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KP Unpacked
KP Unpacked explores the biggest ideas in AEC, AI, and innovation, unpacking the trends, technology, discussions, and strategies shaping the built environment and beyond.
KP Unpacked
High Agency Beats the Easy Button
In this episode of KP Unpacked, the #1 podcast in AEC, KP and guest Frank Lazaro explore how AI is reshaping the job market for recent graduates and what parents should tell their children about future career prospects. They discuss strategies for navigating an economy where traditional entry-level jobs are disappearing and entrepreneurship offers promising alternatives.
• The job market for recent graduates has softened similar to the post-dot-com bubble era
• Three emerging career categories: capital allocators, high experts, and exception handlers
• High agency individuals who can solve problems without guidance will be increasingly valuable
• Today's generation seems more comfortable separating income generation from traditional employment
• Entrepreneurship offers viable paths forward with less capital investment required than in previous eras
• AI tools can democratize business creation, allowing individuals to launch ventures without extensive technical expertise
• Field experience and customer-facing roles may become more important initial career steps
• Modern business opportunities don't require venture capital - many successful ventures start with minimal investment
• The ability to quickly learn and adapt matters more than formal credentials for entrepreneurial success
• Companies are abandoning custom AI projects in favor of using existing tools and platforms
Check out our upcoming Vibe-a-thon in Phoenix this October! For companies interested in private Vibe coding workshops, reach out to Frank directly.
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Check out one of our Catalyst conversation starters, AEC Needs More High-Agency Thinkers
Hope to see you there!
Hey there. So today's going to be pretty interesting for KPN Pack. I've got Frank Lazaro. My usual friend, nick Durham is busy running around New York doing God knows what, so I invited Frank in to talk about a few things. How's it going, frank?
Speaker 2:It's good. Yeah, I'm glad I'm able to pinch hit a few things. How's it going? Frank, it's good, yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad I'm able to kind of pinch hit for nick.
Speaker 1:It's kind of exciting, yeah it's kind of dark where you're at. Why is that?
Speaker 2:well, um, I'm on the other side of the planet. It's uh, it's only 5 am in, uh, sydney, australia. So nice, you have me. You have me up early running the podcast for KP, ready Unpacked, so it's exciting.
Speaker 1:Cool. So we pinged each other a little bit about what to talk about today. But I want to start off. We'll talk a little bit about maybe some of my posts, maybe not, I don't know. But I had a call with a friend of mine yesterday who runs a family office. He's a fairly wealthy guy and his kids are about the same age as mine my older kids, which are about the same age as your older boys. So he's got two boys, I've got two boys. Well, I've got three boys. One's three years old, so not worried about his future just yet, but you've got two boys about the same age as my older ones.
Speaker 1:And we're just talking about AI and the job market and that sort of thing Like what to do with our kids. What are we telling our kids? And to frame it out, I mean, we all do okay, right, Our kids, like I, tell my boys all the time they'll always have a sofa to sleep on, so none of them are going to end up homeless or any of those sort of things. But we definitely have a bias. You know, we're in a different stage of our life financially and opportunity-wise. So I mean you have one that just graduated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's. It's interesting you kind of point that out. We have an agreement that you know I'm really kind of funding his life now through the next several months because the job market really has gotten kind of solved for him Right. So those entry-level jobs coming in, you know, aren't as abundant. And honestly, it kind of reminds me back when I graduated college back in the 90s. We kind of got out of that dot bomb, that dot bubble type deal, job market softened and it probably took me six months before I found my first full-time job, which kind of feels like the same thing that this generation is going into. But I question whether or not, because of AI, whether it rebounds as fast as it did back in the 90s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. When I graduated in 94, and I had friends from Georgia Tech with masters in electrical engineering, working retail just to have a job right, oh yeah, my first job was at CompUSA.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you remember CompUSA. My first job was at CompUSA, yeah, you remember.
Speaker 1:CompUSA yeah, I do remember CompUSA. I used to buy all my Packard Bell computers there and floppy disks and floppy disks. But you think about it like we've had a couple of generations that kind of graduated and got a job right away, so didn't grind it out, didn't you know? They kind of got signing, bonuses and offers and that sort of thing. So they don't know, maybe this is not a muscle that they know how to use, which is, you know, go just do something until, maybe, an opportunity. But I also think, like with AI, like when are these entry level opportunities going to show up? Or are they ever?
