Latest / Zero Friction / Simplifying HIPAA Compliance Through AI with Mike Scheerhorn || Zero Friction Podcast

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Simplifying HIPAA Compliance Through AI with Mike Scheerhorn || Zero Friction Podcast · Zero Friction

• Terry Coutsolioutsos/RevRx AI: In MedTech, the difference between a good quarter and a great one isn't always the product. It's the friction standing in the way. Broken sales cycles, misaligned teams, deals that stall at the finish line. Every leader feels it, and the best ones know how to remove it. Welcome to Zero Friction, the podcast where we go inside the minds of MedTech's top commercial leaders to uncover the real barriers they face, the decisions they make, and the systems they build to keep the revenue moving. I'm your host, Terry Cuchalucis. Let's remove some friction. Well, hello folks. Welcome to the Zero Friction Podcast. And today I have Mike Shearhorn from Iron Fort. Iron Fort is a ⁓ HIPAA compliance platform that is really remarkable about it's about digitizing and changing the way compliance is is being adopted in the healthcare marketplace. So first I just want to hand it over to Mike and give himself a quick introduction about a little bit of his history and what he's doing today and then more about the company and then we'll dig deep into the friction points around what the product is doing to solve, as well as Mike as a co founder and some of the things that he's challenged with on a day to day basis and how he works through those things. So Mike, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you here. Thank you, Terry. I'm very excited ⁓ as well. ⁓ this is always a fun opportunity for me. ⁓ I'm probably one of few people on earth that are excited to talk about data privacy and security. But ⁓ Thank you so much for reaching out and very excited to be here. So my background is very much in the compliance realm, healthcare, health tech. Really took a focus on HIPAA about four or five years ago and ⁓ had worked internally at some large organizations, Walmart Publix as well as an EMR company. So ⁓ all the way up to privacy officers. Once I got there, ⁓ had realized this could be done a lot better. The AI boom was happening about six months ago and said, I have to get on this now or else it will be a bloodbath here trying to get into the market and get market share. So that's how I ended up at Iron Fort. ⁓ we are a GRC platform. ⁓ really focus on the ⁓ evidence and documentation perspective. So we can automate your technical scans, scan your environment. We automatically can plug into AWS, like Google Cloud as well as Azure, scan your technical environment, get those results as well as scan administrative or non-technical items such as your policies and procedures. We'd scan those, find gaps in that as well. And from there, all those items that we've identified, they go into a specific area called risk slash gaps. There you have it. There's your annual risk analysis. And then you go through, categorize those, intermediate as it goes on. Ideas to make HIPAA compliance as frictionless as possible, if you will. And something that folks don't feel like it's a no matter the size or scope, whatever, a quarter million dollar endeavor with, you know, consultants and platforms and products, et cetera. We want to be that three hundred and sixty five day, three hundred and sixty degree solution for that's a little bit about me, but ⁓ what is ideal ideal customer? Like who do you like? What is your market? Is it is it med tech companies? Is it practices? Is it is it hospital systems? Tell us little bit about, you know, who utilizes your platform and your technology today. Yeah. ⁓ I'd say our our largest customer base now is in that med tech space. We have, and I put medical devices in med tech as well. ⁓ I feel like they operate sort of in that weird gray area that med tech does. For example, I was at a company, Everly Well, now Everly Health. They're in that weird gray area of like, hey, are we do we have to be a covered entity? Are we a business associate, et cetera? And When it comes to device manufacturers, they'll do things like, hey, we scan this and then transmit it to our cloud and then send it to a doctor. That's PHI. So those are really the sweet spot for me personally. These are folks that work really hard to build either a very, very good medical device itself, which is very difficult to get it to market and be able to, you know, sell it to providers or insurers, et cetera. But then also the tech space as well, where Hey, you have this really awesome software, like an iron fort, but ⁓ you know, you have this really awesome software and products, it transmits, stores, or creates PH. What are you doing for it? These are the folks I like to focus on because that sort of innovation is what drives, you know, better health outcomes, lower prices, things like that. And so those are the folks I love to work with. Obviously, when you have you know, large hospital networks, they get very complicated. ⁓ I worked at Advent Health in Orlando for some time. Fun fact, ⁓ Advent Health Orlando