I realize my parents were operators. They were. They were like this, like most entrepreneurs are right there. Like we're focused. But if you're not focused on emerging technology, that's actually hitting and you're you're not seeing it, you're going to be left behind. If you believe we can change the narrative, if you believe we can change our communities, if you believe we can change the outcomes and we can change the world. I'm Rob Richardson, welcome to disruption. Now.
Welcome to disruption now I'm your host and moderator Rob Richardson. With me is Seema Alexander, who is a friend of mine, a co builder, co-founder of DC startup and Tech Week, as well as co-founder of Virgin AI and many other things. A serial entrepreneur, literally grew up on entrepreneurship with her family and, and just cares also about community and collaborating. So pleasure to have you on CMO. How are you doing? Rob? I'm so good. I'm excited to be here.
We've been talking about this for a long time, so looking forward to chatting it up with you. Absolutely. Pleasure to have you on. And we're basically called spirits. You just did, you're in DC. I'm here in the Midwest, but, you know, we're we're moving and shaking and disrupting together. So literally, I think you have a company that says that's a disruption to what's there. What's your original company?
We're like twin flames in a weird way, bro, because my company is called disruptive CEO advisory. So I ran, a repositioning advisory company for ten years. And I was like, when I saw disrupt know and all the things you're working on, I'm like, we're meant to know each other smoothly. Absolutely. It's, oh, I got to get better. So yeah.
Well, I want to talk about your journey into entrepreneurship because it feels like it started a long time ago with your parents, because you bring up the story pretty often about your parents business, their journey in entrepreneurship in this country. Talk about the story of your parents and how your parents entrepreneurial, journey influenced you as a person, as an entrepreneur and what you're doing now.
Yeah, I mean, I think it goes to say with a lot of immigrant families, you know, many people come to America to, to figure out, like, the American dream, right? For them, you know, they came at a very, like, a horror stricken sort of situation in India. And, there were a lot of hard work and a lot of sweat equity where they started the first Indian vegetarian restaurant in Washington, DC, catty corner to the white House. And a travel agency.
And there were a couple other small businesses along the way. And, you know, the brands grew, the community grew. They got to really be pillars in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area. And the story goes that I started working when I was 12 years old, you know, when you're in hospitality at a young age, you learn a lot of things. The really quick I come. Coming to my mom had a restaurant that I worked at. Yeah, it's it's interesting, right. Because you learn customer service.
You you just learn people management. All these things at a young age, which, you know, at that moment in time, you're like, oh, I gotta go to work. And then now you're like, Thank God. Like, you know, like because you learn new lessons at a very young age. The story goes, it went from doing really well to close to bankruptcy in the mid 90s. And, you know, there were a lot of personal implications on the family. Parents got divorced a couple of years later. My dad tragically passed.
And it was it was it was sort of when at that moment in time, at a young age, I started to have empathy for founders because it was like, you know, being on the personal sort of the child side of things, like, you see all the ups and downs when your parents are building something. And we were there when things were good and we were there when things weren't good. And so, I sort of got obsessed with, like, learning why businesses fail and why they succeed.
And that like, started my curiosity and entrepreneur worship. So I so were though after college, I went to Maryland, studied my, my business classes and stuff, and that's when I started leaning in and all the things. But I wanted stability. My goal was to be a chief marketing officer for fortune 500, and I wanted to leave the DC area, and I want to New York.
So I ended up, moving to outside of New York City, actually spent about 17 years there, which is kind of crazy, but spent 13 years of that time in corporate America. So at Prudential Financial, sort of an anomaly in my generation. State. And five of the businesses there was, under the CMO and the retirement business when things shifted, ten years ago.
But the two things I will mention here, which also impacted my entrepreneurial, career, if you will, I got to spend time with 2500 financial planners, which are like sort of commodities in the marketplace. And my job was, how do you make them unique and different and grow their practices, in, in a very sort of saturated market. And it taught me a lot of lessons about how do you differentiate yourself and brand and all the things.
And then the second large project, that I think was a, a game changer for me was working on the repositioning, the historical repositioning of Prudential Financial with all the CMO, the CEO, all the global folks. And it was, how do you take this 136 year old company that has seven divisions, multi, multibillion dollars, but it looks like this old stodgy insurance company to the market.
And that was the coolest thing in the world for me because it was like I went through a multimillion dollar process going through all the steps. And I had an epiphany moment after. Through that process, I was like, man, like, do entrepreneurs do this? Like, do they actually step back? Because who you are when you first start in a business is never where you end up, right?
It was like this moment in time of inflection got me to really think about, like I, I've always been focused on, how do you know how businesses grow and how they succeed and all the things. But I'm like, this is that mis moment in time because people focus on people, process technology to grow. Companies have evolved and they haven't refined their business model or their unique positioning in the marketplace.
