowork is out
• 44:58
  now and everything else. So so I'm curious like what what
• 45:02
  you've seen the biggest changes and how you guys have really
• 45:05
  adopted it. You've said you've gone all in,
• 45:07
  but we should double click. Yeah, I mean, it, it, it
• 45:10
  actually could come back to just the thesis of this show.
• 45:12
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 45:13
  Fear and love. I mean, yeah, we've went
• 45:16
  through, we, we've talked about COVID, you know, and of course
• 45:20
  the prior to COVID, you know, you, you, you know, you were a
• 45:25
  bizarre voice and I was at home away.
• 45:27
  Remember the financial crash? Oh yeah, yeah.
• 45:30
  So, yeah, so we've been, we've been through that.
• 45:32
  We, we, we did a hiring freeze at Bizarre Voice for six months
• 45:36
  'cause we didn't know if we're going into a Great Depression,
• 45:39
  you know, after Remedy Brothers failed and all that.
• 45:41
  TCV, we, we had a signed term sheet and we'd signed it and
• 45:45
  ready to go and they'd, you know, we raised $250 million.
• 45:49
  We didn't know if they were going to give us the money,
• 45:50
  right, right. At that point we were thankful
• 45:53
  that they, they did. We had bank notes, credit lines
• 45:56
  were called. We probably had the same thing.
• 45:59
  So just to be clear, that was when you're at home.
• 46:01
  Way it was a home way yeah, that that just to be clear, that was
• 46:03
  at home way the the point I'm making is is that I mean I, I,
• 46:07
  I'm going to say this seems like there's always something.
• 46:10
  There's always something. There's always something.
• 46:12
  Yeah, the world's a very. Dynamic place, very dynamic
• 46:15
  place. And so, you know, I, I, you
• 46:19
  know, I don't want to characterize AI as always
• 46:22
  something, but you know, you do need to put it in the context of
• 46:25
  this is this next thing that that we need to respond to.
• 46:30
  And I think it's a response, not a react.
• 46:33
  And you're seeing a lot of reactions, fear, fear based
• 46:36
  reactions out of it. So, you know, we saw it, you
• 46:41
  know, we attached to it early on.
• 46:43
  I mean that the strategy was to, you know, we bought every, we
• 46:47
  didn't, we didn't pick a horse. We bought everything and every
• 46:51
  technology and adopted everything and had, you know,
• 46:56
  our, our goal was get everybody in the company using it across
• 47:00
  all of the departments. And, you know, we went through a
• 47:04
  lot of customer Support Solutions.
• 47:07
  Not a lot of them have failed already.
• 47:08
  And yeah, and, and we've settled on some right, right, right now.
• 47:12
  So the strategy was just early broad adoption and really get
• 47:17
  our feet underneath us. And, you know, I'm a programmer
• 47:23
  and you know, we're we, we have a lot of our a leadership is
• 47:28
  technical in in nature. So it, it was that early.
• 47:33
  Make sure. Let's figure this thing out.
• 47:36
  And then I will tell you because we're, you know, a big platform
• 47:46
  backgrounds from, you know, like what you've done in your career.
• 47:51
  We built a big platform and or I would say a scalable platform.
• 47:56
  So for example, you know, we had all of our data coming into one
• 48:03
  data source, whether it was on the phone, whether it was chat,
• 48:07
  whether it was emails, all the educational material, all of our
• 48:12
  organic search content, everything was stored from the
• 48:15
  beginning in a single repository.
• 48:17
  Well, man, that played out really well.
• 48:19
  Oh yeah. When we're, so when we're, when
• 48:22
  we're, you know. Creating part of what we're
• 48:24
  doing at Data dot world is like tying all the disparate data
• 48:28
  together. That's right.
• 48:29
  If if you had it in in one big repository, yeah, that's kind of
• 48:34
  Nirvana story. It was from the beginning and,
• 48:36
  and I think you know, and we use Salesforce of course coming to
• 48:40
  build it, all of the Salesforce data was was in there, all the
• 48:44
  product data, all the customer data.
• 48:47
  So that came in really handy when we were building the agent
• 48:49
  out right, You know. And so I, I think those early
• 48:54
  decisions made it from building a robust system that we wanted
• 48:59
  to scale because of the size that we wanted the the company
• 49:03
  to, to, to get to that. That played really well for us
• 49:07
  in our SO. My short answer is there.
• 49:10
  It's still a computer science problem.
• 49:12
  Right, right. Right.
• 49:14
  You know, still still need to hire a computer scientist.
• 49:16
  Now we no longer hire software engineers.
• 49:19
  We call them builders now. And part of the transition was,
• 49:24
  you know, there was a point. Is that their actual title?
• 49:26
  Yes. Yeah.
• 49:27
  Interest. So we, we, we.
• 49:28
  Haven't. I haven't heard that.
• 49:29
  We've moved. We we, we only hire builders
• 49:32
  and, and you know, there was, you know, we fear and love.
• 49:39
  We, we, we said, hey, folks, you know, you, you need to adopt
• 49:43
  this or you don't need to be here.
• 49:44
  You know, this is the, this is the company that that the way
• 49:49
  we're going to do things. And, you know, I think that's a
• 49:53
  compassionate. Way it is, I would always remind
• 49:56
  people at at dated out world, I was like, I am failing you as
• 50:00
  CEO if I do not help you get ready for this moment, like
• 50:05
  literally I'm failing you. It'd be like, because I'm
• 50:08
  responsible for the company, I'm leading the company.
• 50:11
  You'd be like running a school and just ignoring the AI moment.
• 50:18
  You can't ignore it. Like people, this can change
• 50:21
  their career for the rest of their life.
• 50:22
  That's right. That's right.
• 50:24
  And I think that would be the, you know, the forceful moment
• 50:27
  we're, we're all in, we're in, we burned the boats, the, the
• 50:31
  and, and so I think that was important.
• 50:34
  And I think, you know, we also talked about the, you know, the
• 50:40
  remote, having a remote workforce and having a hybrid.
• 50:43
  And I told you my opinion on is I don't think you can be half
• 50:47
  and half that. I've never, you know, focus is
• 50:50
  what makes a company when fear or love you got to pick.
• 50:55
  And so we picked AI and so we were all in and so we had to act
• 50:59
  that way. And that might sound Pollyannic,
• 51:03
  but everything we do is we act that way.
• 51:07
  Makes sense. Was there?
• 51:08
  Was there? A particular moment where for
• 51:12
  you, because you know, you were this you were on the founding
• 51:16
  team at home way where the CTO, you know, you've got this rooted
• 51:20
  background and technology, which is an amazing profile for for
• 51:25
  ACEO now, right? It's in business, especially
• 51:30
  with this AI moment. Was there a certain moment for
• 51:33
  you? It's in business with AI where
• 51:36
  you're like, holy moly, that's kind of post my mind, you know,
• 51:41
  kind of where it all clicks together.
• 51:43
  You know if it it's funny if you would.
• 51:45
  Have asked me that, you know, I mean, six months, three months.
