Thomas Frye.
He's the guy that just spends a lot of time thinking about stuff in the future and where it's going. Thomas, let me ask you a question. When do you do your thinking on stuff like you're mulling? When you tell me about that process when you're mulling trying to figure out the future.
Oh, usually it's at night, But a lot of times some of the best ideas just pop into your head just at some random moment in time, so it's hard to predict.
I actually do most of my thinking my thinking time in the car. I drive in silence for that reason. And I told another friend of mine this today and he's like, I don't know if I've ever driven in silence. I'm like, well, when's your thinking time? You know you're really thinking?
You got to think.
So he said I don't do that, and I was like, oh, okay, well then that makes me special. Thomas has a very interesting concept. Are you going to write a blog post on this that I can share as well because you send.
It to me? But yes, we'll have it posted in a week.
Or okay, because I think it's very interesting. But it's a pretty complex topic of discussion, and I want to make sure that people are interested in this could go back and find more information about it later. Let's talk about is it Neyman engines Neuman engines.
Yeah, named after John von Neuman kind of he was a contemporary of Valanteering, helped invent modern computing. He's one of the sharpest guys of all times.
But it's it's it's a whole different concept.
Kind of the way cities have been reviving themselves is through economic development, and these economic development operations are are failing big time right now because things have changed so much. So if you move a company into your area, you're probably not going to get all the employees, or if you get a few employees, that's all you're going to get. So economic development there's still something's happening in that space.
But the true, the true engine of economic activity should actually be in the startup space, because with AI, we're going to be creating more startups than ever before in history, and I think this becomes our biggest job engine ever created. So the way the Noyman engine works is you start with a venture studio. A venture studio is different than
than like an accelerator or an incubator. A venture studios where you have a group of savvy entrepreneurs that actually start all the businesses, and you bring this into.
A community that is struggling or failing.
Now, the communities are having problems filling office space, or having problems filling shops on main street.
They're just struggling economically. So when you.
Start this steynment engine, then you have the opportunity not to just create jobs, but to create prime jobs. Now, a prime job is different than just creating a job. See, if you create a coffee shop, what you're doing is you're just recirculating the money in the community. If you create a prime job, then you're bringing money from outside of the community into it and that has multiple effects then, and so that changes the way communities operate.
Well, let me let me stop there. Let's start at phase one.
We'll call it phase one of the operation, and that is the not incubator. And for people who don't know what an incubator is, there are a lot of different organizations, a lot of venture capitalists have incubators where you can as an entrepreneur, you already have an idea, you've already started the plan, you've already started the ball rolling on
your business. You may move into an incubator to take advantage of their expertise to give more business help, to get support as you begin to grow this business that you've already created. So the other thing that the first stage of the Normans engine is actually a space where ideas are pulled out of thin air. Is that the best way for me to dumb this down?
Yeah, but there's more more logic to that than being pulled out of thin air. But you're using kind of the talent in the area. So if you have a community that's in the oil and gas industry, then you can use that startups in that space. If you have a community that's in let's say, making movies, then you work.
With talent in that space and so on.
So you kind of build on what's already there, but then you can you can veer off in different directions as well.
So the idea is.
To first set up and establish a space. It'll be like a co working space that has come a nation coworking space with actually a theater for having shows, having classes, helping people, doing meetups there, coaching people. So that that was the kind of the heart of the whole Norman engine. Is this startup space.
And.
Then you get people coming in there, and so the venture studio will then start creating these prime businesses. In a prime business would be like if you wanted to start a distillery, distillery selling all over the country. If you're starting, there's something that has a food industry, frozen food or something like that, that's money coming from all over the country.
Health camps.
There's lots of different kinds of health camps that you can establish and that brings in money from all over as well. And so when you start going down the list, and I have quite a few different possibilities, but these these can actually there's probably hundreds and hundreds of different startup possibilities for a community. So then you have you have the people that are starting things you have there.
There's something that I call a how to school.
How to school is something that's purposely local. It's just telling you how to do things like how to start how to start vibe coding, or how to do AI marketing for your business and that sort of thing.
So how do you use the AI tools that you are Because Thomas, I don't you and I haven't spoken about this. I have a friend that has worked in the internet marketing field for a very long time. Since the internet marketing field just started, He's started and launched multiple companies, right, so as employed people, he's had staffs.
He said, Well, he.
