Jody Glidden - Tech Entrepreneur & CEO | Why Fast Learning Is the Only Protection Against AI Disruption

Crazyest thing about AI has been the growth rate, how fast it's been able to improve. The latest model, O3, is now the 20th best coder in the world. Well, people say, well, let's just make sure that it's not biased. We're not even the only country developing advanced AI. It's like trying to stop the water from a dam with your hands. From high school dropout to tech visionary, Jody Glitten didn't follow the traditional playbook. He rewrote it. He co-founded Intro Hive, a relationship intelligence platform that raised over $135 million and scaled to nearly a $500 million valuation. His superpower, spotting trends before they go mainstream, and building systems that turn connections into revenue. AI is coming. It will be in its absolute best form that will help us do our jobs. But at some point, it will replace our jobs. One of the ways that I've always adapted anyway and is by being open to learning. Watching videos and studying, reading books, that's going to be a more important skill than ever. If we're expecting to go do college and then we're done learning, you're done. From chalk media acquired by Blackberry to his current role as CEO and founder of Postilize, Jody has consistently built, scaled, and exited industry shaping companies. This isn't just about software. It's about people, relationships, and the AI that drives them. Jody's building more than a business. He's building the future of how we connect. So many people have a hard time with focus. If you just have a plan and focus, you're going to be so far ahead of most of the people. You don't have to be faster than the bearer. You just have to be faster than the people that can. All right, Jody, so you have built and exited five companies and now generative AI pulled you back to the startup scene and to the startup world. So what is the most mind-blowing, scary capability that you've seen AI be able to do? Well, I think the craziest thing about AI has been the growth rate of how fast it's been able to improve. Because if I look at like two years ago, it was really interesting. It was interesting enough for me to stop what I was doing and jump back in. But I really had no idea it was going to get to the point where it's the latest model 03 that just dropped last week is now the 20th best coder in the world. It's pretty much at a PhD level in terms of the first one that can actually do PhD type inventing of new science, for example, right? We just never really thought that anything was going to get there in my lifetime. So this is how long has AI been around? Like, what's the timeframe? Because that's so I think that most people, listen, it's crazy because it's moving so fast that you have people that have not even touched it. You have people that are dabbling. You have people that are building in it. You have people that are sort of proficient users. And I think that even in the proficient user section of that proficient user AI category, I think that people mostly think it's an aggregator of information. Yeah, and this word wrapper. Yeah, wrapper, right? It's not like thinking of new stuff or most people don't think that it's thinking of new stuff. So you're saying that in a couple years, we're PhD level where it's actually coming up with its own ideas. That's correct. Yeah, it used to be able to, for example, sort of look at a bunch of jokes and come up with something along those patterns to, you know, to create a sort of new joke, but along all the exact same patterns. This is the first model that ever came out with 03 where it can kind of invent up an entirely new kind of joke, for example, right? Or it can look at the science along, let's say some sort of quantum physics and actually come up with a new concept or the same thing with DNA medicine. We're going to see new drugs being invented. We're going to see new science happening in rocketry and all this stuff. And now the AI is at the point where it's able to actually improve itself for the first time ever too. So, you know, I think to your point about when did it start, it really was November, December of 2022, which is we're not even at the three-year mark. This is incredibly fast. So, you know, I kick this off by asking, what's the scariest thing that you've seen AI do? And it's not like it's able to do anything too scary or too unnerving yet, but just the pace that it's improving. It's like a little bit, it's a little bit scary. I think so. Like I think I think a lot lately about the impact on our society, on, you know, our children. Not from the ethics point of view, a lot of people talk about the ethics part of it. I think that chip sailed a long time ago. I think not. Explain that though. What do you mean the ethics will have a sale? Well, people say, well, let's just make sure that it's not biased or this or that, but we're not the only companies developing AI. Like open AI is not the only company doing that. We're not even the only country developing advanced AI. So you can't just, it's like trying to stop like the water from a dam with your hands. It's impossible. So, you know, so AI is coming. It will be in its absolute best form that will help us do our jobs. But at some point, it will replace our jobs. You know, for a while, it will augment us. Yeah. And then there will be a point where they won't need us anymore. So what does that mean then? I mean, right now, I already feel like we're at the point where it's augmenting three years in. And like all technology, I'm assuming it follows some sort of growth curve where very soon it's going to, if it's improving itself, it's going to exponentially get more efficient and more useful. And we're three years into it. And now it's already augmenting. It's like six, you know, another three years. Is it already going to be replacing most of the jobs that we do today? Or I think around the replacing of the jobs thing, there's, there's what can it do? And then there's what will we let it do as a society? So there's government intervention happening in every different country. They have their own angles on it and stuff. And you know, we've now appointed like an AI, Zara, David Sacks and so on to sort of put the US's view on what we're going to do. But I think one of the biggest things people, I hear people say all the time, well, you know, I go into Chachi, we tea and it couldn't possibly do my job. Correct. But there's a whole bunch of people building companies out there like mine and, you know, a million others, where, you know, it might take us three to five years to accomplish whatever our goal is. But it will eventually completely do a certain job, whether that job might be customer support, which is kind of already being done now. Or maybe the SDR job, which is basically the, you know, the people that dial and, you know, do the sale, entry level sales people, right? The lead generators. They're taking the most repetitive, easiest jobs. Those ones were getting completed first. And then the more complex jobs will have a next and so on and so on. And I think that's really what you're seeing. I see sometimes in the forums where people say the job, you know, I don't see anything super impressive yet other than Chachi, we tea. It's just you haven't seen it yet. Do you have, have you seen it yet? Because you're in this space, you're building in this space. Obviously, you're like super into technology. Your whole life has been building tech company. So I feel like you're more advanced than the average person who's just messing around on Chachi VT on the weekend. So you mentioned 20th best coder in the world, PhD level. I know that there's a lot of talk about agents as well, sort of autonomous agents that can do tasks once you train them. So you know it, what's the most advanced thing that it can do right now that would be scary for somebody who's like a knowledge worker. I mean, it's, it's getting pretty good now at doing all of the high volume, like white collar work. So for example, paralegals in law firms are probably, it's pretty close to being able to do that job now. And without mistakes. Without mistakes. And people talk about, I hear often people saying about while hallucinations and things like that. But there's, there's ways to mediate hallucinations and, you know, cross-checking and using things like proplexity type algorithms. So people are often talking about it'll never work because of. And then the because of is something that was a two year ago problem, you know. So what are how are people going to learn or upskill if, you know, technology is completely replacing them? Like I think there's going to hit people coming out of college and university the hardest immediately because I don't know where they're going to get jobs anymore. No, I think that, you know, I have a daughter now that's that's 16 years old. And I think the most important thing is to be agile. You have to expect that the the job market that you're going to enter is not foreseeable right now. And so one of the the ways that I've always adapted anyway and is is by being open to learning and just constantly whatever that new thing is, there's always going to be a new thing. And whatever that new thing is, if you're on top of it, not trying to, you know, outsource it to people. You know, I'm all weekend, all evening. I'm like constantly watching videos and studying and things like that reading books, like that's going to be a more important skill than ever because if we're expecting to, okay, we're going to go do high school, we're going to go do college and then we're done learning. Yeah, you're done. Yeah. And I think that this is something that people first realized during COVID, like if they haven't upskilled and they got laid off during COVID, then they tried to get back in the job market and they were just doing the same job for the past, you know, 20 years and they have an upskilled, then there was a lot of friction with them getting a new job. Now AI is making it even more difficult for those people. I think that everybody has to start acting like an entrepreneur. That's really that's going to be a trend. Yeah, like I can see now already that the company sizes are shrinking dramatically, right? You're seeing that the big companies like