Speaker 1: (00:00)
All right. I mean, this is our first official AI report podcast. Um, we've done a live event last Friday, but this is our first time with an actual guest on. So, um, I'll do a bit of an introduction. Me and Andrew have worked together, um, a little bit in the past, um, when Andrew was on the growth side of things, and I was on the ad sales side of things. Um, and I wanna touch on a bunch of things that you have done in the past and are doing kinda your thoughts on things, but if you could give us a little bit of an intro to yourself and who you are and what you do, that would be amazing.
Speaker 2: (00:34)
Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, uh, pleasure to be here, Liam. I appreciate you having me on like the, the first, uh, live interview or first podcast interview here. Um, yeah, we've, we've had some overlap in different things. Um, I'd say the, the thing that's most relevant here in my background is I've been in B2B SaaS marketing for, you know, coming on 18 years now or so. Uh, I've worked with, you know, those brand new companies, VC backed, uh, but were like pre-revenue, helped them grow and scale all the way up to where I was A CMO for an organization that was at 400 million in a RR and helped them grow up to the 500 million, uh, spot. Had my own entrepreneurial endeavors throughout the whole whole time, jumped into different businesses here and there. Kind of built that up. But I'd say I found one of my sweet spots in those organizations that have found basic product market fit. Uh, so that's around the four to 6 million in a RR spot and helping them grow up to the, the 50 or a hundred million area. And that's really where I thrive, is building out those teams, helping them grow. Uh, and then now with, you know, AI really being more publicly, uh, available, incorporating things in there to kind of, you know, 10 x uh, what everybody's doing there in efficiency and processes.
Speaker 1: (01:45)
Yeah. Amazing. I really wanna touch on that scaling process and how you can go about that and maybe how AI's affected those certain areas as well. Um, but I'd love to kind of start off just on that note, I was doing a bit of research on you beforehand. Um, so I a look through your different profiles. I've noticed that you've written an ebook at some point as well. So we went, we printed the research here, but I'll start with your Twitter bio. So your Twitter bio says, oh, three times founder, two, two exits, founder of Wordsmiths, executive board member at faco, board, X orbit model, Agora Pulse, process Street, and omi. Talk to me a little bit about all these businesses, if there's maybe some kind of common themes that you've noticed about them, like what you've kind learned from your journey across all of this, these different organizations. It's a bit of a vague question, but kind of talk to me about being part of so many different organizations and what that process has been like for you.
Speaker 2: (02:41)
Yeah, yeah. I, I think being part of Agora Poles, orbit, process Street mb, all these other companies that are all in, kinda like the B2B SaaS space, it just, it just happens whenever you're in this arena, right? Uh, because things move so quickly. It's not like the old, I'd say, some of those legacy businesses where you're with one organization for 10 or 15 or 20 years, you know, that, that just doesn't happen. Uh, for example, a couple of the orgs that I've been with, uh, from when I joined to helping to scale up within a very quick period of time, they ended up getting acquired, or they raised another round, and we had to do some restructuring internally. And so that's just part of, you know, being in this space. So I think anyone who's been in SaaS tech for 18 years, uh, you'll see a similar thing, you know, a similar repeatable system in that they've been with multiple great companies.
Speaker 2: (03:32)
And it's because there's been things that change. They get acquired, they go under new management. Uh, the company doesn't survive, you know, they didn't raise their next round. So the company has to shutter. And so that there's, there's rifts that happen. Uh, it's just, it's just part of it, but it's, every time I've been in a new org and been part of it, there's always learning experiences and growth opportunities. And so I say that's the biggest thing. And building those human connections while you're there, even if it's a shorter period of time, those relationships, because this space is so small, even though we think it's like huge, it's global. It's, it's not that big. There's so much overlap that happens. So it's really important to keep those relationships. And some of the people that I worked with, I don't know, 10 plus years ago, are still supporting me and I'm working with them on, you know, other projects and introducing them to new opportunities that happen. And same thing for me, like, they introduced me to other things there, and it's just, uh, you know, I'm mutually beneficial, you know, to, to keep those good relationships going. And also just on a human side, you work with great people. Why, why not stay in contact with great people?
Speaker 1: (04:30)
I think there's like a tendency for people, especially if you're involved in like the LinkedIn space for people to like over systemize or overanalyze these things, when it kinda can come down to that really, like, you can be really good at your job, but just being a good person is probably the core value you need to really succeed across these organizations, especially over time.
Speaker 2: (04:51)
A hundred
Speaker 1: (04:51)
Percent. Um, I'm curious, so say for example, like coming out of college for you, um, from what I understand, did you come out with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science? Or is that
Speaker 2: (05:02)
I did. I did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (05:04)
You did. So talk to me about how you transferred from that into the kind of entrepreneur you are now, into your look first organizations. What was the mindset shift like there? Was that just always a vehicle to get there, or was there a shift in your kind of personality or approach? What happened there? Yeah,
Speaker 2: (05:22)
Yeah, interesting question. So, um, I was actually, I, I'd say I really started taking my entrepreneurial journey seriously in college. So even though I was focusing on political science, uh, the university I was going to Baylor was not cheap. And so I, I couldn't afford it, you know, on my own. And I didn't wanna take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans like we have here in the us. So I needed to find a way to kind of balance paying for college, uh, while also going into something that I found interesting. So that's when I launched my own consulting firm. I just called it basically my own name. I called it Miller and Miller Consulting. There was nobody else. There was, there was nobody else in the org, but hey, let, let, let me try that. Uh, and so what I did is I just hustled, you know, I didn't know what I didn't know.
Speaker 2: (06:06)
Uh, I tried to figure things out there. I saw projects that looked interesting. It was all around like the marketing space. Uh, even though I wasn't, I'd say a great marketer, I didn't know the fundamentals. I wasn't going to school for marketing. But, uh, in my, I'd say earlier days in high school, I did a lot of like, website design back when front page was around and all those things, like figuring it out and doing it for friends and getting into trouble online, you know, just messing around on there. Uh, and so I took that and I'm like, okay. I, I feel like I'm a little bit more technologically adept than a lot of people out there businesses. So let me hit up local businesses, let me hit up new projects that are out there and just pitch them. And so that's what I did.
Speaker 2: (06:46)
I, I'd call up people, I'd email people I'd, I'd try to, you know, drum up some business. And that actually helped me to pay for my undergrad. And I kept that going because political science, everybody knows government jobs don't pay well anyways. And I knew, I knew that, uh, but it was something I was interested in in the time. Um, I actually started, uh, in Compsci. So my first two years of, of college was coding. And so I was getting into like object oriented programming, C plus Java, all that. But I couldn't sit there for hours and like try to find a semicolon that I missed that screwed up the entire program. I just, like, that was driving me crazy. I just like, I don't wanna do that with my life, even though it was very helpful. Later on, uh, I switched to political science 'cause I just found it more interesting, more of the philosophical side and jumping into like, con con law and stuff.
Speaker 2: (07:37)
And I thought I was gonna go into law school, did not do that. Uh, so when I switched, uh, when I graduated, I was looking around for jobs and there was some political science jobs, like, uh, you know, working for a local candidate, stuff like that. It just never really called to me. I never really like jumped into it. I ended up going into, uh, other, you know, businesses. Um, and I think that led into the entrepreneurial style. I mean, I did work for the government for a little while after that. I ended up, uh, being director of 9 1 1 for South Texas. And I think the political science aspect of it helped me get into that arena and kind of understand it a little bit more. But I still kept my consulting business because again, government jobs don't pay very well. So I'm like, how do I keep paying the bills, uh, while doing these things that are, that are good? And the, the consulting work led to a tech company offering me, you know, a full-time job. Uh, and that's where I basically decided this is the route I'm going, let's, let's do it. And that's just been one thing after the other.
