Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Stop Doing Your Own HR

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Stop Doing Your Own HR · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
What if I told you that right now, the government might be
0:02
calculating a surprise tax bill for your business, and the only
0:05
way you'll find out is when a letter shows up at your door
0:08
demanding $38,000? Well, the government's awesome
0:11
at that, and most founders learn the hard way.
0:14
The moment you hire someone in another state, you've entered A
0:16
compliance maze that actively designed to punish you for not
0:19
knowing the rules. But with AI, it can see the trap
0:22
before you fall in an AI that watches every state's payroll
0:25
tax in real time, flags the change before it costs you and
0:28
rebalances your payroll spend. And automatically that
0:31
technology is being built right now.
0:33
So what's the most expensive thing in your business right now
0:35
that you don't even know You don't know.
0:38
Welcome to AI for founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:40
Today's guest is John, founder of Cognet HRO in this episode is
0:45
for founders who are scaling fast hiring across States and
0:48
realizing that HR, payroll and compliance are quietly eating
0:51
their company alive. If you want to understand how AI
0:54
is reshaping outsourced HR from the inside out and how to stop
0:58
getting blindsided by regulatory for surprises, this one's for
1:01
you. And if you want more insights
1:03
like this delivered straight to your inbox, head over to AI for
1:05
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1:09
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1:11
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2:07
Co All right, John, welcome to the show.
2:14
Thank you so much for joining me.
2:17
Thank you for having me, I appreciate.
2:18
It it's a pleasure. It's it's a Monday.
2:20
I love to kick the week off with a good conversation.
2:22
So I can't wait for this one. So.
2:25
Nothing better than starting up a week with a.
2:27
Podcast, right, yeah, well, especially, you know, 11:30 AM
2:31
is about the time when my gears start working.
2:34
Anytime before that I I'm I'm no good, you know, did you eat
2:38
before? No, you know, I'm a a lot team
2:40
guy in the morning. I I don't do breakfast because
2:43
breakfast will kind of like it kind of slows me down.
2:45
How about you? Are you at breakfast in the
2:46
morning, guy? Absolutely.
2:49
Bright and early. Yeah, yeah.
2:50
Nice. I wish, because I love breakfast
2:52
foods more than anything. You know, I've been
2:55
experimenting with this new breakfast burrito spring roll.
3:01
So you take all the goods you got that the the eggs, the hash
3:05
Browns, the bacon and some cheese, and then you put it into
3:10
like a rice paper and then make like a spring roll and then put
3:14
it into the air fryer, mist it with a little avocado oil and
3:17
crisp it up. It's so good.
3:22
Just happy you put the avocado oil on it to give it one healthy
3:25
ingredient so that that I know that it it met that need as
3:29
well. That's good for you, right?
3:31
That's what they've been telling me.
3:33
Absolutely. You know when health food
3:35
becomes cook a steak and melt cheese over it, I'm like, Oh my
3:38
gosh, I've died and gone to heaven.
3:41
Yeah, turns out I've been the picture of health and fitness my
3:43
entire. Life.
3:45
Well, welcome to Colorado. Exactly.
3:48
Well, John, why don't you begin by giving us kind of an overview
3:52
of your company, Cognet, and people can find it at
3:55
cognethro.com, but give us an introduction to the tool.
4:02
Sure. You know, we, we're a
4:03
traditional business process outsourcer or more of the BPM or
4:07
management space now because we're bringing AI and technology
4:10
to, to the forefront on top of BPS services.
4:14
So my, my history simplistically is I've been in the HR
4:17
outsourcing business all my life.
4:19
We won't talk about how many years of experience that
4:21
entails. Been doing business in India for
4:24
about 20 years. We've been in business about 20
4:27
years as well. Cognitive was kind of founded on
4:31
the fact that I wasn't a client at one time and had a vendor in
4:34
India, learned my way through that, went to another company.
4:38
We, we turned it around, sold it.
4:41
The the buyer did not want the offshore help of it.
4:44
So basically I kept the best 10-15 people I have today.
4:49
Honestly, I still have most of those people.
4:50
There is a Management Today, which is a good story.
4:54
They've stuck with us and, and we've been very lucky to have
4:57
them. Over that 20 years, you've seen
5:00
a lot of change. Obviously where, where we are
5:03
now is in our space. AI is, is impeding, whether you
5:08
like it or not. The, the, our philosophy
5:12
recently has been that it's coming whether we like it or
5:14
not. So we've started to develop on
5:17
top of our traditional services. Let's say we process payroll for
5:21
people. The AI side of that is, OK,
5:25
great. We need to compare last week to
5:27
this week very quickly and make sure that it's in good shape.
5:30
We've got a tool to do that instantly while they're sitting
5:33
there in the session. So the, the, the hard part of
5:38
this was that we were just talking about it prior, the
5:42
sensitivity of the data. We have a lot of Phi and infra
5:44
and data you cannot share with the LLM.
5:48
So we have started developing our own internal tool set called
5:51
Drive. It's sole purpose in life is to
5:54
ingest anything and then we decide what to do with it.
5:58
Whether that be with AI, robotics, LOMS which we don't
6:02
use as much of, but we had to have that on our own platform.
6:06
There was no way our clients would ever want their data
6:10
running around in our friends clawed or anything like it.
6:13
Amazing. So let's hover on merchant
6:17
service. Or not merchant service
6:18
processing, but payroll processing, you know, 'cause
6:21
this is a sticky one for, for founders.
6:23
It's, it's reared, it's, it's headed me largely because
6:26
there's always changes that are happening all the time.
6:29
And it's, it seems like a perfect application for AI from
6:33
your standpoint, because say, for example, employee tax or
6:41
what am I trying to say, workman's comp insurance, that
6:47
kind of thing. It changes by industry, it
6:49
changes by time. So, you know, my previous
6:53
business, it was a, a tech company.
6:55
So I think we're at 1.7. And then after COVID, you know,
6:58
everybody went on unemployment. And so it, it jumped up to like
7:01
4.5 and I never knew about it. And that created a differential
7:05
that the state of Colorado was happy to inform me that I owed
7:09
them a check. So that sounds like a good
7:12
application where AI could kind of like keep an eye on like
7:16
statutes and like percentage increases or decreases so that
7:20
founders can adjust their payroll spend accordingly.
7:25
The way we have a lot of clients who are in the professional
7:27
employment organization business or PE OS and they're, they're
7:30
managing, for example, state unemployment, the the downfalls,
7:34
the data from the state isn't as accessible as you'd like it to
7:37
be. But you, you've kind of come
7:40
across the great use example there that that's not mature yet
7:44
won't be there. But hey, can I get my claims
7:47
electronically and basically recalculate my rate at all
7:49
times? That recalculates annually.