Speaker 2:because they may not well, they may not right some I think some of them are going to, you know, go away completely. And it also kind of reminds me of like this is also the same generation that kind of grew up with interest rates being very low, in low money and being able to buy homes, and they're not used to the 7% interest rates. And now it's like, well, we can't buy homes, can't get jobs, can't do these things. So it is really interesting. But to your point, on the AI part, I do wonder. But I also wonder if there is this concept of re-skilling or rethinking about how they approach their jobs right. So like, if you are going to go in, say, be an architect or engineer, or like my son who's a chemical engineer, maybe you do need that computer skillset right To the point to where you can kind of help or evolve your job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. My friend was. You know, it was kind of a serious conversation. He's like I don't know what to tell this kid. You know he graduates next year and and so he's like what are you telling your kids? You know, like you're in the thick of this stuff, what are you telling your kids? And I was like, well, my general theory right now is that the way this all shakes out is, um, the world is going to get moved to capital allocators.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'll be one category. The second category will be high experts. Right, just people that are just deep expertise. You can't be a generalist, you're going to be a high expert. And then the third category I'm calling exception handlers. And then the third category I'm calling exception handlers. So, basically, you know, when the AI can't do the work, it's going to get kicked over to that person. Now, that work could be. You know we're talking about AI, but you know also, let's look at like robotics, right? Yeah, so what about when the robot can't do something? You might be the person walking around to pick up all the stuff that the robot drops, right, yeah, so what about when the robot can't do something? You might be the person walking around to pick up all the stuff that the robot drops right. Yeah, I don't believe that the exception handler job is going to be a well-paying job, so to speak, but it's going to be a job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. But I also think that kind of leans back into your post a couple weeks ago, maybe longer. We start talking about that concept of high agency, right, that that ability to get stuff done. I think that is going to be a very, a very attractive attribute of an individual. It's like we're going to hire you for this one job, but you need to be able to kind of think through more holistically around everything that's going on and be that problem solver without a lot of guidance, right? Because if not, if you need guidance, I'm just going to lean into ai. So it's like one around everything that's going on and be that problem solver without a lot of guidance, right? Because if not, if you need guidance, I'm just going to lean into AI. So it's like one of those things. I think that really leans in what you're saying or at least what I'm hearing is I kind of think back on your post about that high agency.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think, if you look at high agency, it might be that they're entrepreneurs, right, they're capital allocators. I think that's one of those things. I was talking to someone the other day and they said I was like you know how, you know 20 something year old, like how are you thinking about retirement and all that? And they said, like I'm trying to accumulate as much wealth as I can. Right now I'm over. You know, I'm maxed out on my 401k. I'm saving as much money. I'm living with my parents. I'm going to save all the money I can and my target is $25 million. I'm like $25 million, what Like?
Speaker 1:well, I figure about 5% of that per year can be income, a job. Not that I want to stop working or that I'm lazy, I'm just unsure that there will be jobs in the future for me and I'm better off accumulating all my money and maybe I'm not going to work because maybe there is no job. So basically, you know, his thinking was I'm going to be a capital allocator, right, I'm going to be the person that's um, that's funding things and I'm going to live off my capital. I think you do have a culture with this generation. The running joke was that the stock market's going to slow down because NFL season's starting.
Speaker 1:People are going to be betting on sports, not betting on stocks anymore. They're going to be too busy betting on sports. It does seem like we have a generation that thinks you know Bitcoin and I don't know like. I tell the story all the time. My first stock brokerage account I opened because I took my company public and my CFO was like where do we send your shares? I'm like what do you mean? You don't have a stock brokerage account. I'm like no, I grew up poor. I didn't have a stock brokerage. Like, the stock brokers were fancy people, right, people with monocles had stock brokerage accounts, so I had to go put up a brokerage account for them to deposit my own company stock into after we went public. Yeah, but that's not the case these days. These guys have Robin Hood and this and that and they're thinking that way.
Speaker 2:Well, I remember it was interesting and I distinctly remember this. The boys were probably around nine or 10. And they came into my office and they're like we want to open up E-Trade accounts. And I was like why? And it's like, well, we saw the commercial and the commercial told us that we needed to open up these E-Trade accounts. I'm like, all right, well, here's the deal you got to use your own money, so find your birthday money, pull whatever. You're getting together. And then you and I are going to sit down and we're going to pick the stocks.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I wish they would have picked my portfolio because you know, in the last like 12 years, you know it's up 350% each of them of wanting to do those investments at a very young age. Which also made me just think when you were talking too, is like I wonder how much of this concept of this gig economy is also influencing this generation of not wanting a full-time job. Right, they're wanting that entrepreneurial spirit, not necessarily wanting to drive for Uber, but taking that same philosophy of maybe I don't need a full-time job, maybe I need like two part-time jobs to get to the income or the things that I need to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think this generation probably better than ours, right? Nick and I were talking about on the last pod about deriving so much self-worth from our work and if ai is gonna, ai doing our work is kind of a it's very personal, right, when you take so much of your self-worth to your job, right, and you know frank shows up and says ai is taking your job, asshole, like you know, it's like you're basically saying, okay, like everything I've worked for and he going to go into the trash can, yeah, um, so we have a little bit of those kind of psychological hang-ups. But I think this generation, like our kids generation, they detach to making money from doing work, from having a job. They're not the same thing necessarily. I was talking to this one kid. He works as a construction manager, I don't know, makes 80 grand a year, something like that, but then he sells like vintage toys online, like refurbishes. It goes to garage sales, finds vintage toys, refurbishes them, sells them online and he's making 200 a year doing that just that yeah just that right.
Speaker 1:I was like the, why are you working the day job? He's like oh, construction's cool, I'd really enjoy my job. I like the people I work with. I have a lot of fun at work, yeah, um, but just like total detachment from you. Know what I do all day for work and job versus, um, what I do to make money could be totally two different things, I mean I was telling my son who graduates in the spring industrial engineering from Georgia Tech.
Speaker 1:Lots of experience. He's gonna be looking for a job everyone listening. But I told him hey, like, if you don't get a job, like let's go buy some self storage facilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you and I've talked about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just go buy three or four self storage I mean. But we can do those things, obviously, like those are things that we can kind of put our kids in business, so to speak. But what about everyone else?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, I think that's a challenge. You know, I go into your point. There's a um, a friend of mine's son. You know that he went out and he became a he basically side business in his apartment doing contract manufacturing, right, doing 3d modeling, and he doesn't like you, submit your project online. He just kind of runs the machines at night, right, he has a full-time job and he's just. You know, he's making six figures on the backend because people just need one or two prototypes of something and they just don't know how to do it.