• 51:53
  You know what we're working on right now with a friend of ours,
• 51:57
  the common person we just talked about.
• 51:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is is frighteningly exciting.
• 52:06
  Yeah, yeah. And you know, I can't talk
• 52:12
  about. But I'm just telling you, it is
• 52:13
  so exciting. But what what we're building and
• 52:18
  we'll be, you know, we've already released our product,
• 52:21
  but what we're adding onto Velo is really going to is right now
• 52:26
  changing the world for entrepreneurs and, and we'll
• 52:29
  even take that that next, that next step.
• 52:32
  And So what we're seeing right now is software is going to
• 52:36
  become bespoke. I mean, it's, it's going to be,
• 52:40
  you know, everything is going to be custom and rebuilt because
• 52:43
  it's getting so cheap. It's not going to put us a lot
• 52:47
  of business. It's going to explode, right.
• 52:50
  And so, you know, and I'll just give you an example.
• 52:54
  And I think people need to, I'd like to pay attention.
• 52:58
  You know, my neighbor here in I've got a house on the lake and
• 53:06
  my neighbor there is in the oil business and he, he caps oil
• 53:10
  wells in the Permian Basin. So when they're shut down, he,
• 53:13
  he makes them environmentally correct and fills in the holes
• 53:19
  and everything. And he just, we're talking a
• 53:21
  little bit about AI just just passing the breeze.
• 53:24
  And he said, Oh yeah, he's like, I've been using this software
• 53:26
  for two decades. It's garbage.
• 53:29
  I hired 2 engineers and in 60 days they made the best software
• 53:33
  we've ever had. You know, I mean built it.
• 53:36
  Totally expect built it. And you know, this is not this
• 53:39
  guy's. You know, a proclivity and so
• 53:43
  that's what's going to happen and we're seeing that is is is
• 53:46
  going to happen and you know, so our ability at Zen to produce
• 53:51
  product is accelerated. We we have like I told you, we
• 53:55
  have dropped road map Yeah, that's incredible.
• 53:58
  I mean, that's a. That's a huge.
• 53:59
  Statement in and of itself, because there are decades and
• 54:02
  decades and decades of, you know, this is the way you do it.
• 54:05
  You build a road map and go out and research it.
• 54:08
  You test it. Right, right.
• 54:10
  Yeah, Yeah. That's that's really exciting
• 54:12
  and especially when you have that feedback coming directly.
• 54:14
  From the customer, we get feedback in, you know, 15
• 54:18
  seconds as opposed to 15 weeks. I'm curious, you know, with.
• 54:24
  When when Chachi PT came out, that was November 30th of 2022.
• 54:31
  And it was four months later that the moratorium Paul's All
• 54:34
  Ahead development came out. That was March of 2023 is
• 54:38
  literally four months later. That was when ChatGPT 4 came
• 54:42
  out. And I went on a number of
• 54:47
  podcasts saying how ridiculous I thought it was in this pause
• 54:52
  because I said, look, you know, people aren't thinking about
• 54:55
  what the implications of this are.
• 54:56
  It's going to create millions of personalized products and
• 55:00
  services. We can't imagine so many more
• 55:02
  startups. You know, the barrier to
• 55:03
  creativity is being shattered right now.
• 55:07
  And it's always been our destiny as human beings to create
• 55:12
  technology to make our lives easier, more creative, etcetera,
• 55:18
  more meaningful. And I'm curious for you like how
• 55:25
  you think about this moment given what Zen business does and
• 55:30
  serving, you know, all these small businesses like are you
• 55:33
  seeing an explosion? Yes, we are so the.
• 55:36
  The it's being written about right now and I'm we're seeing
• 55:39
  it in the business is more and more small businesses are
• 55:42
  getting created. And I think like the Black Swan
• 55:45
  event of the pandemic, people either out of necessity or they
• 55:49
  really took a look around and said, Hey, I don't want to do
• 55:51
  this anymore. I'm not, I really am not don't
• 55:53
  have a secure position at this big company or, or we're going
• 55:56
  to be another company. I need to go and and pursue my
• 55:59
  own side hustle and it's worked out pretty good for us.
• 56:02
  It was your. It was your day to general
• 56:04
  moment. Now they're seeing.
• 56:05
  Now they're seeing it, but in math, right?
• 56:08
  And so. And now with AI it's easier than
• 56:12
  ever and you know, send businesses focused on I can't, I
• 56:16
  cannot think of AI don't want to get out of, you know, out of
• 56:21
  control here, but I cannot. It's certainly small business
• 56:25
  has to be at the top of the most benefit from AII mean when you
• 56:31
  think about small business owners and even you know, your
• 56:34
  your your own history of having to do everything.
• 56:37
  It's at some point by yourself. And we survey our customers and
• 56:41
  the number one thing that that that they say is I I need more
• 56:46
  time and of course I need capitals, the number 2.
• 56:49
  But this time thing, Well, AI now we, you, you, you have your,
• 56:55
  you know, your mentor, your advisor, your accountant, your
• 56:59
  lawyer, you know, your technologist at your fingertips.
• 57:04
  And so you can focus on building your business and bringing the
• 57:08
  value to your customers. So I mean, AI think is AI don't
• 57:12
  think I know it's a, a boom for small business and we're we're
• 57:15
  seeing it explode. And again, I think people will
• 57:18
  be displaced. There's going to be some
• 57:21
  convulsion as a as a response to this, but you know, they're
• 57:26
  going to they're going to pick platforms, they're going to pick
• 57:29
  technology. And I think it's going to be an
• 57:32
  I know it's going to be an advantage to that.
• 57:34
  I mean, I just think of the things I do what, you know, used
• 57:38
  to take me, you know, hours and hours like putting a memo
• 57:43
  together for the board or or a a monthly update.
• 57:47
  I know you religious about them. I was they spent a lot of time
• 57:50
  on those. I could tell for sure.
• 57:52
  Yeah, with AII spent. You know. 15 minutes.
• 57:56
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And say take all this data that
• 58:00
  I would, that I would go through, right?
• 58:02
  Turn this into a board memo. That's just a sign of an
• 58:05
  intelligence. I mean, you should always be
• 58:07
  using the latest Productivity Tools if it if you truly feel
• 58:12
  like it's making you better and more efficient.
• 58:16
  I mean, that's just like that's I mean, that's just a sign of IQ
• 58:19
  that that you should be doing that.
• 58:21
  And you know, it was it was a couple of episodes ago where I
• 58:25
  had Rachel Woods on Rachel invented the term AI operations.
• 58:29
  She actually used to work for us at dated out world and she and I
• 58:34
  were brainstorming on that episode.
• 58:36
  All right, let's pretend like we're plumbers.
• 58:38
  Let's create the best damn plumbing business.
• 58:40
  How do we do it with AI? And we're just like riffing and
• 58:44
  Oh my gosh, like any small business could just breakthrough
• 58:49
  so many barriers right now. And part of what's holding them
• 58:55
  back is fear. You know, they've, they've,
• 58:57
  we've, we've got in the human collective psyche grafted into
• 59:01
  it is the Matrix and the Terminator.