Mehta and Google and all these companies are shrinking headcount and still achieving the same. And it's an exceeding revenue too. And I think there was a thing about Mehta, just strong headcount exceeded revenue numbers and people were giving them a hard time, like why would you lay people off? I'm like, what will those people do? Yeah, I know they do at Mehta or Google when there's exactly people are more productive. And you have to think the company's mandate is to grow the company, grow the revenue, decrease expense. It's their job. It's their job. So as much as it, you know, from a, oh, it's nice if the company just employs people to employ people at the end of the day, no companies ever going to act that way. So you have to understand how companies act and then you conduct yourself accordingly. That's the world we live in. Yeah. And that's the world, you know, our children are going to move into and everything. So, you know, I think I've seen it also at the smaller scale, right? Because I've done a lot of companies from zero to, you know, they call it zero to one, but these companies from zero to a hundred or several hundred people are now, I think you can still, you can build those same kind of companies with fewer heads. And so if you can, you have to because the investors will only give you that much money. So I mean, you built, you built several companies. If you look at, if you look at how you build in 2025 versus how you used to build, what are some of the biggest differences? Like when you first started out, what was the, what was like the first company? Because I would have been how many years ago, I don't want to date you. But it was a couple of years ago, right? When you first started that company, what was notably different in how you had to think through getting something from zero to one, getting it off the ground, raising money, hiring? I'm just, I want to paint a picture for how much things have changed and how quickly things have changed. Yeah. You know, I, so my first one was like in the early 90s and then the late 90s. And back then, I think it was, it was, it kind of like what we were very cash constrained back then. And then the two, in the early 2000s, all of a sudden cash was free. And now it's starting to get more cash constrained again. Because people, investors know that you can do it on less cash. So back then, I was doing things like profitably, for example, you know, because that was the way I knew it was the idea. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I think now we're moving into, we're, you know, we're still doing the same, the same kind of thing where we're doing a cash constrained, but it's incredible what we're able to get done in a short period of time. In, in postalize my new company, from quarter to quarter, when I go back and show customers or prospects, the feature list that we've accomplished with such a small team, it's like blowing people away. So when you say blown away, what, what is so impressive, what is it doing? Because not everybody, like not everybody goes, not everybody's in the weeds on this. All we, we, everyone hears about, like no code, low code, but that's all, that's almost people ever hear about it. They don't actually know what that means. And I don't even think that that is even AI. It really, it's not, yeah, you're, so that's those things like bubble and things like that flutter. But, um, but this is even beyond that. I'm not sure that those are even, I think those are becoming obsolete now, because now you can actually make actual, you know, Java code, Python code, um, you know, no JS code. Yeah. Having like, not a lot of knowledge, I saw a guy on a podcast. He was one of the business guys at Uber, and he created, um, like a very, very successful app, just him. It's generation. He was not a technical guy. He was like a business development guy. Yeah. He has no staff. It's just him. And he taught himself, you know, what nowadays they call vibe coding. Yeah. Yeah. And he built it. And is that just as simple as going into chat GPT and saying, literally, I need to build this app. Can you code it for me? And then taking that code and then hosting it somewhere? Well, or is there most of the time that's going to get it wrong? Yeah. I get it. Um, but if I look at what was happening, say a year and a half ago, the code that it was producing versus the code that it produces today, there's very few errors versus back then. It was, you know, a lot of errors. So that's just continues to get better and better. On top of that, you have, um, you have to have knowledge of like the more knowledge you have of coding, the better you're going to be at it. Because if it's like 90% of the way there, then you can take a look at it. And that's still tons of time saved. Exactly. Yeah. That's what a lot of the developers are talking about is that it gets some 90% of the way there. Yeah. Although now with products like cursor and some of the newer models like O3, um, I'd say you can get it closer to like 95, 96% there. In the past, you said that intro high was going to be your last company before AI came along. So I mean, I, I'm laughing because I sit down with so many entrepreneurs. And whenever they say they're done, it's always a lie. It's like 100 times a lot. Yeah. So what was it about? What was it about? I mean, I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. Like, what was it about generative AI that was so exciting for you? I know that it's efficient. I know that it can do incredible things. I know that it's the future, but you don't have to work again. So why do you want to build in generative AI and go from zero to one all over again? Like every time it's like an extra great hair, right? And it's, it's not less painful. Yeah, I know. The coding may be easier and all stuff, but, but it is for everybody else in the world too. Yes, I'm exactly coming out. Now exactly. Yeah. No, I would say that, um, yes, I was going to be done. And, uh, but I think now what got me are really a couple of things. I'm really worried about our future generations a little bit. So I think that there might only be, um, you know, maybe three to 10 more years left to earn before the middle class could be completely wiped out. There, because there might be so many blue collar jobs and white collar jobs that are replaced, white collar with the AI that we know now. And blue collar with the robotics and everything that's coming, maybe five years from now, um, that I feel like maybe the, maybe I need to earn more for, yeah, help with my future generations, my daughter and, you know, all of that. I can ask chat GPT for anything. What do I actually have to know? I know, I know how to interpret the output of a generative chat tool. So what do I actually have to know? Just enough to interpret it and prompt it? Well, I think really with all of those, whether it's, you know, physics or chemistry or math or coding, what they all, what threads through them all is logic. Yes. You know, and so the better we all get at logic, then I, that's, an adaptable skill that you'll be able to drop yourself into any environment, learn, you know, some domain and, and make yourself useful. I think like building a company is also a process of logic. You have to figure out what, what should the product be or the service be? You're figuring out, you know, what's the market sizing? What's the competition? Like, what, how do you pick a good idea? You have to learn all about how to pick. Then you have to figure out, well, how do I persuade an investor and you learn all about that? But these are all logic problems, right? And, and so if you don't get the logic skills built up in your early years, you're probably going to struggle later on when, probably, like you said, the main job will be building a company. It might be a company of one. It could be a company of one. And I mean, one of my favorite charts is actually looking at how many people it takes to make a million dollars in annual revenue. And if you look at the graph over, you know, a period of times, it's a 1940s or 50s. It used to say, pretend it was like 50 people. And now to make a million dollar, you know, ARR annual recurring revenue or annual revenue company, it's one person. Yeah, the guy that I was talking about. And not even just million. It could be several million with a Chrome extension or whatever. They're, they're, they're predicting, I think the same Altman might have said this, but a lot of people have that think that they're in the next several years. There's going to be somebody that will make a billion dollar company with one person. Crazy. What would be one of the most important skill sets, entrepreneurial skill sets that has helped you when you started your first company and is still relevant. I mean, five companies later. I think probably relationship building has been the most important thing because what there's, there's a few different hurdles that you have to be able to get through in order to build a successful company. And they're all really hard hurdles. One of them is hiring top talent. If you hire adequate talent, you probably won't make it. And that seems crazy, but that's just the way it is. You have to hire exceptional people. And that's a really, really hard thing to do. Why would an exceptional person quit a very stable job that's high paying and come work at a fragile startup? That's a really hard thing to do. I think the other thing is, is it's relationships that do that, right? They trust you because they worked with you before. I've always put a lot of work into my investor relationships and making sure that even though I might not be building something at the moment that I keep those investor relationships alive. And the relationships with my top customers, I make sure that when I get a customer, that I make them feel valued and that I stay, I even keep in touch with them after they're no longer a customer because they might be a customer the next time or maybe they can be helpful to each other, you know? Well, I think that, I mean, your strategy on how you build companies is very smart because you've always built in the enterprise space. And I think that that's maybe talk a little bit about how you sort of, again, built five companies in the enterprise space and some of the