And so, I mean, I don't know if people I'm gonna keep going to the story, but I want to nail down part of the story because I've heard you, I've heard parts of the story. And when I heard you present a few times. Yeah. And you use the example of your parents business and not understanding where the world is going as an impetus to where, how we need to think about things now. Right?
In terms of like, your, your parents going from brick and mortar to, to thinking about things online and for now, how we think about where we are in this moment, which I don't know if you call it where we are at web 2.0. I have no idea what we're calling this moment. And, I don't know what the hell we call this moment, but.
Pre generative AI and I like how did you draw upon the lessons of what you went through with your parents, and how do you relate that to when you talk about businesses now and their need to embrace AI in terms of how they actually implement it into their business? So fast forward advisory company ten years work with over a thousand founders, different industries the last several years to keep things happen. One was, I realized that I was working with a lot of emerging tech companies.
So Web3, smart cities, and then I was asked to advise in artificial intelligence development environment that specialized in AI agents a couple of years ago. Okay. And a moment in time. It was very interesting for me because I got deep with some of the visionaries in the space on both sides, like extreme sides of AI, but it was like when I started to understand the genetic workflows, when I started to understand like what was actually happening.
This was pre LMS and generative AI, and then it got really ahead of it. It was I don't care, but it was like it would Twitter. But what was happening was while this like that moment in time I was like this is bigger than the advent of the internet because the power in what is actually is possible with the current infrastructure, where it's being built for accessibility.
And that's when I actually went back and I was like, shit, man, like, excuse my language, but I was like, my, you can trust on this is cool. Okay, cool. But I was like, I started to think about like, you know, I used to say, whose strategy was this for my parent's business? But what was happening in the 90s were up like, that was like the rise of the internet. Absolutely. And to your point, right.
I always preach about like before the internet, businesses were brick and mortar for the most part, right? Post internet. All of a sudden you have digital, you know, you have internet, obviously, and you have digital. Then you have Google SEO, AdWords, all the things. So market your business in a whole different way. Different segments were actually, growing and new segments are growing.
And then all old, some old segments were failing in the market because of they weren't paying attention to what was happening in emerging technology. And I realized my parents were operators. They were they were like this, like most entrepreneurs are right. They're like, we're focused. But if you're not focused on emerging technology, that's actually hitting and you're you're not seeing it, you're going to be left behind.
And so I do a lot of talks now on this, like comparison of the rise of the internet and where we are, what I, what I consider is the biggest technological revolution of our lifetimes with this AI transformation, you know, all the things that come along with it. I agree. Yeah. And they're going to be businesses that come out of the woodwork that we've never, ever seen possible before. They're going to be businesses that were major players that fail.
They're gonna be a lot of small businesses that get really affected because they're not paying attention. No, I completely agree. So when it comes to AI, what are we underestimating when it comes to AI and what are we overestimating when it comes to AI? I would say underestimating is the power of the technology. I think people okay, when the world of Web3 was happening and you and I, so you and I have been in that way. All right.
And for the folks like who are listening, like Web3 is a big word, right? It means a lot of things. Blockchain ledger, NFTs, like, protocols, layers. Like there's so many crypto, obviously things that go within Web3. When you think about AI, it's the same thing. People have this one general idea, and for most it's like Terminator type stuff, right? It's the right kind of things.
They don't have real understanding of what the skills of the art of AI and machine learning, what is possible, what is accessible. So not only create, you know, these unique automations that no one's ever seen before. And it's possible today, right. But for innovation. And I think that to me, you know, I'm trying to remember your question, but that to me is the missed part. And I totally underestimated what you were underestimating, which I completely agree.
Yeah. And actual power and the transformation that is happening and what is going to happen. Yeah. Certainly being as much as people are talking about AI, it is still underestimated in terms of the impact it's having and it will have on our complete society. And Web3 is your example, right? Web3 is, simplified as like Google Docs. Without Google. It's about ownership. Yes. And understanding and being able to understand and own and all sense of data. That's what it is.
AI is, is the amplification and the manipulation of data at scales that you can't even understand. Right? So it's it's, it's going to be the fuel that, that that makes everything possible in a way. Right. Because data has been that it is now going to take data and put, put like fuel in it to make it go to the moon.
I can't wait to talk a little bit more about that, because I think data is what's going to make businesses stand out in the future, and how they use their unique proprietary data to create unique experience is that I want to answer that second part of your question. Sure. You question that. That's a good way to go. Yeah. The overestimates, estimation, to me comes in. I think there's a lot of pressure for CEOs from board members.
There's a lot of pressure for founders to really think about how to use this technology without the actual education, and people are making decisions based on limited information, and they're not going to the experts or people, you know, experts is a big word right now in this space with the next wave of AI and ML, but they need to really invest in education, understanding what is happening, and what is possible.
Because if they do it right, and they're much more because AI's infrastructure technology, at the end of the day, you have to focus on solving the bigger business problem, the bigger pain points, you know, and and there is so much opportunity right now. It's like almost crazy. Like it makes me excited, because I see it on both sides where I've. The one thing I forgot to mention, and you mentioned earlier, is I'm one of the co-chairs here of DC Startup and Tech League.
