The Next American Entrepreneur: How AI Is Changing Who Gets to Build a Business | James Edgell

00:00 I think we're gonna go like

00:05 this. Has been an experience of amazement to me.

00:20 Before you leave, if you'd like to [music] watch another one of the podcast, click the first link in the

00:26 description. We love having you here and [music] we appreciate all your support. And with that, producer Barbie and I are

00:33 out.

00:38 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Insights and Straight Talk. I'm Rod

00:44 Duff. You know, I've spent more than 30 years in a in the machinery business,

00:51 building things, you know, fixing things, taking something that wasn't working and figuring out how to make it

00:58 work. And I learned something, you know, along the way, like we all do, right? Some of

01:05 the greatest ideas I've ever encountered didn't come from engineers sitting in in

01:10 corporate offices. They came from people standing next to the machines, the

01:17 people who understood the problem because they lived with it every single

01:22 day. Makes sense, right? But here's the trouble. For generations, having a great

01:29 idea and having the resources to bring that idea to life have been two very

01:38 different things. And that's what makes today's conversation so so very important. What

01:45 happens when a small business owner can describe a problem? Just describe a

01:51 problem and artificial intelligence helps build the software to solve it.

01:59 What happens when innovation is no longer reserved for the companies with

02:04 the deepest pockets? And perhaps, you know, biggest qu the

02:11 biggest question of all, what happens when the person with the idea finally

02:17 has the tools to make that idea happen? My returning guest, James Edgell, has

02:25 spent his career on both sides of that equation, from IBM to Deloitte to helping

02:32 develop the the technology behind McDonald's mobile ordering uh and kiosk.

02:39 James understands. Yeah. And by the way, just before I move on to that that McDonald's point, those have been around

02:46 for a while. So talk about being ahead of the curve because James, you know,

02:52 James understands what it takes to build technology at an enormous scale. But

02:59 today he's building something different. His company Softex, you know the name,

03:06 is exploring how artificial intelligence can turn ordinary language into real

03:13 working business applications. Now, I don't want us to get too carried

03:19 away with the hype, okay? I want I want to know what what actually works, what

03:24 what doesn't, what it costs. That's the part I'm really excited

03:30 about. We'll get into that after a bit. There's already a hundred people on. Wow. Thank you. And please subscribe and

03:37 uh join in the comments. So back to what I was talking about whether this

03:43 technology can can generally genuinely change the opportunities available to

03:50 Americans, American entrepreneurs and working families all across this nation,

03:55 much less the world. Because around this table, we believe something very simple.

04:03 Opportunities shouldn't depend on the size of your bank account. James, welcome back to Insights and

04:10 Straight Talk. And before we go through your journey, let's just find out how

04:15 close we are to putting the power of innovation into everybody's hands.

04:24 All right, James, let me click one more button and welcome you on to Insights

04:30 and Straight Talk. It is so good. I'm so glad to have you on. And apparently a lot of people have been looking forward to this because usually not this quickly

04:37 people jump in. You know how people are, right? They get their coffee, they kind of start to dribble in. We've got well

04:42 over a hundred people already and you haven't even said a word yet. They had to listen to me this whole time. So

04:48 start with the opening and then and then go into that question that I had and if you want me to re request,

04:55 uh, I will do so. Yeah. Give me you you said a lot of things there. Which one do you want me

05:00 to focus in on? So, I said, let's So, first of all, I want you to just kind of remind the

05:06 people. I'm sure a lot of the people remember your journey from the last show. That was just over a month or so

05:11 ago, but I want you to go into how you got to that inflection point to where

05:16 you you got on that path that led you to here to to this audience here today. But

05:22 with that, let's find out just how close we are to putting the power of innovation. How close are we to this

05:30 being able to uh put that innovation into everybody's hands? I mean, there's a lot of people talking about this like

05:37 you like Elon M Leon Elon Musk. Sorry, I just got off of an

05:43 international panel about men's huh health

05:48 and obviously I I was probably learning more than I was teaching. But anyway, uh

05:54 why don't we why don't we start the show with that? What do you say? So, Rob, we're we're here. I mean, it

06:00 it's it's upon us. It's not a question of when it will it happen. It it's

06:05 really here and it's kind of like the situation where you're presented with a genie and you're given three wishes and

06:12 you're standing there going, "What should I wish for?" Right? It it it's already here. Your wishes can be

06:18 granted immediately. Uh with this type of technology, it is absolutely amazing.