Speaker 2:And I think that's I do love that entrepreneurial spirit of this generation to where they're willing to do all of those different things. But you're right, like you know, where does the individual that doesn't have access to you know, opportunities or family or something, to kind of take advantage of it? I think that's a struggle. But you also have a lot of kids that are leaving school that don't have an industrial engineering degree. They're leaving college with degrees that don't have a lot of value, but they spent $250,000 getting it Right, so now they're, you know, they basically got a mortgage for a degree that they can't actually monetize in any fashion. You know, I look at my son, you know, as a chemical engineer, I'm fully confident that he can monetize that degree in some fashion. Yep, right, yeah, not to downplay the liberal arts, but you know you're not going to get that same compensation as an English major. Right, you're likely to become a teacher or something along those lines. So I think that's.
Speaker 1:I think that's a challenge for this generation to kind of figure that chasm. I would agree with you, you, but I think I think you're back to your point about high agency. I think it was a couple months ago. I wrote about high agency.
Speaker 1:Um, I don't know, I feel like someone with a liberal arts degree that has high agency will figure something out right. They will go trade, you know like. You know like this kid selling stuff on you know on on eBay or whatever. I feel like those people figure it out. I mean, doesn't the entire universe of Etsy exist for these people? It's not what Etsy is like. I can make candles or whatever, whatever it is people do on Etsy, but it feels like there's so many outlets and maybe that's the angle right Like to set up a shop, use AI to build campaigns, to build something you know we're now giving. You know, if you flip it, flip it around and say is AI giving tooling to individuals to now be an entrepreneur without having to come see me and get venture capital or anything else, they can just, like you know, cash advance against their credit card, buy now, pay later, their 3D printer and off to the races.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I do wonder, because I look at my son, right, you know, in some of the jobs that he's looking at, you know they're kind of focused on, you know, less of just being a straight up engineer right out of college, but kind of being more like a field person, right, starting off in the field. Is this resetting back to like you're not going to get an office job making 80 to 100K right out of college. We reset it back to no. You got to go work in the field, right, you got to go, feel be a field representative for a chemical company first and then work your way up to like a, a senior field representative, and then you can become, you know that, subject matter expert engineer, um, so, so it's almost kind of like re-earning your way back in versus.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of companies out there and it's shocking when you see these kids come out of college, you know, five years ago, with no experience, making $80,000, $90,000 a year as an entry-level brand marketer or something, and it's just like whoa, how did we pivot so far from that? Maybe that's a reset. Maybe that AI is going to be that force multiplier that pushes everyone back to go learn the fundamentals, go learn how to sell right. We're everyone back to go learn the fundamentals. Go learn how to sell right. We're always going to need sell people that sell. Maybe it's like go learn to sell work with the customer and then and then earn your way or work your way into a more of a career path. Well, and for somebody who doesn't have an opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean back to your point like people with high agency that leverage ai tools are probably going to be fun. It's the people that don't have high agency. So, you know, in the world of like people always ask me for parenting advice, maybe because I hang out with a lot of youngish, youngish people and you know like, hey, what should I be thinking about? My kid and their future and their education. Not that I have like all the answers, but I think it's. It's a lot about how do you raise your kids with confidence so that they become so they can become high agency, right, not not giving them. I do think we have a generation. You know, whatever the generation is, it's a little bit spoiled. You know their, their parents, maybe, you know, maybe they're boomer parents, you know, I think being a child to a boomer parent versus being a child to a gen x parent is very different. I think I'm a gen x parent, so I'm just a little bit tougher you know, like, oh, woe is you, it's so hard your life.
Speaker 1:You know, kind of parent which I think creates high agency kids and maybe the boomer parents that I don't know what, what their issues were, but they, um, they treat their kids a little bit different when I maybe don't have a lot as much high agency, but, you know, it does seem like our kids generation. See, you know, they don't hear us talking about our 401k and our pensions and how the company did us wrong. I mean, I, I don't think, of course the company did us wrong. That's just how company it's called capitalism, right? Um? So I think, whereas boomer parents probably complained more about, like all those things, whereas our, you know, our kids are grew up under the like no, go figure it out yeah well, you know they, our kids, are grew up under the like no, go figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you know they gave me an option, right when. When I was like your options are go to the military, go to school, right, like you go figure it out, but you're not going to be here, right, and so we were kind of forced to do that. But I also think too, you know, having hands parents sometimes. So I grew up with my grandparents so like I skipped the whole boomer generation. I was kind of like you know more of the generation before that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's one of those things where you know, yeah, so you, you grow up and you know, and I tell people I was like hey, listen, I said you know we never went out to eat dinner, right, but that that was really one of those things to where that was a special, special event. Um, you know, most of our vegetables came from the garden type of deal, so you had that. That like I grew up around this work ethic of like you work and harvest and you do all the things to make your life, versus I'm gonna hand you something, um, and I think that I think that was it's benefited me a lot because, you know, I I've always kind of leaned into like I'm just going to figure this out, like I'm going to say yes to everything, and I've always had that mentality. I'm going to say yes, yeah, I may not know what the frick I'm doing, but it is. I'm just going to say yes to it and I'm going to figure it out.
Speaker 2:This generation is just like, well, can, can, can you just like you know, can's the easy path. And I do worry about that with AI to where people think that's an easy button, like, oh, okay, this is my easy button, I'm just going to hit and I'm going to create something. It was funny. I saw something online it was kind of a meme that was. The guy's job description was a vibe code cleanup specialist. So is there a whole generation of programmers that are going to sit out there that's going to do nothing but fix the vibe?
Speaker 1:coding right.
Speaker 2:Because people aren't doing it the right way Right, and so they're so reliant on the technology and not leaning into that high agency kind of figure, understand how it works so that it works better for them.