So I see the innovation coming on that side. It's very high. We're focused on sort of this midsize enterprise and you know they're established companies. But it's like when you start to bring both of them together of like, wow, if you use this innovation and put it into this automated flow, what is possible for your company now?
And I think there is a lot of like people just don't realize that until they, even with education, also understand like what is the right education because there's like fundamental stuff. Here's what AI is. Here's what natural language processing. Yeah. But it's like, how do you bring this these pieces, these Lego pieces together to create real innovation? I think it's very overestimated. Yeah. No, I completely agree.
So getting back to the other point about data and the importance of data with businesses. So like what is your perspective there in terms of how businesses can differentiate themselves in terms of how their data is leveraged? I'm going to give you an example. You better I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's very there was somebody who just actually shared this with me and I loved it for this data specific example.
So I think it's got City Sports Group and I do please forgive me if I'm saying it wrong, but they're a company that has collected data over the years on performance. Athletes pre like being designated at a sports sports team. Right. And they just said they've had this information and they've used it for multiple reasons.
But when you think about the sports world, right, when people are like looking at, you know, finding the next, the next LeBron, the next, the next big, you know, the next Kobe whatever. Right. Like it's they're looking they're you know, they're scouts they're agents. They go out they look it's subjective right. And they're you know and there's some stats obviously. But this company now has curated all this data over the years.
And now what they're doing is they're saying, hey, create your decisions based on informed data. We have the data of these individuals. We know the well the missing things within your team. Let us help you identify the right types of players. A right precision right. That precision player of the team. And there was this, there was a use case. And again, forgive me because this is a Spanish team, but it was like an, a small, a smaller city.
And there like, they were comparing like they actually use this service and they were saying that the big Spanish teams, like, they get like $50 million of marketing budgets to use for spend. And for them, it was like a lot smaller 8 million or something like that. And they said, you know, to be able to compete because you can't even get into the same arena with some of these bigger teams unless you have created a return on investment in some capacity.
And so they ended up saying, like, you know, we're going to use this, this generation using data created a team and their team has been doing like fantastic. Just doing fantastic like it's not heard of. But now they're up against these bigger teams because they can be with performances. They're they created the ROI both from a revenue perspective and a performance perspective. And what I'm saying is data can change. Experiences like it will change like your own proprietary data will and will.
So that's this one, right? That's like a whole new segment of the market. Think about like precision medicine or anything that you're like, oh, I was actually speaking to an insurance company the other day and they're like, you know, we have all these Laughlin runs, we have all this information about our customers. How do we use that data to create better programmatic, better experiences for for our folks going forward? Because now it's like we can use that for predictive analytics.
We can say, hey, these folks, you know, in the past, because of these losses, these are things that you need to start to mitigate, or you need these additional insurance clauses to help support you because you know, you don't want to be in this situation. It's that level of personalization precision that I think that can really shift.
And and just the last thing I'd say is like, you know, a lot of people are like, well, we don't have a lot of data like, you know, and so it becomes like and in general, you know, there's this data lake houses, there's different structures. And to be able to start to curate what, where, where you are in your data cycle. But you need to start now. You need to start to really think about it's a foundational it's currency. Absolutely, absolutely.
And something where we're working with is, advising governments on this. Right. Because you talk about who's got the most data. Yes, governments and the most inefficient use of data is also governments. Right. So from my perspective, right. It's, and there's just so many opportunities to serve citizens better, to be more efficient, to even just organize their information better. Like, I just like it's just that there's just the start of that.
Like, there's a lot of, you know, know where the good is. Yeah. In the government sector, how are you finding the current adoption cycle compared to other emerging technologies in the past, or are they open to it or is it segment segments like what are you seeing right now. Yeah it's a good question. So they're they're open. They're open to it. Once we explain the opportunities and I and I think, you know, I've ran for office.
So I have like kind of unique opportunity and relationships in those space. So I talk to them in a way that makes them understand how this could help them right now, and how it's how we make their life easier. Right. And so, like, I will give you, you know, an example of not the actual person, but the type of what the type of the type of, client that we're looking at, like, it's a, it's an office that deals with criminal justice. We'll just say. Right.
And, you know, we had a conversation and, one of the conversations that we had was like, oh, well, part of what they do is they listen manually, listen into conversations, between like, you know, people that are in jail and, and, and people from the outside because often these folks will confess the crimes that they did, and they were able to prosecute the right people and get the right people out of prison and things like that. They manually listen to these things. Right?
So, like, you can just see, like we can save all types of time probably, make sure we're freeing people up. Yeah. You still have to set up the right processes. You still need to have a subject matter experts there. You need to be very intentional about how you are fine tuning and training this algorithm. Yeah, but you can just see that's one area. And this person came up with it. We like. And she's not a tactical person, but she just brought that up.