7:52
So every year, like you, you got a surprise bill, hey, that we
7:55
want all this money or we'll lean against your house or
7:57
whatever it is we got to do to get your money.
7:59
But what I love about jurisdictions especially is that
8:02
they're not asking that they want the money.
8:05
So you find out the hard way. Yeah.
8:08
And and we see like California, I'll give you, I mean, let's
8:11
just be honest, in California it changes by the minute.
8:14
So we have a lot of clients who have sophisticated platforms.
8:18
We we do not run HR platforms. We're agnostic to that type of
8:22
technology. Whatever our clients who are
8:24
mostly bureaus or providers are using, we use a lot of those
8:28
systems aren't compliant and, and come back to the, you know,
8:32
the big beautiful bill, if you will, that you know, the use of
8:35
overtime and all that. The systems are not ready for
8:38
that. Some are more so and some are
8:40
less so. So the examples are laying
8:43
around from a compliance perspective, specifically
8:45
payroll and payroll tax for AI to jump in there.
8:48
It's not there. If you look at all the big
8:51
providers, you know, ADP, pay core, let's go down the list.
8:54
They all have a, an AI tool right now.
8:56
It's a bot. You know, you can ask it a
8:59
couple of questions. We have a partner who rolled out
9:02
an AI payroll tool. He was supposed to compare the
9:05
last week and say, hey, where am I?
9:08
It's not there yet. But the complexity that comes
9:12
with payroll is is ripe. It's going to bring AI to the
9:16
forefront as long as they're careful about handling the data.
9:19
Yeah, you know, second time founders are are listening this
9:22
with a careful ear to hear exactly what you kind of can do
9:25
for them because HR, payroll, insurance, these are the kind of
9:32
things that make you want to jump in a well as a start up
9:35
founder because, you know, start up founders have an idea.
9:38
They want to bring it to the world.
9:39
They want to inspire the team, they want to they want to help
9:42
their customers, delight their customers.
9:45
And then what you get hit with right in the mouth is like, oh,
9:47
you're responsible for everyone's insurance.
9:50
Oh, you have all these disclosures.
9:52
Oh, you have to figure out how to not only make payroll, but
9:56
deal with all the payroll and insurance and, and all these
9:58
things and you know, for for the folks that are just kind of
10:01
starting out right now, brace yourself.
10:04
It's. Awful.
10:05
I mean, and that's why I love this category of business
10:09
because ultimately, you know, you can be like kind of a saving
10:13
grace for folks who are like, dude, I just don't want to deal
10:14
with this. Yeah, but, and our clients are
10:18
as well the the PEO spaces we're talking about 50 and under or
10:22
our new, new starts and, and founders like we're talking
10:24
about they, they belong there. They'll take care of your tax,
10:27
your payroll, your benefits. They'll provide you benefits you
10:30
can't even get, you know, you won't be able to even achieve
10:33
that. That's why we like them as our
10:36
clients as well. But it's, it's the first tax
10:40
notice that you get and you will get one.
10:43
That's the little wake up call there and, and knowing what to
10:45
do with that and or a garnishment or let's just go
10:48
down the list of surprises and sit around in this space.
10:52
If I, I've started up a few companies doing today, there's
10:55
no way I'd do this internally. It's just not value add enough
11:00
and and it will suck up a lot of your time.
11:02
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's the a really challenging, ticky tacky
11:07
part. You get those letters, you know,
11:10
whether it's from the IRS or you get a letter from the, the, the
11:13
state and you're just like trying to interpret like, what
11:15
are they telling me I need to do this looks like it's a bill for
11:18
$38,000. Like what?
11:20
What are we? What's happening right now?
11:22
That is a wake up call. You know, by the way, they only
11:25
send letters. So let's be clear about that.
11:28
Forget the 20 e-mail scams I get a day, realize my background was
11:32
being ACFO. So you know, I just look at
11:35
those scams I get on a daily basis and just shake my head
11:38
like seriously. But but I do know there are
11:40
really smart people out there that fall down that hole in this
11:44
example. They just don't understand, you
11:46
know, the HR side of things and that's the way it goes.
11:50
And some of them couldn't fall into to the wrong place quickly.
11:53
Absolutely. So as I'm looking at your
11:55
website a little bit, you know, services, sales and underwriting
11:58
support, payroll services, benefits in H&R, benefits in HR,
12:02
finance and accounting, tax services, HRIS implementation,
12:08
I'm not sure what that is. And then you have automation
12:10
between all of those things. So you know, if we're if we're
12:13
talking to startup founders, you know, they got a small team,
12:15
they're starting to grow, they're starting to fill out
12:17
sales, they're getting fulfilment, customer success.
12:20
When's a good like point for them to reach out to you to see
12:24
kind of like how you can help the organization?
12:28
I'd say, you know, anytime the course as my first CEO hat
12:32
dancer, But as you get complexity, I'd say when you
12:37
fall into more than one state too, that's when it really
12:40
becomes different and unique in in the post COVID world of we
12:45
work from everywhere and we all care.
12:47
You find yourself in five states, even if it's five
12:50
people, you've gotten yourself in a whole different ball game
12:52
now from a compliance perspective.
12:55
So I would say that that's usually your indicator that hey,
12:58
I might have gotten myself in over my head just a little bit
13:01
here. John, where were you 6 years
13:03
ago? Colorado is always a lot of fun
13:07
by. The way, Oh my gosh, Colorado I.
13:11
I live in Florida. We have you know, no income tax
13:14
and not much going on, but but it it does matter as you because
13:18
you get multi state and get some size from an employee
13:21
perspective that you got to think I had on your services.
13:24
South Carolina seems to be problematic for some reason.
13:27
I'm not sure, but I always got letters with those guys.
13:29
Yeah. Interesting.
13:30
And then what about, like internationally?
13:32
I mean, we're starting to even look outside of the state
13:34
borders and looking at talent all over the place, you know, is
13:38
there, what are maybe some pitfalls that that founders
13:43
overlook? Well, I'll tell you as an
13:46
employer in India of quite a few people, probably over 600 today,
13:50
but it's not fun and it's not here.
13:53
And now what you will find, there is a product out there
13:57
that you could find called Employer of Record.
13:59
So you have vendors all around the world, basically they'll
14:02
just employ the person for you. But that gets you through.
14:05
I mean, if you decided that you want to educate yourself on
14:08
Malaysian employment law, go for it.
14:11
But if you find somebody in Kuala Lumpur that you want to
14:13
work for, you and EOR will actually employ them and take
14:17
care of everything locally and then you direct them and tell
14:20
them what you want them to do, That's an excellent product for
14:23
somebody who wants to look at international employment.
14:25
You bet. Hey do you guys do employment of
14:27
record? We, we do not actually we're
14:31
quite the opposite. So we, you know, everybody I
14:33
have works for me and we do work on behalf of our clients.