operates under one Medicare license from CMS. So they have like 14 hospitals under one Medicare license. So if you look it up, Advent Health Orlando is like I think the second largest hospital by bed size. But that's taken into like account Maitland or Celebration, all those different ones. But also they're the largest Medicare biller in the country. And so those are very complicated sort of customers to have. And so this sort of solution may not be the best one for them because they really have institution compliance programs and platforms, et cetera, because there's also a lot of operational risk as well. For example, a nurse walking away from the they call it the cow, right? Or walking away from their desk or leaving a chart somewhere. So there's like a lot of different factors that go into HIPAA compliance. So I really do think like that technical space, med device is really our sweet spot. But also, you know, those ⁓ smaller clinics, et cetera, they could really benefit from something like this as well. Cause while they do have those operational aspects, it's not necessarily And I'm guessing even on the med device space, which is where I spent most of my career. You know, I know there's a lot of PHI that goes involved. Just being involved in the pacemaker business where, you know, there is patient registration data with devices that go into companies and all that kind of stuff. So I'm sure that those are the types of companies, especially implant companies, that would really benefit from a technology like Iron Fort has to offer, correct? Yeah. No, I think that's very much like the perfect example. ⁓ we have a customer now who the exact use case you put out there where it's Hey, we have this implant or wearable device and it transmits PHI. We tried to engage with, let's say, ⁓ it was a large government entity in healthcare, and they said, we need HIPAA compliance. What do we do? And we don't have any. We don't, we don't know what that means, right? And so that's where we come in and are able to assist, get them to a point where they can answer yes on risk assessments, ⁓ vendor risk assessments, I should say. and get them to a point where. They're not being held up or put on the back burner something. Let's talk about this a little bit 'cause it's That's really a friction point for the med tech, med device, health tech space, right? Whether it's whether it's a device or a wearable or an an app that's moving, you know, patient information or whether you're collecting data and patient information for an implant. What when do you kind of go like, ⁓ I I should be Like I need to I need Iron Ford, I need HIPAA compliance, I need data compliance. How do you like become aware of it? Other than like somebody coming in and telling you that it might be too late at that point, right? Where you're breaking rules, you're gonna get smacked around a little bit. So what how do you discover with your own self like I need this? Yeah, I would say if you are someone in that sort of realm where in the healthcare space, right, whether you're a a wearable or ⁓ software, etcetera, The second you are ready to go to market, have a lot of these things in place and ask someone about them. I think that is vitally important because the second someone comes to you and says, Do you have this? And you go, ⁓ I'm not, I don't know. That's that's where you get into trouble, right? And a lot of this is very much, you know, an insurance policy and making sure that, hey, when we do get this opportunity, we're ready to go. But I do think, you know, once you're revenue, like ready to start generating revenue and have a outward-facing product, that's when you should really start thinking about these things and getting these things in place because it would be very hard to one engage with a potential customer and then them say you need HIPAA compliance and such or for lack of a better term, you need HIPAA compliance. And then also trying to work with a vendor to kind of you also being the intermediary between your potential customer, the vendor, You're explaining to someone like IronFort, hey, they want this, this, this, and that. That it creates a lot of friction and confusion. And at the end of the day, I I think, you know, would cause folks to just say, I'm good. You know, I don't need this type thing because I can go to whomever who has something that may not be as effective. But I would think also with they have today. Healthcare is moving really fast and you have AI, you know, becoming involved in it. We have all these new companies that ⁓ aren't really doing anything medically but they're also engaging with data and they may not actually be, you know, experienced in the healthcare space. So like, you know, any AI company that's, you know, looking at data, extracting data, using data, seems to me like that would be a heavy, heavy exposure on the on the HIPAA side of things and data privacy side of things. What does a what does an engagement with you look like? So, you know, they raise their hand and say, Hey, you know, I'm I really don't know what we're doing and we want to bring you guys in to help