Just launched a new company that is marketing to a very specific kind of business and he's focused on that like a laser.
He has not had to hire anyone.
To scale his business because he's using AI for everything, which for him is outstanding, right, But I'm worried about AI sort of leaving us with new customers to buy the products kind of thing, you.
Know what I mean.
It's like, if AI is so efficient and AI is capable of helping people build new businesses, which it is, what does the landscape look like when we don't have.
To hire people anymore.
Yeah, there's going to be a lot of solo businesses, but those people will still be buying products for themselves and their family. So if we have ten thousand solo businesses in a community, that's still a thriving me right. So the kind of the landscape is going to change dramatically as to how these businesses are function and operate.
There will still be a lot of people who choose to hire people to do different things like even though you can run a solo business, you probably still want somebody to mow your lawn or to do your dry cleaning things like that. So so anyway, this is going to employ a lot of people. And I think with all the sort of businesses that we're going to be creating out of thin air here, that this is actually going to give us with more employment than we've ever had ever in all history.
I look at this and I think, to myself, it sounds like a great idea, and I wonder how it can be done on a more micro level and specifically thinking about you know, you have a list of cities that that you have is like ripe for this kind of development. And I'm going to use date and No High because I was literally just in date O High over the weekend. They've got or right, Patterson Air Force Base.
They've got an aerospace industry there. So you we're saying, look, you lean into that, well, how can this be applied to a suffering, a socioeconomically devastated community right where you don't necessarily have a super highly educated workforce. You're not necessarily going to have a lot of college grads. Could this be used to help create an economy within one
of those lower socioeconomic neighborhoods in the same way. You know, because what you're talking about is educated people using AI to do to do things that will attach to other highly educated industries. Well, what about using this in a community that is, you know, the average home or the average person doesn't own their own home and they're living on the margins. Is this something that could be used
on that scale? Do you think to reinvigorate even individual neighborhoods, forget cities, just smaller things than that.
Yeah, when when you have a venture studio, you have savvy entrepreneurs that are going to start creating things, and they're going to be creating businesses that they will coach along until a point where they can have another set of entrepreneurs take them over.
So the business gets off the.
Ground and operating and they have a handoff to a local group of entrepreneurs that can rend it from there. So this is kind of a training operation at the same time, So you're training training the next generation of business operators. So I think this creates a lot of excitement in the community. Lots of people then change their their their path, change their thinking and say, oh, I
want to be part of that. And so going to going to a few sessions at the at the how to school and you're learning a few things, you don't quite learn enough. So then you sign up for the local meetup group and then you start hanging out with other people, other like minded people.
And that's the key.
When you get that mindset in a community that you can take it from here, you can do it on your own.
That changes a lot of things.
That changes the perspective of virtually everybody in the community.
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly.
I mean, it's the difference between you know, going to Haiti and building a school and going to Haiti and teaching people how to do construction, right. I mean, I'd an interview some many years ago now with a woman, a Haitian woman in Haiti who was begging mission trips to stop coming to Haiti and building things or doing things.
They're like, bring people down and teach people how to do this stuff, because what you've done is create a whole group of people waiting for another set of missionaries to show up and build them another thing. And this is kind of what you're talking about, Like, teach people along the way. This is interesting, Thomas, because my former father in law actually wasn't banking for a very long time and one of his pet projects that he was never able to quite get off the ground because of money.
And I want to ask you about that next is he wanted to go in and create exactly what you're talking about.
Invite people from.
A community to come in and say, what's your idea for a business? Who would it serve, how would it work in your mind, you know, and let's see if we can flesh this out, and then do.
Exactly what you're talking about.
Handhold people through the process, teach them how to do accounting, teach them how to you know, advertise their but like, teach them what they need to know.
And he got close a few.
Times, but it always came down to you're asking for a big investment for what, maybe initially for many years a low return situation. So who funds this, how do you get the money to do this? And what might it cost?
Yeah, the yeah, the kind of the low end.
We're thinking roughly it's around ten million dollars over five years, right, So a lot of cities can afford that. They're spending a lot of that money on economic development. Right now, they can use municipal bonds, so this gets paid back by all the businesses that get started. This is an investment in their own community. I'm not going to say that you can do it on a bootstrap it or do it on a shoe string. I think you need to make a serious commitment in your community and then just go for it.
I agree, and I think that you need to pay people to be full time employees that have the knowledge and skill set to do the things that need.