lessons from there because I think a lot of entrepreneurs, even after they have that first success, they do have a little bit of shiny object syndrome and then they just go down a completely different route and they make it harder on themselves and it has to be. And I think that's almost, I think shiny object syndrome is, it almost comes hand in hand with somebody who's curious enough to be an entrepreneur in the first place. But you've done a very good job of, you know, regardless of all the different opportunities in front of you and when you have a track record like yourself, you have a lot of different opportunities that you can pursue. You've done a really good job of staying hyper focused on what you know best. And I think that's probably been one of the keys, obviously there's many, but one of the keys to you being successful repeatedly. I think it's probably the main reason because I got pitched so many times on becoming a co-founder in some consumer startup or, you know, all these different things and my answer was always like, it sounds like a great idea, but it's not my expertise. I don't know anything about it. And I think you have to admit to yourself, what do you know and what do you not know? And enterprise, the thing about enterprises, I've worked in them enough to know how the marketing departments work, how the finance departments work, how the sales departments work, and I know a lot of people. And you know, one of the things I always say is there's only 500 or the Fortune 500. So when you know a bunch of those people, it makes your job a lot easier, right? So talk to me about relationships because you mentioned a couple things. So relationships are key. And relationships will probably be even more important in the age of AI where everything, every other piece of the business is almost commoditized. It's almost like it's simple. And the barrier to entry with technology is going to be lower than ever before. So then what's the what's the the X factor that's going to get a company to choose your product versus someone else's? I see I would say more and more the reason that people are losing customers. So customer retention going down or people not winning a deal is because in the era of COVID, everybody got used to they can sell by Zoom. And they no longer put the emphasis on relationship. I think you can go ahead and sell by Zoom, but relationship has to really matter. You have to make a point to see aside from what maybe I'm trying to sell you. Is there any other way I can help you? Can I make introductions for you? Can I introduce you to come up to customers? Like being a helpful person in the world is it always finds a way to come back to you. AI is going to remove the human component right of building a business. You've found a way to make it enhance the human component to a degree with fossilized. That's kind of how the business works. So I think that that's probably explain explain how you do that. But I think that's probably a healthier way to look at AI. Yeah. Like I noticed with my own personal like with my own friendships that sometimes I would go and be a friend that is really important to me. And I'd realize it's been like, you know, two months since we had dinner that we spoke or whatever. And I just think that's not healthy. No. And so a lot of times it's because we all just kind of we try to organize our day, but oftentimes we don't organize our relationships and how long has it been since we spoke to this person. And and you have to be able to do that measure the relationships as as like kind of scientific as that sounds. Measure the relationships that which which are going to be the top relationships that you're going to make sure that you nurture all the time on a personal and a professional. This is how you've built multiple companies because like you said, even your downtime when you're not building anything, you're still talking to investors. And you're still keeping in touch with your customers over past customers. And I'm assuming even you know, you mentioned to to make a company successful, you have to attract to that, you know, a plus level talent. Yeah. I'm assuming that you also keep in touch with the people that have been absolute phenomenal employees and peers over the course of the past five companies. So when you built something new, you're trying to bring those people back to work with you. Yeah. I always make made sure that I'll give you a good example. One of my best salespeople he wanted to start a new company. He came to me and he said, he's like, Hey, I'm, you know, I'd love to start a new company or whatever. Instead of saying like, you know, like given him a hard time, but I said, stay with me for two years. I'll get you more involved with, you know, the things of how to raise money, how to get your first customers and all these sorts of things. I will help you become a better founder, just stick with me for two years. And he stuck he stuck with me for I think maybe four years. And then he went and started a company. He's now raised, I don't know, five million. He's about to raise his blackstreet. He's doing really well. Yeah. Yeah. So, but and then, you know, we talk on a regular basis, it builds loyalty, you know, just being a helpful person, you'll, you never know when they might want to join back up and become a co-founder someday. Thousand percent. Okay. So what Possibleize does is it, it, I mean, we're all human and we all try, and most of us are trying to maintain our relationships. And it's difficult because there's a million different things going on in our lives. And so what it actually does is it helps you maintain relationships at scale, using AI to focus on and reach out to the people that are the most important in our lives, correct? Yeah. So one of the things it's doing is it's, it's just watching basically who are you emailing with? Who are you meeting with regularly? Who are you texting with regularly? Who are those people? Where do they work at the moment? What's going on in their lives? And, and the long-term vision is just helping make sure that you don't miss things that are really important. If somebody, you know, maybe even has a baby and you didn't know it or somebody gets a promotion or somebody moves to another company. Some of these things are, you know, points of time when you should be showing empathy, you should be showing excitement, you should be engaging with them. You should be taking them out to dinner. You should be, maybe it's a customer opportunity. But if you don't even know that these things are happening, how are you ever going to do that? If we lean on AI too much and we lean on software and tools too much, then we then we miss the human component and all our interactions. You know, we were talking even before we pressed record about how media and podcasting, you think it's going to be very important because AI can now write probably better than a lot of people can write, meaning that what's going to be the reason you read one person's writing versus a Seth Godin or a Malcolm Gladwell or a pick a big author or, you know, James Clear. The reason is because of their name. So I think that it's going to be very hard for up-and-coming writers to build a name just around their written work and you made this point too because people can just use AI to write now. Yeah. I think we're going to see probably a hundred X written content over the next three years, which will desensitize everybody to written content. And I think you're going to see an uprising in the value of personality and celebrity and podcasting, things like that because, you know, I tune in to your show because you know, you're familiar to me and I know what I'm getting when I watch the show. I know, you know, I know it's going to be you and I know what the kinds of things you're going to do. That I think is going to be one of the last replaced things in this new world is like personality. When you think about how to use AI for human interaction in a business context, even before AI, what I used to do when I used to when I used to sell and I used to train sales teams to do this as well, I would tell people to record videos of themselves and send those videos to prospects. Like short little 30, 45 second videos on LinkedIn to say like, you know, 20 of their most perfect ideal customer profile avatars and do that at the end of every day and those got a much higher response rates. So even, you know, that was in the era of mass email and I was trying to sort of stand out in the era of mass email. So now I think it's going to be even more important because the one thing that, you know, back then before AI when I was still building companies with with the mass email, the thing that could differentiate yourself would be either a video which we did or we would research something about the person manually and include it in the email, something that would make it seem that it's impossible for this to be like a bulk sent. But now with AI, even the emails that you're getting, there could be data points that are pulled with AI, I can do the research and send an email. So you still don't even know if it's actually personalized or if it's something that's just sort of sent that scale, but video could be a differentiator then. Video could be a differentiator. I also think that there's a continuum of personalization. Yes. So I think we used to have templates, right? So there were companies like sales often outreach that they had these templates and you fire it at 1000 today. And then then we moved to insert a sentence. So take the template, insert a sentence. But now I think there's a potential. And you know, one of the things we're working on is fusing like what is your personality, let's say, let's say you're a seller. What is the, what is it that you are selling? What are the main benefits that you sell? And what's happening in the world with your customer or a list of prospects? Fusing those two things together and actually being consultative. So not just, hey, I noticed you tweeted this. Yeah, which is like the cheapest cop out of personalization. Yeah, exactly. But more like, hey, I noticed you went through some, you cut 10% of your staff and we happen to have this that helps that because of this. Like that's consultative, right? That's a whole