Speaker 1: (08:38)
Yeah. Super interesting. When you were entering that first tech job, did you realize that it was gonna be the, the process that you have eventually went through where you've kind of went from company to company? Or did you have this idea in your mind that it would be this kind of legacy job that you'd be in for 20, 30 years? Mm. What was your initial mindset?
Speaker 2: (08:56)
Yeah, so since they were a freelance contract, at first I was like, okay, this is just another contract. You know, this is just another company. Uh, but then things worked out well, and I just recently got married and health insurance is important, so them offering me health, health insurance to take care of us, I'm like, okay, yeah, I, I should do this. This sounds great. I wasn't, I think planning at that time down the road too far, I was still in my mind, I'm gonna go to law school eventually I'm gonna maybe go into like environmental law. I'm gonna go do that. Um, so that was kind of in the back burner, and it wasn't like, this is gonna be my, my roadmap for the next 18 plus, you know, years. It's just one of those things that happen and, you know, you, you pivot as life goes.
Speaker 2: (09:39)
Uh, but at that time, I was so fresh. I mean, they were asking me basic SEO questions I had no idea about. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I think I know some stuff about that. Uh, sure. I've heard of, I've heard of Ran Fishkin, uh, MAs. Sure. I had no idea what they were talking about during the interview. And so I googled all that afterwards to try and figure it out. And I just learned kind of on the job. And eventually I did stay with that company ConsultWebs for I think, almost five years. So it was on and off on different things. So I'd say worked with them with, for probably one of the longer periods of my time.
Speaker 1: (10:11)
Yeah. Cool. Um, just on a personal note, and you, you can feel free to divulge as much information as, as you would like to, to this question, but now that you've had that experience of coming in as a kind of growth expert, being able to scale companies, um, on a personal side, what do you kind of optimize for as you come into a new company? Because I imagine you can look at a company, you can see the potential of how they can grow. So you trying to prioritize for equity or shares within the company, what does that look like on a personal side when you come in? Mm.
Speaker 2: (10:44)
So if I go in as a, as a consultant or I, I guess it depends, right? If I'm going in as kind of like a full-time person, like they're hiring me and bringing me on, uh, I, I'd say it's understanding the opportunity for growth there and having a a, an aspect of equity in there that makes sense because I want to help that organization grow. And by having ownership inside of the organization, it gets you more invested. Of course, it's important whenever you're negotiating for equity, especially when they're like younger companies, to understand that there's a risk factor there, right? So if you're looking at things like vesting periods and everything around there, you know, there's a couple years before anything actually matures. So let's say if you don't have like a expedited rider put on there, uh, and I've, I've learned this kind of like hard way in the past, a company, you jump in and you say, okay, in four years I'm gonna be fully vested.
Speaker 2: (11:32)
Uh, after like a year and a half, you hit the cliff and you start getting like a percentage of that ownership in there. Um, if they get acquired before then, and you don't have an exp like that rider on there that says like, you can, you know, fully vest quickly, you, you don't get any upside on there. You actually like, okay, they got bought out. Uh, you don't vest yet. So that goes over to the main company. And so you, you kind of like lose out on there. So I think there, there's things that you just learn throughout the process that when you're jumping in there and you do want equity, you wanna bring those conversations in there because it's, it's harder to negotiate that down the road than it is at the very beginning. It's like just being transparent. If we're gonna get acquired and I'm trying, I'm gonna help you get acquired, let's make sure that we all benefit from the upside if that happens in like six months, two years, whatever, just, you know, figuring that out.
Speaker 2: (12:18)
But I, I, I primarily operate on where are there areas that I could make the most impact in the quickest way? And so there's a bit of an audit process that happens there at the beginning. Uh, there are like, you know, you base hourly rates, but you typically, I I, I make that lower. So if you have a higher equity aspect in the company because you want to have that growth, but then you put a, like a variable comp aspect in there that's more performance based. And I think that's important. You want to drive revenue and you also want to be compensated for that, that you're doing. But it's just understanding the different levers that you can pull. Um, 'cause there's some things that just take a long time. You know, if you're going in there and they don't have proper tracking and everything like that, it's gonna be hard to show the uptick when you don't know where your money's going or what's happening here.
Speaker 2: (13:02)
It's just like, ah, I think we're doing better. But data clarity and hygiene takes some time. You know, usually I bring on an ops person and that's like two to three months of just getting that together. And so you wanna show quick wins before there, and that's where like, partnerships with AI tool reports and newsletters have always worked really well for me because you can run a message and get a response on that, that language within 48 hours, you can see is this resonating or not, and get some of those conversions. And so those are some of those quick win aspects that you can build into there. So it's just balancing all of that.
Speaker 1: (13:34)
Yeah. Interesting. I mean, on that side of things, obviously you've learned through the process of repeating this a bunch of times, kinda what works for you and why it works. You also mentioned at the start, um, about the kind of importance of relationships and nurturing them just out of general interest and being friends with people and stuff. Was there ever a degree of like, mentorship that you got from individuals and kind of those primary companies that taught you the ropes to these things? Was it all kind of been self-taught?
Speaker 2: (14:04)
So I'd say there's, there's nobody that has ever stood out as like, I'm jumping in here to be a mentor for you as you grow, you know, throughout, throughout, uh, my career. But there have been many people that I have learned from, right? Uh, and so I'd consider a lot of them as mentors, even though it wasn't like a direct, I'm coaching you, I'm helping you. It's, I'm learning by engaging with that person. I'm learning by watching how they interact with everybody. And so I'd say, you know, every CEO that I've reported to has been different. You know, they have different, uh, dynamics and how they engage and lead their teams. Uh, things that I've learned that I think, oh, that's phenomenal. And I've, I've taken bits and pieces of that and applied it to my own leadership style. And then things that, you know, the way that they did certain things I wouldn't repeat, you know, it's like, hey, that's, that's how you probably should not do things.
Speaker 2: (14:55)
And so I'd say it's, it's really important to see, you know, learn the good, but also to understand like, yeah, you probably shouldn't do that. Uh, that's as valuable, if not more than these are ways that you should do it. So I'd say there, there's been a lot of people as well as like marketing leaders, CMOs, I've reported to CROs. Uh, I've been very heavily influenced, I'd say, from the growth in the revenue side. Um, so that's why I pull up like CRO people and VPs of revenue and different, uh, individuals like that. But there's also those soft skills from like community leaders that, you know, I've, I have a community leader that reported to me at Orbit. Uh, his name's Tony, uh, blank, phenomenal individual. And so I didn't, you know, he reported to me, but I learned so much from him about engaging with individuals, building the community.
Speaker 2: (15:44)
I'd say he's a super connector that you, you hang out with him. It's like, I love this guy forever. And we still talk all the time. And he checks in, uh, no reason for him to check in. We're, we're not engaging on any projects or anything like that anymore. But we've just stayed as really good friends. And, you know, anytime I go to Denver now, I, I send him a message. I'm like, Hey, let's, let's meet up. Uh, same thing. He was just here in, uh, Seattle the other day and we were, we were gonna connect, just learn so much about the human to human dynamic, uh, that he brought and the way he engages with people.
Speaker 1: (16:16)
Yeah, I mean, there must be part of that as well. Like obviously you've seen a considerable amount of success kind of early on with running your own marketing agency to help pay off those, those college fees and stuff. Um, and by the sense of it kinda were promoted to leadership positions pretty early in your career. How did you find kind of handling your ego with that? 'cause by the sounds of it, you've remained very down to earth and that you're kind of learning from someone that's technically under you as well. Was that something that you had to adapt to, like as a young man? Is that something that was just kinda natural to your personality as a whole?