So like once we kind of kind of inquire about, well, what are some of the pain points that you have in terms of dealing with your job day to day? What takes the most time? What I found that's the most useful and then it's, open is a much of the conversation moves faster if you try to start with. Because I made this mistake to all the things they can do, it just loses them. So I usually try to say, yes. What are some pain points you're having? And it's much easier.
I tell you, this conversation is much easier than, you know, anything I've had in the past, like in terms of the internet and other things, because it's so much easier to see, and they see you that they see the opportunity, to save them time and effort. The challenge this is that they are like they have systems that are 30 years old. That's the challenge. Not that it can't have them, but that there's they're not even that like automation let alone.
Yeah, I yeah, I say there's two things that you said, one of the thing is when it comes to, the government, are you seeing because what we've also seen is like those internal processes to start sort of these beta pilots versus like those external like, well, let me actually step back. What I loved about what you said is very similar to our process is figure out what the pain point is and obviously what problem it solving, because then it just becomes much more real.
And it's not like, oh God, this big. I think we have to figure out how to use it. And it's scary. Right. And and I think that's the again, going back to your earlier question, it was like, again, people don't know what they don't know until someone like yourself comes in and explains it to them for the opportunity. But I always I feel like and in most cases, not just government. And most companies these days are looking at how do we build something internally to prove the model.
Correct? Correct. Like prototype, approve it so that we can feel comfortable ourselves before we go to any external sources. Just curious if you're seeing that's definitely that's definitely across the board. What I've seen with governments, with unions for example. Like that's what we've seen. Like that's start start something with a small specific. And then show some success.
Like instead of try to do something major, try to do something where you can show how much you can, you know, change them. And even then even you start in a small area and, and grow. That's exactly what we're seeing. I mean, so it sounds like it's very similar to even mid-sized companies.
But but the conversation has been easier because people at least have a they have some idea, like when the internet first started, it felt like it can be completely foreign, where AI is not as foreign as the internet was to when things were totally brick and mortar. Right? Because it's like people had no concept, like, what do you mean? We're going to go on like it? Really, if you think about it. And we were right. We we rewind 30 years that it was that long ago.
Yeah. Yeah. We still look young, but it was that long ago. But, it it seems like a weird foreign concept where now people understand because we've been through. Or at least they should. We've been through so many iterations of what happens online that people, I think, are more open to it than they used to be.
I agree, I totally agree, and I think there was this big like and I think it happened after the LMS and generative AI, that's that's when everything sort of shifted and people ChatGPT give them credit. Oh, I actually created the UI, UX because that's what it comes down to. It's like, how do you make this? That's, you know, Web3 is still problem is that the UI, UX, the the user experience is not easy. It's still like it's good for like developers and tech nerds,
but it's not enough. Like, you know, what's had GPT? They made it accessible to anyone, technical or non-technical. And that really opened up the world. Speaking of that, how how do you see this when it comes to AI in terms of accessibility and where we're going? So I'd like to I'd like to hear from you. What is the best case scenario? For AI and how do we make that happen? And in terms of how you define accessibility, building inclusivity. And then what is the worst case scenario?
You know, I think we're in an era because of AI and the tools that are truly out already for almost free on the marketplace. It's not like, anybody can start today. Like that's like one of those things in a sense of like, if you are curious, if you're trying to get ahead, if you understand even an inkling of like where AI is going, and obviously if you have the internet and you have accessibility, there, you can truly learn a lot of these things on your own.
I mean, we're in the fastest time frame of being able to prototype things. You don't need to code. I mean, people are using cursor. I don't like it. Prompt things that took forever. I just found out about a, a a new bolt that new to help prompt all that new old skin. You, you know, every day there's a new tool. But I think from an inclusivity perspective, way before you get what is built in, what does that you know, I'm going to play with it.
But, one of our clients was playing with it basically, and you could create it's prompting, but you can create like landing pages. You can create anything with it. It's it's pretty, it's pretty. It's pretty cool. Okay. Good. Good stuff. It's not like, it's not like some of the tools out there that like the, the early stage user experience or user generated in terms of visuals are bad. And again, I need to play with it more. So I'll tell you more about it. But my whole point is like it.
There's free courses from Google from Nvidia I mean so many YouTube. You know, it's like inclusivity. And in terms of like this is an opportunity where we're all learning together. You know I feel and and and it can make sense. And it's not totally over your head. I think there is a moment in time for that. I think that whole responsible framework, you know, ethics board about not having biased models. I think there's a lot to be done there. I think we I agree with that.
We've learned a lot from previous cycles, but that doesn't mean it's everyone's top priority. And I don't think it's any priority. I think their priority is to build, make money and then worry about that consequence later, which is been the model. Right. And we have to I think that's what makes me the most nervous. But the other thing we could do is build right. And and until there's policy. Yeah. And I think I mean so again you are a DC startup in tech week.