Speaker 1:But do you think also, cause you do a lot of training and workshops for us and you've got a bunch of new workshop programs coming up but do you also think there was a little bit of hey, I just got hired straight out of college, you need to train me. I had this happen to me. I had an employee quit. This was at a startup. She quit because she said I was not providing adequate training and resources for her to be successful at her job and I was like but it's interesting, yeah, but it's like OK.
Speaker 1:Bye. It's like OK bye, but.
Speaker 2:but again I look at it. But it's funny how, when you say that and then I look at it like well, why didn't you just figure it out Like it's almost kind of like like you could have actually taken some personal responsibility to figure out, like let me learn my job and then ask questions, versus just expecting you to tell me how to do my job.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's funny. I had a friend's son stay with me and he went somewhere and his car wouldn't start. And so the dad calls me, like hey, you know he's stuck here, his car won't start. I'm like, yeah, like how's that my problem? Yeah, he has a boomer dad, right? Well, can you go and see if he can jump them off? I'm like, absolutely not. And so I called the kid. I called the kid. I'm like go into the closest store and have them see if anyone has jumper cables. He's like what's that?
Speaker 1:I'm like, listen, youtube generation instead of like going on youtube to figure out some cheat code for a game. How about you go on youtube and look up and troubleshoot your car, yeah, and I just like refused to go get him. I just refused and dad called me like hey, you might. I was like I'm fine, I'm just sitting here on the t watching on the sofa watching tv. I got nothing to do, I'm not busy. I'm just unwilling to go like perpetuate this weakness in this child. You know, and guess what? He looked it up on youtube. He went into like one of the stores and they had some jumper cables. He got someone in the parking lot to jump him off and he made it home. Fine, right, and it's like there's, you know, and now, with ai, like that's like the youtube generation, go like, go figure it out on youtube. Right, figure it out.
Speaker 2:Well I have the same. Now it's even more powerful now.
Speaker 1:It's even more powerful with ai.
Speaker 2:Yeah just ask your phone and he could have looked it up. I had the same thing happen with my son. He calls me, no, he sends me a video. He's at the grocery store. He says my motorcycle won't start. And he sends me a video and it's clicking. I'm like your battery's dead. And he texts back Well, how do you know that? I'm like, how do I know that you sent me a video? I listened to the video your battery's dead, go find a battery. Like, take it over to the AutoZone, go get a new battery. But it was so funny. It's like you didn't tell them to roll, start it. Well, that was I told them. I said I need to teach you how to like. You know how?
Speaker 1:to roll, start it.
Speaker 2:Without killing yourself. Well, he was like what's that? I'm like, oh my god, I was like this generation that like that's the other thing too. It's like they don't know how to drive a manual car. Right, you start thinking of, you start thinking about like they have all these sensors and and and lights that light up and tell them not when to switch lanes. I'm like you don't know. Panic when you're not sitting in a 1978 dachshund on a steep hill with a four-speed manual, praying that you don't crush the car behind you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but my middle son, you know, proud dad moment he went out and bought his own car with his money and he bought a stick shift, okay, and I was like why don't you buy it? It's like dude, he's like that it's not driving a car unless you're driving a stick shift. I'm like where, when did I rub off on you? You know, I know.
Speaker 2:And um, he also jokes around that it's theft deterrent, since nobody stealing a car knows how to dress well, it is a pain in the ass, though, when you show up at the ballet and the park your car. You got to park your own car, you know, but you know first of all problems when it comes to that. I will tell you, though, and I told this to the kids I hey, listen, you drive a stick.
Speaker 2:I said it's way cheaper to run a car when you're in Europe, because they know that if you need them, if you need an automatic, you're an American and they're going to jack up the prices. But no, I think it's the yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, so what do you? So what you know? Let's see, you've got one kind of out of the nest sort of kind of my eldest has he quit. He did have a job. He quit his job to do a startup. So he's working, right, it's different work, but working and doing stuff. My next one, who graduates next spring industrial engineering from georgia tech, he's available. Look him up. Um, he's unsure, right, and he clearly, you know he wants he what he. I think his preference would be to come out to california with me, but, um, you know, I've kind of told him like hey, we'll figure out, like we'll buy a business, whatever you know, go buy a gym or there's so many small businesses you can kind of buy. What are you telling your kids in terms of, hey, go get a job, or else what does, or else look like.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, same, same philosophy as you it's um, it's the, or else right, which is the motivator, right, um, but they'll always have a couch to sleep on, right. So I had that. I was out in Texas with the one son that just graduated, you know, and I was like, hey, listen, I said, right now, what I need you to do is your job is to find a job right. It takes effort, it takes diligent. You can't expect to sit here and have someone just like hand you a job. That's just not the way this works.
Speaker 2:The other one and granted, funny enough, they're twins One is kind of graduating about the same time as your younger son.
Speaker 2:So next spring he's there, he's at the University of Alabama, he's a business major. I think his prospects, I think for jobs, are going to be a lot tighter, because I think what you are finding is is those marketing, sales type roles are, you know, they're going to be far and few between and they're not going to be as lucrative as they have been. So for him, I'm trying to like, think about, like you need to think more broadly about where you want to be right. Think about that field type of role you know, go work for a Coca-Cola bottler and learn how to service a customer and do that field marketing and it's going to suck and it's more manual and it's not that corporate-y type job. But I think that is for me. It's them to kind of take that next step to say, okay, that you can swing back to corporate after you get that field. It's really kind of pushing them into kind of more of the, the roles that a lot of the the generations have ignored up until recently.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, no, no, I think you're right. I mean, um, you know, we see it with startups and tech companies. The whole, like sdr, bdr, never actually meet a customer, sell things, things roles quickly, quickly, quickly going away, and it's definitely much more about field marketing. I remember, like my first startup, one of my advisors said hey, you know, what you need to do is hire people that sold cut code knives, that worked at the at&t store selling cell service.