Speaker 2: (16:52)
Yeah, I, I'd say it, it's a mix, right? When I, when I was younger, and I, I feel like a lot of, uh, immature younger individuals or like, Hey, I have a position of authority. It's command and control. You're gonna follow this. We're gonna do this. This is how it goes. Uh, you know, I tried that a little bit. Uh, I wouldn't say it's ever been my personality, really. Uh, but I, I did get, you know, there were points in my times and being transparent that, like, that ego kind of got to me. It's like, why isn't he just doing that? Why aren't they just doing that? They should just do that. You know, you know, kind of getting on them about it. And it just, it just never worked. You know, people work with people that they like, with people that they trust. Uh, you have to earn their respect.
Speaker 2: (17:30)
And, and a title is just a title, you know, it's, it's there, but at the end of the day, you know, they can jump into another position. Uh, they could go work somewhere else. And one of the, one of the quotes that I, I don't remember who said this, but, um, it was something like, people change jobs, uh, because they're leaving their supervisor, not necessarily the company or the work that they're doing. I mean, you see, when they jump somewhere else, they're typically doing a very similar thing, but they're switching because that person who they reported to it just, you know, it wasn't working out. They, they, they didn't have that trust. Now there are caveats to that, right? Rifs and other things like that happen. But in general, if somebody's looking around, uh, it's most likely because they're not growing and learning from that individual that they're reporting to.
Speaker 2: (18:15)
And so, I'd say, since I've, I was young, something that's always been I think, drilled into my mind is that concept of servant leadership. And that's where I've always tried to come from. Like I said, I've, I've fallen. There's been times where that, that didn't, didn't work so well. Uh, maybe it was 'cause I started a fraternity in college and I got that mindset in my head for a bit. It is like, uh, but later when I've matured a bit more, uh, it really is that that servant leadership aspect that my job is not to come in here and say, Hey everybody, this is what we're doing. Go do this. And, you know, command and control that, that just doesn't work. It's empowering amazing people. And my goal has always been to hire people that are better than me in their core areas of responsibility so that I can learn from them and then I can support them and hopefully in areas they're learning from me as well.
Speaker 2: (19:05)
But it's like, let me knock out that red tape. Let me knock out the roadblocks that you have so that you can go and be as effective and efficient as possible. Because at the end of the day, we're hiring adults that are coming in here to do a job and crush it. They don't need me to like micromanage them, uh, or give them the exact plans. It's like if I gave them the exact plans and say, just follow this, this, and this. I'm just doing, you know, another job. It's like, that's, that's not my responsibility. I, I, I shouldn't be doing everybody else's job and that doesn't make them happy and that doesn't make me happy. So that's been all the principle in my mind. It's like, how do I support them? And when they come to me with, with problems and like, Hey, how do I fix that? I'm like, you tell me and then let's go through it and let's coach it and work through different concepts. And eventually we'll get to something. But it's like, you don't need to come to me to ask for permission for everything. I mean, you're empowered. Go do it and knock it out. Uh, and then I see them grow and thrive, and that makes everybody happy because then we, we want to grow. That's what makes us all happy, is like seeing progress. That is how we feel accomplished on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: (20:16)
Yeah. Um, I mean, I love that. I think it's something I'm kind of just starting to learn just recently moving into a leadership position as well. Um, is it that's what people kind of react best to, um, is actually giving them responsibility to go and sort things in their own. Yeah. Um, on that note of hiring, we're you're, we're kind of speaking like the vernacular we're using here is, we're speaking about already hiring people that have a bit of that intuition and then nurturing that. But in terms of the hiring process of like hiring the right people, what are the kind of things that you look out for in terms of like personality traits Yeah. To make sure they're gonna be coachable and gonna grow?
Speaker 2: (20:54)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So there, there's a couple things there, right? Uh, so for whatever the position is, ideally they have the base skill level. I mean, that, that has to be a given. Like they should be able to do the job or be close enough to, to like learn really quickly. Uh, of course it depends on the seniority, right? If it's a higher senior position, they should have been able to been there, done that. They can come in here and uplevel everything. On the personality side, that's where I like to bring in team members to interact with them and go through the process because I'm just one perspective. I'm just one person on, you know, the, the panel of interviewing. How do they engage with me? How do they engage with other team members? What is, I hate to say about the, like, the vibe that we're feeling whenever we're going through there, because you're gonna be working with this person a lot.
Speaker 2: (21:42)
You know, they're, you're, you're in work more than, you know, half of your day engaging with this individual. Even if we're remote, we still have to jump on there. So if, if you're on a call and you feel uncomfortable or it's just like, it's just, I don't know, it feels like things are not, you know, resonating whenever you're having the conversation. It's just like, you know, it's probably not gonna work out. Uh, so, but that's why you have other team members do the, the interview as well, so that you can get their feedback and just get that general consensus from the team because they're interacting with them as well. So it's just going through that process.
Speaker 1: (22:19)
Process. Yeah. Interesting. Alright. I mean, that's gave me a lot to think about. I think that outside perspective definitely helps as well to have more eyes on that individual as well and get that kind of vibe. Um, I think to,
Speaker 2: (22:33)
Oh, no, so sorry. I was gonna say like one other thing I forgot to throw in there. Check those references. Uh, and if possible, one of the things that happened to me in one of my interview processes is they didn't ask me for references, uh, so to speak, in that they specified who they wanted to talk to. So since I was going for an executive position, and they knew I reported to the CEO at all these different organizations, they said, I want to talk to the CEO at this company, this company, this company. 'cause whenever you provide references, you're already providing people that love you, that are gonna say great things about you. Uh, and, and it's like, of co of course it's gonna be good, but if you ask for specific people, then you get, uh, I think more of a, a holistic perspective there. Uh, and, and that's always interesting because if you talk to somebody and it's like, oh, well, things worked out really bad, you know, uh, iffy about sharing those people, um, that's an opportunity to dig into why, you know, and maybe there's rational reasons, uh, but it's always good to get different perspectives in there as opposed to just, here, here's the reference of everybody that loves me. Go ahead and talk to them. Uh, it, it flips things on its head a little bit.
Speaker 1: (23:45)
Okay. Interesting. That's given me a lot to think about. Um, I want to take a bit of a turn to the conversation and I'm gonna provide you a couple of examples as well. Okay. So I want to see how you blended the line between what you're passionate about and what you do for a career. So I'm gonna give you two examples for one. Okay. Um, I managed to find out through your medium profile, oh, um, that you'd started a 1937 hemp store at some point.
Speaker 2: (24:12)
Whoa. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (24:13)
. So I'm, I'm bringing it back to 2020 here. Sure. Um, and I also seen the, you are somewhat of a funnel expert from an ebook that you've released on Amazon. So I guess my question for you is, um, how you, how do you balance that degree of like kind of personal projects and passion with business? And, um, is it hard to stay motivated what you do? Are you generally genuinely passionate about what you do in terms of the growth processes of businesses?
Speaker 2: (24:40)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, uh, great research, great research there. , uh, I didn't even remember that I had that medium profile. Um, but 1937 hip story, yeah, that's actually a project of my wife's. Uh, and I got involved in it because of my marketing background and I like building out funnels. And it was a bit of a shift and I'd say a test, uh, in my skillset, because I've mostly been in B2B SaaS, and this is a B2C e-comm store, right? And so it's a completely different way to build out the funnel, uh, acquire customers at like a smaller rate, uh, dive into things like a, uh, you know, cart abandonment rates, uh, how do you get like upsells inside of there, uh, different drip sequences that you typically wouldn't do on the longer B2B side. So it, it was mostly jumping into that to help her build that store work on acquisition methods, uh, and just I, I'd say dip my toe in the e-com, uh, B2C space.