us out. What does that what do you what what sort of exercise that you go through? I'm sure there's a you go through some discovery, you go through some design, you go through some implementation. What does that look like? Yeah, great question. So the number one thing I always ask is what brought you here? Right. For the most part, HIPAA compliance is something if you're a founder in the healthcare space that you're aware of, right? But you don't I don't want say you don't care about it, but it's not necessarily a major concern until it becomes one. And so that's always the first question I ask: like, hey, what brought you here? More often than not, it's hey, we have a potential partner or customer that said, Hey, we want to work with you, but you need all this stuff. So the first thing I ask is saying, Hey, do you have policies and procedures? Right. Very basic, written down, IT policies. And it's a yes or no. And ⁓ half the time it's no, I don't know what that is, what that means, what I need to do, et cetera. That's fine. We can help you with the policy work. And we build them like mad libs. So we leave some areas blank to make sure it fits your organization because you don't want to have hospital HIPAA policies for a med device or whatever it is. So that's how we approach it. But then also we say, hey, do you have a specific platform or software that you use? Yes or no? No. Okay, great. What are you host it on? We're hosted on AWS. 80% of other folks. Great. We can do the technical scan. We'll get you your policies. So let's say they need policies. We'll send them our policy suite all filled in for approval. They approve it. We get them all uploaded. Obviously, that'll pass our ⁓ AI technical scan because we want to, you know, we wouldn't give you policies that don't pass those things, right? So we scan our policies, then we'll scan your technical environment. And from there, it all filters into that risk section. And Really, if you have all those things, let's say you even have policies, right? You get all those uploaded. You get you give us your credentials to access your cloud for a scan. We could in theory, and I don't want to say HIPAA compliant, but HIPAA position within an afternoon if you have those things, because the idea of HIPAA is knowing, identifying, and remediating your risks. And so you know that your S3 bucket is vulnerable and they're not encrypting, right? Which is something we would find in your technical scan. That's fine. It's not necessarily that it's not encrypted that's the problem. It's, hey, are you working to fix it and how are you going to fix it? And make sure you write down how you did fix it. And so we give folks and our customers the to go in there and create that process almost instantaneously. Where a company like Delve ran into some issues a few months back was they tried an end-to-end automation for SOC2 and HIPAA and all these compliance frameworks, but the fundamental Philosophy of the rule is that you need some sort of human intervention in there. ⁓ and so where we put that was like in the risk categorization portion. And so it's you accept, monitor, reject, etc., but we we make the end user do that. So we have that sort of human intervention. So that's how we explain it to folks and sort of the, you know, revenue cycle process, if you will, of that engagement. And so we fully are aware that. Hey, after like the first month, six weeks, these folks will have their risk analysis be able to remediate these risks. We can get them in touch with service providers because we want to stay sort of away from the service and more so in the advisory realm, ⁓ if that makes sense. And so send folks to get the, you know, if they need a service provider to remediate risks, that's where we, you know, would help them with that as well. But after, you know, 365 days, we come back to them. And we say, hey, we're ready to do, you know, set up your next risk analysis. Do you want to do it? Do you have any updates to policies, et cetera? So do you guys operate as sort of like an process or you actually, you know, are you implementing like safety measures inside the system for the data privacy itself? Because I'm just like when you talk about getting service providers, that service provider would be is that a training suit suit like what when do you when do you say that like you're bringing in, you know? Somebody that's gonna you like to do the advising, but you like to have the service provider. Give the give us examples of what that might be. Yeah, great question. So that's where we call an MSP or MSSP to come in. So those non compliance regulations. What is an MSP or an MSP? What are those items? Yeah. MSP is a managed service provider. MSP is managed service security provider. So All the I ⁓ if you're an IT nerd listening to this, you've probably heard those terms a few too many times. No, no, no. We the amount of crazy isn't it? Yes, healthcare and IT is mind-numbing. So but but no, so that's where we really wanna ⁓ fit is in that we want to be your software. So like ⁓ think Salesforce, right? So Salesforce, they that's a SaaS, right? But