14:37
Yeah. Is there exposure if if founders
14:39
are just using contractors or you know, there's a bunch of
14:43
different services like that, you know, assistance do it
14:46
working part time, things like that?
14:49
Yeah, 'cause I'll tell you I'm going to use what I what I know
14:52
in India, the laws on contractors are very strict.
14:54
So that doesn't mean you're not doing business with one.
14:57
You may not be doing so legally. I would caution people in, in
15:02
all markets. I'm not going to pick on Asia or
15:04
South America. Any place in particular.
15:07
Be wary of whether that person's actually doing the work.
15:10
So you know, I've seen especially in technology where
15:13
people, hey, I hired this great guy in India and he's doing all
15:17
this coding for me. He might or might not be doing
15:19
that coding. They.
15:20
Hired a guy in Philippines. And you're going to you're going
15:24
to find out that the quality of the work of the person the hard
15:26
way. So the international is is
15:30
tough. So be cautious with it.
15:32
If you can find somebody that lay liability all fun like an
15:35
EOR, do it. Yeah, love it.
15:37
OK. And you guys have a fleet of
15:40
different services. What's the business model?
15:42
Do you have kind of like a core offer and you have expands and
15:46
upsells like how does that work? Yeah, we, I coined it.
15:51
I wish I would have service. Mark, this year's a guy called
15:54
Land and Expand. So we typically, you know, our,
15:58
most of our clients are providers of services.
16:01
So we'll come in and if their current problem is a tax
16:04
problem, we'll solve that problem then.
16:06
So, oh, by the way, you know, here is our other areas.
16:10
You you mentioned them. Those are our practice areas.
16:12
We're actually internally organized that way.
16:15
So I have a payroll practice with the payroll leader who's
16:18
been doing that, you know, 15 years and knows they're
16:20
everything more, more than I've probably forgotten.
16:24
So as you look through our, our service model, you know, finance
16:28
kind of fell because I used to be ACFO.
16:30
So that's not a tough one, you know, benefits and, and there
16:34
are just other HR transactions as well.
16:36
I 9 let's go down the list. We, you know, we, we built that
16:41
by functional area versus the client by client.
16:44
Yeah. OK.
16:46
So most do. Most people kind of come in the
16:48
front door for tax preparation. I'd tell you right now, a lot
16:53
do, yeah. And then you know.
16:55
They still supports it or April snakes.
16:58
Because they've got a problem. Yeah, it's because it's like
17:01
you. I got that $38,000 letter.
17:04
Oh my God, do I hire an attorney for $600.00 an hour to figure
17:08
this out for me? You know what, what is what are
17:10
my options or how do I, as we say, we're an ISO 9001 shop 2.
17:15
We're we're process driven. The biggie is, how do I make
17:18
sure it doesn't happen again? 100% awesome.
17:22
So now did I hear you correctly that you've been living in India
17:25
for 20 years? Oh, no, no, I've been doing
17:28
business. I live in Orlando, actually.
17:30
So oh, OK, OK. I was like, oh.
17:32
Right now my biggest problem is getting to India because I
17:35
actually need to go. There's a small little excursion
17:40
going on over there that does is causing me problems from a
17:44
flight, the flight so perspective.
17:45
So we're trying to figure that out right now actually.
17:48
Is this related to the whole Iran thing?
17:50
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I fly Emirates.
17:52
So yeah, as you can imagine that that's not happening right now.
17:57
There's not a lot of flights going on.
17:58
Interesting. So it so you're, you're based in
18:01
Florida and your team is in India.
18:04
Yes. Cool.
18:04
And how? How big's a team?
18:07
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19:01
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we went. From 67 to over 600 in the last
20:03
3-4 years. Wow.
20:05
That's insane growth like 3 Xing every year over the last couple
20:09
years is that. Well, 100 / 100 we're only 5000
20:12
lists coming up for the third year in a row.
20:14
Hopefully I'll give him my pitch right there.
20:18
But yeah, you know what I, and I hate to, you know, I, I was in
20:21
this industry and I had all the people that I knew within it.
20:25
The, the story side of this was COVID.
20:27
I quit. I quit my day job during COVID
20:30
and said I'm going to go do this all day, every day.
20:32
I wonder what would happen. It's turned out good so far,
20:36
that's for sure. Yeah.
20:37
It sounds like it. So zero to 60 in about two years
20:41
and then 60 to 600 in another three years.
20:44
What talk about the growth like how did you kind of like what's
20:48
the sales process like where, where's your acquisition coming
20:52
from? Yeah, it's, it's honestly
20:56
because I'm, I spent 30, you know, six years in the industry.
21:00
It's a lot of it's people that I know.
21:02
We're finally getting ourselves to a point where it's referral
21:05
based. So with a complex product like
21:08
we have, I used to joke like standing in the booth and
21:12
saying, hey, do you want to outsource a bunch of stuff to
21:13
India that that is not what you call an easy sale.
21:16
You know, I'm not selling the fruit or anything like that.
21:19
So this is a longer term, more sophisticated sale.
21:23
And we, we've been very lucky. And now what we're looking at is
21:27
kind of branching out a little bit.
21:30
We, we'd only do HR. So I've always said we're going
21:32
to stay at our lane. It's very tempting to take
21:34
anything. Hey, I'll do you know, just a
21:37
big accounts payable deal. No, you let the big guys have
21:40
that. They know what they're doing
21:42
there. We we stick to our niche and
21:44
we're just getting broader. So staffing is one thing that
21:47
we're looking at today, but on top of that.
21:50
And your niche, is it like startups and SMBs?
21:57
Absolutely. Actually, we, we love startups
21:59
because they can grow into us. You know, we tell them you well,
22:03
when it's a mature model and I have both client facing people
22:07
on my own back office, let's say it's hard to get that to move.
22:11
It's a little bit harder when when their client facing because
22:15
they're small and they're growing like crazy.
22:17
You say, great, just grow with us.
22:19
You know what scale is one of the things we're here to provide
22:23
somebody on the up upside of growth.
22:25
That's a very easy decision for them.
22:26
They just stay client facing and, and keep it there.
22:30
For your mature business, it's a bigger shift because there's the
22:33
cultural aspect that you have to manage and, and people don't
22:36
understand you have to manage culture on both sides.
22:38
Yeah, we have a lot of really educated people.
22:40
They don't like. I used to go to call centers in
22:44
India that I would laugh. Like, I know the, the, the US
22:47
person's irritated, they've hung up, pissed off, but you know,
22:51
they didn't go. Well, it happens on that end
22:53
too. They're they're like, I have a
22:54
master's degree, really. I don't have to take this crap.