Speaker 1:Back then it was like you had to sell it, you had to convince people to get a cell phone it wasn't just automatic, it wasn't order taking by any means, and you know, hire people with those profiles and then, uh, and then put them to work right. And now, like we have people that are quote unquote in sales, that are just really good at, you know, showing up on Calendly calls. They walk through a script and, god forbid, the customer asked them something that's not on the script or not in the FAQ. They just get lost. And these same people I think like we talk about it right, like some of our consulting services that are not inexpensive, I always tell you guys like hey, we're not going to close that business. That's a three beer close. Unless you've had beer with that customer three different times. It's not going to go anywhere. The esoteric world of consulting is 100% on trust, and trust comes over time and conversations and social interactions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yeah, and it requires persistence and challenge. Like you know, you and I have run into this too. It's like we have this great service and we see that there's huge market demand, but the selling cycle from a customer's perspective could be three months, six months, 12 months. You know, we have conversations and then people boomerang back to us 12 months later saying, okay, now I'm ready to do that. But like, why do they do that? It's because we stay in touch with them. We continue to, you know, provide them content and and and really kind of continue to kind of nurture those relationships to that point. But I agree with you a hundred percent. I think that there are, for some reason reason.
Speaker 2:This generation likes the concept of the easy button, whether it's the ai or whether it's like like, oh, I'm just going to read the script and then there's no follow-up and there's no, I'm going to build a relationship with this person, have a. You know, sometimes selling is just checking in and saying meeting them at a conference, taking, like you said, three beer, three beer, meeting, um know it's. You look at the big four. Like you go back in the day. Like you know, there's a lot of lunches you go to. There's a lot of dinners that you do, there's a lot of whining and dining, and I think we've lost some of that because this generation has grown up with technology and they're just overusing technology.
Speaker 2:It's like well, first of all, you don't sell via text message. You know what I mean. Like you have to. I remember one of my first bosses right off the bat was just like you communicate with your feet. You get up out of your desk, you walk over, you go talk to KP, you get the answer, you walk back to your desk, you do your job right. You don't send an email, you don't like, you don't do those things. Um, and I think the connectivity and the technology has kind of dumbed some of these kids down where they think it's completely acceptable to to have a whole conversation with a grown-ass adult via text message. No, we're not at that part of the relationship.
Speaker 1:It's kind of funny, though. Right like there was a time in in in work life you would never email someone that was sitting in the same room with you or three cubes down and it was kind of considered weird and awkward to do such yeah now it's like fairly normal, right? It's like of course I'm gonna email you. Like why don't you just ask me? I'm right, right next to you.
Speaker 2:No, I'm going to Slack you.
Speaker 1:I'm going to Slack you Slack.
Speaker 2:That's kind of funny. I also remember too and I think there's a lot of value in this too If you kind of go back, you know the value of just being present right, being visible, like we've gotten away from that because of you know the remote work. But you see these kids now they wouldn't even turn that. Like how many times have we gotten on like a call and someone doesn't even have their camera on, like, yeah, I get it. Some instances like hey, you're in the car, you don't want to be distracted, fine, turn the camera off. But if you're sitting somewhere stationary, why isn't your camera on right? And and you even see that now to where, like I get on some of these calls and it's just like people just for whatever reason, like maybe they're still in their pajamas, I don't know yeah, it's funny, we, we, we deal with this one very, very large corporate and, um, somehow it became corporate policy that you could not request your employees to turn their camera on.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was like some kind of hr violation, um and so. So of course, everybody figures this out. So you get on these like teams calls with them, and you know people are like at this at the grocery store and cart, like they're everywhere but at their desk and they're also not paying attention. Because you'll say things, you'll get uh-huh, and like you didn't hear me, it's like are you sure? Oh, yeah, no, what'd you say? Again, it's like uh-huh, yeah, like you weren't actually listening. So, yeah, I think, I do think that if you take away the, the pessimism of you know, hey, it's gonna be right. And I told someone the other day unfortunately I'm not at a point in my career where I worry too far beyond my family, my clients, my friends to society writ large, right, like what's AI going to do for society? You know, I don't feel like I have, as you know, a big assay as that and that, as other people with much larger capital stacks than I do, right, but I do think optimistically. I think entrepreneurship is the way to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the difference is there's so much opportunity there.
Speaker 1:There's so much and I don't think you have. You know it used to be. I remember I started my first company when I was 23 and my uncle like just begged me to keep working. It's like you need to pay your dues. You don't understand things. You need to understand things. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I'll figure it out. Right, I was like I'll figure it out and the truth is I had someone call me actually earlier today wanting some mentorship, right, and I made a simple point to him.
Speaker 1:I was like when I was in my 20s, there was such a thing as stupid questions and there was such a thing as looking stupid and your boss would let you know that you look stupid. So I would walk out of meetings not knowing what people said and I would go buy a textbook because I was like, okay, I'm going to be in there tomorrow, I better not look stupid, I better not sound stupid. There was a heightened resolve around not being stupid, right? So I would just go to the bookstore and buy textbooks. Okay, here's what I need to understand. What's the difference between a balance sheet and a P&L statement? I better textbooks. Okay, here's what I need to understand. But what's the difference between a balance sheet and a patent, a profit and a P&L statement. I've already learned that, right. So I just every stay up all night, paul nighters, not trying not to look dumb and that was when you know you had to go buy books and read all night.