Speaker 2: (25:38)
Um, but yeah, it, it aligned perfectly with my background with what I'm interested in doing. And it was something around like building a social purpose. So on 1937, him story, uh, like if you go to the website, you'll see there's, there's information on there that talks about like, why it's called 1937. It's like pushing against the law that was proposed back then that was, was basically like bigoted and racist in regards to why they were removing hemp and the production of, you know, cannabinoid, you know, um, uh, products at the time. And it was mostly because of like gerrymandering and rule setting for voting in different areas, uh, within the United States. And so that was a law that was passed back in 1937. And so we intentionally created that as kind of like a jab to that ruling that was, you know, passed back then to say, this is unfair and there was no reason for this. And we understand that it's racially motivated. Um, and so it, it kind of brought in, I'd say if you go back to the political science side, you know, it brings in that political activism aspect of it and was able to kind of merge into there. So that was, that was what came about with the name, but it also blended like the marketing aspect and, um, what I've been doing as a career.
Speaker 1: (26:51)
Yeah. Awesome. And how do you find that, like, as a career? Are you, do you come into work every day and you're passionate about you? What about what you do? I know that you obviously travel a lot, you're kind of self professor, so nomad at different points in your life as well. So how does the kind of job fit in with the passion? Is there places where they overlap, places where they don't, like, what are the enjoyable, not enjoyable parts? How do you kinda keep yourself motivated through that?
Speaker 2: (27:18)
Yeah, yeah. So I'd say there, there's a lot of layers to that in figuring out the, the motivation and the areas that I like to, you know, like work in. So if you talk about the company that I recently joined, uh, you know, lately it has, uh, it's like neuroscience driven ai, right? So it uses, uh, I got my master's in behavioral economics. So there's a lot of like that overlap in just areas that I'm very curious in that I really enjoy studying. And that's the, the human psychology. What creates purchase decisions? Why are people, as Dan Ariely says predictably irrational, and how do we build that into the digital body language and the funnels that we're building. Uh, so it has a lot of the things that I just find interesting and that I, I read on the side anyways. So there's that overlap there.
Speaker 2: (28:08)
But on the, on the growth factor and the, the team with lately and, and the the other organizations, it is about the team and helping them grow and figuring out ways to level them up. So that's one of the things that really drives me in the morning, is I get to work with amazing people and see them grow. And over the years I've seen some phenomenal individuals that I worked with that were early in their careers that are now leading growth at amazing organizations, doing other, uh, amazing things, starting their own businesses and being successful in there. And it's just like I was able to be a, a little part of that, you know, and help them grow and still stay in contact with them and support them. So I'd say the human aspect is, is great, of course, like the, the other areas of growth, uh, I love mapping out funnels.
Speaker 2: (28:52)
I love figuring out ways that we can, uh, you know, just build a business. Uh, at the end of the day, I, you probably tell I'm a builder, I like to build things when it gets to that larger org. And that's probably why I left. One of the reasons I left that CMO position is because it got too so big that was hard to make movements. Even being at a CMO level, things moved so slowly that I wasn't able to make the impact that I'd like to make at that time. So it's coming back to the building side and maybe when you hit a hundred million, it, it's not a good fit for me because things start slowing down. It's all about optimization as opposed to, let's test things. Let's figure out new, you know, experiments and hypothesis and have the data behind it. So I say there, there's a lot of triggers there. The human side, the psychological side, uh, the, actually just jumping into the marketing, you know, aspect of it, I enjoy it, but also figuring out some sort of social purpose and everything, uh, is important for me. So trying to find some sort of connection there. Um, helping people grow in their business, you know, some sort of impact.
Speaker 1: (29:52)
Yeah. Awesome. I really want to, I'm gonna touch on, um, lately how that came to be and like more about your role and stuff in just a second. But just while we're on the subject, we talked, or you talked a lot about the kind of internally within a company, what motivates you about the growth, the experimentation of building other people up. But if we were to look at things in a more macro scale, what kind of motivates you personally to keep pushing forward with these endeavors? Um, as a family orientated, like what's your kind of like biggest motivational factors do this? Mm-Hmm. .
Speaker 2: (30:26)
Uh, so I, I'd say it's building the, the, the world that I wanna live in. I, I'd say that's the, the biggest motivation. So that's why I, I merge working in tech because I, I love tech and that's why I'm, I'm, you could say I'm an employee, executive, whatever in a tech company. Uh, because I love how quickly it's moving. I love the people that I get to interact with there. But it also, you know, financially, you know, decently rewards me to be able to kind of like live the lifestyle while also jumping into other things that I really enjoy, such as consulting, building out other side projects. And the thing that I, like a, around a lot of the tech companies I've worked with, like Agorapulse as an example, uh, or even Sumo back in the day, they really encourage you to create your own side hustles.
Speaker 2: (31:14)
They really want you to build that out because what that does is that makes you have that owner's mindset that has you pushing in there and figuring out all the different areas that you have to work in that you ne wouldn't necessarily get exposure to by just being in your own like little, little domain inside of an organization. Yeah. So that's, I wouldn't say those companies are what, you know, started me doing that. You know, I've been doing it for a long time, but they helped fuel that flame and, and create a reason to stay in tech and work in that area while also pursuing other areas that are, that are making truly a, some sort of positive impact. Uh, there's so many ideas out there and like side projects, like, I'm not gonna go into too much detail here, but like climate tech, I mentioned environmental law, but there's a climate tech project that I'm kind of working with, you know, burning Midnight Oil, trying to build out that, figure some stuff out there.
Speaker 2: (32:04)
There's also like agency work there. There's a bunch of different things and projects that I love. Having the ability to work on those while also jumping into something that's revolutionizing the, the, and I know revolutionize is a overplayed and used word, but truly making a difference in a space. And that's, that's why a company like lately, a company like Ziley, uh, some of these other orgs that I've been with, they did that and they're doing that. And so it was, it was kind of, I'd say that's the higher level thing is building the lifestyle that I enjoy and spending the time with my, my kiddo as well. With everything going on, there's still that time that I can be with my family and travel and do other things.
Speaker 1: (32:42)
Mm. With this kind of selection process of like what company you go to next, I'm assuming you're kinda at a stage 'cause you've led growth for such massive organizations that you get headhunted and approached a lot. Mm. Um, how, how do you kind of decipher what companies are really aligned with you? Like what, what is it you're looking at? Is it conversations with executives? Is it what they're putting out in a public domain? How do you really figure out the fakes from the, the real ones, I guess?
Speaker 2: (33:11)
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a great question. So I, I guess to talk about like, my journey with Lately, right? So I've known Kate, the CEO there for a couple years. Uh, I interacted with her, I think, I dunno, it was five or six years ago when I was at Agorapulse. And so it was in a similar space, you know, the social media space. And we, we brought her on and she did a couple of our webinars and she's just like a phenomenal individual. I mean her, her backstory and her history running, uh, like a music rock station for, you know, millions of people in the US and then taking that, uh, like those learnings and applying 'em to like the, the neuroscience aspect of AI and doing that before, you know, chat, GPT and Claude and all these other things became publicly available. But having that built in, you know, years before that ahead of the game, you know, I thought it was amazing.
Speaker 2: (34:02)
And so I engaged with her a little bit there and we've stayed in contact and I've seen kind of her growth. And whenever I started circulating that, you know, I'm looking around, you know, that comes back to the network effect, right? The people that, you know, before you start blindly applying to all these jobs, throwing it into an a TS system that just like disqualifies you immediately because of whatever, uh, but reaching out to your network and saying, Hey, you know, I'm starting to look around you, you know, this is, these are some of the factors I'm looking at. And she was open, she's like, Hey, let's have a conversation. And because of that relationship and what they were looking for and growing and everything around there, um, you do your due diligence, right? You look at their finance, you, you have to in executive positions, right?