• 59:04
  And you know, I'm Jewish, you know, the story of Golem and
• 59:07
  Prague. And, you know, there's, there's,
• 59:10
  there's other, you know, myth, mythological stories that, that
• 59:14
  I cover in my book that go back to like ancient times that, you
• 59:19
  know, we're going to create this machine that destroys us.
• 59:22
  And, and, and, and there's also kind of a natural resistance for
• 59:26
  people to, to embrace the new, you know, that's, that's been
• 59:30
  that's been with us. So, you know, what you were
• 59:33
  talking about earlier is just like the adaptability you have
• 59:36
  to have to be an entrepreneur. You know, there's always going
• 59:38
  to be something, but this is a big something.
• 59:41
  But I mean, let me ask you this question.
• 59:43
  So didn't it? I mean, you know, I have we we
• 59:48
  don't like to call them triggering events anymore in my
• 59:52
  household or in at my C team. When someone goes off the rails,
• 59:58
  we we call them activations. It seems like that activated
• 1:00:02
  you. All right, All right, That's
• 1:00:03
  pretty funny. You know, and I'd be.
• 1:00:06
  Lying, if I didn't say that, you know, a lot of this activate
• 1:00:11
  you. I mean, you, you can't, you
• 1:00:13
  cannot be human and not, you know, see, am I going to be able
• 1:00:17
  to keep up? Am I going to be able to
• 1:00:19
  transform my company? And, you know, is remember, I
• 1:00:24
  come from home away. We were completely disrupted by
• 1:00:26
  Airbnb and, and, and I study this stuff at the institute.
• 1:00:31
  It's hard once you know, it's some small disruption, it, it's
• 1:00:37
  nearly impossible to deal with it because you're here.
• 1:00:40
  Your investors have paid you to run this business and do a good
• 1:00:43
  job of it. That's not what, you know, a
• 1:00:47
  disruptors thinking about. They don't have a business,
• 1:00:49
  right. And so it there, there's a part
• 1:00:53
  of it's it's frightening. And you, you know, you do have
• 1:00:56
  to pick. It's like I'm going to make it
• 1:00:59
  through this. What do I need to do?
• 1:01:01
  What does the team need to do? What do we need to do with the
• 1:01:03
  engineers? And and I like to to, you know,
• 1:01:10
  heard this somewhere is that, you know, you don't know a
• 1:01:13
  decision is is good or bad until you've made it right.
• 1:01:16
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:01:17
  Yeah, You know, And so let's. Make a.
• 1:01:19
  Decision and then we'll figure out if it's, you know, fatal or
• 1:01:23
  not. And I haven't made any fatal
• 1:01:26
  decisions. I think fatal decisions are hard
• 1:01:28
  to make, and actually most decisions.
• 1:01:30
  Actually, you know, one of one of the women that read my book
• 1:01:34
  and provide this beautiful testimony.
• 1:01:35
  I was so touched that she did it is doctor Ellen Langer.
• 1:01:39
  She's the mother of mindfulness. She's written 12 books and she
• 1:01:43
  loved she loved she loved the book.
• 1:01:46
  And one of the things that that I learned from her that I've
• 1:01:49
  repeated this so many times at this point, I although I don't
• 1:01:52
  think I've ever said this on the podcast, but said this so many
• 1:01:55
  times to family members and everything else is she said, you
• 1:01:59
  know, we live with this kind of weight of when we make a mistake
• 1:02:04
  that so many mistakes are so easy to undo, Like so many
• 1:02:08
  mistakes, like, OK, fine, you bought the wrong shirt.
• 1:02:11
  Who cares? Like, you know, it's like donate
• 1:02:13
  that one, buy the right shirt or whatever it is, and there's just
• 1:02:17
  there's very few mistakes that you make that you can't just
• 1:02:22
  like immediately course correct and just failure and that's a
• 1:02:24
  bad decision. Whatever, move on.
• 1:02:25
  That's right, that's right. And you don't have to live with
• 1:02:27
  the way and beat. Yourself up.
• 1:02:29
  That's right, you can't cause. Unnecessary suffering.
• 1:02:31
  That's right. It is and and and you know.
• 1:02:33
  When you get that from a, you know, experience, I'm on the
• 1:02:37
  board of American National Bank in the Dallas Fort Worth area,
• 1:02:39
  and their CEO is absolutely great culture.
• 1:02:42
  You know, it's a, you know, a very 100 years plus year old
• 1:02:46
  bank and you know, Robert has this great tendency.
• 1:02:51
  I learned so much from him and they learned a lot from me.
• 1:02:54
  But you know, most of my stuff is young technology.
• 1:02:57
  You know, you guys are slow and stupid.
• 1:03:00
  Is is, you know, my arrogance and you know, the bank can have
• 1:03:05
  a misstep and Robert's just he's over, he's on it, he's over.
• 1:03:09
  You know what I mean? It's.
• 1:03:10
  Just like let's move. On and that is such a great you
• 1:03:13
  know, I mean, you need to learn from it, of course, of course,
• 1:03:15
  right, but he's just over it. You know what I mean?
• 1:03:18
  You know, hey, you can't pretend like you didn't make a mistake.
• 1:03:21
  Fine, you know, clock it up, learn, but then but just move
• 1:03:24
  on, you know, like just keep going.
• 1:03:25
  It's so healthy and. You know, that's very true.
• 1:03:29
  My my wife has got one rule for me and I've got the same rule
• 1:03:33
  for her. She says she can't date.
• 1:03:35
  Other than that, everything's OK.
• 1:03:38
  That's funny. That's hilarious, and it makes
• 1:03:41
  the point. I mean, it kind of boils.
• 1:03:42
  It down, you know, you, you know, being married a long time,
• 1:03:45
  there's plenty, plenty of problems you're going to create.
• 1:03:48
  I still date a lot. I just date.
• 1:03:49
  I just date. My wife, you know, we're going
• 1:03:52
  to celebrate 30 years June 9th. 30 years, man.
• 1:03:55
  Good for you. So how?
• 1:03:57
  How do you see? How do you see?
• 1:03:58
  This moment then, I mean, you know, when you project out,
• 1:04:03
  like, do you agree with my thesis that, you know, this is
• 1:04:07
  the time where we could create abundance for everyone on the
• 1:04:11
  planet if we choose? And kind of how do you think
• 1:04:14
  it's going to play out? Because it's, I, I mean, you
• 1:04:16
  know, the, the thing that is different now versus prior is
• 1:04:21
  that we're in a time where humanity has never prioritized
• 1:04:26
  anything with this much money, energy and time.
• 1:04:28
  I mean, there's, it's we're in unprecedented territory.