And you were on a panel that I wanted to curate very intentionally around this conversation on AI and responsibility. But really that innovation has implication. Right? And I say that a lot is one of my pillars, because it's easy to get really excited for a technology. And there are a lot of entrepreneurs. This is one of the most biggest entrepreneurial moments. It is it goes right and a lot of opportunity.
But again, looking at the internet, looking at social, looking at digital like there are a lot of things that you can do. I had a time and get over your riches and actually it's not a very feasible, viable, you know, business or whatever it is, and either going to hurt a lot of people or you're gonna hurt yourself. Right. And I think, this concept of, making sure you're in a, when you're thinking about innovation, I think about impatience came from that example I had shared, not too long ago.
But it was kind of like when you're on when you're on your cell phone and you're going through your social media, you don't know if you see a cell phone. Okay. But it's it's called doom scrolling, right? Like it's a list in C of like, you know, like looking down and just constantly being by yourself and the the individual who created that feature was on the Oprah special, and he's been talking about it. All over.
And he was like, if I had known 15 years ago that this feature would have how much loneliness it's cause depression is cause anxiety. It's caused, people, I would have never created it. And it's an extreme example because you don't know always what goes in like what is actually going to happen from an intentionality perspective. But it is just it's more of being like open to understanding. Like not every innovation is a good innovation, right? Like, yeah, let's put it in that risk factor.
I mean, Elon says it's really interesting because he's like, you know, there's a 20% chance that things could go really wrong. Like, you know, and I think it's just keeping that in mind because this technology is I think it's not like a to Sam Altman talks about like there's like a I don't know if it's 1 to 5 from an AGI perspective. Right. An artificial general intelligence besides the level of intelligence these AIS can actually have. And we're between a 1.5 and two right now.
So the stronger, the more powerful the stuff gets. It's going to get more autonomous. It's going to start thinking for itself. And if we're not, again, going back to your original question of what people are underestimating, they have no idea what the power of this is actually going to look like. I agree with that. Yeah, I think I'll take it even a step further.
Yeah, I would say even the people that are building the AI models don't fully appreciate the power of what's going to happen, let alone the general public. Right? Because like when, algorithms were being built even on social media, like. And I mean, you I'm sure you know this, but, no one knows how the any of those algorithms work within one person because they're so complicated. It's like one person takes a part in, like, Cincinnati versus another person in California.
And the algorithm is a nation journey of AI. Builds on that because then it just builds on its own on that. So there's great opportunities. But if we're not intentional about how this is guided by ethics and principles, there could be problems. And, you know, I'm a I'm a pragmatic optimist. So what I mean by that is I think history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
So I believe we're going to probably go through some bit of pain to recognize this, because we're going to keep moving until we are forced to be intentional. I hope I'm wrong on that, by the way. But let me ask you what what do you think? Like what do you think is going to solve for this round? Right. Because government like what we're seeing with Virgin. Right. It's like people don't have governance policies and that's should be part of it.
And you know, when they're thinking about building, they're not thinking about there's a level of education, right. But from a higher level government perspective, is it a priority? Like like the answer is it's not exactly. So like it's so what's going to solve for that is I think in terms of how we're and I hope I'm wrong, by the way, I hope that that, you know, private sector intentionally builds and is very thoughtful about this.
But I believe even if they want to be individually, the market will not allow that behavior to happen. Right. So how I think we how I think unfortunately the correction will be is something the same way we have to have correction with the housing market. Like there will be some boom, some pain that will happen, to society. And we will have to come up with that moment to adjust. I think businesses are going to go through that individually.
And that's why I tell people like, I believe that I believe this to my core, that in this world with algorithms and AI, the greatest asset you have is trust, right? And then and so you can take the power of this of the of AI and algorithms. And you could decide that you want to manipulate and you will be successful for a long period of time.
But I do think the cynicism you build up, the reaction could be so harsh that you could really, especially with social media, set down your business pretty quickly. If you're not transparent about how that happens and you can have a reaction that you're not expecting. And then I also think how we implement AI for not intentional will have some effects that we don't anticipate.
So even with the industrial revolution, for example, right, we got to the point where we got to a really good point in society and it was obviously better, but people forget. We went through two world wars, a pandemic, multiple labor, multiple labor laws having to be put in place, child labor. There was a lot of things that had to happen to make sure that the Industrial Revolution was stabilized. People don't remember that, where it was less demanding that with AI,
what that's needed. That's what I think. I mean, you mentioned trust and how that is obviously a big virtue and AI allows for it, but in a lot of ways it doesn't allow for it because you can't trust anything that comes out of AI currently.
But but with Web3 and like, you know, that to me is like the biggest opportunity is like bringing both of those together, building out real trust in the ledger and knowing verifying actual, you know, sources and things is going to be such an important piece because trust I like to be honest. Like anything you see is could be super fake now, right? Like HTML. And so we know I know lots of people creating innovations and solutions for that problem. But I just have not awareness.