They've gotten so big that they now need Salesforce administrators that you pay six figures a year to operate it. And it's a unbelievably fun model. I can't believe they're able to figure that out. But ⁓ we want to give you guys the documentation and evidence component and say, here's how you fix it. And then you say to yourself, Do I have the time, effort, ability to fix these? No. Okay, that's fine. We can send you off to one of those managed service or security service providers. And they can help you with that. And obviously we get you, you know, very favorable rates, things like that. But that that's really how we want to manage it and make sure that you have access to get these risks and issues remediated from a like literal perspective. And, you know, not just saying, Hey, we know we have these issues. Okay, that's great, which is what we do. We get you to that point. Hey, we know we have these issues. Now how are you gonna fix them? That's up to you, right? You can go through and organize your risks how you want to. But then the actual like praxis of fixing them, that could be an MSP, MSSP, yourself, whoever. And so ⁓ it's all about just that paper trail and documentation, which is really all HIPAA is is a it is and it's but it's for a good purpose. Policies and documentation. I can't remember a time when I after HIPAA came out that we weren't required to go through HIPAA training every year. And so I I think, you know, the global med tech world is is you know, for the most part, in a good place. You know, removing all those potential frictions like sometimes people might actually call HIPAA a friction in itself, right? Like, you know, it's it's a place where everything kind of stalls and slows down and, you know, you have a system that actually probably makes it pain free and, you know, allows you to move on and and do your business. Because again, that's a r regulation is another form of friction in any business. Whether you're in healthcare and banking, those are probably two of the most highly regulated in industries Mm-hmm. You know, frankly, in a lot of ways, from a customer or a patient perspective, they're both very broken. And so they're designed to protect, but they also just they literally can slow things to a complete stop, right? At the same time. And it's almost like they're they're designed to be confusing, if you will, because God forbid, you know, Joe Schmoes, like you and I, we figure out how the banking system actually works or how health insurance works and how, you know, billing and things like that, which, you know, it's funny I You know, I always tell people, I'm like, it's funny when you look at you see someone on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and it's healthcare policy expert or healthcare czar, whatever. And it's like, in what? Right? Is it is it billing? Is it is it actual like health care? Is it administration? So there are like twelve, fifteen, twenty different sub areas of healthcare that you need to be a genuine expert in. And I'm sorry, there's a lot of smart people on earth. I like to think I'm close to being a a smart guy, no one on earth has a big enough brain to fully comprehend and understand the end to end economics, if you will, of the entire healthcare system. It's just so big and broad and almost designed to be confusing. So people just go, Yeah, it's fine. Okay, I guess I have a ninety thousand dollar bill. You just mentioned AI. So tell me about AI and you know, are you are you leveraging AI in your business in any way? And if so, how are you? Significantly. So ⁓ on the back end, our policy analysis tool uses an AI, an in-house build AI function, ⁓ as well as our technical skin as well. From a like company perspective, yes. ⁓ from a personal perspective, absolutely. I, you know, grew up in an era where I grew graduated high school in twenty twelve. Hopefully don't date anybody, but ⁓ that was an era in which the whole like learn to code. And if you don't learn how to code and become a software engineer. you'll have no chance of getting into that, you know, top one percent, which is where everyone wants to be, right? I had no desire and I don't think the brain capacity to be a software engineer is I forgone, maybe for foregone. There you go. For went, is that a word? ⁓ decided that foregone. There you go. There it is. ⁓ foregone that and ⁓ decided to go into economics and business type thing. But I I think adoption, this is an opportunity for so many people to catch up to those folks who May have gone into software engineering because if you haven't noticed over the last couple of years, you've seen all these folks who went, they did coding boot camps, all these things. They saw their friends getting hired at these small software, you know, development companies at Silicon Valley getting paid four hundred and ninety thousand dollars a year, all these crazy numbers and salaries for twenty two year olds, et cetera. Those days are gone. They've all been consolidated into the Fang companies. ⁓ Well, I guess Mang, but the meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, et cetera, all