Speaker 2: (34:45)
You have to ask as much as you can about like, financials, what are the raise? You know, where are we pacing, things like that. You get as much information as you can, but then it ultimately comes down to do you have faith in the CEO? Do you have faith in the organization or not? And with, with Kate there, there was no doubt, and she, she brought me on to, I'd say even expand my typical role, you know, as growth, you're typically focused on the marketing side and figure out, you know, where there are holes in the funnel. And, you know, leveraging that to drive revenue. I was brought on to manage all go-to market teams. So that's, you know, customer support, success, sales and marketing, which is getting everybody aligned under one kind of like group. Uh, and so it's, it's kind of pushing me, you know, a little bit beyond what I typically do in organizations, but also is a, another area that I can like uplevel in and I've had experience in in the past. So it's like growth opportunity, working for a great company. I've looked at, I done, I did my due diligence there. And also an, uh, a founder that I've, I've admired for a long time and being able to work with her is also leveling me up. Because again, learning from a CEO or somebody who's been doing it for 10 years, you know, she's been building this company and that's, that's a a lot for a, you know, SaaS company to be around 10 years and growing. It's like they're, they're here, they're here for the long run.
Speaker 1: (36:09)
Yeah, I had no idea that they had been around for such a long time. They were ahead of the game instead of Claude and Cha team, stuff like that. You've touched on it briefly about how it works, but I was wondering if you can go into detail about what the actual product is, uh, like what the actual, like in a back end of that looks like, how it all works?
Speaker 2: (36:27)
Yeah. Yeah. So I, I'd say that the, the unique thing here is that it jumps in there, and if you look at it from an enterprise standpoint, right? You, you plug in your, um, you know, your, your core company account in whatever platform, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, whatever. And it goes back through your histo historical posts and really analyzes everything to figure out what is resonating with your audience, what is your brand voice and your tone, and, and really tries to like decipher that, okay? So it helps understand and create your own brand model based off of what you've posted historically. And then it goes ahead and it figures out how to do that in the future and what times you should post. I mean, the basic stuff there, but without you having to think about it. So I don't have to go on there and when I'm, when I'm like writing something, say, okay, I wanna schedule this for this time, that time, it's like, automate it for me and it figures out, you know, when it should post and at what times and, and the cadence and everything around there.
Speaker 2: (37:29)
So the, the brand identity model and figuring out the brand voice, I'd say is the really, I'd say, differentiator that we have. And then you can plug in all these other things like video and it creates, you know, the text on there and it cuts up the snippets for you. So like Opus clip, right? But we have that like prebuilt inside there. Uh, there's all these additional like features, but when you think of like a franchise, right? Um, a franchise has their national voice and then they have like 500, a thousand different local franchisees down there that all wanna have their own little localized, you know, voice. Trying to figure that out. And also giving that to a local franchise that doesn't really understand marketing or want to do it, uh, you know, that's, that's tough when you can white glove it and handle it for them and just be like, here, just use this.
Speaker 2: (38:18)
Let it happen for you. Let this understand it, plug it away, throw in your content. Like if you wrote a blog article, throw that in there, cool. It'll figure out all the posts for you and give you with our like AI originals, it gives you all these different, you know, posts that you can do and just like, boom, boom, boom, there you go. Click, click, click, schedule done. Uh, and so it handles a lot of that like social aspect for you to really get that distribution cutting everything up. And like I said, I mean it, that, that brand model, uh, that's something that brought me to it back at ago Pulse. I'm like, we need to have this, we need to have this built in here. Let's do an integration. Of course, Hootsuite, sprinkler, other companies like that, and HubSpot got integrations with them before us, but IIII, I think Agorapulse is eventually gonna get get on there with a, with them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (39:07)
So with feeding the data in, do am I able to just send you an Instagram account, send you a Twitter account, and send you a YouTube channel and it will just scrape them, or they need to upload them individually?
Speaker 2: (39:19)
Yeah. So you need to connect your account. So that has to like, you have to authentic authenticate that it's you, you know, and then it can go through there and figure out that, okay, this is what's your historical, you know, posts have been, uh, you can always, if you're just creating a post, right, you can upload, you know, a link from, you know, an article that you wrote or like a link from something else, and then it'll scrape all that and like figure everything out for you there. But if you really want that model, you have to show that you're the valid owner of that account so that we can go in there for security reasons and everything, you know?
Speaker 1: (39:56)
Yeah, I got you. Um, and then with that, does it take into context the current trends of what's performing well on TikTok, on Instagram, stuff like that. So obviously you've got the scraping that data, but then has to become effective content. Obviously you've got timing and everything down, but, um, is there another kind of section of lately that actually develops some sort of algorithm to understand what works content wise?
Speaker 2: (40:22)
Yeah, yeah. So that's where it comes down to the voice models. We have voice models created for best practices is to have a model created for each channel so that you're not posting the same thing on LinkedIn as you are on Twitter, as you are on, you know, TikTok, Instagram, anything like that. So what you do is you like, like any, you know, of the, these models, you have to train it to that specific area and then you post based on that segment. So if you train something to your LinkedIn, it understands everything around there. That's one model, right? And so that's how you like, push it out and then you go onto Twitter and it's like, okay, it scrapes everything there. And that's a different model that you post and you push out through there. And so you can select which model that you wanna use as you train it and build it up.
Speaker 1: (41:06)
Got you. Awesome. And you said that, um, your current role is, um, pretty wide in terms of the scope that you actually cover, right? You're right. Covering all these different topics, talk me kind of through what you do. Maybe not on a day-to-day basis, minute by minute, but like in in general, what is it you're kind of covering?
Speaker 2: (41:25)
Yeah, so I'd say North Star metric as with most growth, uh, is revenue, right? So it's figuring out where our revenue is, how we increase revenue and what are areas, uh, and opportunities for growth. But at the same time, uh, every like GTM team, so like customer support and success, if there's areas that we can improve, like best practices, understanding, you know, what are risk churns, but also how to go above and beyond. What I really want to do on the CS side is build out a team that people just, you know, love us so much. Like Zappos, right? Mm-Hmm. You, we go above and beyond on the customer support and success area because we're here for you. Uh, I'd say one example recently, uh, that we had is there was an individual that, you know, wanted to sign up for us, uh, but then there was like a health problem with their, their husband and had to be like, rushed off to surgery and all these things, and it just went silent.
Speaker 2: (42:21)
And they sent us a message because they were gonna sign a contract with us, like this is a longer term thing. And we had kind of like a window when we could close it because it was like the end of the quarter, all these things there. And it's like, don't worry about it. You know, we, we've figured out their address, we're like sending them flowers. We're like being there to support them. Mm-Hmm. . And it's been a couple weeks and there was like nothing. And then we got an email just the other day where the person was just like overjoyed and extremely happy and like, I'm so sorry that I didn't get back to you. I'm sorry. It's like, you don't have to apologize to us. You had this crazy thing happen in your life. Uh, we're here for you. And they're like, yeah, we're, I'm gonna sign up, you know, get that set up, you know, we're good.
Speaker 2: (43:00)
And you know, basically building, uh, uh, a evangelist for life, you know, from there. But it's, it's beyond just the metrics. It's like we're creating core human to human interactions and showing them that they're there, we're there for them. So that was really cool. On the CS side, there's things like on the sales side, you know, improving and optimizing our, our sales process, the deck, the flow, you know, things like that. And then on the marketing side, running different experiments. Uh, so it's just getting that all aligned together for us to know what are our objectives and key results and how does everybody own everything and it rolls up to the top. And so each department group knows what they're owning and they're working there, and I'm just there to kind of jump in and support them whenever I can.
Speaker 1: (43:41)
Yeah. I mean, something that kind of comes to mind from what you've just said there is that that kind of overarching goal of increasing that revenue is there, but your kind of true curiosity is that ability to go in and optimize these different departments and help them grow and stuff as well. Yeah. Something that's interesting, just as you were speaking there about that kind of customer service story about sending the flowers and stuff and just kind of taking that one bit extra, do you think maybe that that gives you guys a competitive advantage specifically in this space? Because we know with ai, like everyone in their grand and their cat and their cats, grands cousins uncle is starting an AI business, and a lot of it is probably young dudes that are starting like a sales agency and stuff like that. And it's all very just like money centric. How can we increase our MRR? So is that like, I mean, obviously it's just kinda led by your natural personality, like your group of people, but it must put you guys at a competitive advantage because you have a real human touch to the service you're offering, right?