We have to care about it. Like right now. And people don't care about it. It's not a it's not important enough for people. And I don't think it will be for some time. So I just tell people like, if you want to be a business, I think there's opportunities to set yourself apart, that you're taking, that you're being intentional about.
I think how you use AI, that you're transparent about it and that you have some human connection to it and that you're not necessarily that I tell people we can't we can't predict the future, but we can envision it right. And we can't and we can't control algorithms. If we're honest, we cannot control AI algorithms completely. But we can dance with them and design them to be what we want to be and direct them in the in the proper direction, 100%.
So what I also saw with the cycle of social media, when Mark Zuckerberg was put up in front of all the ports, right. And then there was, Web3, say FTX or a couple. Right. But like was put up in front of of course, because out of like doing all the wrong things. Right. That's what people listen because they're like, holy crap. Like, this is major law NFT world, right? Got tons of lawsuits now because people were using that as securities versus a utility.
Right. And I think that's the way our government has done it up to this point is like, you see, big use cases and then go after everybody. And up to then this is I don't think it's a good approach to either. But go ahead. It's not. And I think the innovator's dilemma. Right. It's kind of like, well how much do we push? What can we do for innovation or are we going to get shut down eventually. And that's where like a lot of growth in Web3 was stunted for so long.
It is still is still has been another way that that really hurt. Like that's it's fact. But but then those people too. But that was my old the old company's back there like that's, that's that's the truth. And so let me ask you this. When and because you've been in an appointed role. Right. Like when you don't know enough as a government official, which most, you know, like you're getting advised, that's hard.
It's hard to know, like what's coming down and then the right people don't know where the decision makers. So how does a government make decisions on policy without really understanding the technology. Like, you know, that that is that is a great question. And that's literally like the heart of what we focus on as a midwest con, as a company, as value, like one of our values talks about is that we talk about as policy innovation.
So I don't believe that, okay, does a government official need to know how to program a little. No, but they do need to understand the basics of how, how I generative AI works, how prevalent it is.
And they need to have a view about emerging technology and, and, and the question I ask you about, I, I ask a lot of public officials, very rarely can they actually answer it with any thoughtfulness, but they need to be able to think about these questions like, what's your best, worst case scenario for emerging technology? Like and and what's your plan to create the best case scenarios?
What what's your thought about AI and all those things and how we can both support innovation and make sure we have clear policy? I think we're going to have to reimagine how we do policy. And I don't know what that looks like. I know that we have to start having education to our policymakers, because they're going to have to play a role, and they're going to play a role. And they could either screw it up massively or really empower us.
And there's no and that's why I call it dance with the algorithms, because there's not going to be an exact system. We're going to have to kind of be nimble, but we're going to have to set some type of guidelines and measures for what we want our society to be, and technology should be amplifying those things. Policymakers aren't having those thoughts.
So being from a policy makers point of view, like I didn't, I understand why they, how hard it is because they have all these things on their brain. But what they don't understand is like this is one of the most important issues period. Like it is affecting like is affecting how we communicate. It's affecting racism, it's affecting misogyny, it's affecting civil discourse.
And it's only going to amplify unless we figure out how we want to, what what we want our principles to be around technology. And so I think when they I think the problem with folks in elected office is that they are they are they are approaching the problem from a 20th century perspective. When we're in the 21st century, that's the problem. Well, we got Ellen now, so let's see what's gonna have is go interesting. Right.
Like yeah that that that I have that that's scary too, because like you, all other podcasts are podcasts. I'll just say what we don't need is digital dictatorships either. Right? Because that's also scary. Because but I would say that there could be, like, I think there's opportunities in every situation. They'll seem. So I'm not one of these people and I'm not going to get into, I didn't support the incoming president. However, there is opportunities in everything, right?
And so I will also not allow myself to be at a state of constant anger. I'm going to be focused and figure out, because I think there will be opportunities in this moment. And if if something good comes out of this, like in and Elon does, or Trump goes something that actually is beneficial, I will wholeheartedly support it. If I feel like it's not, I will definitely speak up. But my focus is not going to be on simply reacting to someone else.
It has to be for us. How are we building the better future? And what I know is whether, no matter who's in office, I don't think much is going to change when it comes to AI and things like that. And I do think we need to do more of our parts.
I think we, you, me and the others that are building intentionally in this space, like we are the new civil rights leaders in a way, because we have to build the future and the vision, the future that we want, and it's really participating in this space directly. No, I couldn't agree with you more. I've had this conversation multiple times over around like whoever's in the office is in the office. Our voices matter more now than ever before, right?
Especially there's there's not a lot of us, I would say, who are in the know, like, you know, and I feel like blessed and responsible at the same time.
Exactly where it's like, okay, if you don't speak up, if you're not doing these sort of podcasts our audiences are hearing, my goal is to speak around the world, around what's happening, because it's I want people to understand what's happening so that they can either take advantage and also think about the implications for where they're at in life or in business. Right. So I couldn't agree with you more. I think it's interesting.