those talented folks have been absorbed by them. And so now what we've been doing over the last probably ten years is standing on the shoulders of giants, if you will, of the folks that wrote the source code, wrote all these things and then Taking pieces of each code and putting it into different platforms and services. Yes, you need to be intelligent and talented to be able to do that, but not nearly as talented and driven as someone who's building it from the ground up. For example, the folks who made Snapchat puppy dog years, ⁓ they were based out of Utah. They sold their company for $50 million just because Snapchat didn't want to have to pay engineers to figure out puppy dog years, right? And I think what AI is gonna do, and that was in the very much like technical world, right? your software engineers and, you know, computer geeks, if you will. I think for folks like like myself and maybe even you as well, Terry, where I don't have that technical background or experience or ability, right? But I have the knowledge of how regulatory compliance works, or if I'm a lawyer, how the law works for mergers and acquisitions, et cetera, where, you know, let's say you're at Aiken Gump, massive law firm doing MA. Hey, these folks are paying us like six million dollars in legal fees to do this. I know for a fact I can do all of this discovery and get this merger done right in one tenth of the time. And I can charge a million dollars for it. And so guess what? You're gonna have these folks who break off these accountants, lawyers, compliance folks, you know, like myself, which I did was like, hey, I can do this way easier. This, like, there's no reason for people to be charging, for example, a SOC two audit. Getting back into sort of my world, 150 grand or a HIPAA assessment. ⁓ we were quoted by a big four consulting firm when I was at Publix for a hundred and eighty-five thousand dollar HIPAA security assessment. That was the moment, and granted, it took me about another year to really go do it on my own, where I'm like, I could do this for Publix for like a fifth of this and be very happy, you know? And so I think you're gonna see a lot of that in the future now with AI and it's gonna happen a lot quicker than people think because you're gonna have folks who are like, Okay, why am I, you know, this associated law firm or, you know, a compliance manager doing these things when I could go into cloud or claude, however you say it, say, Hey, build me a platform that does this and analyzes A B C D E F G and it'll do it within like four or five hours of finally tuning it, you very likely could have like a a viable product. And so that's where I think we're heading. And I I personally I'm excited. I think a lot of folks my age, the 25 to 35 year old crowd, we should look for and be excited for these sort of opportunities. ⁓ where it's like, hey, be entrepreneurial, go build something, you know, what's the worst that can happen? Right. And that's sort of where how I ended up in this this this world was like, hey, I'm 31 years old. Why not, you know, take a risk and You know, God forbid it doesn't work out. And let's say I spend two, three years on it. I'm 33, 34, you know, MBA, twelve, fifteen years experience and, you know, a failed startup. And I don't foresee that happening. It's I I don't think it will at all. But hey, I'm I'm fine. Right. And so I think a lot of, you know, people, especially, you know, around that twenty-five or thirty-five range should look into that. Space and not be worried about, ⁓ I don't know how to code. I don't know how to make a website. Who cares? That's easy now. It's cheap now. And so ⁓ that's where I really see AI taking us. And I I hope people harness that instead of sort of becoming doomer. Hey, they're gonna take all our jobs and all this. That happened when, you know, ⁓ the industrial revolution. It happened during the hardware revolution, the software revolution. Guess what? We adapted, we're smart. And you know, speaking for us personally, like Americans, we will figure it out and, you know, lean into it, learn it. No, you don't need to learn how to build an AI model. That's just turn on cloud and use it, play with it, give it a crazy task to do and really just explore and figure out, okay, what is this? What are its capabilities? And you'll be blown away within an hour. Do you think it it will happen a lot faster than that software revolution and definitely than ⁓ the hardware revolution? This is something prior to twenty thirty things are gonna compare against significant internet or the digital revolution. I I think it's one of the reasons why I got into the AI, you know, I'm in the revenue architecture business, but you know, I think a couple of things with AI. Number one is it's democratizing intelligence. So the IQ part of the world, it's you know, there are super IQs out there that will always be super IQs, but it basically is allowing the average brain to become above average and everybody's just democratizing and commoditizing the intelligence piece. Where what's not t being commoditized and can't be commoditized is the innovation