Speaker 2: (44:43)
Yeah, yeah. I, I would say so. Uh, I think the, the goal isn't for a competitive advantage, of course. Uh, but if that happens, like Zappos, I mean, they built, they, they were selling shoes, you know, it's like shoes is a commodity, but they cared so much and they were empowered to really engage with the customer and show them, Hey, we're here for you, you know, we can help you. Uh, and they, they did similar things, but I think that come that, that's what we're trying to build here is like, we are here for you. Uh, if we're a great fit, amazing. If we're not, maybe we can find recommendations and send them over to you to make sure that it works. Because that also helps on the churn side. If you get down to the metrics, if you're forcing somebody into your product and it's not a good fit for them, they're just gonna churn anyways.
Speaker 2: (45:25)
So I'd rather have best fit great customers that love us. Of course, that's what everybody says, but taking the steps to do it. I, I think a, a really good example of not doing this well is, and, and this is an individual within the Airbnb group, but you know, I have a a, a trip down to Texas next week, uh, to visit, you know, some family and we, we got this really big Airbnb 'cause there's gonna be like, you know, 12 of us staying at this house. And I asked them, Hey, is it possible just to move our checkout by an hour? You know, and this is like a week and a half in advance can instead of 10:00 AM which is super early, can we just do 11? And they're just like, no
Speaker 1: (46:03)
, no explanation, nothing.
Speaker 2: (46:05)
No, no. I'm like, uh, yeah, I am like, uh, you know, we're investing a lot because this is a big thing and we're staying, you know, for a couple days, like seven days. I'm like, uh, can you, how about, how about just an hour? You know what I mean? Just, that's all I'm asking is a little bit. And they're just like, no, we can't do it. I'm like, well, appreciate you working with us here and everything. And then I, I ask some other questions and it's just like, nothing. I'm like, what, what is this? You know, like just very basic thing. And it's a corporation running, you know, because I remember Airbnb when it was, you know, great. And it was the individual that you were working with. This is now all like management companies that are, you know, handling a forum. And so this is a, a management company that's responding on behalf of the property. And it's just like so bad. And so of course I'm gonna leave a review, even if it's a great place, I'm gonna be like, don't, don't do it. Don't work with these people. There's other places, you know,
Speaker 1: (46:57)
Have you not got enough time that you could cancel and pick somewhere else?
Speaker 2: (47:01)
I could, but it's also like high season, so it'd probably be hard to find another place for this many people, you know?
Speaker 1: (47:07)
Yeah, I got you. Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, it's a bit of a nightmare, but it's, I mean, something in there to kind of keep in mind for everyone is that through the process of making lots of money or building a company, you can still have a lot of fun and be a human being.
Speaker 2: (47:23)
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 1: (47:24)
And I think that's something a lot of people miss out on is that that aspect of building a business or growing a business isn't really mentioned. And the books that talk about it or the YouTube shorts that you watch about it, it's all just about money. Whereas like, people need to keep in mind that you can't have a lot of fun where you're doing this and truly, truly enjoy it, especially if you're surrounded by a group a good group of people, right?
Speaker 2: (47:51)
Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. I mean, at the end of the day, we're, we're building a service for people. You know, we're trying to work with people. So when I see new brands coming in, I'm like, oh, I, I'm still excited about it. 'cause I, I get to jump in there and look 'em up. I'm like, that's really interesting. Oh, you're, you're, you're doing like water relief in Africa. You're, you're doing these other things and it's like, that's super cool. Or you're doing, you know, whatever their business is, there's always something we can learn from them. But at the end, at the end of the day, it's that human to human relationship and knowing you're servicing them. And that cuts through all the, like, the corporate bs. And I think that's what made tech and SaaS so cool for a long time is like, oh, these are scrappy startups.
Speaker 2: (48:32)
There's a human element to it. The, the brand voice is more conversational, all that. And now it's just been taken so far that it's like, well, standard, yeah, brand voice has to be conversational. We're doing it, this, this, and this. But there's, it's removing a lot of the human element to it. And that's, you know, I, I don't feel like that's great for long-term growth and also how to compete against massive orgs that have, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in backing, you know, if you're smaller, there's just, if you, you can't compete on that. So you have to have that real relationship with your customers. Uh, and that's, that's how you grow and that's how you get the word of mouth and the virality fact effect and everything. KF factor, all that stuff.
Speaker 1: (49:10)
Yeah. I mean, it's always that, it's almost that like fun sweet spot as well. Something I've noticed, like the multi-billion dollar company, such as Google and stuff, you try get onto someone for customer support, and it's basically impossible to actually speak to human being to help you out with these things. And it's like, Google is a trillion dollar company, but I can't get someone to help me set up my Google workspace when an issue goes wrong. Like they put it under four pages and then a left click down here and a right click down there. And I'm like having to code to get through this. Yeah. Um, so I mean, like, again, it's not one of those things that you mean to be a competitive advantage, but it turns out to be, um, yeah. Just by being like an individual, by being a person. Absolutely. Um, switching up a bit, I want to really kinda focus on AI specifically. Um, and I'm kind of, first of all, obviously you guys are like an AI centric and neuroscience centric company. How do you guys use AI internally? Either through processes, through conversations, whatever. What does that look like lately?
Speaker 2: (50:15)
Yeah, yeah. So there, there's, there's a lot of things that I personally use it for and also that we're like building into the team. But one of the, I think the main things that sold me when I joined was that the company really didn't do a lot of marketing outside of using its own platform. So that's always a great sign, right? You're going to a company that actually uses its tool on a daily basis and is preaching, I mean, like living what it's preaching. So that was, I'd say the, the biggest, uh, one of the biggest triggers for me is when I came in here, all of their leads came through organic social, and that was the big thing. Uh, and then one of the things that we, we were talking about whenever promoting, uh, lately is that, you know, paid with, with third party cookies going away with targeting and a lot of these things that are making it harder and harder to get your, you know, ICP, the, the cost effectiveness is just plummeting.
Speaker 2: (51:14)
You know, it's becoming really, really hard. Uh, but with organic, you're getting organic push. You're getting, you know, reach to people who are already engaged with your post. They're the most likely to convert. Uh, that's what they've been doing. So from an AI standpoint, it's been using Lately's AI for the past, you know, I guess 10, 9, 10 years that the company's been around, and that's been their primary driver and helped them kind of like raise the rounds that they've, they've raised and like moved throughout, you know, time. And so I was brought in to kind of level that up, keep that going because that's our main engine. Uh, but what are other areas that we can kind of expand on and do from a growth area? So I'd say the big thing is our own tool. You know, we've been using lately, uh, and everything around there, uh, on a daily basis, which is, which is phenomenal.
Speaker 2: (52:01)
Um, you know, myself and my team, I mean, there, there's things that we use, you know, some of those LLM models to kind of help with clarity of writing, uh, you know, different workflows that we put together in there. Uh, you know, I still like to take my, my core concepts that I'm writing out, or like a formalized document and throw it into chat GBT or Claude, uh, and say, Hey, can you refine this? And let's work through this. How can we do this? Um, a lot of times I, I use it and I've, I've encouraged my team to do this, use it as kind of like a brainstorming tool now, you know, I I, I know in the past I've talked about it as more of an assistant, but whenever you train them, uh, and like I take different, um, you know, articles and best practices that have been written out about like, let's say pricing strategies or, you know, commission structures for sales teams or whatever. And I throw that in there and I'm like, I'm trying to build this, this is my thought process here, but these are the best practices. How do we do it? And I just have a conversation. And that kind of, that helps uplevel some of the documents I think internally that we, you know, push out and, and use, I know for me, for sure.