other thing. And I think that is, that's where you just just understand using ad to understand both the what's going on with all of your prospects and the right time to contact them so that you won't be annoying. Yes, correct. It is the really the most important thing. And this is what, so this is, this is sort of bleeding edge outreach that that you can do right now. So this, I guess I was thinking too far into the future when I said that video is still going to be like with the one thing that people feel is truly human because at this point, what you're describing, that doesn't really exist yet for most people. Most people don't get this consultative hyper personalized team. There will be a point where this is the de facto where this is what you have to do. Maybe it's in two years from now. But right now, this is not the norm. Yeah, and you look at like in the consumer side, this has been happening. It's where I have a conversation with my girlfriend about some car and all of a sudden I start getting ads exactly about that car. So you're like, oh, the right thing at the right time. Yeah, exactly. But it hasn't really been happening in enterprise. And so this is what I'm trying to bring. Which is weird. Actually, if you think about it, when you're selling to businesses, you're just selling to people. That's right. So why do we treat it any differently? Yeah. Well, I think it's because people have always been doing things based on search primarily in enterprise. It's been like, okay, they're searching for this and then that was but that's not really how if you were to hire Deloitte to come in because you, you know, you're going through a mass layoff and you have some problem, that's not what Deloitte wouldn't just look through your search history, right? They'd analyze your business. They'd look at the SEC filings. They'd look at like what's what's really been trending in your business and then they'd be consultative and they would they would come up with some different approaches and they'd run them by you. And that's what we're trying to work. And you can do that now. Now you can do that without paying Deloitte $100,000. You're trying to help Deloitte. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Be able to do more of what they do well. Yes, really. So you said the generative AI might be the biggest thing that's happened in your lifetime or lifetime. What are some other ideas that you believe in how it will transform professional work? So you mentioned robotics. You mentioned that it will also obviously replace some knowledge workers. Are there any other things that it's going to do to our, you know, nine to five? I think it's going to completely change our criminal justice system. Did you disagree? We have humans now that are like looking at cases and trying to understand like remember when the, what was the FTC looking at how internet was going to be? I forget what that was that thing was called like a Senate hearing? No, they were they were looking at what kind of could Comcast go and just restrict what was going to go over our internet? Oh, okay, anyway, then you have judges who know nothing about technical trying to decide on cases like that. Oh, well, I've seen I've seen the Senate hearings about like crypto. Yeah, with people that have no idea what crypto is and even forget crypto. Like when you watch, like Zach or any of these fang executives or any tech executive sitting in front of the Senate and testifying and you can just tell that like the Senate understands maybe like 5% of what's actually going on in these people's businesses and they're asking the dumbest questions because again, that's this is not a political podcast, but they've been in the world changing the world's changing quickly. And these people have had their, you know, their positions for how many years and they grew up in a different world and they are not the subject matter experts. So the questions they ask are actually not that useful because these I'm a highly technical person. Yeah, I read every day and I'm watching podcasts and everything every day. And if I were made a judge right now to decide on a DNA case, I would say I'm unqualified, you know, because that's not my expertise. And so that's why I think AI is inevitably going to help assist judges at some point and then probably at some point beat the judge. And I think the same thing will happen with policy decisions. I think in politics right now, you have, you know, politicians making laws and I think what's going to end up happening is you'll have AI assisting politicians making laws and then you'll maybe someday have AI being the makers of the laws. Today's episode is brought to you by Vanta. Now, listen up, this matters for your business and today's digital landscape security isn't optional. It's essential. Without it, deal stall sale cycle stretch on and scaling becomes very difficult. Now, why? Because investors, customers and partners all expect businesses to demonstrate strong security practices before they commit. If you can't prove trust, you lose opportunities. So whether you're a startup founder, trying to land that first big client or an established company scaling your security program, Vanta helps businesses of all sizes prove that they're trustworthy by automating compliance across 35 frameworks like SOC 2 ISO 27001 and HIPAA. The exact certifications your prospects are demanding. Here's why you need to pay attention. Vanta gives you back precious time that you're currently wasting on compliance. Their platform automates up to 90% of the tedious compliance work. It helps you respond to those endless security questionnaires at the 5 times faster and it connects you with experts to get your security program running immediately. The results speak for themselves. A recent IDC report found that Vanta customers achieve over $535,000 per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself in just three months. So you're going to join over 10,000 global companies like Atlassian, Korra and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. And don't miss this. For a limited time only, my listeners can get a thousand dollars off Vanta. That's real money back in your pocket. Visit vanta.com slash Scott right now before the software expires. That is vant.com slash Scott. Prolon is a success story partner. Now long weeks and busy weekends can leave everybody feeling depressed and tired. We work nonstop. And that's why I love Prolon's five day fasting mimicking diet. I absolutely love this company. Let me explain how it works. Basically they have a fasting mimicking diet that rejuvenates you from the inside out. It'll deliver plant-based soups, snacks and drinks to keep your body in a fasting state while giving you the nutrition you need. And when your body's in a fasting state, this triggers cellular renewal and it actually works. This is why I've loved intermittent fasting for so many years. This is the magic of Prolon. And the exciting news is they just launched their next gen five day program. It has all the benefits they had before, but now they have 100% organic ingredients in all their foods, better taste and ready to eat meals to make the whole process easier. I tried the original Prolon program. I feel incredible whenever I do it. I personally can't wait to try this new and improved version. And if you've never tried them before, you're in for a treat because the old one was great. I can't even imagine how good this new Prolon five day program is going to be. And for a limited time, Prolon is offering success story listeners. You guys, 15% off site wide, plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their five day programs. Just go to prolonlife.com slash clary to get your 15% discount and your bonus gift. Prolonlife.com slash clary. What do you think if somebody is looking to sort of upskill themselves? What's the, you mentioned logic before, but how do you actually develop logic or what are some other important skills that somebody who is concerned about their job should start to master right now? I think, I think the most important thing is get in the habit of spending a lot more of your day learning. Because most of us spend, you know, an hour to a day just surfing social media. That's not the best use of time. The best use of time is having a plan. Okay, for this next month, I want to learn about, you know, let's say coding on AI or I want to learn about, you know, chemistry or DNA or whatever it is. And I'm going to, here's my plan and I'm going to, I'm going to focus on that. So many people have a hard time with focus. And if you just put a plan, if you just have a plan and focus, you're going to be so far ahead of most of the people. And I don't know if there's, remember there was that, that old joke about, you know, you don't have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than the people that can. They got me to run the bear. Yeah, exactly. I think that's going to be kind of like that. Just don't be, don't be the one that's lagging behind. As long as you're ahead of everybody else, I think you'll do fine for a quite a long time. You witnessed multiple sort of tech revolutions firsthand. What makes AI different than some other transformative tech that you've worked with or you've seen? Well, yeah, there's three big notable ones that I can think of. So, you know, first there was internet, right? Because I was using internet, sorry, I was using computers to develop software when I was eight before there was ever internet. And I was like, wow, email, this is crazy. I can send a message and they can receive it. And it did change things a lot. I was working in a company at the time and we got everybody from using drafting like on paper until like computers and it made probably a five or 10% increase in the amount of bids it could put out in the day. And then mobile came along. And that's when I jumped into creating software for Blackberry, because I thought, wow, you know, all of a sudden people have a mobile device in their hand. We could disseminate content to these dispersed work teams and train them quickly. That was maybe, you know, a five or 10% improvement on people's productivity. And then, you know, Cloud had a small impact on productivity, but I think AI is dramatic. You know, you're