• 1:04:30
  Like you know, after Trump announced Stargate last year,
• 1:04:35
  500 billion of funding that was on January 21st alongside Larry
• 1:04:39
  Ellison, my UC son and Sam Altman towards this race, you
• 1:04:43
  know, with AGI versus China, which primarily like like the
• 1:04:47
  the one that the government's worried about maybe on both
• 1:04:51
  sides. You know, since that
• 1:04:55
  announcement, there's been around $7 trillion of
• 1:04:57
  announcements worldwide. I mean, like, like Zuckerberg
• 1:05:00
  alone announced a $600 billion, we're going to create a
• 1:05:03
  Manhattan size data center. So, so that's, that's different.
• 1:05:07
  Like, you know, we, we've had the, we've had the Internet
• 1:05:10
  boom, we've had the mobile revolution, we've had social
• 1:05:12
  media, etcetera. But this is this, this is
• 1:05:17
  different, you know, and, and I think that it's happening for
• 1:05:22
  two main reasons. It comes back to fear and love,
• 1:05:25
  right? One is that there's this great
• 1:05:28
  hope. Like we could be looking at the
• 1:05:30
  end of disease. We could be looking at unlimited
• 1:05:32
  energy, you know, 18 seconds of the sun's rays that fall on
• 1:05:35
  Earth. If we just had the material
• 1:05:37
  science breakthrough to capture it, that would power America's
• 1:05:40
  energy needs for over a year, 18 seconds.
• 1:05:44
  And, and so we're, we're at that inflection point for hope and
• 1:05:49
  what the implications of that would be.
• 1:05:53
  But, but we're also at that inflection point for, you know,
• 1:05:58
  are we going to use this in a way where we destroy ourselves?
• 1:06:02
  And I'm, I'm 95% certain that we make it through this critical
• 1:06:07
  moment. But, but I'm kind of, you know,
• 1:06:11
  some people on this podcast been 100% certain, but most people
• 1:06:14
  aren't as certain as I am. I'm just curious how you see
• 1:06:18
  this. You know, I'm always.
• 1:06:20
  Cautious about the pundits, right, Because we were certain
• 1:06:23
  about a lot of stuff. So I don't know.
• 1:06:26
  I don't, I, I do now. I'm a a fan of studying history
• 1:06:33
  and I do know that mankind seems to make it through.
• 1:06:39
  Muddles, muddles through. I use that word a lot.
• 1:06:42
  Muddling through. Models through it seems like
• 1:06:45
  more models. Through and, you know, I'm at
• 1:06:50
  the Santa Fe and we study these kinds of things, these big, big,
• 1:06:54
  big, big questions. And, and, you know, I had this
• 1:06:58
  experience with, with one of the researchers there.
• 1:07:07
  And this was before AI and we study complex adaptive systems
• 1:07:13
  and, and a lot of the stuff can turn into what I call death
• 1:07:17
  cult. This is like, oh, this is a
• 1:07:19
  death cult. And it was maybe a bad day.
• 1:07:23
  And I said, you know, what's, what's going on here?
• 1:07:26
  And he said, Ross, you know, it was very old, older gentleman.
• 1:07:29
  And he said, Ross, electric cars were just coming out.
• 1:07:33
  And he said, I don't, you know, he said, Ross, you study this
• 1:07:37
  stuff, I study this stuff. Electric cars can save the
• 1:07:40
  planet, just electric cars. And really never thought of
• 1:07:44
  that. I mean, you know, we're not,
• 1:07:46
  we're just in the start really of, of that.
• 1:07:49
  And you know, it's not completely matured yet with the
• 1:07:54
  battery science yet. But but you know, that simple
• 1:07:59
  thing, electric cars could save the planet.
• 1:08:02
  And if you believe that and I and we can kind of all see that
• 1:08:06
  progression if it if it works forward that we would need less
• 1:08:10
  and less and I think that's now pretty obvious.
• 1:08:13
  Yes, pretty obvious. That's right at the time we.
• 1:08:15
  Said it it wasn't including self driving sitting exactly.
• 1:08:18
  Self driving was the was. His thesis of like God, if you
• 1:08:21
  can get more efficient on the roads and you know all that you
• 1:08:25
  you, you, you can save to there. So just that I would call that a
• 1:08:28
  very physical change in the world, kind of cavemany type.
• 1:08:35
  And now we're talking about software and AI and what what it
• 1:08:41
  can Robots. Robots.
• 1:08:43
  I mean, it seems like the Sky's the limit.
• 1:08:45
  So if you can, if you can say what the, the impact that you
• 1:08:49
  know, EV is going to is having, it seems like it's, you know,
• 1:08:54
  unlimited now. I'm not, you know, I don't, I
• 1:08:58
  think we're away from, you know, human intelligence.
• 1:09:02
  We're ways away from from that level of, of intelligence.
• 1:09:07
  But AI can make a make a huge difference.
• 1:09:10
  So my view is that we are in for a renaissance.
• 1:09:16
  I think the people see the investment.
• 1:09:18
  I mean, I think we're in for quite a ride.
• 1:09:20
  I don't know where it's going to going to turn out, but I do
• 1:09:24
  think I'm buying into your thesis that now's the time, you
• 1:09:30
  know, also a believer in conscious capitalism or in, you
• 1:09:35
  know, entrepreneurship. And if anyone's going to do it,
• 1:09:39
  it's not going to be governments.
• 1:09:40
  It's going to be, you know, innovators, right?
• 1:09:45
  And I think all of those, who knows where it's going to come
• 1:09:48
  from, Right, Right. Well, what governments need.
• 1:09:51
  To operate is they need revenue and they get the revenue
• 1:09:56
  primarily from people designed to start businesses that didn't
• 1:09:59
  grow into big enough companies. I mean, I mean, it's very hard
• 1:10:03
  to name a company that didn't start with a couple of brave
• 1:10:06
  entrepreneurs. That's right.
• 1:10:07
  There are some, there's like big companies that like spun out
• 1:10:10
  from other big companies and stuff like that.
• 1:10:12
  But but there was always that spark of creation that got it
• 1:10:17
  going in the 1st place. And that person at the time, you
• 1:10:20
  know, a lot of people thought they were crazy.
• 1:10:23
  You know, when Bezos started Amazon, I think, I think it was
• 1:10:26
  something like 85 out of the 1st 100 people he passed, he pitch
• 1:10:31
  passed, you know, and a lot of people like to do the math of
• 1:10:35
  like, well, for the one that passed, etcetera, you know, what
• 1:10:38
  would that stock be worth and or, or for the ones that didn't
• 1:10:41
  pass and invested. But what they miss in that is
• 1:10:45
  the psychological effect of OK, if they bought, then they would
• 1:10:52
  have had to hold the entire time through all the ups and downs,
• 1:10:56
  including when he's on the cover of barons with a bomb, you know,
• 1:11:00
  saying the Amazon dot bomb, you know, and and not sell through
• 1:11:04
  that whole thing, right, which is our new this is investor
• 1:11:07
  letter. He says I'm.
• 1:11:07
  Not going to listen to you guys right, right, right.
• 1:11:10
  We just went public, right. I'm not listening to you.
• 1:11:13
  Yeah, but but it but it always you know.