06:24 You just got to start using it. fractions of a penny. Fra I mean fractions of a penny to the dollar,

06:30 right? Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Compared to like human labor, and I know that's a it's both a

06:36 fascinating and terrifying statement uh at the same time. It is. But compared to human labor, it's

06:42 extremely inexpensive. You can start to do things right away. And the last show, I think I coined the phrase is it's my

06:49 co-founder essentially. Yes. And it's a co-founder that will never try to push me out of the company. It's

06:54 always somebody there who's willing to help me with knowledge that I don't possess. And that's a perfect type of

07:00 co-founder. So, you can use this thing. I I I think we're at the infancy states

07:06 of it. I think people are just trying to figure out how to learn it, right? Like ChatGPT

07:13 came out what, four or five years ago or so. And you know, only in the last couple years we figured out that it

07:18 could write code for programming. And it is amazing. Oh, wait, wait, wait, hold

07:24 on, hold on. So, ChatGPT when it first came on and that's a Neon Mustang thing.

07:29 He started that because he wanted free to go out to people and when when the board got greedy and started paying then

07:35 he started uh Grock, I think. But anyway, ChatGPT I use it a lot. It's

07:40 awesome. It's great research tool. It's great for changing the tone of something

07:45 I've brought written if I wanted to, you know, address a different audience, you know, like LinkedIn versus Facebook,

07:51 right? different audience. So, I I I like using a lot, but in the beginning,

07:57 we didn't realize it could actually create code. That's how far chat's already come in what, a couple of years.

08:04 Yeah. I mean, I can't speak for everybody, but I, you know, I used it. I thought, "Wow, this is an amusing little

08:09 tool, right? It can give you a lot of facts. It can do, you know, things for you." But I had no idea when it first

08:16 came out that it had applicable solutions that you could literally ask it to do things.

08:22 I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. Go ahead. And you know, you ask it the, you know, when you first start working with Chat

08:27 TV, you're like, what's the hype, right? And you get in, you ask it, what's the population in the United States? It instantly gives it to you. And it's very

08:35 interesting, but it's okay. What do I use this for? And that's I think the phase that a lot of people are in right

08:42 now. Um, I discovered about a year or so ago that it could actually write code and I put it to the test and I was

08:48 amazed at its capabilities and that was a gamecher for me because programmers

08:53 are very expensive and now I I could have a bunch of programmers with

08:58 knowledge in many different areas just by asking it to build something for me.

09:03 I it's like magic. I I when I first started working with this, I turned to my wife, I go, "This is science fiction.

09:10 I can't even believe this. I've done coding my entire career, decades, more than I care to admit, but all of a

09:18 sudden Oh, stop it. Stop it. [laughter] Stop. Knock it off. You're still a pup.

09:24 Um, be before you go on though. Um, so you you you started uh it learning code.

09:32 You know what? One of the first things I did with my chat GPBT because I did my son taught me while my granddaughter was

09:39 being born three years ago. I I was at their house, right? And they were in the

09:44 hospital and we were chatting and he said, "You ought to try this ChatGPT thing." And at the end of the day, um I

09:52 didn't know how to tell it what to do. So what did I do? I told it to write the

09:57 most perfect um uh what do they call them? Not not

10:02 prompts prompts. Write the most perfect prompt to establish yourself. This is what I

10:08 want to do. So I literally just told it something along that line and it created its own prompt. Go ahead with what you

10:15 were saying. Yeah, it's it can be very iterative and uh it can really improve on things. It

10:21 it's just amazing. I I I just I can't even explain it. You got to start using it and then you start to figure out how

10:28 to apply it. Um I've been using it. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. You're That's a good point. Go ahead. I'm

10:33 sorry. Go ahead. I've been using it for coding for a while and you know, we started to go live with SoftEXIT Studio about a month

10:40 ago and I wanted to update my my website and I thought, you know, God, this is the part I dread. I'm not a marketer.

10:47 I'm not a sales guy. I'm a tech guy. And uh so I asked ChatGPT, I said, "What can

10:53 you do for me on this website?" And it says, you know, started asking me questions. What do you use? I said, I

10:58 use WordPress like most everybody else. And then it just it taught me that I

11:04 could just describe the product. And since I had been working with it for about a year or so with the coding of my

11:11 app, it knows my app very well. I literally said, "Hey, can you make me a landing page?" Yeah. Don't don't move too far past

11:17 that. It it it does learn you. That's that's the best part about it is working

11:24 with it over time. it becomes your assistant that that doesn't argue with

11:29 you, won't try and steer your job, all that kind of stuff, all those other things. But on top of that, it literally

11:35 sits there and takes into account from its memory of of what and and literally

11:41 builds out you builds upon you, not some other person trying to do their job from

11:48 their aspect. It's doing it. It'd be like having another human being that

11:53 absorbed all your thought processes and then started to support you in your job, right? It's that good.