seeing people coming in and they're saying we're laying off 20, 25% of our people now. Imagine what happens three years from now. So I think it's, it's, um, people should act right now with urgency. Not to stop AI from happening. That's impossible. They should try to act with urgency on learning and building. What's it? What's an aspect? It is actually very interesting. So yes, there is a huge adoption curve. I was just listening to a podcast, um, where open AI published that they're getting. Uh, I think, I think it was three billion searches a month on open AI. And interestingly enough, though, which seems like a lot. Yeah. Then Google released and they have not released this in a very long time. I think since 2016 or something like that, how many searches they're getting, which was, oh my god, I have to find the numbers. It was in the, it was in like, it was like 13 billion a day or something like, it was in the trillions, uh, per, per, total searches in whatever, 20, 25. And they only released that number after open AI. We said number basically everything's okay. And they're like saying, like, no, no, listen, like we're still, we still, we still run the show over here. Um, I'll have to make sure that those numbers are correct. But that was a general takeaway. It's like, so yes, there is massive adoption. I'd love to see what the curve looks like, though. I know. Because I bet, I mean, I just know from my own use, um, that I do use Google. Probably as often as I use chat, but my results are dramatically better on chat, you, and, and now I have to scroll away down. I just do a simple search today. I searched for Office 365 admin because I was like working on something. And, and it was like the six through seven results down the page and the rest was all ads or people gaming the system. And if I ask chat, you be T, it's like, you know, I had a couple of conversations. So I just looked it up. It's the AI snippet. I don't know if this is accurate, but say I mentioned 13 billion per day, the AI snippet on Google said 8.5 billion per day around two trillion searches. The podcast, I listened to, I think it's at three trillion searches annually, which obviously open AI is not even close to this number. It's open AI is saying three billion per month, whereas Google is saying between eight to 13 billion per day. So massive difference. But you're right. I think that there is going to be from a business perspective, there's going to be this whole game of trying to figure out how to not only rank on Google and be reference in that Google AI snippet, but also find a way to get your company as an answer on chat GPT. And that's going to be the new SEO. And I don't think anybody's figured that out yet, because I've interviewed SEO agency owners that, you know, doing between $7,000 to $100 million in revenue. So obviously they're quite good at what they do. And they're just now trying to figure out, okay, how do we, how do we become the answer? When chat, when you ask chat GPT, how do we become the answer? How does so and so's pizza shop become the answer when you ask, okay, where do I, where do I go for pizza in New York? And there's going to be like 10 restaurants there. How do I become one of those? That's a whole other game that now people have to learn how to play from a business in SEO and marketing perspective. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not sure it's gameable. You know, it's, if it's, I don't know, it might be slightly influential is the way that it feels. I think that even SEO in general, I think is less gameable. Like Google's gotten very good at. I agree. Yeah. But you know, just to your point about the difference in traffic, do you remember Google saying back in maybe the early 2000s when they were, they were going, they were saying that they put a lot of effort on taking the amount of time down that it took for to get your search results. Yeah. So it used to take maybe a second and then they got to tend to like point one seconds or something. And they said that every point one second that they reduced had something like a 10x difference in the amount of traffic that they would. Yeah. Yeah. Because people hate waiting for answers. So like, you look right now, you go on to chat with you and you ask something. It might take like 10 seconds. Right. That's not going to be forever. No, it's, that's hard. That's hardware and power right now. You know, we can produce enough chips to keep up as a as a nation or as a world. And we can produce enough power. And both of those problems are going to be solved. There's more chips being created all the time. And now the whole world is moving to micro nuclear sites and all this kind of stuff. So power generation is that problem is going to go away. And then that means that because like right now when I use chat GPT or or or or perplexity or cloud, I mean actually chat GPT and perplexity are the two like ones that could do deep research. It does take a little bit of time. Like the deep research component takes, I think whatever 5, 10, 15, sometimes a little bit longer minutes. But then it's very comprehensive. But I've also found that it's not perfect either. I mean, when I ask you to do deep research on a person, if I'm prepping for a podcast, sometimes it'll find information on the wrong person, same name, stuff like that. Like sometimes I'll ask you to read through documents. And I'll have to ask it like four or five times to confirm the information that it read in a document that I uploaded. So there's like a lot of it's good. But like all things, it is still a tool at this point. It is still very much a tool. And then you look at like O3 that just dropped last week. And even without asking it to do deep research, it kind of does deep research. So your answer sometimes come back in 45 seconds to a minute. And it's it's went and searched a whole bunch of sources just like deep research did. So we are really just that those times are going to drop dramatically based on the processing power and the processing power is limited really by chips and power. When you are now an AI entrepreneur, how do you build a company when the technology is changing so quickly? Because the way that I look at what you're building, it's like if the app store like legal guidelines changed every 24 hours. And that's what you have to deal with as an entrepreneur. It seems like yes, there's an advantage, but you're constantly having to innovate because you're building you're building on top of existing, right? Yeah, whole society. Yeah, you know, because like I remember last year, we got surprised with there were going to be a bunch of new Canadian regulations where anything that was AI assisted, you were supposed to put a big stamp on it saying this is AI which is kind of weird because if I had my actual EA draft something for me or notice something for me, I don't have to put a big stamp on it saying like of course not by assistant helping with this. It's kind of but anyway, yeah, you wake up to these things and you're like, whoa, there's a new law. And I got to deal with that. So I think the same thing will help us all succeed as entrepreneurs now that helped us stand out 20 years ago as entrepreneurs is speed agility. If you're working in eight hour day, you're absolutely not going to make it, you know, you have to go in these bursts of speed when the opportunity is there and it's unpleasant, but it's the unpleasantness that causes all the competition to fold. So if you can just handle it better than other people and keep that pace, you'll have these crazy laws that will pop up and then get knocked down and you just have to like thobbing weave. So, you know, you mentioned before it's never it never gets easy building company never gets easy. So now you're building another company. What what what is the I mean, it sounds like you're still putting, you know, 80 plus hours of work into this per week like minimum, like you never really this is like there's never an easy way to be a founder. Doesn't matter how many times you do it. No, this was Easter weekend and we worked all weekend. I did. Yeah, I feel that. And I think that that's what allows you to be successful. I think that if you look at like some of the most important sort of entrepreneur lessons, it's it's going to be a ridiculous amount of work for a period of your life and that's what you have to do. Yeah, just, but it's just for the period of time that you're building that company through the hard period. There will be a time like when when we got into our 13th, 14th year of IntraHub, things got remarkably easier. We had a brand. We had all kinds of happy customers. In those early years, there's no shortcut. Like if you can't put that amount of work in, you're better off not even trying and go work at somebody else's company. That's what I think that like entrepreneurship is not for everyone. No. And I don't like I don't like that people sell this, you know, this laptop lifestyle entrepreneur bullshit, which is not accurate at all. It's like it's going to be a lot of hard work. There's nothing passive about it. There's, there's no work like balance. There's no work like balance. I've heard this before where people say, how do I do it? I go, I'm on Reddit on the forum. It's like for for a wide combinator and you start ups. Are you ever on on fat fire? No, it's basically people that want to retire early and never work again. Yeah. Yeah. It's how to structure your life or how to build a company or how to get a job that allows you to retire at a ridiculously like young age. That's the that's the whole premise. But the point is, yeah, it's always going to be a lot of work. Yeah, I think the people that if you go into it, expecting to have work life balance, it's probably not for you. I mean, it isn't for you. And I think people don't like that message because it sounds like people are bragging or whatever, but like there's a reason that almost every entrepreneur you've ever seen in any podcast ever says this. It's because it just happens to be the reality of it. It's it's a lot of hard work. I happen to have personality and I think a lot of people do where it's fun. Like I find it's super exciting to wake up and work on it. You could try it and if you if you find you might find it fun too. And and