• 1:11:15
  Big, big fan of, you know, George Bernard Shaw that it
• 1:11:17
  always starts with kind of that, you know, quote UN quote
• 1:11:20
  unreasonable person. That's just like, we're just
• 1:11:24
  going to do it And and it it again gets back to
• 1:11:28
  entrepreneurship because man, the barrier to creativity is
• 1:11:30
  just being shattered right now. That's right.
• 1:11:32
  I mean, we're only limited by our imagination in so many ways.
• 1:11:35
  And it's it's really hard for me to even forecast three more
• 1:11:40
  years that well, that's the point.
• 1:11:42
  I was saying if you. Asked me about AAI three months
• 1:11:45
  ago in the business. I would.
• 1:11:46
  It's a different answer. Yeah, yeah, it's a different
• 1:11:48
  answer. And I guarantee you you'll have
• 1:11:49
  a different answer 3. Years from now, I mean, it is
• 1:11:52
  you and I both. This may be, I mean, this is so
• 1:11:55
  exponential. You know, it's like a week of
• 1:11:58
  tech progress right now to me, feels like a year, 10 years ago.
• 1:12:03
  It does feel that way, yeah. And that's frightening.
• 1:12:05
  Yeah, I mean, it can be, yeah. How fast, how quick it's moving,
• 1:12:09
  you know, put on the. Kind of the futurist hat.
• 1:12:12
  And you know, what is your best advice for humanity to make it
• 1:12:17
  make it through this curve and and get to the other side
• 1:12:20
  because you know, the other side of this to me.
• 1:12:23
  And I read about it in The Lattice, my science fiction
• 1:12:26
  novella, which I gave you today. You know, Part 1 is there's this
• 1:12:30
  unification of science and spirituality where those two
• 1:12:34
  come together, which I view as the two sides of the same coin.
• 1:12:38
  And then we have the Star Trek future, you know, because people
• 1:12:42
  start working together. We realize, hey, we're 99.9%
• 1:12:45
  genetically identical across this planet.
• 1:12:48
  And a lot of these constructs that we have, Buddhism is very
• 1:12:52
  good at this kind of deprogramming and reprogramming.
• 1:12:56
  You know, I'll say like of the mind and realizing all these
• 1:13:00
  constructs, you know, this separation of man and woman, the
• 1:13:04
  separation of political parties, the separation of religion, the
• 1:13:07
  separation of of all of these, you know, constructs that don't
• 1:13:12
  serve us. Like, you know, looking at one
• 1:13:14
  race differently, another race versus just looking at the
• 1:13:18
  collective of we're all humans the way I put it, or the way I.
• 1:13:22
  Perceive it is that the, the radical solution is in the
• 1:13:32
  middle, which is, which is it's interesting.
• 1:13:36
  You know, we, we think of the, you know, the, you know, that,
• 1:13:41
  that it's got to be the left or the right.
• 1:13:42
  It's got to, you know, be the good or the bad.
• 1:13:45
  I think that the, the the, the true genius is going to be in
• 1:13:50
  the middle and and the and versus the OR.
• 1:13:55
  That's right, it's going to be. It's going to be that the the,
• 1:13:59
  the and I think that's even the path to the political division
• 1:14:03
  that we have across the world is that that the true change is
• 1:14:07
  going to come from the because the OR divides us, right?
• 1:14:10
  It's like. It's like that's where you see
• 1:14:12
  people shouting each other, forgetting that probably 90%
• 1:14:17
  issues actually, they actually probably agree on, right?
• 1:14:20
  They're just like arguing at the French's and I study philosophy
• 1:14:24
  and you. Know and I'm you know, I'm a you
• 1:14:28
  know, everyone asked me, you know, hey, what's your you seem
• 1:14:32
  very spiritual, Ross and I said, well, I'm a you know, and I said
• 1:14:35
  you can ChatGPT this it comes out pretty good or you can use
• 1:14:39
  anthropic. You know, I'm I'm put in there
• 1:14:42
  atheist and Zen Buddhist. That's me, right, right, right.
• 1:14:46
  That's where where it comes, it comes, it comes down.
• 1:14:49
  There is order in the universe and I believe I believe in that.
• 1:14:54
  And I'm a very spiritual person from that point of view.
• 1:14:58
  And you know, this is I think this is as old as Athens itself,
• 1:15:04
  when, you know, this was all Western society was created.
• 1:15:07
  And they they think they had the same questions that we're
• 1:15:10
  talking about today. And I think, you know, for me,
• 1:15:14
  it's the, it's the stoic point of view of balance, you know,
• 1:15:20
  not, you know, too much consumption and not too much,
• 1:15:26
  you know, restraint. It's, it's in the, it's in the,
• 1:15:31
  it's in the middle. And so I think the, the, if we
• 1:15:36
  are to get to your view, which is a beautiful view, and we do
• 1:15:41
  have a choice. So why, why wouldn't we choose
• 1:15:42
  that? Why wouldn't we?
• 1:15:44
  Why wouldn't we choose that one? I do think it's going to have to
• 1:15:47
  be the the middle and it's going to have to be enlightened.
• 1:15:51
  You recruit teams. I recruit teams and, and I'm not
• 1:15:57
  sure they always get it, but I remind them, I said, you know,
• 1:16:01
  hey, we live in Austin, TX now. The richest man in the world
• 1:16:05
  also lives in Austin, TX. Clearly there's no lack of money
• 1:16:09
  in the world, we just need to kind of spread it out a little
• 1:16:11
  differently. There's no lack of food.
• 1:16:16
  There's no. Lack of, of, of any of this.
• 1:16:19
  So how do we, how do we get to the, you know, how do we get to
• 1:16:23
  the middle in a, in a rational way?
• 1:16:27
  And, and I mean that more of, in a, in a middle like the Stoics,
• 1:16:33
  you know, what's that balance? What's virtue and you know, I
• 1:16:39
  don't think we I mean Brent, I don't think it's it's like we
• 1:16:44
  don't need to reinvent that. That's if it's still very true,
• 1:16:47
  right, right. It's not changed and I.
• 1:16:50
  Think you know? Our most you know, that the the
• 1:16:55
  big fan of PBS, I was watching, you know, humans and they have a
• 1:16:59
  series on there how we became humans and the the branches and
• 1:17:03
  the, you know, in the Homo sapien.
• 1:17:07
  And, you know, our biggest adaptation is a gene that makes
• 1:17:15
  us cooperate. Right.
• 1:17:17
  Right. That's it.
• 1:17:18
  Yeah. That's what, you know, made us
• 1:17:20
  and. And the size of our prey, of
• 1:17:22
  course, right. But which started with the
• 1:17:25
  discovery of fire and cooking food that helped us.
• 1:17:28
  Actually consume more calories and everything else.
• 1:17:30
  That's right. That's right.
• 1:17:32
  We get there. That's right.
• 1:17:33
  And so. I guess we're derivative of
• 1:17:35
  hominids, which is been here. For four million years on a
• 1:17:38
  planet that's 4.54 billion years old.