or the emotional intelligence or the resilience or the ability to like overcome and execute and implement, right? Those are the things that are really going to be the unique aspects of being a founder, co-founder, running a business, because again, I think the the AI world is is leveling the field with regards to the intelligence. It's commoditizing it. So that to me is, you know, f so for a guy who doesn't have a super high IQ like me, yeah. Like that that that gets me excited, right? Because it allows me to to do what I'm good at. ⁓ you know, the other side of it is is that, you know, it's speeding up the world. And and one of the reasons why I did get into the AI business is that I believe the impact of AI versus the internet is gonna be twenty to thirty times the impact on our society, number one. The other piece, which is even which what what's the other piece that's gonna be even scarier is that that same thirty X factor is coming at a hundred times the velocity too. So what took the internet thirty or forty years to get to in terms of change and transformation, you're probably gonna see that same type of change within three to five years with AI. And so that velocity is gonna happen. And so like when you think about and you're not old enough to realize this, but I am, is that I remember the day when You know, you there was no iPhone, like let alone like there was you know, there was no mobile phone, let alone an iPhone. I will say I remember the first time my dad got internet on his ⁓ like the days when there wasn't anyone I remember those days of ⁓ the flip phones and jitter bugs. And so like that's the days when I was on medical sales and you actually used a pager and you got called and you had to go pull over and go to a gas station and put a quarter in the machine and make a phone call. So, you know Those are the kind of things where I'm saying that like if you think back even thirty or forty years and where we've come, like that kind of velocity is gonna change. So our society has to be ready for immense transformation. ⁓ and that's what's gonna be really disruptive. I'm not worried about people losing jobs because I don't think actually AI is going to do that. I think AI is gonna transfer where people are working. Like I think things that are repetitive and I think things that are low impact types of work that you don't mind if an agent does. then it's all gonna get pushed off. What the good thing is it's gonna allow the high impact to be work done by humans, like the engagement part, the human to human connection part, which can never really be replaced by AI. As much as it's good, it's still not a human. And so that's what's exciting to me. No. Yeah. And that's why like the art arts and sciences ⁓ I think are pretty safe for a while. You know, the creative the stand up comedy, the ballet, like all that sort of stuff, I think is safe for a long time because that is the human component of life. Like art is the expression of people, right? And it's ⁓ AI is very much a just big math problem. And it's taking the most common or helpful or easiest route to an answer you're looking for. And you know, a lot of these industries and like jobs that we see are those types of things, right? You know, HIPAA compliance. It's gathering evidence and Documentation and if you have an AI tool that can go and find that makes your job a lot easier. You know, kinda wrapping these this very exciting a little bit. I do have one surprise for you. And so ⁓ not that you have a whole lot of gap between eighteen year old self and thirty-one year old self, but like if you can go back and and give yourself whether it's graduating college or graduating high school, that pivotal turning right or turning left hand turn kind of moment in your life, what advice would you Today give yesterday mic. I would tell them that you're not you're not behind. This is ⁓ I I think especially for folks around my age, I I referenced twenty-five to thirty-five quite a few times. We got put into a world where ⁓ well, I guess grew up ⁓ with a world that, you know, in our ⁓ prime years of, you know, let's say 16 to 25, we had to watch friends, family, famous people. on different applications, you know, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera, doing all these amazing things and like being really hard on ourselves and being very like doomer of like, ⁓ I'll never be I'll never be a millionaire or be happy or anything like that. And for me it's it it'd be like slow down and just appreciate where you're at. You know, for me and like where I'm at now, I I took a massive risk. And it's that's another thing is take risks. Like that's something I've always done. ⁓ I'm a perpetual perpetual job hopper. I'm always looking to I don't want to say bigger and better opportunity, but bigger and better opportunity. And hey, take those risks. ⁓ and, you know, apply for that job that you think you're underqualified for. You know, what's the worst that can happen? There's a thousand other people that do. Maybe they see that you went to their school or whatever it is. And, you know, just do those things and