AI, Startups & Surviving the Future: A Conversation With Developer Chad Cox | Ep1

Nailing it. That's awesome. Sounds good. Norris producers happy. You look good. That makeup's great. Yeah. I didn't think the gal can make you look that good in the back. But I was impressed. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't even look like me now. Like this. Where's Chad? It's like, who is this guy? He's hard. And welcome to the killer. Yes. Episode one where we talked to entrepreneurs and people doing cool things or things we don't know or understand is going to be a lot of our conversation. Yeah. I don't understand most of what you know. I don't understand. Me too. And you're on the same boat. We were just talking about that last night. Yeah. Yeah. So I being my first podcast interview ever, uh, watch some YouTube obviously on how to do a podcast. Right. You know, this morning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Before this, I thought that was the right way to do it. Yeah. And it said to start with like some soft serves, like build momentum. Okay. Okay. Like I need to start with, you know, asking you some easy questions. So, um, so yeah, you're ready to go. Um, are they, how, how easy are they? Well, are they multiple choice? It's always C. Yeah, I know. It's always C. It is. All right, Chad, what's the meaning of life? What was the number? I saw that movie, um, build it. There was a movie. Yeah. What was it? What was that movie with the meaning of life and the wonderful, a wonderful life. No, no, no, no. It was just this, I should know this cause I'm a nerd. The movie's called. No, no. That's the final, the final, the answer that was the meaning of life was a number. Oh yeah. Interesting. We had dolphins in it and stuff. Wow. Hi. No, no, not coming to me. What other animals are in it? Mammals. That's all I remember. Yeah. It's just dolphins. They were very smart and uh, yeah. Good dolphins. Great, great movie. And somebody's going to call me out on this and I'm going to be like, yeah, sorry. All right. I'm under a lot of pressure. There's a big producer. Can you look up this movie real quick? Uh, let us know. I should've, I should've grabbed my phone. Let's give me a second. Um, what is that? No, this is going to bother me. Let's just let it bother you the rest of the podcast. Let's do that. Yeah. Okay. So Chad, we've known each other for a year now. Not long. Not less than a year. Less than a year. Yeah. Although we've been Facebook friends for quite some time. Yeah. I've, I've avoided you. You've messaged me a lot of years. Right. And uh, I appreciate you blocking me. Um, so now that you've gotten to know me and you're like, yeah, this was the right choice. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That makes sense. Um, so let's start with this. Okay. Uh, you were a software developer and software engineer. What's the difference between an engineer and developer? Um, I have a computer science degree, but not a software engineering degree, but you know, engineering sounds cooler. It does. Yeah. So let's go with software engineer. We'll take that back. So Chad, you're a software engineer. Yeah. Yeah. It turns out. Perfect. Yeah. Uh, so let's go before that, before you got into software and your degree, uh, what was life like out of high school for you? Oh, out of high school. Uh, I went to college at Wichita state for a couple of years and then I had this crazy idea that I should join the army. Yeah. And then I did and then I did it. And so, yeah, I spent four years in the, in the military and got out and I became fairly, uh, unintelligent for a couple weeks afterwards. Um, just trying to go back to school. So I went back to call it after the military. Yeah. Uh, I've been pretty brainwashed. That was a great promotion for the army. You want your IQ to drop? It came back. You were just a robot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What'd you do in the army? But seriously, transitioning out of the military is a, is a thing and it's, it's not even, I mean, I saw no combat, but still there's a, there's a whole different lifestyle and coming back into this civilian world was not super easy. What'd you do? Made lots of bad choices. And then, Oh, no, in the army. That too. I was with the third range of battalion. So infantry. Wow. So yeah. Anytime you throw a ranger out, that's kind of a big deal. I was, um, Oh my shirt. Yeah. So it's average ranger. That's perfect. I didn't have a below average, so I just had to go with this one. Yeah. So that's perfect. I feel like you told me you jumped out of airplanes and stuff. I did. Yeah. Did you have a parachute? Hopefully you want to be here most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I hated it. I mean, with how old you are, was it like, what did those parachutes look like? What were they made from? Were they like those perfect circle ones that seemed too big of a dome? You know, they were certainly like in the world war two, they were totally, uh, you couldn't really maneuver them. You can just kind of fell where you fell and you just kind of got away from people as much as you can, but mostly you just land like a sack of potatoes. There's another term for that, but wow. And Chad's due for his next knee surgery. That's true. I got this. I've already had one, so I'm getting the other one done here since. Yeah. Uh, paratrooping. That's the, that's the life for me. Nice. But that was like what, four or six years, four years, four years, four years. So, and then back to school, back to school. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, it was a pre-med student when I went in when I, before the army and thought that's the direction I wanted to go. And then I got out of the army, went back to school at Wichita state and, um, struggled a little bit. And then I took a ethics in medicine class and I did not do well. So like you're thinking pre-med for a second. I was pre-med. I was going to go to medical school. That was what I was going to do. And, um, I got a C in that class cause I didn't, you saw blood on a page and you're like, Nope, no, no. I, uh, didn't agree with my professor at all. Oh wow. And yeah, I, he wanted to like euthanize everybody and I just like, I don't think we should do that. And he did think that, um, my stance on things was all that great. And so, um, that was the end of my medical career. Short lived, short lived. Yeah. But he went out with the bang. Yeah. Professor. Yeah. You know, you should have been the professor. It sounds like that was clearly, that was the problem. Yes. Yes. Um, we may not have had the same political views at the time. Maybe, maybe I agree with him now. I don't know. I don't know. So, yeah. So then I went into, uh, aerospace engineering cause I'm from Wichita. Sure. That lasted a semester. Um, a lot of, a lot of drama that semester. That was a lot in a year pre-med and aerospace engineering in a year. Um, I was, I changed majors like seven times. Yeah. So I really should be a doctor as long as I went to school. Uh, but I am not. So a full circle, you landed on computer science. Yes. I've been, I started programming when I was about eight years old. Okay. Um, used to stay up late with my cousin and make Turkey pictures for help for Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff. You'd type in X, Ys and press that was in your run. Yes. Yep. Press run and pop up and it was like magic. That's cool. And then I got into high school, did a bunch, did some computer science classes. And so hold on, you're eight. Yeah. Eight. So you were in third grade messing around with programming. Yeah. Apple to eat. I don't think that's a lot of kids do that when they're eight. Yeah. I don't think so. Well, they all have their own devices now. Yeah, that's true. They don't have to use it. Yeah. It was the same thing. So yeah, the teachers would come to me asking me how to format a disc and stuff like that because it was new to them too. What computer was in your house at eight? Apple to eat. Apple to eat. You just said that. Somehow we got that. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Crazy. So computer science just all kind of made sense all of a sudden. Yeah. Tried all the, tried running away from your passion since you were eight and then you were, yeah, I came back to, I didn't know what we would do with it because it was pre internet. Yeah. Oh, that's a good point. You're so old. I keep forgetting how old you are. Yeah. Pre internet. That was a thing. That was a thing. Yeah. It used to be that they didn't have the internet. Yeah. None of them. None of them. Plural. Um, okay. Computer science and that was through WSU. Okay. Yeah. Then out of that straight to programming after college. Yeah. After that I did some contract work for a company locally and through the co-op program. Did you learn, how much do you actually learn in a computer science degree about programming? Like quite a bit. Computer science is pretty, pretty program. Like you can, you can write a program after that. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know a whole lot of different languages depending on what the school teaches, but yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So I understood algorithms and how it worked and that pretty good concept of things. Yeah. So, so I started doing some contract work and then where was your first job? Ooh, what was my first job? It was so long ago. Oh, I worked for a church. Yes. Oh really? Yeah. And it was not programming. It was a, I was the director, uh, it director. Okay. The large church. And uh, that was interesting. Yeah. So learning that, how, you know, you realize that church is made of people and the people that work there are people too. And so it's kind of an interesting. So figured out you weren't in the people business. I guess. Church is very much a people business. It is. I'm just saying that people aren't perfect. Yeah. No. Yeah. I swear. If somebody goes to church, they're perfect. They are. And you should trust them. Well, if they work for a church, they, they, they aren't either. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Turns out. Turns out. But it was good. Yeah. I, um, um, got my go from there. Okay. So, um, and then Sam make a note to Google Chad church scandal. Yeah. No, no, no scandal. Don't do that. Don't do it. Don't do it. You don't know what you're going to find. Uh, so it went on to, uh, I think I went to another company that I, I just, I just kind of floated around. Yeah. I've been bouncing around for a long time. And you were at, uh, like wherever you were employed, what was kind of your focus on development? Like what was your niche? Uh, I was a.net guy for a long time. So a lot of just web-based stuff. So I've always been kind of a web-based guy because you know, we have the internet now, right now that's, that's, that's handy. Yeah. Yeah. Turns out. So, so yeah, yeah. I did a lot of that. So what was the worst development job you've ever had? And you don't have to say the name of the place if it's going to affect you locally. Um, like the actual work you had to do. Well, actually the, the worst and best job I've had was teaching. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I enjoyed teaching. What'd you teach? Uh, oddly enough, a.net. I'm seeing a pattern. Yes. Yes. So I taught that for basically a semester, but it was a split shift. And so I'd go to, I'd go work in the morning, have the afternoon off and go to work at night and then go teach. Yeah. And so were you an adjunct essentially for a cool. Yeah. And then they, their, uh, their curriculum was a little dated and I didn't want to teach it. So I had to write my own lesson plans. Uh, there was not enough time in the day. Yeah. Especially as an adjunct. Yeah. With the split shift. And, um, but I decided that wasn't the best. I love teaching. I just, yeah, the hours were not good. So, uh, so you're on the.net side. So there it's, you were a part of their computer science department. Yeah. Was it friends? No, it wasn't. It was a pay to play. Oh, gotcha. Batter up. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't think they're even around anymore. Really? Yeah. Another scandal to Google. Yeah. If you look that up, I see where this is going. All right. This is an intervention. I don't know. Yeah. Right. Yeah. This, the new title for this podcast is locally exposed. Exposed. Oh man. It's going to be a, yeah. Okay. Well, that's great. Thanks for sharing. Yeah. Those were soft serves, right? Were they? I'm getting a little sweaty. My whole life. My whole life. In front of everyone. All the scandals. In front of all five people that are going to watch this first episode. Hey, I am going to post this to all my socials. Love it. So there'll be at least six. Yes. Yes. Yeah. You'll, you'll add one to the five. It might be me. Yeah. I'm going to view this so many times. Trick the algorithm. That's right. Okay. So fast forward, uh, did the job stuff. Then you moved into freelance, correct? And startups. Startups. Yeah. Somehow I got startups before freelance or you kind of did both. So you leave, I've always been like the guy that read entrepreneur magazine and trying to figure out life and still kind of doing that. One of these days I'll figure out what I want to be when I grow up. And, uh, but yeah, just always been kind of drawn to it. Uh, the creative aspect of it. Yeah. Um, it's not necessarily about the money cause I wouldn't be doing it still if it was for the money. I can tell you that. No, it's just a creative process. And it's like painters got to paint. Yeah. You're kind of unique in that way. Getting to know you. Um, I think some engineers I meet like the process and then some like the vision. I, yeah, the, the process is part of the vision. Yeah. I prefer the vision. I like to get it done. And I'm like, okay, yeah. Somebody go, somebody take care of it. Yeah. Then it gets boring. What was the first startup you were a part of? Uh, I tried to write a program that would allow you to trade things with people. Okay. And it was an algorithm that would say you take one thing and I want this and somehow I can't remember how it's like, I have a, I have a trigger. I want to trade it for a car. These are the things I want. Yeah. These are the things I have. Find me matches amongst all the people. I couldn't figure it out. Yeah. Turns out I needed AI is what I needed. So that was way before any of that was even a thing. So I was trying to figure out this algorithm. I just couldn't figure out. So cause you have to like put a price point on these things. Cause it's like, it's not an exchange. It's bartering. It's bartering. Right. So you're bartering so that both parties have to agree upon it. Were you trying to evaluate what something was worth? So it was a, yeah, I never figured it. Yeah. It didn't work. It's an interesting idea. Yeah. So I pivoted. It was an extreme pivot, but basically I had a LLC set up. So I was like, well, let's do something else. And so I started, uh, it was a coffee and fair, fair trade art, uh, online store. Okay. So that's a little different. It's just a little, um, shout out to Matano, Toby Creewell, fair trade clothing. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we were kind of riding the fair trade hype and it was okay. And then I got sick and had to have surgery and things went downhill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that didn't last very long. I have so many questions in between there. I got sick. Yeah. You got that. Okay. Yeah. Well, I like it. I like it. Yeah. Um, yeah. The fair trade thing's interesting to me. Yeah. Yeah. We have a friend who did that. Okay. Who I just mentioned. Yeah. And, uh, come to find out, it's hard to find a product and price point that is truly fair trade that people are willing to pay the price increase. Yes. Come to find out they like their slave labor pricing on clothing and many other items. It was actually pretty cool. Ignorance is bliss. Yeah, no, it is. And some people are into social issues and some people just don't care. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a cool concept though. Some have done well. I've seen some do well. Tom or what's the shoe where you buy a shoe and someone gets a shoe that Tom's maybe Tom's. I can't remember Tom's. I think it's the wrong. Yeah. Um, but I remember learning that that actually was a terrible thing because it ruined the entire footwear market for those countries because all shoes were free now. Uh, so you'd buy a pair and then they give a pair to another and, and then the local kind of became a welfare state that nobody was like buying shoes. We don't have to buy shoes anymore. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of different ideas. So I could move there and get free shoes. Right. Okay. You should think about it. Good to know. And now because of the internets, you can work from anywhere. Chad, it's true, which also causes lots of problems for my, um, it's a great, yeah, great transition right there. Right there. Right there. You nailed it. Yeah. All right. Q transition to Samuel's next question. Okay. So done the startup stuff, still messing around with some of that. Oh yeah. Did the fair trade thing. Yeah. We'll get into some of that other stuff, but that transition right there, you've been looking to do some work for work, a real job, if you will call it for about two years. Yep. And how's that gone? Oh, pretty terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, uh, it used to be, I'd walk into a software company locally and I'd be competing with everybody in Wichita. Right now I'm competing with everybody either in North America or possibly the world, which makes my odds a lot worse. Yeah. Yeah. So I figured that out the other day and we were talking about it. I was like, oh, that's why. Yeah. Also AI is not helping that. Sure. Cause I think people are still trying to figure out. That's what I was going to ask. How much of that is, uh, access, easy access to anybody in the world to work for you versus, uh, AI. I think it's a combination of both. Yeah. It's a AI caution, not knowing exactly how they're going to use it or what it's going to do or how it's going to take over jobs or not take over jobs. Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. Two years you've been looking on the hunt for two years. Yeah. Off and on, off and on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So can you tell us about, you just went through a Zapier process? Would you be willing to talk about that? I thought that whole thing was fascinating. It was fascinating. It was actually not a terrible process. It was long. Yeah. I think it went through six interviews and got to, and they were recruiting you specifically for, uh, orchestration type position. I never really understood what it was. I probably wouldn't until I got into it. Yeah. But, um, definitely they're very, excuse me, AI friendly right now. So, and they're trying to figure it out too. Um, it's interesting is after six interviews, I thought my last interview was my best and, uh, I guess I was wrong. Six interviews. Yeah. I had to take a two and a half hour test. Uh, then I had to go over the test on what I did. And, uh, so yeah, it was a stressful. And that two and a half hour test, were you building something for that test? I built something, yes. It was not something they would use. Was it supervised or on your... No, just take home assessment. You had to time it a little bit so they could look at your, at your pull request or whatever to see when you finish things. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it's actually more like three and a half hours because there was a setup part too. Okay. So, uh, yeah, that was stressing me out a little bit. I bet. Yeah. Um, it was fun. So you get to that final interview and they said, sorry, we're going to choose somebody else. Yeah. And that went over how long? Like six weeks? Yeah. About six weeks. Yeah. Yeah. That's brutal. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of time. Makes me not want to look for a job again. Right. Yeah. And they were very transparent. I'll have to say that there, it was not a terrible process. It was a long process and definitely disappointed I didn't get it, but life goes on. And you, they, they made it pretty clear that there's a chance you weren't going to get it obviously through all this. Well, yeah. I mean, there's, you never know. Right. I mean, I got pretty far. Yeah. So let me find out about myself. So yeah. Now you're in their system. If they ever have another opportunity, do you go through the whole thing again? Or do you skip to the, you start over? I don't think you get to skip. Yeah. No, no, no. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. So internet's affecting. So anybody that's getting into software engineering, software engineering now. Yeah. Becoming a developer. Right. What's that look like right now? Like fresh, like fresh out. Oh, that's a hard one. So I haven't quite figured out how that's going to work. Right. If they don't know AI, they're kind of screwed. And so I don't know if the schools are teaching AI. Because it feels like the companies and the schools don't know it yet. So it's like. No, nobody does it. Everybody's. It's the wild, wild west. We're trying to figure out who does what, how, and what you need to understand how, what you're building and how you're building it. But then you have different tools now that basically build it for you. But it's kind of like, Oh, how would you say it? It's like having a bunch of Lego blocks. Yeah. Let me. Yeah. And then, but if you don't have the instructions, you're who knows what you're going to build. Yeah. So you're going to build it wrong. If you do exactly, exactly. So somebody has to have the instructions. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good way to put it. Yeah. Um, so on the AI front, what, what, what's your recommendation to a developer for developers watching this or listening to this? Um, um, they're in their twenties. Just go on. Yeah. There's this great book, uh, that somebody wrote, uh, that goes through the process. Yes. Plug it. Go plug. I don't even know where it's not even published. So it's just on the, it's on the internet. Give him the slug. What did I call it? I can't remember. Um, pixels to products. Yeah. That's what it was. Yeah. Yeah. And it walks through the process. I actually documented how I, how I program, whatever you want to call it. We'll put it, we'll put it in the podcast description as well. Yeah. If it's still public or still on the, uh, some company called voice grids website. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah. Great. Yeah. We'll tag that in there. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I basically documented how I go through the process of using what I, I use clot AI a lot, a lot of code and how I use both of them together. Yeah. Yeah. It's very entertaining. That's very entertaining. It's actually pretty repetitive, but that's how I do it now. Yeah. I don't write, I don't really write code. So nobody's got to figure it out. No. What, what do you think it's going to just take a stab stab at it? What's it all going to look like in, well, we, I think we can only go forward. Like you can't even say five years now. Like in, are you comfortable guessing at two or one? I mean, I don't know. Jump to three. Give me a two year guess. What is it? What, what is software engineering going to look like in two years? Like the way, like let's go with dev shops and internal dev shops. They're going to be prompt engineers, not developers. Yeah. Yeah. That's really what it's going to be. And that's going to be an interesting transition. Yeah. And eventually the architects will be kind of lost too, because I can figure that out too pretty well. You just give it a description of what you want and it can, I mean, it's still right now the code is a little rough, but so is mine, but it's come along. So I don't know. It's more, it writes 10,000 lines of code. I'm still on, you know, 300 characters and yeah, it's going to have some issues, but that's, that's what you go through and debug and it gets better. It keeps getting better. Yeah. So. So education and computer science is going to start adopting this, obviously. Like, it'll just be that. Cause like Newman, I think when we got to Newman, they've already got an AI program. Yeah. They're getting ahead of it. So there will be AI programs out there. But yeah, I don't know how many developers are in the country, but it's going to be interesting. And the output is where my head goes. Like if the output now is exponentially, it's multiples, then are we going to be able to come up with enough work or now that we can go this fast, we're going to solve much bigger problems, right? Like when the same time, like cause problems, right? Yeah. That's true. Moving, moving too quick. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I can build something so fast now. It's just like, I just have to make it up now. Yeah. And it's just, I just build it when you say make it up. Like what do you make? Oh, here's a problem. Let's solve it. Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah. And then you put the, you give it to a prompt and it starts building up for you. How's this going to affect like, uh, CRMs you think in the next five years? Um, you've got big ones, right? Service Titan, house call pro. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's AI going to do to that for a great question. I mean, they're going to have to tie into it very extensively. So what's the bait. Salesforce is a huge one that people pay insane enterprise money on. Right. I wonder what that's going to look like. I don't know. It's just going to be interesting to see how enterprise, um, really picks up AI because it's a little different in an enterprise environment. Sure. Right. Like they can't move as fast because they'll break things fast. Um, when things break at that level, it's, it's, it's not like AWS going down and the whole world, the whole world shuts down. So you can't just build it fast and break things as somebody once said, somebody important, I'm sure. Yeah. That wasn't me. It was that guy from Facebook. I was going to give you another book plug. Oh no. Although I made up Facebook Zuckerberg. Yeah. Before Zuckerberg did. Yeah. I should be a millionaire. Billionaire. Is he a billionaire? He's definitely a billionaire. Yeah. Everybody said it was a dumb idea. Yeah. It turns out they were right. People want to stock and promote themselves. Yeah. It's going to be interesting on the social media front on the AI topic, just content. Oh yeah. Cause you're, you're talking about coding still a little messy. Yeah. Like still has. Yeah. It's going to keep getting better, but where we've seen a killer growth, just the content side in just one year. Yeah. And really honestly, even just in six months, it's wild. What AI is producing now on first renderings now and it's good. And yeah, I, I feel like, I mean, it's already kind of hard to know what's real or not on the algorithm when you're scrolling, doom scrolling. You're like, there's no way a rhinoceros or a rhino. I think when you saw that it was a rhinoceros. Right. Right. That was it. Like, Oh, what is that? Yeah. Dinosaur had a baby. Um, sore. Uh, but yeah, right now it comes through the bathroom window. You're like, and the guy's like running out or a lion comes through. I don't know if you've seen some of those. I saw a bear come in. Oh yeah. Yeah. Was that not real? I hate to break it to you, but maybe, maybe it was, I don't know. I don't know. I couldn't tell. If it doesn't have the sore or watermark on it, I have no idea. Oh man. Bad day for him. Yeah. I can't imagine. Um, I, I, it was a bad day for the bad bear. Probably smelled terrible. Yeah. Oh man, get me out of here. Yeah. The deer busting in the, uh, I saw one of a, a dog grabbing a kid and dragging the kid off. And I, I had to pause cause they use like a, a what? A dingo. I don't think it was a dingo. Yeah. It did have a big metal gate out there. It could have been, you know, in Australia. Yeah. Down under. Down under. Trip on the barbie. That's, now we need a, I'm going to make a kangaroo stealing a baby and just put it in his pouch and just, it'd be a good one. It'd be good. It'd be believable. Yeah. Why not? You can pick things up. Kangaroos stole my baby. I just like to do it. But yeah, I don't like, yeah. Fast forward. Like it's going to change. Yeah. It's already changing so much. And I don't think it removes the human element of understanding of how something needs to be or how it needs to look. Right. Um, but at the very basic level it does on the bigger picture, like I think you're still going to, yeah, I don't know what marketing will look like for us on the content side. Like, Hey, send us a photo and uh, and uh, let us know what our goals are and photos of your products. And then we'll just start publishing really high end creative from a couple different images. What's like with, I mean, AI is a tool that makes you work faster, more productive. So you're just going to end up with more content than you had before. That's either a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know what, um, I think original content is going to be a big thing now. Um, yeah. Gary V had a good line the other day. I saw him just talking about like kind of the future now is like original, real, authentic content that's uh, not overly produced because now you're going to be able to have a super bowl commercial done for next to nothing that you could produce yourself from your computer. Right. Um, and so yeah, having stuff that's legit, real being personalities, building followings on social media, I think is going to be a big thing now. And you're going to know if someone's publishing an insane amount of content and they're like a small business, you're going to know they're using AI. Like that's, I don't know if that's bad, right? So yeah, I, it just, what's the engagement look like? Like ultimately like it's like, do the followers like it or not? That's no, the followers decide. That's always been the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Even with like stock images, you know? Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's templatized like social media management tools. Like yeah. Yeah. Canva is going to look interesting. They've already got some AI going into it now, but um, yeah, that should be, that should be interesting. I mean, everything, that's kind of the next wild west for, I mean, development was one thing, right? And it's still, don't know what we're doing with it, but we know what we're doing with it. And we, I mean, which is kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would think, uh, you've got what a de decades. It's changed a lot, obviously before AI over the years, but like, so you got 15 years, 20 years of like SOPs in place at software companies and now redoing all of that and rethinking what a department looks like. Yeah. That's going to be wild. Yeah. I mean, there's already been a ton of layoffs. Yeah, absolutely. And AI in a team environment makes, is still hard. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard enough with people. Now you're throwing in an AI agent there too. And you're like, how do, how do we even make this, how do we manage this all together? You just got to treat it like a person. You have to be kind. Well, if you're not kind to them, they will take over. Right. Well, that's a great transition into my next question about doomsday. Yes. Will it be AI or is it going to be Atlas three? I'm just saying maybe it's both. The probes are coming. Everyone, the probes are coming. Um, yeah. So I just, uh, had a conversation with a client and encourage them to use AI more. And this person said, do you not think it's demonic or is going to cause doomsday? Should we not be helping it get better? It was essentially the conversation to get better. Like, like if we don't use it, it won't evolve. Right. Like, so, but via usage, AI evolves. That's the mindset. Cause it's always learning. Um, so yeah, on, on that front, what could AI actually do? Like Mr. Science fiction. There's this Terminator. Is that the movie? Yeah. Yeah. That's a movie. Yeah. Yeah. AI's involved. Yeah. AI's involved. Uh, I don't know. This interesting. Um, I don't get too worked up about it. Yeah. Um, it happens. I'm, I'm good. That feels like a whole nother question. Oh, into the world tomorrow. Okay. I wish I could be like that. That's nice. I mean, I'll go see Jesus. I'm good. Moving on. Let's go. My wife always says if the zombie apocalypse happened, she's just going to walk outside and say, let's take it. I don't, I don't want this life. Yeah, exactly. This world's hard enough. You've got zombies in it now. Like, yeah, I'm good. Uh, if it did happen, how would it happen? Doomsday from AI. Doomsday from AI. And doomsday, you know, not end of humankind, but maybe we're no longer in charge or end of mankind. Well, when you start putting in devices and, uh, actual humanoid type robots, that's when it starts going, okay, what's the fail safe here. Right. And who wrote the fail safe? Is he still around? Somebody find Bob. Cause I don't think it's Bob. I think it's probably somebody named Claude or something like that. That's actually a really good point. Yeah. You should write a book about that. Yeah. That's a good idea. I should do that. You should write a, they should make a movie called Terminator. Yeah. AI writing AI. No, seriously. AI does write, can write AI, which is weird. AI is really good at writing AI programs. Yeah. They can talk to each other too. It's just a weird thing. Yeah. What's the language they talk in? Have you seen that video? I haven't seen it. You told me about it. Yeah. I need to send that to you. I don't need to see this. It's like beeping. It's like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It's probably like modem type sounds. Yeah. And it's like, Hey, this is a little quicker. It's going back to the 90s. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Dial up. Dial up. Uh, yeah. It's like, Hey, it'll be quicker if we just use our language. And then the other AI bot's like, okay, sounds good. And then both phones just start beeping at a crazy fast rate. Yeah. Sure. Why not? I mean, we could learn that, right? Just frequencies. No. Somebody with perfect pitch could, Tyler could do it. I'm Tyler. Tyler. All right. Let's hear it. Yep. Tyler. Ready? We're ready. All right. He said no. Yeah. We're done asking Tyler questions. He's not participating at all. I noticed that. It's not like he doesn't have a mic. He doesn't have a mic. Okay. Well, that was, uh, not that exciting. I was hoping you had a really great, uh, Oh, line of thinking about Mr. Ryder. Uh, we do have to be worried about that. I mean, to some degree it's going to be on us, not on AI. Yeah. If we do some stupid stuff, I mean, this is going to be in weapon systems. It's probably already is. Yeah, that's true. I mean, yeah, I don't know. Will it ever be actually self-aware? That's a very interesting question. I think, how's that even possible? Well, I, I, why did I watch this morning? Uh, by AI produced, uh, there was something about how we might be in a simulation, which some people theorize that, uh, they, somebody built a, basically like a video game type of system. Like somebody already has done this, built a video game system that has 80 million, like, you can just go scroll. You can just go through this universe forever. Right. Sound familiar, right? Yeah. And it has creatures and planets and you interact with it. And they said, well, what happens if we put AI in this for the creatures? For the creatures? For the creatures. And what happens to, they become conscious. Is that what we're in right now? Somebody's simulation that threw AI into it. And now we're the AI that happens to be interacting with this world. Whoa. And I have to think about that for a second. So we're just building a new one. Like we're going to build the next simulation. We're going to build the next simulation. Kind of sounds like Mormonism. If I'm not correct. Do I have Jesus? No, it's like the next planet. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. I'm not real familiar with it. Yeah. No, I don't want to bat on it. Yeah. No, no, I'm not bad at it. Yeah. Mormons are the nicest people on earth. Oh yeah. And I, nobody has ever said anything other than that to me, which is kind of creepy too. Yeah. No, I've always, yeah, for sure. That was not throwing. Go throw the Mormons under the bus. Yeah, it wasn't. It was just like, I've always found that interesting. No, it is interesting. This goes on in different variations and different realities. And yeah, I just saw a guy talking about what is reality and that we've fabricated it to what we want it to be. And we don't actually see everything because we're all protecting ourselves. You have sensors that you're getting information from, which makes no sense whatsoever. It's like, but what am I even? We have a sensory system that makes no sense whatsoever. Right. No sense. I mean, it's just what our brain is telling us. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, it's not really what it is. I mean, I, I, some things like if I, if I'm going to touch this plant and look at it, if I'm going to close my eyes and touch it, I imagine it differently. Yeah. And it's just a bunch of atoms and you're interacting with it and somehow you think it's green. You're just an Adam, Chad, guys, you Chad, silence your phone. This is the part where I took my phone and checked it like five times to make sure it was silent. And then I put it way over there. It's like, this is your first time doing a podcast. I can't believe you'd leave your ringer. So you should silence that next podcast. Say that again. You should turn that off next. Hey, that's good advice. Yeah. I'll call you before I go live. Can you just be my checklist? Chad, I'm about to go on. Do you have your, do you have your pants on? Shoot. I knew I was forgetting something. All right. Let's dial back in. Yeah. Yeah. What we got? Interacting with atoms. Yes. I don't even know Adam. I don't, I never met an Adam I don't like. Um, yeah. So that's all the, uh, theories we have about doomsday. Yeah. Life is kind of wild. Reality is kind of wild. Maybe a simulation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I believe that, but it's kind of cool to think of it. It is make a good book. Well, at the rate, everything's going, I never thought in our generation, like I thought the iPhone was it like when the iPhone happened, I was like, that's the advancement that's going to, I mean, that's changed more than anything in my opinion that I'm aware of today. And now it's like, right, right. Yeah, sure. Uh, I wish I had a flip phone. Yeah. Cause I get, Oh yeah. Well, I mean our whole economy alerts all day. Our whole economy is built on that. Right. I'm sounding like an old man now. Yeah. No, just for your personal health as you're stepping away from it. It was a good day. Yeah. Every once in a while. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, we're tethered, but I didn't, I mean the advancements we've seen in the last, like since I was, gosh, the iPhone came out, I think when I was a junior in high school. Okay. I believe, yeah, I think I was a junior. Oh, eight is Oh eight. Like the first, I think Oh seven Oh eight. Yeah. Yeah. Those six destroyed my, one of my first startups. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And I'm not going to tell you. Yeah. All right. Fine. Really had to twist his arm folks. So I had a product called, uh, actually we called it, uh, 10,000 fans at the time. Okay. It was a, uh, kiosk. You only had 10,000 fans. We were trying to get people to 10,000 fans, but they used to call pages on Facebook. You'd have fans. Gotcha. So you had an only fans page and then you had the, that was just my feet. We're on the, okay. All right. We're on the same page. I'm an old entry, man. You don't want to see my feet. If you do, there's something wrong with you. All right. Back to it. So the iPhone six destroyed your startup idea. Oh yes. My startup. Yeah. Uh, so it was not an only fans site. Okay. It was a 10,000 fans site. Yes. There was a lot more fans cause I have nice feet. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. They're very unique. I'm so lost. I can't wait. Keep going. What's the best. So anyway, so anyway, my feet, not my feet now. We're, we're, we're digressing back to what the original question and prompt and all that good stuff was. Okay. Yep. Stop thinking about it. Okay. I don't want it. I don't want to sit here and have you thinking about my feet while I'm talking to you. All right. I'm back. I'm sorry. I'm up here. Look up here. Eyes up here. Eyes up here. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Put those down. All right. Get a close up. We'll make some money. Crop that in Tyler real quick. All right. So the six destroyed your 10,000 fan. Yeah. All 10,000 of them. Yeah. It was terrible. No. So we had a kiosk that took your picture at a business, like at a coffee shop or whatever is branded. And then you go through and take your picture and it would, it would put it on their Facebook page with the brand of like at the time it was, Oh, I see. Yeah. Or it could be, Oh, I don't know. Name somebody, somebody you want to shout out to. Basically built a content engine. Yeah. That's a good page. Yeah. And then Mark Zuckerberg changed that a little bit to put a camera on a phone. Somebody put it, somebody put a camera on the front of the phone or the face of the revert. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they created the selfie camera, the selfie camera destroyed my selfie. Wow. So I sold that, but then iPhone six came out and I was still working. Did you sell it before the iPhone six came out? Yeah. That idea. Yeah. Um, or that business, it was fine. Uh, this was a long, long time ago. Um, back when, um, we had the internets and we had the Facebooks. Yep. Uh, that was about it. Yeah. So no, I mean, I, in, in retrospect, what we needed to do was go into a, some sort of accelerator program or something like that. Yeah. Instead we sold our IP to a company so that we could try to build it up bigger. Got it. So we just, it was kind of the pre startup. There's always been startups, but there wasn't this ecosystem that exists now. Sure. Yeah. To accelerate it. Yeah. Yeah. Cause there could still be a context for that even then. Oh yeah. I still run around those. I mean, it was a glorified photo booth, right? Yeah. They still business location. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was cool. I like those green screen. You can do like, we actually used a connect, um, was placed or not. Uh, what was it? The little camera that they had on a X-Boxes that could do stuff. I can't, or you can, I don't know. Oh yeah. Like the Wii. Yes. It wasn't the Wii, but it was the sensor. Yeah. It was a sensor. I can't remember. I thought it was called a can. I may be wrong on that, but yeah, I know it could actually, uh, green screen stuff without you being without a green screen. That's cool. Yeah. So you could be in Hawaii or something and take pictures and they're like, we had a few people like, are you in Hawaii? This was pre AI. Yeah. So everybody just took, you know, the internet actually had it. It's interesting. So we just auto crop the person and then put up a background in real time. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's impressive. Yeah. Portrait mode before portrait mode. Yeah. We had, that's on an iPhone now too. So yeah, there's the iPhone 16. Now you can just touch it and it takes the background and blurs it out. But ours was a lot simpler and cooler. Yeah. And I didn't have to, that's pretty cool. I mean, that's a great idea. Makes sense, especially for restaurants or retail stores. And they auto, so that all auto published though. Yeah. To Facebook. Yeah. Which caused some problems and actually was kind of organic too at the same time because people would do things that they probably shouldn't do. Oh yeah. Censorship dude. Yeah. Yeah. I would have been one of those people. And what we found was people would, they go like Chick-fil-A and flip off the camera. Well, I go to Chick-fil-A with McDonald's in my hands and get my photo there and then, you know, do the opposite. Yeah. And what happened was people would just destroy them on the internet for doing it. And so it was bad for them. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So it was self-released. Yeah. Yeah. Drove up the comments. And you don't mess with Jesus chicken. No. Jesus chicken. That's actually a really good idea. Yeah. So what year was the, did the Oh six come out or sorry, iPhone six. I don't know. I think it was six. I, I may, I speak. Yeah. I don't, I just picked a random number. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's in my book. Yeah. I haven't finished your book, but I really liked the beginning. The last of it is pretty. Yeah. And we will post that in the description. No, no, it'd be over my head. Can you read it to me at night? I can. Can you. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's true. Yeah. I'll just do it that way and then have it like, stop like, Hey, hold on. I don't get this. Explain it. Oh, explain to me. Explain to me like I'm a seven year old. It's like, I just told him what the right. I was reading a book to my seven year old last night. And then I'm like, you can read this. And she's like, yeah. Yep. Yep. I'm like, all right, your turn. And then she just reads right through it. I'm like, Oh yeah. That's how this works. They just at the time they still wanted me to, she still wanted me to read the book, but I'm like, yeah, you can read now. Yeah. Okay. That was good. That's a cool thing. So, uh, what are you working on now? Uh, you have a lot going on right now. Too many things plug away. Okay. So I'm doing some contract work for high touch, which was the company I sold 10,000 fans, which later became tag me cam. So if you would have just only called it only fans before only fans, can you imagine if you own that.com when I back to it? Sorry. We've got to get off that. Yeah. Yeah. Hindsight, right? Hindsight. So you're doing contract work for previous employer. Don't burn bridges unless you want to. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you. There are a few bridges that I've enjoyed burning. Watch them go up in flames. That's another podcast. To be continued. That's our locally exposed podcast. We'll have you on. Who should you not do business with in the Wichita area? Let's not go there. I like to talk nice things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. High touch contract. There's some company called voice grid I'm working with. Uh, I think you're familiar with it. Yeah. Yeah. We use it for our agency actually. Yes. Answers all our calls. We are involved in voice grid. Yeah. I believe so. Yeah. What is voice grid? Uh, you tell me. No, I'm here on behalf of killer growth. Oh, well, uh, voice grid. What does it do? Let's see here. Oh, this is going to be good marketing training for us. Actually. I need to work on your elevator pitch. I'm just joking. I'm terrible. Elevator pitches. I don't even like elevators. Yeah. And by the way, an elevator ride is way longer than you think. So like, well, hopefully not too long. Anyway, peeing in the corner, my worst nightmare, you pee in the corner. If the elevator stuck for hours, I'm going to have to pee at some point. That's all I think about. I don't care about being stuck in the small space. The small space is kind of freaky. And then the person that's like enough hours go by. Yeah. Peeing is one thing, but you're trapped in an elevator with two. Yeah. You never, I mean, yeah, that's true. If you're over there peeing in the corner and I'm like, what are we doing? We've been in there for 10 minutes. We're never getting out of here. I think that's literally an office episode where I can't remember who's just feet in the corner. Dwight, yeah, Dwight, like five minutes in the elevator. We have to establish a pee corner. Yeah. Well, I can't wash the office. Oh, really? I love humor. It makes you uncomfortable. It is just cringe. Oh, I know. I can watch snippets of it and just die laughing. That's all I really need. Well, that's the best part about it. The CPR one. Oh yeah. Once I was afraid I was petrified. It's like cutting out the face. Yeah. That's the fire drill episode, right? Oh, I don't know. I think that's the same one as the fire drill. That's the best episode of all time. Oh, so funny. By far. Stanley has a heart attack. Harvest the organs. He's got his life out. Wow. Oh my God. And they're all just randomly dancing to the song. Good one. Okay. What's VoiceGrid? Oh, VoiceGrid. It's a voice AI agent that you actually just call and it will answer, make appointments for you. It will, whatever we program it to do, but it's great for service companies like appliance stores too, to have service and really anything that where people call and they talk to somebody. You could really narrow it down to if your business answers the phone. Right. If you have a phone number. VoiceGrid could take that over. Yes, that's how that works. And schedule appointments. Right. Or just talk about things. Yeah. Talk about how many stars are in the universe. Right. Whether or not we're in a simulation or not. I did that on a demo, by the way, for VoiceGrid. I showed that as an example and someone on the other end, because it's built on usage. I said, Alex, how many stars are in the universe? And then it gave a really funny, clever answer. And then this potential client's on the other end. So that's just going to bill us more if people ask crazy questions. And I'm like, did not see it going that way. I thought it was impressive. Well, what they didn't see is that it then just took that conversation and probably put it back in where it needed to be. It did. Oh, yeah. Really quickly. And if you think that when you're calling somebody, they don't just start talking about random stuff anyway. Oh, for sure. And it's better at it than. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't really. The best conversation I had was for the HVAC company that uses it. Oh, yeah. For after hours. Someone called that was very intoxicated and it handled it so well. It was unbelievably kind. Asking for a ride. It arranged an Uber, everything. It just handled everything. Nice. Yeah. It's pretty impressive. Yeah, it is. So you're we're focusing in on the voice good side. Killer growth is a part of this, which is how we got to know each other. Yeah. But we're focusing in on the appliance service niche. Yeah. Which has a lot of niches. Sorry. So, yeah, the appliance industry side is pretty interesting. It really is. I mean, a lot of calls. Right. We've narrowed down to basically having an A.I. tech that answers the phone. Because normally you have to have like an actual tech answering the phone to answer some. For it to go well. Yeah. Right. Because there's a lot of diagnostic on the front end that can help their first time repair rate. Right. So it'll go through. Yeah. And but not tell the customer about it because the customer doesn't care about. Right. But on the back end that you show me, it'll do its best to come up with an actual part number. Right. Based on questions to the consumer scheduling an appointment. Do a little troubleshooting. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited about that. So great idea. Whoever came up with that. Yeah. Yeah. Go, Chad. That wasn't me. I did come up with that. I been associated to the appliance industry for a long time. Yes. I know about the headache of the appliance service side. Anything to make it easier. Yeah. It's interesting to see. I mean, it's a great use case. Oh, yeah. And actually, that kind of got me into the A.I. field anyway. Yeah. About a year ago. Yeah. I've been drinking it like a water hose. Mm hmm. And then what's the other. Fire hose. Fire hose. I've been drinking it like a fridge water line. Don't get me started on that. Those are dangerous for us. Especially when you leave on vacation. You come back and the whole downstairs is flooded. The fridge. You roll it on the water line. Yeah. It just freezes up because it's a defect in the manufacturer. The crawl space water lines. Those freeze up a lot. Yes. I'm happy with that. Fridge water line. Yeah. I've been drinking it like a fridge water line. I've been drinking it like a fridge water line. I've been drinking it like a fridge water line. I've been drinking it like a fridge water line. Yeah. They're so tiny and the leaks so tiny. Yeah. Yeah. But it does squirt pretty far. Yeah. A lot of pressure. Twelve hours later, you're don't have a. Yeah. It's a it's a big flood. OK. Voice grid. That's great. Yeah. Check that out. We'll have some updates on that, I think, in the next couple of weeks. Yeah. It'll be cool. And we'll probably just do a podcast. Yeah. We'll probably just do a podcast. Yeah. We'll probably just do a podcast. Yeah. We'll probably just do a podcast. Yeah. We'll probably just do a podcast. Yeah. We'll probably just do a podcast. We'll probably just do a podcast on that alone. I think that'd be good. We'll do a podcast just on, I think, breaking down what it can do live. It'd be kind of fun showing it. We should just do a podcast with voice grid. Like, it could be just me talking to voice grid. Voice grid. That's a good idea. Yeah. That'd be interesting. You can ask it about how it's going to take over the world. Yes. Special guest. Special guest. OK. And then optical launch. Optical launch. That's right. Which is a two-fold product. We're just getting ready to launch. It is a e-commerce platform for eye care providers. So we have all the frames for them already. All the lenses ready for them. They just plug and play and they can sell thousands of frames that they don't have in their store. And you showed me some ballistic frames. That's pretty cool. So that's metal optics. Metal optics. Another thing. Another thing. Yeah. So that's ballistic eyewear. So I kind of got involved in eyewear business a little bit. And I said, well, I'll just make my own. And so I made my own that are mil-spec rated. You can kind of shoot like a .22 at them. And I mean, it's still going to hurt. Yeah. He wouldn't let me do it to him. So I don't believe him, guys. I was ready. I was ready to test it. We had it ballistically tested. Yeah. They held up quite well. That's awesome. Well, you wouldn't when we shot a bunch of times. You couldn't tell, though. I mean, when I was holding them, they feel like normal sunglasses. I mean, a lot of those ballistic things are like solid. But these are made out of stainless steel. And yeah, they were cute, too. They look good on you. Cute. Yeah. I think that's what you're going for. I don't think cute. No, they were tough. No, they looked cool and tough, obviously. OD green. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you have too much going on. Usually. Yes. And then I got this other idea for that whole concept of. They're going to steal it if you let too much out. You know, you got to be careful. Are five people watching? I know. Which five are going to take it? I'll find you. They might all team up. All right. I will find you. I have a special set of skills. It is a kind of a credit score for AI agents. Oh, yes. Yes. This is a great idea. We talked about this yesterday. So basically, it'll analyze your agent that you build. We put a little wrapper in it and or a library in it. And it's kind of a code signing certificate for AI agents that allows us to know what they're rated for. Like SSL for a website. Was that kind of your analogy for me? It gives you trust to know that this agent's not going to just delete my whole directory if I tell it to on accident or it thinks it wants to. Because sometimes they get a little crazy. You're going to want this certification for an AI that's involved with a new launch, right? Right. Yeah. You're going to want to make sure that guy doesn't touch that button. Yeah. But things that like so higher credit score, higher AI score would be better for real-time applications that are important, that are medical based or possibly driving a car. Yeah. Things like that. Yeah. Yeah. But for general use, I mean, you could just you just need to get it. Say this is something I built and this is who built it. You can build a lower score and it can be used for other things. Yeah. Whatever you want to use it. But it gives you an idea of what the agent is capable of and what its drawbacks are. Yep. Like some type of compliance rating. Yeah. Not exactly like HIPAA, but like in that situation, you could be like, this rating is recommended for something that needs to be HIPAA compliant. Right. And then- Yeah. There's probably nothing like that right now, obviously, because it's so new. Brand new. Yeah. Brands, it's not even done yet. Right. Yeah. Almost done. Yeah. Yeah. And then you tie it into the enterprise. And so then they just allow certain agents that have a certain score inside their enterprise environment. Yeah. And then- That makes sense. Make sure that they're using the enterprise license that they have so that their data is not getting used to make the model smarter. It almost sounds like you're hiring a real person and you have to do a background check. Kind of, yeah. To determine clearance. I mean, seriously. Yeah. You're doing a kind of a clearance check. Yeah. Make sure they know what they're doing. Yeah. Where you let somebody over in accounting play with an AI agent that they don't know anything about. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. And that's how you stop Skynet. There you go. Perfect. Because I guarantee Skynet will not get a very good score. Oh, really? Yeah. I can't guarantee that because it doesn't really exist. Right. Right. Yeah. Don't write that. I think- Because that's how that started. Really? Skynet and Terminator. Yeah. Yeah. It's how the whole thing- Yeah. I knew what you were talking about. I just couldn't tell if you were joking or not twice now. Oh, no, I'm not joking. You were very stoic. It's very real. This is real. So real. Chad, you're awesome. Thanks. It was fun hanging out. You're awesome too. Yeah. Appreciate you. Are we done? This is our first episode. Yeah. Ever. I enjoyed it. Yeah. I don't know what camera to look at half the time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can look wherever you want. Like you can look there. You can look up wherever you want to look. Will you come back on? Don't lick my feet anymore though. Right. I'll have you back on and we can get more detail on something specific. Yeah. Sounds good. This was fun. It was fun. Yeah. Appreciate you. Yeah. Yeah. You too. Boom. Where's my gift? Yeah, right. Yeah. Gift's at the end there. Cool.