• 1:17:41
  But Homo sapiens is 300,000 years, right?
• 1:17:44
  And just barely get here. Yeah, we just barely.
• 1:17:47
  Got here and and and so and. That is a blink of an eye in
• 1:17:51
  terms of evolutionary. Time on that's right on this all
• 1:17:54
  of the planet in a universe that supposedly is 13.8 billion years
• 1:17:58
  old, but we're finding out through James Webb looks like
• 1:18:00
  it's older a little bit older than that is farther we can look
• 1:18:03
  back right right. So I think we've got.
• 1:18:06
  All the pieces. It's really, do we have the,
• 1:18:09
  the, the will and, you know, can we, can we keep from, you know,
• 1:18:16
  killing each other? I mean, I don't think we're,
• 1:18:19
  we're not in, you know, in, in innately, you know, evil.
• 1:18:26
  I mean, you know, Socrates and Plato.
• 1:18:29
  I was just reading Plato and I've got a grandson we were
• 1:18:32
  talking about that's 10 years old.
• 1:18:33
  Plato believed, he said, you know, one of the, the, the
• 1:18:39
  tenants of a balanced life, many of them.
• 1:18:41
  One of them was, you know, you need to raise your kids because
• 1:18:44
  they're naturally savages. They come out, They come out as
• 1:18:48
  savages, and you need to socialize them.
• 1:18:51
  And, you know, you can go to any playground with a bunch of young
• 1:18:53
  kids and you can say, yeah, these are clearly savages here.
• 1:18:56
  All right, Right. So I you know.
• 1:18:59
  What we're trying to find. That middle ground and where I
• 1:19:01
  bring it up, is AI mean is, is everyone sound like a real old
• 1:19:06
  man now? Are we all training our kids?
• 1:19:09
  Are we all sending that message? And we just talked about media
• 1:19:12
  and social media. And now the the, the case came
• 1:19:16
  out against Facebook. It's like, that's some pretty
• 1:19:20
  dark stuff. I mean, that that was going on
• 1:19:23
  there. And the one of the developers
• 1:19:25
  says he deeply regrets being a part of of that.
• 1:19:29
  And it is a choice. It is a choice.
• 1:19:31
  It is absolutely a choice. I.
• 1:19:32
  People need to pay attention. You know that.
• 1:19:35
  You, you, you. Talk about are we on the right
• 1:19:37
  course? It something like that could be
• 1:19:42
  a course correction. That's right, yeah.
• 1:19:44
  And we know, we just see it as a blip in the, the press And, you
• 1:19:48
  know, is it, is it, you know, the tobacco industry's gone away
• 1:19:51
  because of that kind of of, you know, having a legal system
• 1:19:59
  that's truly just, you know, I mean, I think that that that
• 1:20:06
  hopefully that sticks. And we're going to have to be,
• 1:20:09
  you know, what makes a good society is a good justice
• 1:20:12
  system, right? You know, ultimately we, we, we,
• 1:20:16
  we, we, we all have to play by the.
• 1:20:18
  The rules and so that small thing can have huge
• 1:20:23
  implications, right? You know, you can't build
• 1:20:25
  addictive software anymore. You can't build you know, if you
• 1:20:30
  do, it has to have a warning label on it.
• 1:20:32
  One narrative that I reject and. I've had other people on this
• 1:20:37
  podcast and we've we've discussed this.
• 1:20:39
  I was most recently discussing this with Seoul Rashidi.
• 1:20:42
  And so people can check that on episode 54, she was the world's
• 1:20:46
  first chief, a officer. Amazing, amazing woman.
• 1:20:49
  That's amazing. 2 episodes actually.
• 1:20:51
  We we spoke and spoke together at Culturati.
• 1:20:53
  That was a live recording of Love Conquers Fear.
• 1:20:57
  So it's 54, Part 1 and Part 2. But you know, this whole notion
• 1:21:02
  of this fantasy, I'll call it of and I understand how people got
• 1:21:08
  there in terms of the wealth spread that this whole notion
• 1:21:13
  that there's going to be a world of like, you know, 5 to 10 multi
• 1:21:16
  trillionaires and the rest are going to live in squalor.
• 1:21:19
  I just think that's lunacy that that's even a notion.
• 1:21:23
  I don't I don't think that that can even happen societally
• 1:21:28
  because A there's no market. It's that happens.
• 1:21:32
  B you know, this, this notion of like they're multi trillionaires
• 1:21:36
  and they've got their, you know, place in New Zealand with the
• 1:21:39
  bunker and all that stuff. Well, what kind of life is that?
• 1:21:42
  You've you've destroyed the world And, and I just think that
• 1:21:47
  there's like course correcting also, you know who who you're
• 1:21:49
  going to get to work for you. Well, people would feel like,
• 1:21:52
  well, don't need anybody to work for them.
• 1:21:53
  They'll just have like a bunch of AI agents, etcetera.
• 1:21:56
  But then what are the AI agents doing?
• 1:21:58
  Who are they selling to? Like they're, you know, so, so
• 1:22:01
  there's all these self correcting mechanisms and you,
• 1:22:07
  you're seeing more and more people act more and more
• 1:22:12
  responsibly. And I know that that might sound
• 1:22:14
  contrarian, you know, when people saw the AI documentary or
• 1:22:17
  whatnot, but the, you know, Dario Modi, like he could be
• 1:22:21
  spending his time on a lot of things and coming out with a
• 1:22:24
  piece like the adolescence of technology, really big deal.
• 1:22:27
  You know, Dimis Sisyvis, you know, going on 60 minutes and
• 1:22:30
  talking about like the immense Wade and like how we've got to
• 1:22:34
  get this right. And you know, all of his
• 1:22:36
  employees are watching that, right?
• 1:22:37
  And he's leading everything AI at Google.
• 1:22:41
  You know, Mustafa Solomon, who was his Co founder of Deepmine,
• 1:22:44
  who is leading everything AI at Microsoft also, you know, very,
• 1:22:48
  very intentional messages. And then there's been a number
• 1:22:52
  of that have left, you know, companies like Open AI, like
• 1:22:55
  Mira Marotti, you know that they've started their own
• 1:23:00
  companies and like really care about getting this moment right.
• 1:23:03
  So. So part of it comes from
• 1:23:06
  Anthropic not bowing to the department.
• 1:23:08
  Of defense, yeah, totally. Yeah, we see the reaction to
• 1:23:11
  that. Right, right.
• 1:23:13
  Yeah, there's been a lot of people who have shifted to them.
• 1:23:15
  Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
• 1:23:16
  Yeah. And and that actually is made
• 1:23:20
  even easier by the fact that their product really is running
• 1:23:25
  away with it. And B to BI mean I I started
• 1:23:28
  this morning as well by watching this video that they've gone
• 1:23:33
  from 1 billion of revenue 14 months ago to 19 billion run
• 1:23:38
  rate today. That's that's never happened
• 1:23:40
  before. That's in my board, Dick.