22:57
Yeah, yeah. Other I, I've been looking to
23:01
see both sides of that equation. It's been very educational for
23:04
me. Yeah, I mean, Indian people are
23:07
incredibly oppressive, you know, I mean, not the stereotype or
23:10
whatever, but like, I have the great fortune to work with a lot
23:14
of folks from India and they're incredible.
23:18
It it's the reason we're there. People ask us why not
23:20
Philippines, why not Costa Rica? Why not hear one out there?
23:24
And one, one of my founders who runs the India operation, his
23:27
wife works for a very large outsourcing firm and they're all
23:30
over the world as well, near and far shore India.
23:33
The bottom line is betting on the education system.
23:36
It's a fantastic education system.
23:38
The quality of the kids that we hire out of school are, are
23:41
really good. There are some quirks that are,
23:44
you know, things that you have to work through, but you have to
23:47
learn within your market where where we see now going is
23:52
applying technology on top of that.
23:54
That's the other part of why in the the tech talents there now
23:58
in AI land, what you're finding out is the there's no seasoned
24:02
experts on these tools unless you're going to steal somebody
24:06
from Anthropic or you know, whatever and you can't afford
24:09
that. So what one of the reasons why
24:11
we've gone where we got is the talents laying there to to build
24:14
the tech stack. Let's build it and let's apply
24:17
it to the sides of client who can't afford to do and doesn't
24:20
have an IT person or an IT department big enough.
24:23
I think the race here at AI is that everybody's messing with
24:28
it. Is anybody proving they have an
24:29
ROI on it? No, not yet.
24:32
Yeah, I and that's where I think like AI can be very
24:36
instrumental. It's just internally,
24:38
particularly with, you know, workflows for administrative
24:40
purposes, you know, I, I'm assuming with like startups and
24:44
SMBs that they've got a long way to go infrastructure wise before
24:48
they're trying to develop AI tools.
24:49
It's like, Hey, we could do some simple automations that might
24:52
make your world a a lot easier. But also just when you have a
24:56
suite of administrative kind of services, all they want is just
24:59
make this easier for me, which you can you apply and just like,
25:03
you know, hey, it just works like magic.
25:05
It, it, we're not reinventing the wheel.
25:07
You don't need to like, you know, create a, a picture of
25:10
dinosaurs having a picnic, rather you like, just give me
25:13
the information I need as fast as I, I can get it and, you
25:16
know, let me work it out. So, you know, all those tools
25:19
are kind of like available now. And the great thing about it is
25:23
we can just learn from what is successful.
25:25
So the second that somebody finds a workflow that's, you
25:27
know, amazing, then like you can implement that into yours.
25:30
I think we're going to a place now too where well, there will
25:32
be marketplaces of agents for very specific tasks.
25:35
So it's like, hey, I want to tag everything in QuickBooks over
25:38
here and I wanted to connect to, you know, Monday over here.
25:42
And it like all those things, a very specialized tool.
25:45
We can just go pick that up, plug it into our business, but
25:48
that's a little ways away. Yeah, and there's a real
25:52
intonation point there too. We see it where we use robotics
25:54
as well when you know, it's not all AI, but the grey AI might
25:59
have collected the data, got us here.
26:01
OK, now I just need to do 5 steps with it over and over and
26:04
over again. You know, robots are very
26:07
efficient of that para automating the made the tools
26:09
that are already out there, they're very good at it.
26:12
They also don't expose the data, they're simply doing the same
26:15
thing over and over and over again.
26:17
And we'll have projects come in where, OK, great, we'll just
26:20
pull up 18 robots on Amazon AWS and let them go rock'n'roll on
26:25
this and knock it out 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
26:28
Where it LED for us or where people need to think their way
26:31
through is size. So I had a project where, OK,
26:35
I'm moving from one payroll provider to another.
26:38
Oh crap, I forgot all those PD FS that I have out there.
26:41
You know, my W twos, my W fours, my nines, you know the benefits
26:46
sign up form whatever I need to move them from here to there.
26:50
We could do a small project with humans.
26:52
We'll just put people on it, you know, and work overtime and get
26:54
it done. If you brought us a 500,000
26:57
document project, we couldn't do it where where we went with that
27:01
as a is more robotic and less AI.
27:04
So people have to to decide their tool set.
27:07
It really does matter. And and also what's the
27:10
sensitivity of the data that you're touching?
27:11
Yeah. If we're talking about finances,
27:13
it's very sensitive. Yeah.
27:17
I mean, we for you for example, probably don't want your bank
27:19
account number, Social Security number around through ChatGPT or
27:23
anything like that. Or Claude.
27:26
Or Claude, well, Claude, yeah, Claude was blackmailing people
27:30
in their test bed. So that would And you know, we
27:33
find it, We, I went to an AI conference last year in Vegas,
27:37
AI four. It was fantastic.
27:39
Hallucination was one of the things we talked about.
27:41
We see it in our practice today, meaning I I've standing up and
27:45
it worked perfect. I haven't doing exactly what I
27:47
want it to do now. OK, next week comes in and we
27:50
run it again. And now it makes mistakes
27:53
because it's trying to learn at all times and do things slightly
27:56
different. We're having to monitor it or,
27:59
or it's hallucinated and it's it's read the wrong thing and it
28:02
doesn't understand what it's seeing.
28:03
And it comes out with an output that makes no sense to you, so
28:07
that the tech itself has a ways to go.
28:11
But the practicality is you got to, you have to watch it.
28:13
Yeah, yeah, You kind of got to babysit it, right?
28:15
It's like the agents are are all shiny and new and they're great
28:18
and then a model changes and then it's broken and you're
28:20
like, I got to go rebuild it, you know?
28:24
And is what the age of doing for you matter?
28:27
I know there's some really cool stuff and maybe could set some
28:29
appointments for me or whatever it's doing.
28:32
I have some staffing clients. I'll give you an example of
28:35
recruiting, fighting people. The the AI exists to recruit
28:39
somebody contacted them, set them up an interview.
28:43
Some of them could interview them probably.
28:45
So that, that works great if you're looking for warehouse
28:48
workers, if you're looking for physicians, yeah, there, that's
28:52
where there's a lot in between where the human needs to jump
28:55
into the process, you know, can I have the AI do the legwork for
29:01
me, which is the answers, of course.
29:03
And then where do I need to step in and take care of the human
29:07
element? Yeah, it's interesting too.
29:09
It's like, you know, in the beginning it was like, oh, AI is
29:11
going to take our jobs. But it looks like a lot more
29:14
it's, it's kind of like reshaping the, the nature of the
29:17
job where you used to be kind of a individual contributor or
29:21
operator, and now you're more of a manager, you know, So if
29:24
you're building like automations and agents that kind of take
29:28
some of the data entry load off your off your shoulders.