don't be, don't be scared. Right. And take these risks and, you know, at the end of the day, money is ⁓ If you're relatively smart, right? You got a college degree, making money is easy, keeping it is hard. And so don't worry about, ⁓ wow, it's, you know, gonna cost me a bunch of money. If you truly believe in something and think, hey, I have this figured out. I'm gonna go after it, do it. And I think I was strategic about when I did it, but there's always a, ⁓ well, if I'd waited or if I'd done it earlier, that sort of thing, don't worry about it. Just take those risks and believe. Just trust in yourself because you're A lot more capable than you can imagine. And I think by the way, I love the fact that you you're bringing this twenty five to thirty five year, you know, old perspective. 'Cause frankly, as a you know, a very old Gen Xer, okay, like on the fringe of boomer. But ⁓ I don't get you guys sometimes. I got like, you know, the whole like job swapping and like, you know but as a l when I was leading you guys, like you know, as a leader, like it's the most challenging time to be a leader. You have like you actually have boomers still working, you have Gen Xers, you have millennials, you have Z, you have A's, and literally you have like five or six different age demographics that have different cultural alignments, different perspectives on what, you know, work life balances, because frankly, I grew up in an age where there were Like w what is work? There is no work life balance. What what are you talking about? Like it's work, right? And it's kinda funny 'cause my daughter just graduated from Temple and Go Alice. Go Alice and she just got her first job with Deloitte, right? So Okay. And the funny part is she was, you know, interviewing with them and I've, you know, again, I've worked with you know, I've hired McKinsey and BCG and Deloitte my whole life and and I told her, I said, You're gonna get abused. Like you you know, you you are especially as a first year consultant, they are just gonna bang on you and you're gonna be doing slides at three o'clock in the morning and she's like, No, no, no, Dad. They promised me that they have this new philosophy on work life balance and I was like, Bullshit. I go Yeah. So guess who's doing slides at three thirty in the morning last week? You know, like, you know Yeah. No, it is funny. My my dad's an EY guy. Okay. That That it's so funny you describe it that way because he is, you know, on the verge of retirement. He's I think got less than a year left. But it's very similar where, you know, coming out of college, that's what my friends were doing. And that wasn't too long ago. I graduated from Florida State in twenty sixteen. I had friends that were UF finance kids that went to or accounting that went to all these wonderful, you know, ⁓ places and even friends at, you know, Florida State as well. you'd be out on like a Friday night and it's ⁓ hold on hold on I gotta do this real quick it's like what ⁓ what do you mean? But ⁓ no, I do see that that change coming and it makes complete sense because it's something, you know, my dad has seen it. It's not because like, hey, I want to work these kids to the bone kind of thing. It's just like this is different, right? Like there is the change that's happening is pretty significant and I think it's happening a lot faster than people, you know, can realize. It's like ⁓ your friend has a puppy or or gets a puppy or has a baby, you don't see it for six months and you're like, ⁓ my gosh, this thing is like 10 times the size it was last time I saw it. Exactly. But the person who's sitting there is going, No, they didn't grow that fast, you know, that sort of thing. And so I, you know, for me personally, you know, one of the things that I I think someone like your daughter sh you know should consider is like, hey, things are a lot different. I should probably focus on learning how to use AI tools, things like that. But you know, one thing I I think is important as well is like, hey, don't get hung up on the ⁓ I guess, boo nature of job hopping. But that's something I did that worked for me. It's something that I not many of my friends have actually done either. You know, I we came from an era, you know, us folks who are sitting because I'm right on the line of ⁓ millennial and zoomer. Like I'm 94 birthday. People say ⁓ millennial goes till ninety six some say it goes to ninety two so it's it's really right in that sweet spot. So like I didn't have Instagram or any of those, you know, social media things until like late senior year. My guy friends and I all thought Instagram was for girls and lame. You know, now it's everyone has an Instagram. Everyone has a Facebook everyone has a Twitter that sort of thing. And You know, I think that you know, I I think did a decent amount of damage, if you will, to folks my age, ⁓ men and women, where it's, hey, we're constantly comparing people to ourselves or ⁓ my gosh, and they're not even and they're not even real, by the way. That shit's not even like that all that that's all this big shiny shit on the internet, right? So And and you know, you