there's going to be nights where you can't sleep because you you're like, how do I make payroll? That does happen. It's happened to me a bunch of times or you you thought you had a customer and then you lose them that happens all the time. It's but but as long as you can find the the fun day the updates are so up. Yeah, I know that it's worth it. That's how that's what gets you through. What's I mean, if you think about all the lessons that have been sort of instrumental in helping you build all of your companies, what's sort of the most important lesson that you've learned that will help you start something new? Yeah, one of the things I found over and over again is that when I hit a wall, usually like several years in, like at IntraHive, we had basically zero revenue for four years. And probably around three or three, I think most people would have folded up and said, forget it. But I think the a lot of the successful startups make it about one year after most people would have folded. And I've seen that over and over and over again when I when I listen to people's stories. So I think that's the one of the most important skills you can learn is resilience. And it's really difficult to discern. Am I being resilient? Or am I being irrationally stubborn? And I've seen that one too where where somebody came to me and they said they had no offense. If you're listening, they had a startup idea where they were going to do art for students. And it was all around art for students. And I was thinking market size is terrible. These are people that are not going to have a lot of money to spend. You're going to have a really hard time. And they worked at that for a lot of years. And I was thinking that's the corollary, right? You have to make sure that everything else is in your favor that competition is fine, market size is fine. There is a real need for what you're doing. It's just taking a long time. And that happens. When you're first picking out like a niche or a vertical, I mean, now you've again sort of picked out a niche five times in a row that has worked out for you. But that first time for that first time founder, how do you decide what to go into? Because I don't like the advice. Follow your passion. I feel like there's a lot there's a much better advice. And I know for a fact, I don't even I don't even have to have had no new way back in the 90s when you first started enterprises. No one's passion. I was not passionate about enterprise learning management. No, I know what I did. So how do you pick a vertical when some of these all the options in the world? What's the advice that you give them? I think you have to do a fair amount of reading about that. There's lots of great stuff out there by Steve Blank, by Eric Reese, by Peter Teal and a lot of the great podcasts out there. But the most important things are the things that investors rate you on. So investors always rate you on. If you look up how to build a great investor deck, they always talk about talking about your market sizing, talk about your competition, talk about your competitive mode, talk about the, you know, the pain of the problem you're solving like Uber, right? That people calves were horrendous back then. And you know, if you go down that checklist and make sure that you have a big enough problem with a big enough market, with a high enough price point, a low enough competition, and a big enough mode, those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, then you'll probably be okay. How do you think about timing when starting a company, both in terms of market readiness, but also sort of personal readiness? Yeah, good point. So I think that most ideas that you come up with, if they could have been done three or four years ago, you should stay away from it. Really? You don't believe in being like the Facebook to, you know, the Myspace? That's a good point too, because I mean, look at Google's another good example of that. They were a couple of years after. If you're going to do that, you have to be a much better version. Yeah. You can't just be a copy, because I see enough a lot of people do copies, and that's, that doesn't work. What about personal readiness? How do you know if you are personally ready to start a company? I think you have, if you have any doubt, then you probably, it's probably not right, because anytime I've ever dove in, I was, I never second-guested, I was a hundred percent. I was like, oh my god, this is a huge opportunity. I can't believe nobody thought of those. Turns out a couple of times people had thought of it. I just didn't know they were building at the same time as me. Yeah, yeah. But every time you felt that much like excitement about what you were building. Yeah. I used to keep a little notepad before notepads were at our phone, but I used to keep a little notepad. And I'd wake up in the morning sometimes, I think, oh, that was a good idea. So I'd write it down. I remember one of them, this was around 2000 or so, was like, students being able to share homework and notes and stuff like that among each other, like a community for students, right? And then, and like, I'm remember one time in around 2008, 2009, I was like, what if enterprises that sales teams could like top to each other and everything. And I was like, create this thing salesmason. I was like, this is, and then chatter came out. So yeah, I would keep these big lists of things. And then, I kind of like pick a way out a little bit. And then if I got enough conviction on it, I'd be like, okay, go. And you just lean into it and go. And did you, I mean, obviously that first little bit of motivation is fun, but it doesn't last forever. Like, like, did you carry that amount of energy through the entire building process? Or was there something else that you had to figure out that allowed you to keep going when things didn't go so well? Yeah, I think one of the things that I've, that it's always kept me going. Well, especially in the early years, it was sort of proving people wrong. I had a bit of a bunch of, yeah, I was younger. Yeah, because I came from like, like a poor, you know, upbringing. I didn't have much money. I had, like, I didn't have the clothes that all my friends had in school. And it was embarrassing. And I had to try to figure out how to earn my own money and all this kind of stuff. So later on, when people would, when people would tell me this startup isn't going to make it, it's a terrible idea or whatever. That would often drive me more. Like, I'd like that because I could like, yeah, like, you know, now and later in life, I've chilled out a lot. It's a lot less about that. Now it's, it's more like, I love, like, I just love AI. I love what we're doing. But I think you do have to have, and I've seen so many entrepreneurs that have something like that, they have either an extreme drive for money or they have an extreme chip on their shoulder or, or something. When, when you're building stuff doesn't go right, you know, you're not progressing, you can't make payroll, customer cancels, you get sued, somebody quits, you know, somebody's very important to company, they leave. How do you keep that energy? Because I find that very hard. Well, for even if I love what I'm doing, it's like, there's some days I'm like, oh my god, like the world, it seems like the world is ending. Yeah. I don't, I'm not good at that. I think it's a really hard thing to do. Yeah. I mean, I think I have a bit of fear of failure. I have an irrational belief that I will make it somehow every time. And, and, and like to the point where I've written checks like when investors wouldn't, I've done down rounds before and then still came back and then raised it. I remember I did a down round. I won't name the company because I think I'm not allowed to, but I did a down round at 80 cents. Yeah. And people say that's the kiss of death. And then I just kept on going, going for a few more years and we raised it raised at $5 and something to share next time. So, you know, sometimes you have to do things that people say, oh, if you do that, you're done. And if you just keep pushing on as long as you're making progress and you're still bringing the energy and you're still keeping the great people, you'll be fine usually. I just want to take a second and thank Cornbread Ham for supporting today's episode. Now, Cornbread Ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use them every day just when I want to win wine after those extra busy weeks, but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance really just shut off from work. Now, what makes them special is how Cornbread Ham crafts them. They only use a flower of USDA organic hand plants. That's the best part for the purest, most potent experience. No fillers, no artificial fluff, just clean, full spectrum goodness and delicious watermelon berry and peach flavor. I keep them in my nightstand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing. And I love how transparent they are too. Every batch is third party lab tested so you know exactly what you're getting and they put together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners. All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com slash success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing dummies. Fresh books is supporting today's episode and if you've ever wondered how successful entrepreneurs stay on top of their finances while growing their business, the answer is fresh books. The numbers don't lie. Over 30 million people have chosen fresh books processing more than 60 billion in invoices and saving an incredible 192 hours every year on accounting tasks. Think about it. That's nearly eight full days. You can get back to focus on what really matters growing your business. Fresh books is more than just accounting software. It's your all-in-one financial command center, create professional estimates, track time, automatically build clients and capture expenses on the go plus it integrates seamlessly with over 100 business tools. You already use all backed by award-winning customer service. If you're ready to stop drowning in receipts and you're ready to stop chasing down payments, here's what I want you to do. Head over to freshbooks.com to start your 30 day free trial. No credit card required and for all