• 1:23:42
  Yeah, it's never happened before, right?
• 1:23:44
  I mean, it's just like. I knew it was like extreme, but
• 1:23:47
  when you actually see it laid out that way, holy moly, you
• 1:23:50
  know, it's incredible. It's incredible.
• 1:23:52
  And and so, you know, as big of a loss as that was, you know, I
• 1:23:59
  can't even imagine like losing a customer where it's 200 million
• 1:24:02
  of funding or whatever, but, you know, out of a 19 billion run
• 1:24:07
  rate, that's small potatoes even.
• 1:24:09
  Seems like it was the right choice, doesn't it?
• 1:24:11
  Yeah, well, well, they're definitely.
• 1:24:12
  Getting a lot of good. Press on it, you know.
• 1:24:15
  Hopefully that'll right that that ship will right itself,
• 1:24:19
  because it kind of does matter if you know, the federal
• 1:24:24
  departments have the best technology for whatever they're
• 1:24:27
  trying to do, like to accomplish their mission.
• 1:24:30
  So but but I'm just, you know, when when you when you look at
• 1:24:35
  that kind of narrative, what do you think about that kind of
• 1:24:37
  narrative? I don't believe in that
• 1:24:38
  narrative and I. The end that they it's just too
• 1:24:45
  simple. Again, on the board of the Santa
• 1:24:48
  Fe Institute. And I think, you know, there's
• 1:24:51
  all these different agents working together.
• 1:24:53
  The world's a complex place. And so these, these little
• 1:24:58
  choices make a, you know, make, make a difference.
• 1:25:03
  I mean, what's the what's the book?
• 1:25:08
  Guns Steel. Guns, Germs and Steel.
• 1:25:12
  Yeah. And you know.
• 1:25:13
  It's a it's a great book. It is a great.
• 1:25:16
  Book and and you know that the view is that we're all kind of
• 1:25:22
  goofed that the folks that are in power that have the
• 1:25:25
  resources, it's going to continue to to exploit the folks
• 1:25:31
  that don't. And that's just been a, a
• 1:25:34
  natural thing because of the, the limitations in the world.
• 1:25:40
  I think that with AI, those limitations, you know, that that
• 1:25:44
  this is, this is, can we break out of that those, those
• 1:25:48
  limitations and where it's so accessible from every country.
• 1:25:53
  And so, you know, now it's, you know, maybe the real question is
• 1:25:58
  who's the most educated, you know, and then and who has the
• 1:26:03
  most educated folks? And then are they going to make
• 1:26:06
  those, those maybe those big choices are those individuals
• 1:26:12
  that, that are in those positions, Are they going to
• 1:26:14
  make considered choices for more than just revenue or more than
• 1:26:19
  just capital? What are those big implications?
• 1:26:22
  And I think I talk about that book a lot with my, my son in
• 1:26:35
  And and, you know, if you read that book, you're like, man, the
• 1:26:38
  world's effed. You know, we're, we're destined
• 1:26:41
  to relive this over and over again.
• 1:26:43
  And he looks at, he says, you know, yes, he said, here's what
• 1:26:49
  I do, Ross. He said, we all have a choice.
• 1:26:53
  And I think that individual choices make a difference.
• 1:26:56
  And in a world that is so wildly connected and where we can do
• 1:27:03
  stuff like this and share these opinions, I think those all
• 1:27:08
  those little choices make a difference.
• 1:27:10
  And we hope you that we that that we can choose love over
• 1:27:17
  fear and make the the right choice.
• 1:27:21
  And I think, you know, if you believe that and you do well,
• 1:27:25
  then, then how else would you think it's going to turn?
• 1:27:28
  That's that's the beautiful spiritual root.
• 1:27:30
  That binds all of the, all of the, the early religions, they
• 1:27:37
  all, they all synchronize at this spiritual root that the
• 1:27:42
  meta theme for humanity, whether you look at it as you know, this
• 1:27:49
  is derived from God or it's just derived through, you know,
• 1:27:54
  complex natural selection or however, however you want to
• 1:27:56
  look at it. I, I, I'm, I, I'm deeply
• 1:27:59
  spiritual, so I'm not an atheist, but you can hit it from
• 1:28:02
  multiple ways. And I've, I've talked about it
• 1:28:05
  on this podcast many times that, you know, when I use the word
• 1:28:10
  God, you could replace the intelligence of the universe,
• 1:28:12
  whatever, you know, whatever suits you.
• 1:28:15
  And, and, and you can get to the same place through stoicism.
• 1:28:18
  I made that point many times on, on the podcast.
• 1:28:21
  But the, the, the central message for humanity that ties
• 1:28:25
  at that common root is that we have to do the internal work,
• 1:28:29
  tell love to love, to conquer own fear, Then we can help
• 1:28:33
  others do that work. And then if everybody does that,
• 1:28:37
  there's no problem. Like, but like we ascend and
• 1:28:41
  that's the metaphorical or mystical or both of heaven and
• 1:28:45
  earth coming together. And I actually personify it in
• 1:28:48
  in my book with Uber driver from Chad who picks me up at 4:30 in
• 1:28:54
  the morning. And I'm like quickly on ChatGPT
• 1:28:57
  trying to figure out something about Chad because I was
• 1:29:02
  embarrassed. I know anything about Chad and
• 1:29:03
  he and I are just like having this amazing conversation.
• 1:29:06
  It's just like we're just meant to meant to be.
• 1:29:08
  And and I'm like, wow, their GP is $660 a person versus our
• 1:29:14
  86,000 here. OK, So what does that mean?
• 1:29:17
  That means very limited electricity, clean water,
• 1:29:21
  healthcare, food, etcetera. And hits me on that drive as
• 1:29:26
  he's telling me his story of like how much he loves being in
• 1:29:29
  America in this place of abundance.
• 1:29:31
  And he's saving up for the next six to seven years to move his
• 1:29:35
  six family members over here, supporting 6 people back home
• 1:29:39
  through his Uber, you know, earnings and just amazed by what
• 1:29:45
  he sees here. I'm like what?
• 1:29:48
  What's the real hope for Chad? And I'm like, it's AI, it's
• 1:29:54
  robotics, it's quantum computing, you know, it's, it's
• 1:29:57
  that, it's that catalyst of getting to the point where we
• 1:30:01
  can create abundance for so cheap that even in a place like
• 1:30:07
  Chad, they would have abundance that they can't imagine today.
• 1:30:11
  And that is like heaven on earth.
• 1:30:12
  And, and there's already many things that we have today that
• 1:30:18
  if you took someone from 100 years ago or 200 years ago and
• 1:30:20
  you transported them to today, they would be like, what is this
• 1:30:24
  thing called a grocery store? And you have like all these
• 1:30:27
  things called blueberries in it, right, Right.
• 1:30:29
  You know, they just want to be able to imagine it.
• 1:30:31
  I do believe in a higher power, you know, I think.
• 1:30:34
  God for me is of course is dog backwards and you know, it does
• 1:30:39
  stand for good orderly directions.