Speaker 1: (53:09)
Yeah. Awesome. I mean, I think we're a pretty similar process in terms of internally like, um, AI tool report. The AI report is that, um, we use the meeting note takers. We're big experimenters as well. Um, so, um, we love kind of experimenting with new tools. Um, obviously I think a big trend for the future, something that everyone's gonna be keeping an eye on is AI agents, specifically when they come out to be with GPT five and stuff like that. What are you most excited for kind of, personally or even within the business in terms of developments in AI and how that's gonna affect your role or just the, the environment, the sphere in general?
Speaker 2: (53:51)
Yeah. Uh, I, I'd say I'm, I'm pretty focused on lately right now and everything that we're building in there. There's, there's a lot of, I'd say new advancements that our team is incorporating in there. And because of like the historical data that we have, it's helping to improve our, our models. Uh, Kate, our CEO uses an example of, you know, it all comes down to math at the end of the day, you know, I know where it's like language learning models, they're using, you know, language to like train it and everything like that. But it's really, it's, it's the math because it's fun, fundamentally built on logic and everything that we're, uh, we're kind of programming inside there. And so it's like, whose math you know, is better and how much time has it, uh, how much information has it trained on? And ours now has 10 plus years of historical, you know, knowledge and built from like world class organizations, and it's all like proprietary and private, and it's not being shared out with anybody else.
Speaker 2: (54:49)
And so it, it's, there's ways to uplevel our own product and a lot of cool new features that we can build into here, uh, as we continue to grow. So I'd say I can't share a lot of 'em yet because they're, they're, they're in, in development. But I'm really excited about some of the, the things we're moving towards, uh, especially leaning on the neuroscience aspect, because that wasn't language that we used in the past. Uh, that's been more of a, like a recent development, and it's because we've been studying it and looking at it and it's like, Hmm, that's interesting. And nobody knew, like terms like deep, you know, deep social or deep anything. Uh, it's like, oh, now people are understanding that, you know, deep learning falls into like machine learning and that's like a segment within there. And so there's some sort of heuristic that people can plug in as more of the like tech savvy people, right? But now we can say we have the first deep social platform in the world because we're building all these additional aspects into it. And so that's really cool language that we can stand behind whenever we're pushing out our current platform, but also like new features that we're releasing in the next few months. So I'd say excitement's there in some of the things that we're being able to do.
Speaker 1: (56:01)
Yeah. Awesome. How long have you been in the AI space for in total?
Speaker 2: (56:07)
Uh, not very long. So I think three years or so is whenever I really started jumping into it, uh, you know, a little bit of introduction, uh, before I joined mb. And then when I was with J mb it was like all encompassing, living in that space and everything around there. It was, uh, an area that I found interesting, but I was also pulled as entrepreneurs are, and we all are right into different spaces. I'm like, Ooh, I like Web3, crypto. I've been in crypto for what? Maybe I should go into that way. Uh, and then it just, AI just kind of stuck out and Web3, nothing, but, you know, uh, good vibes for them, but it's just not my space.
Speaker 1: (56:48)
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I mean, what you spoke about there with what you're building up lately is all very, it's very specific to lately, right? And it's all Yeah. Um, kind of a USP that you guys have, having that deep social right. But I'm noticing over the, or not noticing, my question is like, over the last three years you've had experience in your specific role in AI companies, and I'm wondering if you've, if there's any specific trend you've noticed changing recently, either pertaining to your role or in the space in general, or there's anything changing trend-wise right now that you're kind of seeing as maybe a gap in the market, or just something interesting that you've noticed in the space in general.
Speaker 2: (57:31)
Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, I'd say the biggest thing is just the, the quick adoption that's come around. AI in general. Um, large organizations jumping in there with like chief of AI science or like AI specialists that are coming in here. This is a prompt engineer, you know, which is like a newer term. Uh, they're bringing on here. Like, we're hiring for a prompt engineer that needs 10 years of experience. It's like, okay, that's, that's not possible.
Speaker 1: (58:01)
Some 16-year-old, I thought I could be a prompt engineer at a point I was like, yeah, if I can around with chat GPT, I can be a prompt
Speaker 2: (58:07)
Engineer, right? Right, right. And it's like, it's, it's interesting I'd say how quickly they're like, organizations are adopting it, but it's also scary that they don't really understand it in the first place. So some of these, like job descriptions and posts and everything, and the people they're hiring, they don't know what they're hiring for. And so you're bringing on people that I, I don't know if they, they're just like learning, so everybody's testing and learning together. So that's, that's really cool. Uh, but then there's also like this big pushback and I, I don't know why, um, there, there's these marketers, uh, and other roles that just don't want adopt it at all. And so they're quickly getting replaced because companies are looking at bottom lines, and this comes down to like the business aspect of it, right? They wanna make sure that every individual is contributing, you know, three, four x their salary to the organization.
Speaker 2: (58:59)
So they're trying to look at those numbers and it's like, is this person performing at that rate or not? And can we just bring in with, without a true understanding of ai, can we just bring in an AI on some of these things and do it? And in some cases, like, yes, you can, you can bring in an AI and it replaces that person. Um, I'm not sure if it's really like this, you know, big shift. It's something that we're just seeing right now. We're seeing that it's moving quickly. People aren't understanding it. Some people are pushing back. It's just an, I'd say an interesting climate that we're living in. And I'd say in the next year, things are gonna really kind of like settle down. And those people who don't adopt at all, we'll probably get replaced in a lot of these organizations. And then you'll see, and I, I think it's, uh, Jason Lemke from, uh, uh, man, what you, Jason Lemke, you know, he is founded all these, uh, what, what is he?
Speaker 2: (59:52)
Sas? There we go. Saster Saster, there we go. Founder of Saster. Uh, he's, he's said multiple times that, you know, it's gonna be that individual that knows how to use all of this, and they're gonna be doing a lot more and the teams are gonna be a lot leaner because you'll have one person leveraging all these different, you know, ai, you know, models and tools to like 10 x what it would typically take, you know, a bunch of people to do. And so I see that shift already happening right now. Um, there isn't like one tool that pops into my mind that, oh, this is revolutionizing it because there's so many things that are just changing every day. Um, but I'd say the gap in the market is if they're not training and they're not taking some of those courses like AI tool report put together, uh, you're really, really gonna fall behind and you're not gonna be marketable. You're not gonna be able to like command a, a decent salary. You're gonna go and entry level jobs are gonna get cut and it's gonna be even harder and harder to just break into the space. So I'd say that's your competitive advantage. Do it now before we get another year, uh, ahead, because then that is gonna be like table stakes. Uh, I'd say that's, that's what I'm seeing.
Speaker 1: (01:00:59)
Yeah. I mean, one of my last questions I was gonna finish off with was kind of advice to younger people or entrepreneurs in the space, but I mean, you've essentially just covered that, if we extrapolate from what you're saying. Yeah, essentially yourself as much as possible. Um, right now because hundred is coming, um, regardless of whether you want it to or not, like some people, um, a lot of my friends and people I speak to and I tell them I'm N ai, they're like, are you terrified of it? We're terrified of the fact that it's coming. And I'm like, well, you just need to look at it with a bit of a kinda stoic attitude and the fact that it's gonna come regardless, right? Like individuals such as me, you aren't going to be able to change the executives at Microsoft or open AI to stop or keep developing AI models. Like it's going to happen regardless. Um, you wanna be on the right side of it. Um, if possible. Bit of a thought experiment here, and you might actually be the right person to ask about this because of your political science degree.
Speaker 2: (01:02:01)
Oh man. If
Speaker 1: (01:02:02)
All these jobs are getting replaced and these organizations are getting leaner and stuff, like where do you kinda see the future of like this job displacement? Um, are we gonna be looking at more creative roles, more UBI? Um, you might not have the answer to it, but I'm curious to thought, experiment your initial thoughts on something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (01:02:19)
Yeah. Um, I think before I jump into that, one gap that I did think of real quick that I wanted to add is we need an AI to do my dishes. We need an AI to be in , you know, to just come in here and clean the house, do the dishes. That's what I wanted AI for. Like come in here, get that handled, you know, that would make my life so much easier. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:02:41)
But I will say two, two things on that. 'cause we're directly aligned. One, I recently bought one of those Roombas, like a cheap one off Amazon, and it is an absolute game changer 'cause I Oh,
Speaker 2: (01:02:54)
Nice.