One of the things that also scares me, and I'm trying to think about both sides of the perspective here, because a lot of the work we do is more on the automation data and genetic, all this stuff. And then there's the whole robotic side, right? And with Elon saying by 20, I think 2040 that we're going to have more humanoids than humans on the planet, scares the shit out of me a little bit. Rob.
I know the I know the little bit of things, you know, and like, you know know policy is should it's like, whoa, that's crazy. But that's that's the way the world, like, you know, the world and it's, and again, I think we'll learn some lessons. You know what? I will not we're we're always wrong when we when we predict the future. Yeah. But I just say, what I do believe is that there are lessons to be learned from the past, not to lean on them.
And I do think there's going to be there's a lot that hasn't been addressed and that we haven't thought about, with this. So, and that's why, you know, understanding this technology is not there's not there's no opting out, you know, just say like we can you can't put your head in the sand and just say, I'm not going to adopt the technology because you will get left behind. You will not be able to build your business. You won't be able to participate in society.
There is no option other than adopting the technology, learning and then figuring out how you make it better. I mean, that's what I tell people. Yeah, I think from a practical perspective, just because I'm sure we have a lot of entrepreneurs on this, on this, in your community. Right. Think about like this, your technology stack that you normally have for operations or marketing everything. There's going to be a whole new technology stack, right? I mean, able technology stack.
It's actually something I get asked probably the most. Rob is like, what do I use for this? What do I use for that? So it's like, is it like, what's the best tools ten x 15 x your productivity or whatever it may be? And I think it's something that everyone needs to start to think about, because there's one thing of creating custom and unique things which, you know, depending on where you are in business and what your goals are and all the things, there's lots of opportunity there.
But there's another just being because I it's like a big buzzword right now. At the end of the day, everybody's going to be running an intelligent business, right? Like that's really what this is. So it's about, you know, what are those two ChatGPT is great, but it's not the end all be all. There's so much so much more out there.
So anyway, I, I just think that's a really important thing for any entrepreneur or even any business leader to start to think about is what is our AI enabled tech stack, and how is that going to help, you know, amplify our productivity, our experiences, our customer support, etc., etc.? Yeah, I mean, I, totally agree.
And how you just made me think about this is, I would probably ask a business owner or a government official or a nonprofit or whoever, what is, repeatable, scalable process that you have for your best practices? What is what is the repeatable, scalable process that you have for things that you that that are going wrong in your business to improve? And then I would ask a third question, how can I be used to help and amplify the first two questions? Right.
Because you got to really think about like there's there's nothing that I can't help you do better. When you think about the current pain points you have and the things that you do well, it can both amplify the things you do extremely well, and it can minimize the pain points you have for things you do poorly. So really thinking about what those things are specifically and thinking about how AI applies to those things will save you so much time, money, and make you more money.
So I tell people to, to to learn by doing experiment as much as possible. Is there any tools that you like, one or 2 or 3 tools that you use? And you you highly recommend that? I want to ask you a couple wrap up questions, man. I mean, obviously the ChatGPT world and but it's not just that for me. I look at like Claude, I use Claude, I use perplexity. It really depends on if I'm more research driven stuff or complexity. Right. Which I use for research a lot.
I mean, I'm a I'm a podcaster too, so I use opus clips, which is like, I just want you to understand if you use opus clips of you really, I use opus clips. Okay. Just this is again perspective. Not too long ago. This is like not too long ago to create a clip. I have a podcast. I don't get it for five years and you're like, you had to literally get the video. Somebody had to transcribe your podcast said this was a year and a half ago. A lot too long ago was a year and a half ago.
It wasn't a long time ago. This opus clips. You put your entire episode in and you can prompt for like, you know, I want engaging moments, I want some funny moments, I want this and the other. And all of a sudden 25 clips come in. And not only that, it's like between one minute and five, you can be precise, you can go in and edit it, you can add different parts of the script. It is to me.
And actually funny, I just reached out the CEO to the CEO because I really want to talk to you because I feel like one, I, I feel like there's some products out, but those are products that I want to amplify to my community because they're done well. And, you know, the people that are in it are in it to win it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that to me is it's such a, because, I got another one for you to go for. No, but I have you use notebook alum. Oh, yeah.
The one that brings everything together and makes your podcast like it's free. That's free. And when I talk about that, because that's, like, the coolest thing. Yeah. Like, no, just literally for my questions with you today, I use notebook LM like literally I did that, put it together, pull the sources together and help me organize it. And what what normally takes me who used to take me hours to prepare for a podcast. It takes me now. I've done it for a lot of time, so that's all.
I also have some knowledge, but. And now what used to take me three hours probably takes me 20 minutes of prep, right? Probably. And it's starting to get less because that is like no big deal. You're just able to pull any source in, it'll organize it for you, put the notes together for you, you can ask the question and it's free. It's just amazing, like the amount of tools that are out there.