29:32
And, and that's just, you know, if you're a creative, that data
29:34
entry, it might be deeply entwined with your identity, you
29:38
know, creating things. Now we're using AI to create
29:41
things. We're more like giving them
29:43
tasks. You know, what you think is a
29:45
lot really challenging to a lot of people of like, I don't know
29:47
if I want to be a manager, you know, I, I like doing the thing,
29:51
you know. You remember that day when you
29:54
go they said, oh, congratulations, you have 20
29:56
people working for you was the worst day You go exactly.
29:59
They they tell me why it didn't pay more than it.
30:02
Should, but totally I'll. Tell you he's an old financial
30:06
person. That's where it's really going
30:08
to hit hard. First is the the accounting
30:10
department that there is, you know, people that it's people
30:15
spreadsheets and systems. AI is very effective at figuring
30:19
those things out. Let's say something as simple as
30:21
a bank or consolation the So you know, we do some for some
30:25
clients, but we built so we're building tools to do them
30:28
knowing that it's coming anyway. Yeah. 100% man, I am still just
30:32
taking aback of you know, 5-6 years zero to 600 person team.
30:37
There was 15 years of pretty flat there before then, so yeah,
30:42
it's been the last five years where we've really grown quite a
30:45
bit. 15 years, kind of a side thing and you still had kind of
30:48
a you know what? Yeah, I had a day job and then
30:51
we did this on the side and we had friends as clients, which
30:55
was great. And I'll tell you, that's been
30:57
the struggle of our organization that you anybody that's as a
31:01
founder, I'm in the same place, Anybody else's?
31:04
Hey, am I in the way now? Are we getting so big or are
31:08
they going in a trajectory where somebody else could could be as
31:12
effective, more effective or differently effective, I guess,
31:15
and that's kind of what have with the growth.
31:17
You have to re examine ours. Ours was build technology first
31:22
and foremost, you know a lot of internal technology.
31:25
We, we have a lot of pretty sophisticated internal
31:27
technology from a productivity perspective to say because we've
31:32
grown, how effective are we? You know, if I, if I'm not more
31:35
effective than my client at the task, then what?
31:37
They don't need me. Yeah, so why not?
31:41
Why not hire Aceo and go chill on a beautiful boat and do some
31:45
fishing? Because I my golf game sucks.
31:51
I have a really nice boat and I can't catch anything, catch
31:54
cold. My dad's in his late 80s and he
31:58
and I talked quite a bit and he he's like, what would you do?
32:03
I don't have an answer to that question yet.
32:05
So I, I will, I will tell you I spent and I don't know when your
32:10
forever I was, but you know, I was CFO and I, I did a lot for
32:14
other people. I was good at it.
32:17
I didn't love it doing what we're doing now in the last five
32:21
years. I love every second of that.
32:22
So doing something else has yet to even come close to occur to
32:27
me yet. Amazing, So any idea what
32:30
revenue per employee is? Yeah, but we're private, so
32:36
we'll stay away from that one. Ballpark.
32:38
I'll tell you one, John. We want to know.
32:41
You know, we, well, I'll, I'll tell you how we price.
32:43
It's that simple. We price by the person, by the
32:45
seat. So it's $2000 per month, SO24 a
32:49
year. 24/20/2000 per month How many clients?
32:55
About 60. 60 amazing, great business.
33:01
It's not an easy one. It's one of, you know, it's my
33:04
personality a little bit too. It's one of the ones, well, you
33:06
guys will never be able to do that.
33:08
People in India will never understand the complexities of
33:11
what's going on in HR from AUS perspective.
33:15
And then you know that my answer was no, they, they can't.
33:20
I'll tell you, we compete against the model.
33:21
There's a model out here in outsourcing land where, hey,
33:24
I'll just find you the people in India.
33:26
And then you can train them and teach them and, you know, manage
33:30
them. I just, I just found them for
33:33
you. What people ask what's different
33:35
about us? We already know everything.
33:37
We've been doing this for 20 years.
33:39
My tax guy knows more about tax than I do, which is good.
33:43
That's the way it should be so, so we don't need training, we
33:46
just need you to show us how the process goes and what it is you
33:49
want us to do. Yeah.
33:51
Well, you know, that kind of growth with basically zero
33:54
marketing it sounds like. I mean, that's how you that it's
33:58
basically your, your validation right there.
34:01
Because ultimately I have never had a good tax prepare ever.
34:06
You know, I've been through a half dozen.
34:08
It's awful. I'm jumping around.
34:10
I shouldn't say that I I had a pretty good outfit last year,
34:14
you know, but it it's I don't know why it's such a big demand.
34:19
So when you find somebody good, hold on a dear life, you know,
34:22
it's like, OK, cool, I can trust you.
34:24
And again, I think it's because it's so scary and it's so out of
34:27
the wheelhouse for most founder CE OS, you know?
34:31
Yeah, I think you, you hit a point there from a founder
34:33
perspective, my mostly my, my attorney and he and I own a
34:38
place here in Florida at the beach and he's in Fort Connell.
34:41
So he's not too far from you, but you know, I've known him
34:44
2530 years and he's excellent. So when you, when you have those
34:48
three or four people, whether it be your tax person, your
34:51
attorney, our chief operating officer and president used to be
34:56
my boss at one of my last jobs. He was the CEO.
35:00
He and I reconnected 5-6 years ago.
35:02
And then I was like, are you kidding though?
35:05
You think I want to do operations?
35:06
Are you out of your mind? Yes.
35:08
When can you start? So, so I do find I don't know if
35:12
you have and you're endeavours, but you know, you got 345 people
35:15
around that are really good that you trust you're doing pretty
35:19
good. And in our case also my business
35:21
partner in India, if you're, if you're going to be out of the
35:23
store, you got that person's got to be a owner and you got to
35:26
trust them with your life and you really need to know them.
35:30
People that I hear. I have a large company client
35:34
friend who's like, hey, we're just going to go to the Indian.
35:37
I'll bring it up and say I'm sure it's easy.
35:39
Somebody told me it's easy. I'm like, you have no one.
35:43
Like, yeah, go ahead, yeah. Go ahead, it'll take you 18
35:46
months. And a bunch of bribes you can
35:47
get incorporated but other than that it'll all work out very
35:50
easily. It's, you know, things that are
35:52
hard and hard for a reason. Whereas equal.
35:55
I tell them, hey, I can start LLC in Florida on this computer
35:59
in the next 15 minutes for a couple hour bucks.
36:03
Nobody believes that either. So it does does make me realize
36:06
how doing business in in our market is is quite different.
36:10
Yeah, I love that. You need, you need a.
36:12
Like a, a small team around you like it like a pirate ship crew.
36:17
You know, you, you got to have the tax guy.