12:00 It's that good. And when you say support, it really does. It doesn't have a hidden agenda. It's supporting you

12:06 100%. And it's it's kind of weird that way because sometimes you're wondering if

12:12 somebody is trying to advance their agenda. This thing isn't. It's it's completely out to help you. And so it

12:20 learned about me, it learned about my product and it spit out a page and it said, "Here, use this. It's a WordPress

12:26 template." And I said, "What's a WordPress template?" So it's you just import it and it's a basically it's a

12:32 completely done web page. And I looked at it and I was expecting to go through iterations of tweaking and it was

12:39 perfect. I mean, in every sense, the copy, it wrote the copy. It pitched the this the uh the software. It it

12:47 described it in ways that I'm not quite as articulate in. And and I looked at it, I'm like, this would have taken

12:54 weeks with a design team uh with human beings, and this thing spit this out in

12:59 literally 60 seconds. And then I just took it and I and I

13:05 completed my website within probably a half hour. a complete rewrite of a

13:10 website. We're talking weeks of [snorts] time under a normal iterative process.

13:16 It would hit the mark 100%. It created beautiful graphics. You know, you could take a look at the website and it's it's

13:23 all I generated. You know what? I forgot. Um in the private chat somewhere here, can you

13:30 give us that website so that I can copy and like it last time so they c people

13:36 can contact you? Uh, I just did. Perfect. I see it pop up there. Um, work

13:42 work uh Michelle. Oh, I'm on the wrong side. Work Michelle. Can you see that? Yeah, I see her. I see her.

13:48 Work Michelle's comment because as soon as you started talking about your app and and developing that that that popped

13:55 up. So, she's probably a developer, I'm guessing. Can you read and then re respond to what she what she uh wrote

14:01 there, please? So, she says, "Great show. AI is making app development more exciting." I would

14:06 agree. Yeah. And how do So you you are a tech person. I'm a It's funny when you said

14:13 that. I'm a marketing guy, not a tech guy. The opposite, right? And yet both things can be addressed

14:21 by your by your prompt. Um and and and by that agent getting to to know you,

14:28 you now have a marketer. I now have a tech person that's also a better marketer than I am,

14:34 but I also have a tech person that can help me work through things. And you said one key thing there. Well, you said

14:40 a bunch of key things, but one thing that I went yes is how fast it happens.

14:47 I can write something that would take me hours or an hour to write, you know, not even doing

14:54 the research. tell you love the research, but now take that and write that out for me. Within 30 seconds, you

15:01 have 10 pages if you want or something. Within three seconds, you have a 100 pages. It's just very quick of what it

15:08 pulls up and then how it lays it out and then you instruct it accordingly. Right.

15:13 Yeah. It It's amazing. The turnaround time is light speeded. [clears throat] It's it's it's like magic. It I just

15:20 can't get over it. Every time I use it, I'm like, "Oh my goodness, I can't believe that it turned that around."

15:25 Just how productive you become. I mean, I I write an I I write a column

15:31 in the Mangum Star. I'm I'm a columnist as well. And then I write three substeps. Well, what I do is I write the

15:38 column, but then I'll take it, put it into my AI so that it'll write a

15:43 Barbieism on Monday, a poems and pages on Wednesday, and a Friday mic drop on

15:50 Friday about the column. And it says it in completely different ways because not

15:55 everybody likes what I read or reads what I Oh my god, what a day. Holy cow.

16:03 uh it gives it in different it it takes those thoughts and changes them into that tone and that tone and that tone

16:10 and it does it instantly and now I can write four things in the time you know

16:15 in a tenth of the time that it would have taken me to write those same thing four things independently and probably

16:21 wouldn't be as good because it's still me it's just taking and and I tell it

16:27 turn the focus turn the and come at it from a different direction why because I want to reach a a wider audience. A lot

16:35 of people love my column. I love that. But there's a lot of people who probably would like it if it had a Barbieism tone

16:42 to it, right? Yeah. The the turnaround is amazing. I'll give you a real world examples is

16:51 usually I would meet every day with a development team, a whole team, and I would say, "Hey, look, this is the

16:56 feature I'd like you to develop, you know, and we and and this team was moving at at light speed. I'd say here's

17:02 a feature I want you to develop and you know draft it. Show me something tomorrow. So they come back and they

17:08 would show me code tomorrow. Then I would say okay you know you need to tweak this. You need to change this around. This isn't exactly what I was

17:14 want I wanted or oh you showed me something I didn't think about. And then it then I ask him for the next day to

17:21 come around. Well these would take days. Now it's within five minutes. So I

17:27 literally You're describing what's written right here, aren't you? You're describing what Mike's writing here right now and