• 1:30:41
  So there is a, there is a, you know, a, a theme to the
• 1:30:46
  universe. But yeah, yeah, you know, yeah,
• 1:30:49
  I don't think it's a mistake that that that.
• 1:30:52
  God spelled backwards? No, not by any means, but don't
• 1:30:56
  get me. Started on our long haired dots.
• 1:30:58
  Oh my goodness. My goodness, we just talk.
• 1:31:00
  We start a new. Podcast about dogs, About dogs.
• 1:31:03
  Dogs. I have Newfoundlands, so they're
• 1:31:05
  about 160 lbs. And yeah, yeah, you definitely
• 1:31:08
  have to be Zen with them. Yeah.
• 1:31:11
  Any any closing words of of wisdom?
• 1:31:13
  For people out there that are you thinking about starting a
• 1:31:17
  company or thinking about this moment with AI, well, I mean my
• 1:31:22
  book. Comes out this time next year.
• 1:31:23
  It's done. You know all the book
• 1:31:25
  publishing. Say the name again.
• 1:31:27
  Fear is a liar. Fear is a liar.
• 1:31:29
  It's tattooed right there on the tattooed on my arm.
• 1:31:32
  You know, Bill. Gurley asked me.
• 1:31:33
  He's on a board. That we he's at the institute
• 1:31:36
  too. And Bill said, hey, man, what's
• 1:31:38
  with all the tattoos? And I said, Bill, life's short.
• 1:31:41
  That's all I said. And he said, man, that's a good
• 1:31:43
  answer. And so, you know, life is short.
• 1:31:47
  And if I have a choice, I'm going to choose love over fear.
• 1:31:54
  And I think what we, we all think, you know, I speak and I,
• 1:32:01
  you know, we, we're coming up on a million customers and they
• 1:32:04
  talk to me and they ask me questions about my business.
• 1:32:06
  And I look at them, I said, your business is no different than
• 1:32:08
  mine. It's just a different scale.
• 1:32:10
  We have this the same issues, the same problems.
• 1:32:17
  And so for me, what you know, my gift I'm trying to to do in this
• 1:32:24
  book is that the, the real challenge is not the
• 1:32:29
  marketplace. The real challenge is you.
• 1:32:32
  It's an inside job. You know that, you know that you
• 1:32:36
  got to conquer yourself first. All of the, the other stuff is
• 1:32:41
  just work, you know, and now it's easier to work with AI.
• 1:32:46
  You can really get a get a get a lot of help, but if you're still
• 1:32:50
  struggling with your beliefs or this trauma or that, you know,
• 1:32:56
  folks in Chad need to make 86 bucks a year compared to our
• 1:33:00
  86,000, then that's a limitation, right, right.
• 1:33:05
  That that you know that that and we won't get I'll get a little
• 1:33:13
  bit political here. That's where I think we are
• 1:33:15
  completely off our rockers around our immigration policy
• 1:33:20
  and talk about a prediction for the future the we're going to be
• 1:33:24
  putting together, this government is going to be
• 1:33:27
  putting together packages, right, right, right for other
• 1:33:31
  countries. To send their people.
• 1:33:33
  Over here so that so that they can work on our AI programs,
• 1:33:38
  right, right. You know, I wrote a piece on.
• 1:33:40
  That's where I mean this. Is this is crazy?
• 1:33:42
  Yeah. I mean.
• 1:33:43
  You look at some big cities are shrinking and and they're
• 1:33:48
  they're just maintaining their economic base via immigration,
• 1:33:53
  right. So of course we don't want
• 1:33:55
  criminals here. And and we, we, we, we, we want
• 1:33:58
  to a process, but the government doesn't seem to get that and
• 1:34:03
  it's becomes a a fear based bullshit political issue when
• 1:34:08
  it's not the the the facts are out and you know, this country
• 1:34:12
  is the way it is because of immigration.
• 1:34:14
  That's such a good point. And you know, I wrote a pretty.
• 1:34:18
  Long form piece on Doctor Fifi Lee's book.
• 1:34:23
  And one of the points I made is a she's a great immigrant
• 1:34:26
  success story. I mean, amazing, amazing woman
• 1:34:29
  who immigrated here and, you know, had this kind of
• 1:34:34
  improbable rise in terms of her career and what what she came
• 1:34:37
  from. But one of the things that I
• 1:34:40
  looked at in that piece is the 83D program, you know, for
• 1:34:45
  immigrants and under all administrations, like a Democrat
• 1:34:50
  or Republican for decades. It has almost completely not
• 1:34:56
  grown since the time I started Core Metrics.
• 1:34:59
  You know, I was, I was half my age, actually less than half my
• 1:35:04
  age when I started Core metrics. And I'm just like, you've got to
• 1:35:09
  be kidding. And we've dealt, you know how
• 1:35:11
  expensive and. And you know how how long that
• 1:35:15
  took? And yeah, I mean the best.
• 1:35:17
  The best have traditionally. Wanted to come here and there,
• 1:35:23
  it's just not that. This is just not hard to figure
• 1:35:26
  out the way to let the the best in and you know, but but all
• 1:35:32
  administrations have failed on that point.
• 1:35:34
  So hopefully we'll get that right.
• 1:35:36
  Hopefully. That's really, that's a really,
• 1:35:38
  really good point. Well, I love you, brother.
• 1:35:41
  I'm really appreciate you. Thanks for inviting me to be an
• 1:35:44
  investor in you and and keep on. I'm working cranking.
• 1:35:48
  It's every business. So well, you're doing you're
• 1:35:50
  doing great and you got an amazing team there and wow, you
• 1:35:55
  know, you got you got a lot to share in terms there's a lot of
• 1:35:58
  lot of people who could learn a lot from you.
• 1:36:00
  So I can't wait till your books out.
• 1:36:02
  Vice versa. Thanks.
• 1:36:03
  Yeah, thanks, brother. Yeah, well, thanks again,
• 1:36:05
  everybody for tuning in to Love Conkers fear.
• 1:36:08
  I absolutely love that episode. Definitely.
• 1:36:11
  If you're a small business, check out Zen business.com.
• 1:36:14
  Keep the love coming. Thank you so much for all the
• 1:36:17
  shares, all the amazing comments.
• 1:36:21
  You know the messages means a lot to me.
• 1:36:25
  Stay tuned. You know June 23rd is when my
• 1:36:29
  book comes out which called Love conquers fear, humanity, AI and
• 1:36:33
  age abundance for all it's an honor of the solstice.
• 1:36:36
  You'll be hearing a lot more about it and it'll be available
• 1:36:40
  for pre-order soon. But thank you so much.
• 1:36:43
  Really appreciate all your support.
• 1:36:45
  As you know, I'm completely self funding this and really trying
• 1:36:49
  to help humanity have the collective heart shifted needs
• 1:36:52
  for us to make it to this beautiful age of abundance for
• 1:36:56
  all. It's possible.
• 1:36:57
  We've got the free will, we just have to choose it.
• 1:37:00
  So thank you again for your support.