have these, you know, a hundred let's say a hundred close friends, right? You know Twenty of them are able to, you know, find a husband, wife, get married early, find a great job and, you know, get settled down, you know, in their career earlier than the next. Don't worry about that. Like that would be like the number one advice I'd give is like social media is fake. It it creates a illusion that you should be living the most hedonistic, like hundred percent dopamine maxing kind of life. And I just That's not how it is, right? Cause like some people they plan their vacation like growing up. My I had four siblings, two parents, so seven people traveling is a lot. We had our, hey, we're gonna go for Memorial Day in Fourth of July for our summer vacations. We're gonna do two, three days here, two, three days there, that sort of thing. But if you're 15 years old or 16 in 2026, you know, your dad could have a mom, dad, both of them could have really good jobs. You do that one vacation a year and you're going, ⁓ my gosh, I'm I don't have, you know, all this stuff because Susie was in Kazumel last weekend, Steven was in London, and Terry was in wherever. And it's like, hey, you're looking at three totally different folks. And so it's like, hey, focus on what makes you happy. And if you're a risk taker like myself, take the risk. There is nothing to lose. So if you're someone who's bought into like, hey, we're screwed is. you know, ⁓ millennials, older Zoomers or whatever, that twenty-five to thirty-five crowd will never be this or that. Okay, fine. If you have that mentality, take risks. Do things that take you out of your comfort zone. Because I'll tell you, I walked away from a very nice job, ⁓ very nice career path, ⁓ you know, making very good money for someone my age and, you know, that sort of thing. But like I was bored. Granted, I'm I think and operate differently than most. I have that cliche entrepreneurial founder type. There's a lot of room there's gonna be more entrepreneurs with AI than anything else. I think that's the the very interesting part and where where I really am lining up with your you know take the risk, you know, your advice to your eighteen year old self, I think that is like a phenomenal angle to take because frankly the time to take risks is when you don't have kids and don't have mortgages and you're you're You're financially light, you're responsibly light, you don't you're not accountable for a whole lot of other people. And and frankly, this is when you should do it and and experiment that way. So I think that's a great piece of advice to give to, you know, the next generation kind of coming up as well. No, and I, you know, just hope they live their best lives and, you know, they enjoy. I always thought that was a cliche too. Like do it makes you happy. Okay. Well, I I love sitting at home, you know. Drinking and watching football, that makes me happy. Can't make money doing that. But truly find something that like you get up and you say, This matters to me. It's not necessarily you love it. Who loves getting up at 7 a.m., getting ready, and going to work, right? Not many people. People that do are ones that think they're doing something that is beneficial and that, hey, this is something I believe in. And that's, you know, millennials, I think, and even those, you know, older Zoomers where we really fit in, right? Is like, hey, we want to be valued. We want to be seen as like contributors and be told, and it's not necessarily a participation trophy, but be told, hey, you're a valuable member of this team and like we're so happy to have you here. That's worth about twenty five thousand dollars a year in salary to folks my age. And I'm not kidding. I agree. And having and having that purpose too, like making sure that the work you're doing is meaningful. That's what I've learned is that, you know, you got to keep it interesting. You have to find ways to continue allowing them to develop and learn and then, you know, having that great purpose is always I don't care what generation you're in, purpose is is a is a huge motivator and inspiration for all. But Mike, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to Iron Fort bigger and better things and we'll be in touch very soon. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Terry. Literally any time. This was so much fun and ⁓ really enjoyed our conversation. And please feel free to reach out or Anyone reaches out to you about iron for it, let me know, and ⁓ I'll be be sure to get in touch with them. Great. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Terry. Have a good day. That's a wrap on Zero Friction. The show built around one simple idea. Remove the barriers and the revenue will follow. If today's conversation was valuable, please subscribe and share it with somebody who needs to hear it. That's how we will grow this community. I'm Terry Cuchalucis, a revenue architect powered by AI. Come find me at my website, myrevrx.com. And let's talk about what friction is costing you and your organization. Until next time, keep removing the barriers and keep the revenue flowing.