Speaker 1:So I think, if you think about the training required to be an entrepreneur, right, I deal with lots of entrepreneurs, right. Lots of founders. How many of them are the best coders ever? Very few. How many of them are the best marketers ever? Very like. The reality is so much of just what makes them successful is high agency and the ability to quickly learn and adapt.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure why, a why you have to go to four years of college to be an entrepreneur Probably not that important, not these days or that you need to go work somewhere and pay your dues to start a company. So you know, I've just been like when kids are like a job market, I'm like let's go start something, I'll give you some seed money, I'll give you a couple of bucks. You know, let's go start something, I'll give you some seed money, I'll give you a couple of bucks. You know, um, let's go do something. I'm like, because there's so many businesses you can be in. You know, um, be a coffee shop, it could be a self-storage for something. There's so many things.
Speaker 1:Um, not every tech start not, and of course not every tech startup has to be the next facebook. Right, there's nothing wrong. You can build. You know, I have a friend who builds websites for small businesses. I'm like are you kidding me? Do they not know what Wix and Square? He's like dude, these people, they're using their company, they're using their Facebook page as their company website.
Speaker 2:I'm like okay.
Speaker 1:So in that paradigm he charges like $1,500 to build a Wix website. Does it all day long, Makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a year building Wix websites.
Speaker 2:That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. My neighbor's a therapist and he just asks me every now and then to help him. You know what I do for him. I maintain his website, which is through Squarespace, and he sends me content and I format it for him and maintain his website, which is through Squarespace, and I will. He sends me content and I format it for him and he sends out an email. That's literally like you know, it's like an hour on a Saturday. I kind of help him and it's it's pretty consistent.
Speaker 2:But there are tons of people out there and I also think too, it's like when you start thinking about being an entrepreneur and starting something, I don't think it's as capital intensive now than it was previously. Like if I wanted to buy something or do something 20 years ago you know, I didn't have access to a lot of resources and technology to kind of help build a business. You can bootstrap something right and and create something and eventually, kind of, you know, evolve it into something that's more of an income thing. Go back to the concept of doing. You know, evolve it into something that's more of an income thing. Go back to the concept of doing, you know, contract manufacturing. Now you spend 15, $20,000 on some 3d printers and some software, right, and you throw up a website and people send you projects and you basically, you know, build ones or two. You have a whole business built on 20 K that's profitable by month. Three, right, you know, do two or three projects.
Speaker 2:So I don't think so. I agree with you. 100. I think that there's that opportunity around being that entrepreneur. I think some kids, you know, they're looking for that big home run. Where's the big home run?
Speaker 1:I want to be the next meta, I want to be the next thing and sometimes like no, if you, there's some small ball stuff out there that doesn't feel glamorous but can produce a six-figure income for you with little or no effort yeah I, I told my son like hey, you know we're friends with you, know I'm friends with you, know I don't know half of the enr 500 ceos, right, yeah, I was like why don't you find something simple that I can go sell them? Can we sell hard hats, like ppe equipment, you know, like hard hats and eye protection and ear protection or something?
Speaker 2:because instead of meta glasses, meta hard, hats right you have ai enabled hard hat not even ai like, just like rubber gloves.
Speaker 1:Let's sell rubber gloves right and uh work gloves and across carefree though, yeah, I though, yeah, I've got half the ENR 500. It's a commodity business. You can probably make a half a million bucks a year selling all my friends hardhats all day long. Right, like, just go do that.
Speaker 2:Just go do that. Well, you know, back in the day you remember the guys that would go out and be those independent contractors basically selling credit card machines to small businesses, and then they would get the 2% or 3% residual on the transactions and they have 20 out there making $30K a month with a handful of clients, because they're out there hustling, selling. It goes back to the concept of 30 years ago, when you're selling the Electrolux vacuum.
Speaker 2:Now you're just selling credit card machines. What's that next thing? You know? Get a dozen companies to buy one thing and you make 20, 30k a month.
Speaker 1:I had a kid, an Indian kid, a family member, and he didn't go to college or anything. And he did the credit card machine thing. And he didn't go to college or anything. And he did the credit card machine thing and all he did was hit the Indian shopkeepers, the gas stations, like all those guys right, right, and the liquor stores, and they didn't even care if they were paying, like they didn't even care about the economics as much. No, they were just happy to do business with an Indian right. And he built a massive business, sold it, aggregated, sold it, made it so much money. And then now he's like a lottery distributor, like he's part of the lottery system, he's like a reseller of the lottery system or something. It's like what are you doing, kid?
Speaker 2:you know he's like on his second ferrari doing that.
Speaker 1:He's on his second ferrari, like, just, you know, like whatever. So no, I think I think we under in entrepreneurship, especially for us, we bias, you know, like whatever. So no, I think I think we under in entrepreneurship, especially for us, we bias, you know.
Speaker 1:Uh, we underweight the non-tech startup ideas but um, but also I think even with tech you're going to see more and more um tech startups that you don't have to be. You know it's not go buy it and go hire a coder and do all this stuff. Just build something over the week and you know, sell it right, sell it a little bit. You know, make a hundred thousand dollars a year and subscription fees or whatever it is yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, also too. It's like you also see this. You know this generation too. They're.