36:19
You got to have the attorney man, you know anybody, any
36:23
business attorneys too. I, I could use one of those as
36:25
well. What else you got to have, like
36:28
the massage therapist? That's a real good one.
36:31
I'm or a therapist? Yeah, yeah.
36:33
Personal Therapist. I can't find a good one there
36:36
either. Let's see a good General
36:40
practitioner Dr. I'm looking for another one of those.
36:43
I'm realizing that I'm out to sea without a crew like.
36:47
What am I gonna and and? There are, you know, I'm in this
36:51
business outsourcing some of that makes sense too.
36:55
Yeah, I'll find and you trust and people that you trust that
36:58
go by referral. You you asked about our model, a
37:01
lot of it's referral, but it's people that I trust that that
37:04
trust me or trust somebody I know.
37:06
And you can't beat that and starting up any kind of
37:08
business. Yeah, well, and I love that
37:10
aspect. Of like, you know, basically
37:12
we're just doing kind of a zoom call here with descript, but
37:15
like, you know, that's just across the board.
37:17
You know, it's like if I have to go see my General practitioner
37:20
and that's kind of the hang up. It's like, look, I I want to get
37:23
blood work done. On my.
37:24
Terms send you the thing you send me back with like the fact
37:27
that I have to go to an office and show up and you look in my
37:30
ear and like, you know what I mean?
37:31
It's like it feels dated, you know?
37:33
So like a lot of these, these models are changing, which is
37:36
great because it opens up the talent that you can pull for
37:39
your, your pirate ship from all across the planet, which is
37:42
amazing, you know, and we, we use a lot of chat.
37:46
In our day, in our day-to-day interaction with clients.
37:49
And we love it and we find it. That's what they want.
37:51
They don't want to call us. Oh my God, no.
37:54
The, the the world changed tremendously quickly.
37:57
Yeah. All right, John.
37:59
We're ready to go into the quantum round.
38:01
Are you ready? I'll I'll try.
38:05
First question. Why is ADP so terrible?
38:12
Oh my God, yes, I'm going to divulge my, my girlfriend to be
38:17
quiet. So I get to listen to this all
38:18
the time because my answer is simply because they want to be,
38:23
you know, they're, they're the big boy.
38:25
Here's our service model, here's our five or six boxes.
38:28
And here's how they work. If you if you don't like that,
38:31
then maybe you should go someplace else, but that's how
38:34
you build that kind of probability and scale in that in
38:37
the, in the payroll business. So it's it's by design and I I
38:41
don't generally trash. Companies, but ADP has done me
38:44
terribly over the years and so QuickBooks too, just awful.
38:48
You know, it's just like, boy, well, I'm, I'm with you.
38:51
I'm a QuickBooks. Guy forever alone my clients are
38:53
so yes, I agree with you there too.
38:55
Like what? What do I got to do?
38:57
You can't. There's and unfortunately with
39:01
QuickBooks I got to call and there's nothing I hate more than
39:04
that. Yeah, well, in QuickBooks it's
39:06
like. How do I just get in to get
39:08
something without 17 pop ups trying to sell me something new?
39:11
It's like where's my dashboard? You're always moving around if
39:15
they if they change. The damn look and feel one more
39:17
time. I swear it's like a panic every
39:22
time I log in. I'm.
39:22
Like, Oh my God, what's happening?
39:24
Oh my God, what's Where'd everything go?
39:27
Yeah, we have our new. AI tool.
39:28
That's great. It's just why I just, I just
39:30
want to income state by my mum. How hard can this be?
39:34
What experiments are? You running with AI right now or
39:36
what are you tinkering around with?
39:39
So, so our own. System that we called drive or
39:43
pointed in four or five directions originally.
39:47
I'll tell you this is where I want to be a little different in
39:50
that it was easy for us to say internally, hey, let's take
39:54
this, we do this for 20 clients, let's automate it and be more
40:00
effective and make more money. Where where we are now is, hey,
40:03
let's just talk to the client. He'll be upfront.
40:06
There's a different economic model for it.
40:08
It's software. It's software with ongoing
40:10
support. It might be less money for me,
40:14
but it's coming anyway. So, you know, they've, they've
40:18
been cruising around looking at Cup Island, looking at different
40:20
things that in their business that we could do together.
40:24
So we're, we're taking that from practical perspective and say,
40:28
what's our biggest volume problem and working our way down
40:32
where, where I think that leads us to in the future is leading
40:36
with that as the sale. But instead of, hey, you've got
40:40
five people in your HR department, you know, I got 5.
40:43
We'll do the work. Don't worry about it.
40:45
It's, hey, I've got some technology that can, you know,
40:49
take care of what three of them are doing already and they can
40:51
go do something that has a lot more value to our organization.
40:54
Yeah, they could build customized.
40:56
Tools, dashboards and just plug into your information into your
41:00
API essentially and you become kind of the the backbone for for
41:04
for the data, but also for the compliance and and just the
41:07
privacy so they don't have to worry about it.
41:10
It's funny you mentioned. ADP because the one thing the,
41:13
The funny thing, the HR business nobody wants to talk about, they
41:16
make it hard to leave. So you're never going to get
41:19
your data in a usable format ever.
41:23
You're going to get a here, here, here's your stuff, good
41:25
luck. And the minute you terminate,
41:27
you're screwed because you're going to be turned off in 30
41:29
days. The tools that are starting to
41:32
exist, like the tool we develop can adjust that data pretty
41:36
quickly. You know, run your last payroll
41:38
register, we can adjust that. It's going to be sitting around
41:41
in a Jason file. What do you want to do with it?
41:43
Tell us, Tell us where you are to go.
41:45
You had said earlier about our HRS implementation group.
41:48
That's what they do. So we help people move from A to
41:51
B Love it. OK, so.
41:56
You know, let's say Cognet, someone shy or shows up at your
42:00
front steps with with a duffel bag of gold bars and they want
42:04
to buy Cognet. You're like OK, but as we well
42:08
know that you need something to do and you're you're going to
42:10
start something new. What would be the next project
42:13
after Cognet if you had to? Something to work on.
42:17
Not fishing and golfing. We.
42:19
We've covered that easily, you know, for for me, it's the
42:24
application of technology and what I've already been doing for
42:26
35 years, which is HR. Yeah.
42:30
In this space, you know, I have a friend who has a dream.
42:33
He wants a system that makes coffee and does everything else
42:36
that you'd ever wanted to do. But how do I shorten the, you
42:40
know, quote cycle? For example, I'm you.
42:43
I need workers comp and payroll. How do I get that?
42:46
And can I get it, like today? Well, right now the answer is
42:49
no, not even close. Solving a business problem like
42:53
that, the one we've talked about is small contractors.