Speaker 1: (01:02:55)
Cleaning with a passion. So that thing is a natural godsend. I called it, I call it the dog because it rolled about my house. Yeah. Um, and then Martin, obviously our CEO, um, yeah, I tour report. Um, I was visiting his house in Austin a couple months ago, um, and we're talking, it was me, had his girlfriend, somebody, his family there, and he was like, look what I got. And it's one, it's a bin. Um, and once it's full, it senses the bin's full and it wraps up the rubbish bin for you and ties it together so you can just take it out. Oh, nice. And me and Martin were like, this is, 'cause Martin had said to his family and stuff, and they were like, I don't see the point in this. And I seen it and I was like, that is maybe one of the greatest inventions of all time. So I'm directly on board on that side note there.
Speaker 2: (01:03:38)
Yeah, yeah. Like all, all these, all these AI tools are great, you know, that we're building out, but I mean, let's get some real functionality in like life, you know, go, go have, have it, come do my dishes, take out my trash, break down boxes for me so I don't have to do it for recycling, you know, that would be cool. I would, I would invest in that company, uh, I guess on the on the, uh, like changes in, you know, the, the, the landscape and everything around there. Um, you know, I, I'd say this is similar to the, the, the shift that we had going from like an industrial to more of like a a.com era, you know, the industrial era where we were like manufacturing and building cars and everything like that. It's just the change in society and the change in what society finds as valuable at that time.
Speaker 2: (01:04:24)
So we're going through this shift, it's an important shift in, in life, and you have to adapt. I mean, yeah, those jobs are gonna be replaced, but you have to uplevel to something else and figure out also like, where's your passion? Where's the market going? Uh, that's not an easy thing to say if you've been doing, you know, like if you, if you've been turning one rivet, you know, on a, you know, a job line for the past 20 years, like what do you, what do you shift to? That's tough. That, that is really, really tough. Uh, but you have to go out there and push yourself because we live, you can say pros and cons to it, but in a capitalistic society that is constantly building what we feel the market wants. And so if the market wasn't wanting this, nobody would be spending the time building it out and moving in this direction.
Speaker 2: (01:05:11)
But it's, it's saying that we do. And the only way that that's not gonna happen is if all of a sudden everybody says, no, we don't don't want AI at all. We want to go back to like Gilead from a Handmaid's Tale or something like that. And I, I don't see that that happening. Uh, so I think that's, that's the biggest thing here, is just you have to, you have to go and take that personal responsibility of figuring out what's your passion, where there's alignment. And I'd say today, more than any other time in, in the past is, is an amazing opportunity for entrepreneurs. You know, figuring out some of these older crafts. If you're, if you're somebody that does great with your hands and you like to, you know, build out, I don't know, sculptures or build wooden boats or something like that, you could launch an e-comm store and charge insane amounts of money and sell those to those hipsters out there and, you know, and, and, and do really, really well. And, you know, I'd probably be in line trying to buy something, you know, from you. Uh, there's opportunities there. It's just you, you have to go out there and figure it out. Um, if you don't uplevel, it's gonna be really, really tough.
Speaker 1: (01:06:16)
Yeah. I, I think that's interesting. I think to some degree as well, we'll go back to kinda those physical jobs as well. Like, barbers are gonna be safe for a while. It's gonna be a minute until people let, um, a robot do their skin feed every Sunday as the people in the UK get. Um, and yeah, I mean, I, I think there's something awesome about that is like you can use AI to leverage these processes that are essentially based on information, right? This is, we're in that kind of information era where that's, that's paramount and you can do that and you can automate that and you can work with them, but it does always help to have some sort of other skill where you're working with your hands under your belt too. Um, just to wrap up, I mean, it is been a great conversation. I've loved actually learning a little bit more. 'cause obviously we've known each other for a while. Um, on a personal level, I'm kinda curious, what is the next 5, 10, 15 years look like for you? What your kind of personal goals, family goals, big question about, there you are. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:07:15)
Yeah. Big question. Um, I, I'd say my, my goal would be to eventually launch that climate tech business that I've been like thinking about on the side. Uh, I'm not gonna divulge much about it, but it's, it's really, really interesting, especially with everything that's been going on, you know, with the, the changing landscapes with the oceans, you know, rising with, uh, these heat waves coming through and these extra like cold, uh, you know, uh, environmental impacts that are happening. There's just so much there that this is the time that we need to start doing a course correction. And I know there's a lot of great companies out there doing stuff, so maybe this is a way for me to contribute a little bit to that space. I wouldn't say it's like to jump into there and make billions of dollars because it's not going to, but it's gonna make some sort of reduction in our carbon footprint.
Speaker 2: (01:08:06)
And that's, that's something I'm excited about. But I'd say beyond that, um, probably gonna like, get a farm, you know, uh, just outta out of nowhere, probably in like five to 10 years. Our goal, uh, my wife and i's goal is to have a bit of land and, you know, grow our own food, uh, really be part of it. Maybe set up some sort of like retreat. Uh, a little test I ran on LinkedIn the other day, was I, I posted out there saying, you know, how would you like to have a place, like a, kind of like a detox from tech, uh, even though I'm so involved in it, you know, a detox from tech, you come to Whidby Island where I'm at right now, it's beautiful. It's just like a retreat. No phones, no anything. And it's all about human to human connection.
Speaker 2: (01:08:50)
Not being connected to the internet, not doing any of this stuff, but like mindfulness meditation being, you know, part, uh, of, of, you know, what's going on and being, you know, present. I think that's the biggest thing. Uh, I notice myself constantly like looking at my phone, we're at dinner and I still have my phone on the table checking Slack and stuff like that. And that's not being present, you know, for your family. Mm-Hmm. So I'd say my goal in five to 10 years is to truly be present. I'll, I'm probably not gonna be completely disconnected from the internet because I, I run life, you know, through there and I love it. And that's, it's such a huge benefit, you know, having access to the internet, being able to engage with so many people. Like if we didn't have this, I couldn't connect with you. I mean, you're a halfway across the, the world, you know, from, from where I live. Uh, so I'd say that build my, build the retreat, the sanctuary, um, climate tech business and just be present and help raise my kids, you know?
Speaker 1: (01:09:45)
Awesome. I love that. You gotta let me know when the first retreat goes live. I'll, I'll be first in line for that.
Speaker 2: (01:09:50)
Awesome. Will do, man. For sure.
Speaker 1: (01:09:53)
Um, could you end with a little, a little plug of where people can find you, where they can find lately, stuff like that?
Speaker 2: (01:09:59)
Yeah, yeah. So you can find lately just go to lely.ai, uh, or just search for Lely on any social platform. You'll find us LinkedIn, Twitter, all, all that good stuff. Uh, I only use LinkedIn, so you can find me Andrew Monier on LinkedIn. Uh, you can also find, like, I have a, a newsletter that I write, uh, weekly called uh, Turing's Tofu. So if you type in tour's, tofu, it's on beehive, uh, you can, you can follow me there, but I say LinkedIn has everything.
Speaker 1: (01:10:27)
Yeah. Awesome. I mean, we'll put all of those links down below. And this will be the first in our kind of live podcast series. So we just recently launched the pro community, so this is released a week in advance to that community. Awesome. And then it gets, um, a general release after that. So yeah, I'm excited for everyone to, to kinda see this and hear this and stuff like that. Um, and yeah, it'll be kinda all the links will be in below, but thank you so much for coming on. Cool.
Speaker 2: (01:10:52)
No, appreciate you having me. Thank you.