Speaker 2:They're the ones that were able to kind of monetize content very well, right you start thinking, start thinking about I hate to use the term, but the concept of influencer, right, but you have these, these people that were able to kind of create content and then monetize it through these platforms. If they would just take that same philosophy, right, like, how do I, how do I create really compelling content? And you and I both know this, right, really good content gets eyeballs. Eyeballs will turn into revenue, right, if you're saying something compelling, you know, and creating content doesn't really cost you much. So there, I mean, even then you go back to like this like a, like an intangible type of asset. This is then say, if I can create really compelling content, create engagement and then connect it to whatever I'm trying to sell on the backend, you know that that is your, that that that's a very classic marketing sales model that you could follow. That doesn't require a lot. This requires, you know, again, high agency. You know the ability to kind of get stuff done and be creative.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, think about it Like. Think about like TikTok stuff. You know, walk into a pizza shop and say, or a local hair salon, or whatever it is right with some older folks and say, hey, like I want to be your TikTok influencer, right, one, they're gonna be like what the hell is tiktok right? And then, two, they're gonna let you do it, they're not gonna do it. Yeah, yeah, that that old guy running a pizza shot is not gonna do tiktok anything and you could probably help them drive a ton of business that they don't. You know that they're not, you know. So there's I think there's an opportunity with the not just the unsophisticated, but maybe the unwilling, the unwillingness of people to do some of this stuff, that you could always do.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, well. I also think too that even even sophisticated companies struggle with.
Speaker 2:We don't necessarily need to hire this person full time to do this for us? How can we outsource it in some way? Right, that's cost-effective, that helps drive revenue, a variety of things. And then you go downstream mid--market, smaller businesses. They're even less sophisticated when it comes to some of this stuff. There's a huge opportunity if you can come up with the right hook, right, and then it requires you know, I hate to tell them this it does require a little bit of work and effort, Like if you get some sweat and tears into this thing and what you're going to find is is that there's a lot of opportunity there for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't, and I don't. I'm, I'm pretty much an optimist. You know about this generation. I don't think they lack a work ethic.
Speaker 2:I think they lack some direction.
Speaker 1:Right, they just need help with some direction, and I think I think it's also a generation that it's not afraid of failure.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well they'll fail at something and they'll pivot to something else, right? And for them it goes back to that gig mentality, right? Like well, if this gig doesn't work, I'll just go drive for Uber for a couple months and then I'll swing back and I'll do something else. You know, I wouldn't be surprised that some of these kids aren't doing three or four different hustles at the same time, right? Surprised that some of these kids aren't doing three or four different hustles at the same time, right? Um, maybe if they, like you said, if they got a little focused on one or two of those things, that could really kind of turn into something more sustainable, more profitable for them yeah, let's um, we're getting ready to be out of time, but I didn't want to just bring up like, so what do you?
Speaker 1:um? Just get everybody their ai dose. What, what their AI dose? What are you seeing right now? That's kind of more interesting than feels like every day. There's something new and something new to play with, and some new toy, like what's occupying your brain space in terms of AI toys?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. I think, you know, chatgt-5 came out a couple months, a couple of weeks ago. I think that created a buzz, I don't know if a positive or negative buzz. Some people kind of turned on it.
Speaker 2:But what you're finding, you know, when we talk to our clients, when we talk to potential clients, when you know I talk at these conferences, everyone's starting to pivot away from the concept of a chatbot right, the chat, gpt, the cloud and they're really starting to focus now on like what's an AI agent, what's a gentic AI, right. So now they're starting to pivot towards like we kind of get this piece. But like now I'm really fascinated about you know where does this thing go? What's the next gen of this? You know where does this thing go? What's the next gen of this? I don't really kind of see the models kind of evolving too much. I think you're going to kind of see features and speed and quality kind of continuing to accelerate, but from a tech platform perspective, I really do see agents, ai agents and agentic AI kind of being that next chasm that I think we need to cross, where I think this kind of evolves into a lot of different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's a good topic.
Speaker 2:I think people have no idea what you just said.
Speaker 1:It's like you're just saying words. You took agent and put IC on it and call it agentic, and now it's like AI and cool, but that doesn't you know. Because it's funny, I was talking to a key executive at a very large firm and I talked to two of these people this week and they said we're there landing on AI, and I found this fascinating. They said we're going to give everybody chat, gpt or equivalent. Yeah, that's like a web browser, that's like desktop computing, right, that's just, everyone gets it. Use it to do your job, just like you use microsoft, word, excel. That's like that's not a big deal. Then we're going going to go to our large providers and use whatever AI tools they provide, right, the accounting system, the CRMs.
Speaker 1:They got stuff built in the idea, though, so they've abandoned all of their custom AI projects 100%, because what they're learning is in order to, if you're an AE firm, to invest money and time in building things and how quickly things are moving. They've now spent millions of dollars trying to build something. They haven't built anything that delivers any level of productivity, and they just can't keep up, right, so I think they've all abandoned it. They've said like look, you know, we'll partner with you, kp, if you want to go build this stuff with us, we're happy to like partner with you on it. Uh, we'll give you kind of the needs and you go build it or whatever. But yeah, they're, they're giving up. They're just saying like there's that middle ground of go build something custom that's going to transform our company, just giving up on it, and it kind of makes sense. Well, I don't think the value ever materialized.
Speaker 2:Right, I don't think that they put all that money in that investment, that development and the value never materialized, like they never saw the ROI, they never saw the productivity.
Speaker 1:They never saw any of those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I have a bit of a different view. I don't think they invested enough, and I think when you don't invest enough, you don't attract the right talent that actually knows what they're doing. You don't, you know, you don't build a product market team that actually thinks about the product right, and so what you do is you under invest and you go to zero. I think there is a tipping point. I think I put something out in a white paper, I think it was something like five to 10% of your revenue should be invested in AI every year. And if you really want to transform and disrupt your own business and when you're a $5 billion a year business, that's $500 million a year, and we know some of these people that we're working with that are doing $2 billion a year they are not investing $200 million a year into anything right.