42:58
So they they come build a house, they do the roof for three
43:00
months, they take two months off, they go surfing, they come
43:03
back and do it again. They still need a cert or a
43:05
certificate of insurance, they need to pay people, they need
43:09
instantly to create this infrastructure.
43:12
How do we do that? That that's a problem that I've
43:14
always thought about wanting to solve.
43:16
So I'd probably take some of my gold bricks and do that.
43:20
I'd probably also be asked to stay at Cognet for a little bit.
43:23
So I'd have to think my way through that.
43:26
You know, they're the that's the reality of of being a founder
43:29
too, is if I sell it, great. I'm not allowed to go anywhere
43:33
for a whole I don't sell. You got to manage that side.
43:37
Yeah, that, that is interesting kind of.
43:38
Instant infrastructure for businesses.
43:41
I I'm thinking that, you know, down there in Florida too, you
43:43
guys have a hurricane season every year.
43:45
So like, you know, there's just a massive flood of contractors
43:49
that that jump in to like rebuild stuff or at least
43:52
contain it. You know that it could be that
43:54
could be a really interesting business.
43:57
Yeah, and some. Of the the larger insurance.
43:59
Companies have tried to do this, but they only do it in in like
44:01
clerical and things where they, they don't take any risk.
44:05
So you know, how how do you help companies get infrastructure
44:09
more quickly and anybody can incorporate online fairly
44:13
effectively. The question is, how do I
44:16
magically have a business? Around.
44:20
Hiring, do you have any advice or frameworks?
44:23
I you know, there's that adage of, you know, a hire slow, fire
44:26
fast. That seems to be like a pretty
44:28
good plan. And you know, do you anything
44:31
you you might share with the audience?
44:34
Yeah, they they don't. They were.
44:36
Asking me because they know my first instinct is to say fire
44:39
them and let's move on. And they, they hate that.
44:42
So my HR person, Kevin surely hates to see my, my phone call
44:46
come in. You know, the fact that we're,
44:49
we're in a market that typically in a business that India BPO
44:52
that turnovers 100% pretty much for our space.
44:56
We're about 35 and we tried to make more of a science of
45:00
hiring. I'm very lucky of the fact that
45:02
I have a minority investor who's just a highly, highly
45:05
intelligent HR guy and he's retired.
45:08
And we're, we're going through a process right now where we're
45:10
saying, what can we build predictive modeling on hires?
45:15
Now humans are irrational. So I don't know how well that's
45:18
going to work. But we're looking at all of our
45:20
past data and saying, where did we win and where did we lose?
45:24
And how can we at least understand that data when we go
45:27
to hire? So we're trying to be more
45:30
thoughtful on that end. We we though are in the business
45:33
of growing managers and growing people.
45:37
So we've we've learned to be a lot more, I'd say patient on
45:41
that end. I have, that's for sure.
45:43
Luckily I don't make a lot of the higher fire decisions
45:46
anymore, you know, smart people doing that for us.
45:50
But I think, you know, the, the, the tough part of where I've
45:54
been in with the seat, I've said it in my past, is that you tend
45:58
to move on. I think I love the bus theory.
46:01
You know, we, we're moving around the senior manager right
46:04
now. Hey, we need him on the bus.
46:05
He's in the row seat. We just got to get him someplace
46:08
else. I find more joy and more skills
46:12
needed in that decision making process of let's move somebody
46:16
around than anything else. And then to see them go there
46:20
and do well is is very rewarding.
46:22
How do you do that? How do you?
46:26
Figure out what a good position on that bus is for somebody the
46:30
tough. Well, I think #1 is what is
46:32
motivating them. You know, 111 of the people that
46:35
did fantastic where we moved her.
46:37
The answer was money. Sometimes it's how many direct
46:41
reports that I have. You know, what do I see prestige
46:43
or, or you know, importance or how it how, because it may not
46:48
be what mine is minus profitability every time.
46:52
You know, your group, group by group.
46:53
How are we doing from a probability perspective?
46:57
Your employees, your managers may not see it that way.
46:59
So putting that person in a position where there was the
47:02
hey, great, if you can grow clients, we'll, we'll pay for
47:06
it. So, but that I'm not kidding
47:09
you. That took us three years to
47:10
figure out and it wasn't, wasn't pretty along the way.
47:14
So I think there's some science to it and and art as well.
47:19
There's, you know, there's a good feel aspect to knowing the
47:22
people. Yeah, yeah.
47:24
If. You got a sales team and people
47:25
aren't motivated by money. They are on the wrong scene.
47:28
The bus I I hated to say. Sales is the easiest 1 you
47:32
either made the number you didn't Staff accountants.
47:36
How do you evaluate a staff account?
47:38
I don't know We we closed on time again this month, but I may
47:42
have the worst for best people in the world.
47:44
I'm not quite sure what are. Some interesting.
47:47
Things about Indian culture in the workplace that we might not
47:50
know, you know, I know you know, for millennials it was like ping
47:54
pong and kombucha on tap. You know, what are the little
47:58
perks and bennies of having a Indian team that that they
48:01
really like? I'll tell you the.
48:04
Thing that that. That interests me hugely is too.
48:07
They have their millennials as well.
48:09
So, you know, the, the younger kids in India are, it's a
48:13
different path, but it's a similar path at the same time.
48:17
The, the one that surprised me and still still befuddles me is,
48:23
you know, their, their parents involvement realized a lot of
48:25
our younger kids specifically still live with their parents.
48:28
So their parents are very involved in their lives and
48:32
where they work. And you should I take this job?
48:35
Is there transportation? Is there that whereas kids here
48:38
are like, you know, whatever, I'll move, I'll move across the
48:40
street for five grand tomorrow and I have to ask mom and dad or
48:44
anybody else that that that aspect.
48:48
The thing I love probably more than anything, though, is the
48:52
intelligence gets applied. They love to understand a
48:58
mistake was made and they love to figure out why.
49:01
And they're very transparent about it.
49:03
I used to have to sneak into my office on a Sunday and you know,
49:07
look at people desk and find them hiding stuff on me that
49:10
they screwed up that they didn't want to bring to the forefront
49:14
that cultural aspects very different.
49:16
Whereas there 5-6 people get together really quickly and say
49:21
how do we find this and make sure it doesn't happen again to
49:23
fix it and communicate to the client, let them know it's a
49:26
very much a group organizational thing.
49:29
Whereas here not so much interesting.
49:32
You know I love the. Multi generational living too.
49:34
That's that's something I I moved down South to the sticks a
49:37
little bit. I'm down by Roxboro probably,
49:40
you know, 15 miles southwest of Denver, so kind of in the
49:44
foothills and it's kind of a new community and they're we're
49:48
probably 5-6 miles from Lockheed Martin.
49:51
That's all nestled into the thing.