So I recommend people to experiment, pay for some of the stuff, even with ChatGPT pay for the to pay the $20 a month and then do some of the other stuff. If you have anything like accounting processes. You know, something I've done is you. Because I'm not great at processes, but you have to be to scale businesses.
But I started creating processes, writing it down, then using GPT to help with other stuff I did, and then dictating that and then using ChatGPT or something else to come up with better results and making sure that I'm creating standard operating procedures. I mean, this can really you are literally hurting yourself by not adopting the new technology. So all right, a couple of things I want to get to you at the end, kind of rapid fire questions. Now, these are hard questions.
Yeah. Always true. People are all right. I say things like that. And I know you're just. All right. What's an important truth you have that very few people agree with you on? Oh, important truth. Integrity is everything. Whatever that that is. Integrity is my number one value. I feel like if you're going to do something, say something. Do it. But it's really hard to do. It's a really hard to do. Keep integrity with yourself and with others. So to me, it's it's the source of truth.
Integrity. Yeah. You know, I say the truth is simple, and life is simple is just not easy, right? It's just like. It's like it's just the truth. All right. You have a committee of three, living or dead, advising you on life. Who would these three people be and why? My dad, he passed was 23. I have so many questions for him. Hands down. Wow. You would ask him right now, you're thinking, oh, my God. I mean, I would ask him so many business questions. So many life questions.
I feel like he was a community builder. He was a business owner. Like he him and I, we would have wrapped on every part of my life. Robert. Like, he was so insightful, like, you know, and I was one thing you could think you wanted. You want to tell him right now? What would you tell him? I'm staring at his picture, and I'm just like, how he's influenced me. And he's the reason I do what I do. And like, for me, it's like I'm building his legacy. Because he was an incredible human.
His life was too short, and I'm just trying to keep going. What he started, and hopefully amplify it. I'm sure he's proud of you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Who are your other two? My other two.
I would Michelle, Michelle Obama, I, I think her perspective on life personally and professionally, her resilience and all the things that she's done and accomplish, I just want some very strong females around me that will push me in ways that I've never been pushed before, and I just appreciate her honesty and transparency. And just what she continues to show up and how she shows up in this world. So that would be definitely number two. Number three, that's a hard one for me.
Doesn't have to be three weakest opportunities. Two is two. I can't do two. And I want to come back to it because, you know, I here's the one that actually I would love somebody. And I don't know, that's what I have to think about. Who, but someone who in the emerging technology space would be really interesting. And I don't know if it's Mark. Because, I mean, you shouldn't discriminate, obviously.
Sam Altman I think it would be really amazing, intriguing and scary to understand what's going on in his brain. And I'm very good at interviewing and just getting into some deep conversations. We're going to project that that you're going to get him on a. And the reason why is if we want to be leaders and have voices in the space, like you have to understand where people are coming from. And he such a unique perspective and so much depth.
And you want to hear both sides, the extreme sides and the sides. And then that allows you to actually create informed decisions. I, I just for him, you know, make an AI agent out of his brain. He's. Yeah, it's a good idea. There you go. Hey, hey, Chad, it's ag Sam Altman. Okay, well, all right, final question. What's your what what's your theme and slogan in life? Impact and profit? It's. Yeah, I have many, but that one has stuck with me.
I just feel like for everything I do, I want to make sure I'm adding a ton of value and making a crazy amount of impact. And I think you can do that by living a really sustainable life. Life. And you can do that and add more value and more impact when you do have that. And I feel like in the entrepreneurial world, in the nonprofit world, in the government world, a lot of people don't have that stability.
And I think a lot. So that's always been my mantra when I help people create sustainable businesses. But I'm thinking AI and opportunities, it's impact and profit, right? Yeah. It's about like, the truth about innovation and talk about this like in terms of like what's happening, what needs to happen, how people need to be framing.
It's one of those things that's been in my brain because, like you, I see the patterns connecting and what and what and how and how we need to be thinking about business innovation and growth in order to make sure that, you know, that we're well positioned as a and that businesses are, but also the communities that normally are well positioned are well positioned. But anyway, I want to think about that. Why? You know what I mean?
It's definitely I have to write it like I have, like I was going to write everything on the unique method before the repositioning, but now I'm like everything, this is the future of business. Like I need to be known for that. Like it is an important thing for me is like I see things and so do you. So I'm also let's do it. I want to use that as an ability to get paid internationally. And speaking. Yeah. That's we, we, we share that. We need to think about that. Let's, let's, let's let's do it.
See my Alexander, who's also going to be, a feature speaker at Midwest Con 2025, also the co-founder of DC startup a Tech Week, also co-founder of Virgin I building agents and helping midsize businesses learn how to implement AI. It's been such a pleasure. I can't wait to talk more with you. I will be in DC next week by the way. So for connecting back if you have time and love everything you're doing and let's continue to build. Awesome. Thank you for having me.
This is an awesome conversation. Thank you so much.