Speaker 2:Maybe like $2 million. I was going to say not even $2 million.
Speaker 1:Most of them just have a job code called innovation. That's non-billable and they think that's their investment, right, Right.
Speaker 2:They're putting hours against it.
Speaker 1:So my view is if you're going to build stuff, you have to be serious about it. You can't just tinker. There's no tinkering with it.
Speaker 2:No, I agree with you 100% too. But I also think, too, the technology has changed a hundred percent too. But I also think, too, the technology has changed in the last 12 months. You mentioned vibe coding right, and a lot of people may not know exactly what that is. But when you break it down to the fundamentals, this concept of low code, no code. I don't need a custom developer anymore, right, I just need somebody that has a really good idea, some high agency and the ability just to kind of talk to these tools to produce something. Right.
Speaker 2:Go back in the day. You know what did product development used to do back in the 90s for us? Right, it would be 18 months. Right, technical requirements and business requirements, and we go through this whole step around UI, ux and CX and on and on. Now it's just like if you have an idea, just start. You can get to like an MVP or a minimal viable product very, very quickly, and so if companies would get into that mindset, like you know, it's almost goes back to that concept of fail fast, right?
Speaker 2:Like let's go there and do this and if it works, great, If it doesn't scrap it, let's go back and revive this thing and kind of get the tool that we want. Where you have these companies that invest $100,000 into a tool it's not exactly what they want and then it just lingers there. They don't do anything with it, they don't put more investment in it.
Speaker 1:Then it becomes another CRM system for an AE firm. Yeah, and, by the way, I mean I think you know we have our vibe-a-thon coming up in.
Speaker 1:October. So go to our website and find the vibe-a-thon. It's going to be in Phoenix. It's going to be in Phoenix, but you know what's interesting and I'll put this out there If you're paying attention. If you got this far into the pod, we're pretty deep into it. So if I if we haven't lost you already I think I would be super interested in hosting private vibe at thons at companies like bring in, bring in your folks, we'll do it workshop style.
Speaker 1:What will pre-train you want it? Cause I know we're starting to put out a lot of vibe, vibe code, trading on cursor and stuff, and we'll come in and host it. You know, because a little bit you got to have some guardrails around this stuff and people do need help every once in a while.
Speaker 1:you know, not everything's in there um, you know, I I would say, like I would be cool with doing one, one a month at a firm, you know, not not for you individual people, but at a firm. I would probably do that gratis. I would probably do that free, just to see, just to see what goes on right, just to see how people do it. Because I think if we went out and did it free, you know, one a month, that's about how much time we can spend for free, you know, besides buying plane tickets and shit. Um, we're gonna do all that. But I think after month three, I think we would probably have something pretty interesting that people would pay us for.
Speaker 1:Like I think we could like try it out right now and let people tinker with us, so to speak, because I do think what we've learned in our vibe coding experience has been it is a great way to get what's in your brain into software without going through all the steps of let's do a technical requirements document and this document, let's set up a Trello board, like you know. Like all that step, all that step function stuff, that is not coding, right, it's all the administrative aspect of building product. I think you're really flattening that down more than anything. But I'll tell you like, probably whatever you vibe code, um barry clark, our cto, he would probably throw it away. Now it's probably going to start from scratch, right, if you actually want to turn it into something. But it doesn't mean that there's not value in the prototyping and iteration that you've done today.
Speaker 2:No, no, and I also think being able to visually see some of these ideas actually kind of working in concept allows people to kind of really understand how it could evolve. You know, kind of feeding off what you're saying too. I could really see like these private these, these, these private or these individualized vibe coding sessions also being part of your strategic planning. Right, when you're because you know what's what's your strategic planning we throw a bunch of ideas on some posted notes, we put them on the whiteboard, we put a priority and then we have like 20 things that we want to do but we don't even know if anything are feasible. We don't really know what's going to drive revenue. But if you had like a vibe account, like a vibe-a-thon type deal to where you're really kind of seeing some of these ideas come to life, even if they're not fully baked, you know, it could actually integrate into like a strategic planning as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it goes back to what I've said. The last you know last few years now is that an LLM is all about getting us dumb humans closer to this small compute without having to learn Fortran or Python. You know, we're finally able to talk to computers in our language and our dumb English language that lacks syntax. We have this thing called grammar, but what's the difference between read and read? I don't like you know it's like it's very. It's a. It's a convoluted language that we speak compared to machine language, right, and all LLMs are doing is getting us closer and closer to that. So when I think about vibe coding, that's all it is is taking people that actually have knowledge of what they want and not having to go through layers of people to translate their need into zeros and ones. You just get to talk right to the zeros and ones and uh and do that so you know, join us for vibeathon ping frank.
Speaker 1:If you want a free vibe coding workshop, I'll stick them on a plane. He's excited, he's an australian.
Speaker 2:He doesn't care, he's an australian. He travels he's hey, we have any australian clients out there that will need some the next day or so. Let us know.
Speaker 1:I do. Actually, I have a great Australian client. The last time I visited I got hooked on flat whites and I would walk into coffee shops in America and say I'd like a flat white and they all make it wrong. They basically give me a latte.
Speaker 2:I introduced someone to a flat white this week as well. Like they're like they've never heard of it and I'm like it's like literally the best coffee ever.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, people, like people that haven't been to australia, don't understand like the coffee there is like next level. Yeah, people forget about that that in the that in the home of avocado toast, but there's that. Um, all right, frank, that's great chatting. Um, yeah, for our listeners for nick.
Speaker 2:So yeah, anytime you want me to come back, just send me the note yeah, we'll do all right. Thanks, man I appreciate it.