you success story listeners out there, I've got something special. Get an exclusive 60% off for six months when you visit freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer. Transform your business with fresh books today. That's freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer for 60% off. You have an incredible amount of self-belief which I think is probably one of the most important things. Yeah, I don't know how that happened exactly, but I do have a lot of self-belief. I call it irrational self-belief because I always just go in. I read these stats that start off 7-90% failure rate and I just think, yeah, that won't be me. But it probably should be. Well, I think you mentioned this and I actually love this idea. It's like the success that you're looking for usually happens one year after you quit. Yeah. That's because you've been in it for so long and you've learned so much and the energy and the effort that you're putting into your company is not matching how the company is doing. So you're like, I'm so knowledgeable. I'm so experienced. We're doing everything right. Why is a company not growing? And that's depressing for a lot of people because you're most people are, you know, when they're putting in the effort and not getting the output that they think they should be getting creates this is creates this friction. And that's probably why they quit because yeah. But know that if they kept going because they were they were the experts and they are doing all of the good work that has to be done if they kept going eventually the output will match the input. Yeah, you have to you have to be very clear on what your goals are like, you know, what are the steps to getting the first 10 customers? What? And so if the product isn't resonating, you you can't just be doing the same thing. That's the definition of insanity. Yeah, exactly. You have to be tweaking things and like, okay, what what do I how do I make sure that this resonates? Okay, let's talk to a lot of customers. Let's hone in. Let's make a plan. Let's but you have to you know, as long as you're continuing to get closer and closer and closer by definition, it's going to eventually it might not be the same product you started with, but it'll get there eventually, but it will get there eventually as long as you can finance your way through it. That's a thing, right? It's the ability to sort of keep the lights on and keep going and moving in the right direction. Yeah, but you know, here's a good example in 2020. We had very little money in the bank. The company was already valued, I don't know, a couple hundred million dollars and and then COVID hit. And our sales went from several sales a week to zero. And it went this it went zero for maybe six to eight weeks. And the investors, the board, they were telling me they were like saying they wanted me to lay off 40% of the stuff. And and we had I don't know, maybe we had four months of payroll left. Really? Yeah, and and it was a massive team. We probably had two, three hundred people, something like that. And I remember just thinking it's going to work itself out. Like we're either going to we'll get the payroll lowered without reducing the headcount. So I just explained the plan. I was like I worked out the numbers and I said, okay, I'm going to I think I cut my pay like 50%. I said, I'll I'll do a 50% pay cut. The next level down will do like maybe a 30% pay cut, 20% pay cut and so on. The lowest paid people we wanted to try to work out that they got no pay cut. And and then we did do like a 5% layoff. And and then we just said, let's let's do this as long as we we do it. The approval rating on glass door in that went to the highest approval rating ever, even though we had given everybody a pay cut because everybody was just on board with the plan. And they knew that we were all like everybody was convicted. They're all like we are going to make through this. And then one more quarter or two more quarter, something like that boom, we were back. You know, how do you how do you as the founder of the CEO? I mean, how do you get people on board with that much conviction? Because it's always important to it's always important to get people to believe in the vision and believe in what you're building. But I think that most of the lessons about, you know, hiring the right people and getting them to see your vision, those lessons come from a place of if things are working and shit isn't hitting the fan. Right? Like that's usually that's very easy. Like you just have to get people on board with his rocket ship. When things aren't going well, what's what's the what's the strategy to make sure that they they stick with you? I think people can feel truth. You know, people can suss out if you're kind of like not if you're trying to tell them a story. The the thing I've had is I really truly have believed in those points. I was like, we absolutely will. So I was telling the board. I was like, like, here's here's what I think is going to happen. And here's why what we have is amazing. And here's the downside. If we don't do this, then we're about to lose something that's going to be a new category. And it wasn't it did become a new category at ERM. So I think like I mentioned earlier, I think about how persuasion is probably one of the most important characteristics persuasion and determination are probably some of the most important characteristics of being successful as a founder. And I think that's because it's really, really hard. And people can read the energy from you and the belief from you. And if if the customers don't think you believe in your product, they won't buy it. If the investors don't think you believe they won't invest and the employees won't stay. Was that the biggest gamble that you've ever taken? Probably, yeah, because I mean, that was a if I would have taken the 40% cut, we would have we would have been to break even. And then we would have saved the company. And it was a lot of my net worth at the time. Yeah. But I was I thought we're going to lose the category leader status. And so and there's going to be a residual. There's going to be sort of this, you know, butterfly effect of lack of trust. Maybe hard to attract good talent in the future. Nobody wants to work there because you laid off 40% so how do you know you're not going to do it again? You know, all the signals would have been negative. Yeah, we were too big for that, I felt like. And and so I wanted to and especially that early in six weeks into the pandemic, I was like, we don't really know anything yet. We don't even know what's causing this. We don't know how long it's going to last. We don't know how it's going to affect business in six weeks more. We'll probably know a lot more. If you think about what motivates you, forget financial success. You mentioned like you have a chip on your shoulder. Yeah. Yeah, had a had a chip on your shoulder. What's the most important motivator for founders? Because I think that I think that financial success, yeah, that's what everyone wants to make some money. But I think very quickly, you're going to realize when you're building a company that there's easier ways to make money than building a company. I mean, like yeah, yeah, going to finance, go work for fang. Yeah, like there's a million ways to make money. So what's the what's the most important motivator for a founder? What should they look for? And if they find it, that's a good indication that they should go build a company around that thing. I mean, if if I were an investor looking at trying to predict successful founders, which I have invested in a handful of startups and I invested in six and two of them got quite big. So I think the thing that I look for, I think one of the biggest predictors of failure is somebody who just really wants to be a founder. I think that's like you can kind of read it off them. They're just like, oh, this is cool. Like you want the late you want to update the LinkedIn bio? Yeah, yeah. I want to say CEO in there. And actually, they'll put CEO instead of putting founder, they'll put CEO. They're at every tech event, all that stuff. I think that's like that's the that's a bad predictor. I think the the best ones and it always it hasn't always been me like in the learning management system one. It was but but I think the best ones are when you can tell that they they really love what what they're building. Like the I met a guy the other day who was building a thing for second opinions for cancer. I was like, what does that mean? So when you go to a doctor and you get diagnosed with cancer, yeah, the doctor usually never he probably dissuade you from going to get a second opinion because this the second doctor is most likely going to tell you that you you did the first guy screwed up, you know, really? Because they want your business. Oh, cancer is a business in the US. That seems like that's a really toxic. That's very toxic. And so he he this guy was just very passionate about making sure that patients don't get screwed over and that they have a much cheaper and more accurate alternative. And that the first doctor that like he's just you can just tell the way he spoke about it that he really believes in it and he believes in it for the right reasons. And his work ethic is crazy. Like I was hearing from him in the weekends and evenings and all this and I was like, I was like, this guy's going to make it. So I'm probably going to invest in a startup. And and and I've seen that pattern before being being being absolutely passionate about the problem. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that that's a smart way to gauge whether or not a founder is going to be successful. I think it's also, you know, having a little bit of self awareness about speaking to founders, having a little bit of self awareness is about why you're doing this and are you actually passionate about the problem? Or is it a money thing? Is it a status thing? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and also, you know, we talked about how it leads to, you know, two of the most important things are determination and belief. Well, that that kind of gives you both. Do you feel like people have to put life or dreams on hold to build a company or can is there balance? Is there something that is there some version of entrepreneurship where balance is actually, you know, allowed? Not that I'm aware of like, you know, my my family have been wanting to go to Japan for the last like few years. And and I just for for me, I keep saying like like, I would love to. I love snowboarding. I love. I love everything about Japan. I would love to go, but the amount of time zones away it is. I can't do a 10 day trip to Japan, even if it's a working trip. Yeah, I know. So I just don't think it's possible in the early years. Once you had once you get past like the B round, you've built a machine. Yeah. Then I think it's okay. When you have those layers of management, the people that can help you and when you can actually walk away. Yeah, because by the time you have to the B round, you know what your sales efficiency metrics are and you've worked them down as low as possible and you've got like fluidity in the in the sales machine and the marketing machine, it's a lot easier at that point. What's a failure that you've experienced that taught you a very meaningful lesson, maybe something that didn't work out that you haven't shared before? In high school. So so I was this is pretty crazy. I was like, I was always like a, you know, really good student. I was competing. I came second in the country in math and all this. I was like a really good student, but I was like, I don't want to go to class. So like, I think I missed something like 40 days of school. That's a lot. Yeah, it's all great. It's all great. And because they had a rule where you could just write the final exam and if you're and they would take the higher of your exam or your marks all through the year. So I was like, yeah, who cares? I'll just write the exam. They the school board met and put in a special rule for, I think it was because of me saying if you missed more than X number of days, you weren't allowed to graduate. And so I didn't graduate. I mean, eventually, eventually I did what I ended up having to do is go back to, I mean, I tried everything like a founder type personality would. I petitioned the school board and I fought and everything and I lost. And I was so disappointed. Everybody got to, everybody got to graduate and I didn't. And it was so embarrassing. I was already pre accepted to college, one of the, the college that I wanted to go to and everything. I ended up having to frantically do summer school to get all those. Oh my god. And I, and I, and I did summer school all summer long and then I entered, but that was embarrassing and traumatic. No, that's that's that's such an entrepreneur mindset trying to game the system, right? Oh my god, that just skip everything, take the final exam. That those marks will count and then fine, you'll be fine. Yeah, but that's a thing. This is, and do you think people are born entrepreneurs do you think they learn it? Because I always find the entrepreneurs, they always think differently. They always trying to like hack this or like dooster, you know, they try and think outside the box all the time. It's like their default operating mode is just outside the box. Yeah, I've been, I've been wondering this a little bit because what, well, the more the way I was thinking about is is a bit of defiance kind of required. And I think it probably is because most of the people that I know that have become successful founder is like, look at Travis Kalanick, right? At Uber, like there, there were laws in place that he should not have been able to build that company. And he was just like, we're doing it anyway. He would go into a new jurisdiction and find a way around it and Airbnb the same thing. So I think like, you have to have some, you have to have a combination, which is a weird combination, but you have to have a combination of defiance and, you know, sometimes rule breaking, but, but also being organized, an overachiever, have conviction. Yeah. You know, that's, that doesn't always go together. No, it's a very unique, to very unique combination. And it often ends up with people sometimes not doing well in school, or they do in well in school, off to a certain point, then they drop out of college, you know, you get all these kinds of types, right? If people, you know, if someone's listening to this, I think you've given a lot of value about what it takes to be a founder and also just giving people like a really good overview of where we're at with AI right now. But if somebody wants sort of walking your, you know, in your steps in your path, where do you tell people to go research and just say, we've spoken a lot about upskilling and staying relevant. So what's your recommendation for somebody who wants to stay relevant, doesn't want to be watching Netflix every single night, does want to make sure that they know what's happening in AI, whether or not they want to build a company, or they just don't want to be, you know, replaced in their job. Where do they go? I think I would start to put together a plan of how in case of emergency, you could start a business and probably a technology business. And what are the skill gaps that are that you're missing right now in order to do that? So what are the business skills I need to know? What are the marketing skills I need to know? What are the sales skills? The coding skills potentially. And you know, a lot of stuff can come from just watching podcasts. And then it's going to get into, okay, well, I've got this far. I've got a base of knowledge. Now I can go research more on AI or I can read a book. But I think, you know, one of the things I was really happy that I did early in my career is, I grew up through the technical side. And then one day I just, I was like, I'm hiring these sales people, but I don't really know what they're doing every day. Like, you know, I'm watching them do their job, but I've never sat in their shoes. So I had been a two-time CEO and I just joined the company and took an entry-level sales job. Because I was like, I love this. I want to, I want to see what this feels like. And you just did it and you'd learn. And yeah, and I, for four months, it was horrible. I was getting hung up on everything, you know, but then eventually I just, I was like, oh, now I get it. Now like, you know, and now I probably made you a more effective leader that allowed you to set up sales teams better, higher sales better for sure for sure. I love this idea. This is something that I've spoken about quite often. I think that some of my success has just come from figuring shit out and doing it. And even, you know, there isn't really a sales or marketing task whether or not it's figuring out what subject lines get the highest open rate or coding up a website or, you know, figuring out how to identify an ICP and a buyer persona or, I don't know, figuring out how to run a Facebook ad set and optimize like the ads and the creative to get a better row as like, there's not much that I haven't done at least once. And that I think has been a superpower because then it allows you, first of all, in zero to one phase. Before you have money and before you can delegate, you can get something off the ground, at least to, you know, a very basic level, but also then it helps you hire because you can tell who's full of shit. Yeah, yeah. And I think some of the worst failures that I've ever had in hiring have been hiring a person too soon. So like, for example, I used to always hire a salesperson and it would take them forever to learn to sell. And then I realized, no, all the best performing enterprise startups have had a really good founder selling. And they, it took them a long time, but then eventually they, when the founder can't sell anymore because you're just busting at the seams, then hire a salesperson and it's going to be way easier for that person to be successful. Yeah, because they know what they know what process is, you know, good looks like they know everything. All the objections that are going to happen and all that stuff, right? So I think, I think most of our, our internal instincts are usually, oh, I don't know marketing. I should hire a marketing person. I don't know sales. I should hire a salesperson. And that's usually, you're missing such an opportunity. If, if you, like, look at all the marketing techniques that you've learned and everything, it's, it's so important to, to rounding us out. And also, nobody's going to be as passionate about doing a great job out of this. The person whose life is on the life, thousand percent. And, you know, there could be a chance that you could get a good hire. Or if you screw it up and you don't know how to do it yourself, you basically, you might not even know, you might not even know, you, and there's a really good chance if, if you hire too soon and you make the wrong hire, your company's done. Yeah. Like, or it's going to be very, a very expensive mistake to come back from. Yeah. For sure. Okay. Where can people connect with you? What's, you know, what's the best place for them to, and on your writing a book, I think it's like the title undisclosed at this point. Yeah. But where can people connect with you? Social, LinkedIn, Instagram, where do you want people to go? Yeah, probably. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, an Instagram, but mostly LinkedIn. And try, I try to be on Twitter a little bit, but mostly Jody Glidden at LinkedIn. Amazing. If you, out of all the things you've learned, I always like to ask this just to, to bring it home, but you've learned a lot of different ideas, tactics that have helped you in your life. If you could only pass one of those things on to your kids, one of the most important ideas, what would that idea be and why? One of the most important things that I've been trying to pass on to my daughter is to have, like, determination, passion about, about something, hopefully entrepreneurial. Yeah. Because I think passion will get you through a lot. It'll get you asking an expert, you know, a lot of what we all learn is conversations like this, right? Like, you know, we, we talked before the cameras came on and all that we learned a lot from each other. And I tried to ask people questions all the time, curiosity, passion, conviction, just care about something. Yeah, exactly. And that's going to put you ahead of 99% of the people.