49:53
I don't know what they're working on spaceships and
49:54
rockets or something. You probably don't want to know
49:57
I. Don't want to know I.
49:59
Do because I also moved over here because I feel like it's a
50:02
hot spot for UFOs, but that's beyond the point.
50:05
But as a because as a result, there, there's a bunch of Indian
50:10
families here that are, you know, engineers over at Lockheed
50:14
and they have their parents with, with them.
50:15
So it's like, you know, grab the Nanas and the Papas, the parents
50:18
and the kids are all in the same house.
50:20
And, you know, having kids, my kids are 17 and 18.
50:23
I'm kind of looking at, I'm like, hey guys, look at this
50:25
like, you know, this would be actually really.
50:27
Cool to like, you know you have dad around.
50:30
Forever. You know we don't know our.
50:32
Neighbors names. Yeah, You know, we're the
50:35
opposite. I have a little game, but it's
50:38
it's a parable, if you will. But every time I go over, they
50:42
know I'm there, Of course, because I've let, I've had to
50:45
let everybody know where I'm at when I get in, when I'll be in
50:47
the office and my driver brings me in and I I've literally tried
50:51
to bribe him and say, you know, John, do not let them know that
50:55
I'm on my way. I want to just show up in the
50:57
office and walk in and go talk to a couple people.
51:01
They're working on something and just kind of elements surprise
51:05
you will never going to happen. It's it's a it's a conspiracy
51:09
all the way in. And my entire HR team comes down
51:13
and putting my vice president of HR.
51:15
They are there with some gifts, candy, some flowers.
51:18
It's it's a show. Yeah.
51:20
And this is this is just India. This is not for me because I'm
51:23
the boss of the owner. Any of that crap.
51:26
It's it's cultural. The the the guest is king or
51:30
queen and I, I I have literally for years tried to figure out
51:35
how to get into that office without them knowing that I just
51:38
can't seem to get it done. The surprise Pop it and they
51:40
probably. See this disrespect?
51:42
They're like, how dare you join? They would.
51:44
Yeah, they would. Me, I'm just like, I know I'm
51:47
going to pull it off one of these days.
51:51
And and I look at my own culture, I realize I'm American.
51:54
I'm like, they want to carry my back.
51:56
Nobody touches my backpack. Come on, my entire life is in my
51:59
backpack. I don't let anybody touch it
52:02
ever. So the the little nuances come
52:06
out when you do business in other cultures.
52:09
I tell you, I I, I absolutely adore and love the Indian
52:13
culture too. You got to go Incognito you.
52:17
Got to like. Show up with like a Easter Bunny
52:18
costume on or something and do like a little danceagram and
52:22
they'll be like, what is this? And then you'd be like,
52:24
surprise. No, no.
52:30
OK, I'll see how TSA likes that one when I come back through it.
52:33
Nice. John, as we're wrapping up here,
52:35
I know Justice Ventures is like near and dear to your heart.
52:38
You want to give them a shout out and talk a little bit about
52:40
the work they do? Sure.
52:43
One of my friends, Jeff Pencrest.
52:44
Started it and he's an attorney the DC area.
52:48
He he and I have done business in Indy together and he helps me
52:51
out with some of our legal issues.
52:53
But their their goal in life is they go to northern India, they
52:58
pro bono represent people. And I know this will sound very
53:02
strange, but there are still cases within parts of India
53:06
where people are kind of indentured, where is, hey, you,
53:09
you owe me a debt. You're going to work for me
53:11
under terrible conditions. And this is the way it's going
53:14
to be. They represent those people in
53:17
court for, for nothing. So their charity is all about
53:21
lawyers who come over, have lawyers in India, but also
53:25
lawyers from the state and represent people who are in bad
53:29
situations and try to get them out of it.
53:31
We just, we love that. We also started something called
53:35
Contact care. So locally in in Chennai where
53:37
we are, we're out out and about and get our folks out and about
53:41
and do visits to orphanages. Anything that makes sense for
53:46
us, we let our employees kind of drive the bus on what they want
53:50
us to go see or, or what's important to them.
53:53
That outreach is is really important to me as well.
53:57
Amazing. And that's.
53:58
Justiceventures.org, people can check that out kind of as we're
54:01
wrapping up here. What's on your media plate these
54:04
days? Any any fun movies or TV shows
54:07
or albums or podcasts? What?
54:09
What are you digesting these days?
54:13
I I will admit. That my girlfriend and I binge
54:16
watched House of Guinness yesterday on Netflix.
54:20
I haven't heard of that. Somebody else.
54:22
Somebody else turned that way. If you're a Peaky Blinders guy,
54:27
same, same people. So it's about the history of the
54:30
Guinness family and the transition from when the when
54:34
the old man kicked off to his children taking over the
54:37
business. And I got to tell you about, you
54:39
know, for I'm not a big fan of reading business books.
54:44
You know, I'm in business all day.
54:46
I'm not AI do like to read, but yeah, from a binge watching or
54:51
or media perspective, those are like types of things, you know,
54:53
how can I not be in the outsourcing business for the
54:56
next 6 hours watching something like that?
54:59
Well, I didn't even hear about this.
55:01
I love. Peaky Blinders and really just
55:03
period gangster movies in general.
55:05
You know, my favorite movie is Miller's Crossing, which is a
55:08
Coen Brothers movie where it's basically the Italians against
55:12
the Irish gangs. It's great.
55:14
I love that stuff. Yeah, I.
55:17
I kind of, we, we joke. I, my girlfriend Sasha, she's
55:22
fantastic. She's not a movie watcher.
55:24
Me and my friends quote movies all the times.
55:26
You know, we'll come up with a, you know, leave the gun, bring
55:29
the cannoli. Let's just start there.
55:31
Since we're both gangster girls. I just get all of like talking
55:35
about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
55:37
I could, I could basically go all day just reciting Fletch
55:41
quote, you know. Ron Burgundy what?
55:46
Yeah. Man I I watched this.
55:48
New Bob Lazar documentary. I made my wife watch it too this
55:52
weekend, which it's pretty cool. It's like really AI generated.
55:56
But she wasn't buying it. She she doesn't think that that
55:58
guy saw any aliens, but you know, it was fun.
56:01
It was fun. I'll check.
56:03
Hey, well, we. Might well AI might bring the
56:05
Terminator to all of this soon enough, so we'll see how?
56:08
I hope not. Hognethro.com John, where's the
56:12
best place for people to connect with you personally online?
56:17
The LinkedIn SO. You can find me there over there
56:20
all time, wherever you're listening to this podcast.
56:23
John's LinkedIn will be in the show notes.
56:25
Cognet's website will be in the show notes as well.
56:27
I really appreciate you joining me as it was so exciting to get
56:31
to know your business and congratulations on such success.
56:35
Thank you. Appreciate your time.
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