To be done.
You know, I'm actually thinking, have you ever heard of the organization's SCORE.
It's the Society of I can't remember.
It's like retired corporate executives, and it's a volunteer organization. And if you start a business, you can go to SCORE and they will give you good business advice.
It sounds like something if. I feel like.
All of the pieces for this already exists, we just need to put them all together in one place.
Yeah, except the pieces are changing with AI. I mean this idea of being able to do vibe coding as an example, I.
Don't even know what that is, Thomas, where is that talk.
To talk to your computer and it will actually build your website, or it'll do the software coding for you. That's something that's new and different. It's something that has come out within the last six months, so not everybody knows about it.
So that's one of the pieces that's changing.
No, I agree, and I do think that.
I think that in the next before AI becomes super intelligent decides we're no longer worth it and wipes us off the face of the earth in one night by cutting all of our gas lines, I'm sure that won't happen for a while, so let's just enjoy the run while we can. I do think that our economy is going to be divided into people who learn to use A and people who don't. I really think the divide
is going to be significant. And I think that people who learn to use AI effectively and learn to use the tools that are available to them via AI, are going to excel in the economy no matter what field they're in. I think they're going to be the ones that excel. And I think anything that we can do to sort of inspire the next generation to really take these tools seriously. But man, there's so many of them
coming out every day. It's hard to keep up, So this would be this would be a way to do those lots.
A lot of the AI agents right now can work as a personal coach for you.
Let's say you want to write a book.
You can have this personal coach that's sitting on your shoulder telling you, coaching you on how to how to put together the characters, how to create the story arc, how to create a good ending, and then put all the pieces together, and by the time you're all done, then you have something that you've accomplished, an accomplishment form of education. And this is new and different because most of the stuff that's being taught in schools today, you accomplish virtually nothing that you're proud.
Of that you want to show your friends. Right right, If, as an example, you want.
To become a gamer, a game designer, and you want to design video games, you could actually have a coach that actually coaches you through that whole process, teaching you different ways of putting this techniques together and kind of creating the storyline for.
That game that you want to play.
And by the time you're done, and you have something that you want to that you're proud of, that you want to show your friends, this is another accomplishment form of education. I find that to be quite fascinating.
I agree. I don't know.
I'm afraid and maybe this is just an unnecessary thing to be worried about. I'm afraid that they're What you're saying for cities makes a lot of sense. It would work for Denver. I mean, if you if you really concentrated your efforts on creating new industry in Denver rather than trying to drag other industries here to your point where you may or may not get all their employees.
I think that's a better way to go.
And I actually think Governor Jared polis it would agree with everything you just said. He's very attuned to bringing in tech and you know, and trying to nurture startups. So I think that for Denver it would be a really interesting proposition. But again, you know, I'm I'm looking to try and figure out how to help people who are not well versed in computers, who are not well versed in and for AI may seem so overwhelming for them. How do we make that more accessible? Maybe we need an AI for that.
Yeah, just uh, there's there's a lot of people are living in isolation, and I think that's that's kind of the wrong way to do it. If you can find a group of friends that are actually doing something similar and you can.
Hang out with them, and you go.
To this a certain place every day and you go there and you have coffee, and you strike up discussions with what if you accomplished day, what if I accomplished today? And suddenly you start learning about things you never knew about before, and and so then you can have friends that kind of coach you through it as well.
This is.
We're quickly losing this human camaraderie and I think it's really important.
Excuse me, sorry about that.
The next time you're on, I want to talk about the new wave memorials and cemeteries, but we're at a time this time because talking about human connection. I have an article on the blog today interactive cemeteries. Well, you'll be able to go and have a conversation with your loved one. I want to know this real quick, and
we'll we'll we'll dive into this deep next time. But can I plug in things that my dad would say, so my dad the hologram or whatever would say them back to me, because that would be really cool.
We're getting very close to that. Yeah.
I went over to Copernicus University last year in in Warsaw, Poland, and they had they had robots of Copernicus there that would would talk to you and answer any of your questions that you had. So doing that for average people on the street, I think we're real close to that, all right.
He's our futurist. He's Thomas Frye. Find him the Futurist speaker dot com. I put a link to that on the blog as well. Thomas fascinating conversation as always, and it's given me a lot more ideas that I can think about, never do anything about.
So thanks for that, all.
Right.
I have a good one, that of course is Thomas Rye.