17:33 because that's what you're primarily doing is building apps out of this, right? Right now. Yeah. Uh, you know, mo that's almost 90%

17:39 of the work I'm doing right now is generating apps. So, so Mike, when you started talking,

17:45 Mike popped up and and uh and said, so obviously I I'm assuming Mike has a

17:51 small business and and is in in the same uh business arena that you're in. So

17:59 James asks how James asks Mike is asking you how can small businesses start apps

18:07 with AI you know the ability for the common person to build an app kind of

18:14 started with other people's help started probably a decade ago that's first time I heard about and started thinking about

18:21 building an app for the plastic machinery business that I had uh that I you you know the business I'm talking

18:27 about Um, but I'm assuming that that they're they're out there building some

18:32 apps. What does that look like? So, I'm a small business. I I'm building apps

18:37 now, but I'm not using AI. I I hire somebody like you to come in and do that for me, right? This is what I wanted to

18:45 do. This is what you're doing. And bam. And and start building the apps. So, uh,

18:51 he's Mike's asking, "How can small businesses start building apps with AI?" What does that look like when you

18:56 decide, okay, I'm I we we're going to do this, what does that first look like?

19:02 So, it's just a matter of asking for it. It's uh you know, the the primary interface for for these these LLMs is

19:10 English. If you can, in fact, it you're not limited to English anymore, but you just speak it in natural language and it

19:17 will build you the code. Then you need to transfer the code to your computer and then you run it and then you go

19:23 through iterations. You can say, "Hey, change this, add this." And basically, anybody can have an app programmed.

19:30 However, I will caution. I I know there's there's a lot of uh newbies who are jumping into the app business

19:36 thinking, "Yes, all I need to do is create an app and then I'll be rich." Well, those days are gone because you could create that app

19:44 that'll make you rich, but no one will know you exist because you're in a crowd

19:49 of well over, you know, I think there's like 1 point something million apps, right? And you know, Apple, when you do

19:56 a search for an app, you can't keep scrolling till you get to your app. They cap it at 200 apps. So, if you're not in

20:03 the top 200 out of a million, you're invisible. And so now you now you have

20:09 and I know you'll understand this. Now you have standard marketing problems. You may have the perfect app and no one

20:15 knows you exist. So now you AI can't replace advertisement. It can't replace

20:20 getting you at the head of the stack. Those are very challenging issues for anyone in the technology business today.

20:27 What what AI can't replace is that hunger to get it and make it happen.

20:33 that human that human part, that competition, that that drive that and

20:39 like you said, they're not marketers. They can put the words down, but it's

20:44 still that all competition business is still comes back to the same, but now

20:50 with some extra tools, you got to have that drive still too, huh? Yeah. And that's if you're going for a

20:56 general audience app. Now, let's make it a little closer to home. Let's say you're, you know, a HVHC type of company

21:05 and you want an app to service your clients better and you they walk into the store and you point to a sign and

21:11 you say, "Hey, download this app and then I can contact you in real time that you can build and

21:17 that was not available to small businesses before. One, they couldn't afford a development staff. Two, they,

21:23 you know, they they just didn't have Yeah. Yeah. I went through that same exact thing. I couldn't afford to build

21:30 that app that I was talking about gone. But now they can and this could help differentiate their business from the

21:36 business down the street that doesn't have that kind of an app. So if you have an idea like that that's for a limited

21:42 audience. Yeah. Within a couple of weeks of getting familiar, you you'll spend more time getting familiar with the

21:48 environment than it will to build your app. Oh my god, this app thing is just

21:53 blowing up, dude. Um Nick Nick just popped up. By the way, we have uh over

21:59 600 people on. That's great. Yeah. Congratulations. And please subscribe. Please continue to comment.

22:07 Oh, actually, I'm going to put up a banner that says, "Hey, there we go. Start talking, folks." So,

22:14 um, in in this one here, um, what so

22:19 building on the on the app that that we're talking about are the ability to

22:24 build apps. Again, same same first question. Mike Mike asked this. H how

22:29 can a small business start? And you said just by asking literally and that's that

22:34 you're not being lazy or or or flip it. It it's literally, hey, I want you to

22:40 build an app and and then the next question that came in right after that was what's the first step in turning

22:47 that idea into building an app? So So what just get ChatGPT and say build me

22:54 an app? I wouldn't do that. I put some thought into it, right? Like, you know,

22:59 one of the great questions I have when I was Hey, can I ask you a let me ask you a while you're talking? I hear typing. Are

23:05 you typing or is that the Oh, I'm sorry. I'm fiddling. I thanks for pointing that out. I'll move my hands away from the

23:11 Okay. Okay. I didn't know if it was a like a system that was taking down all your notes or or what it was, but I just

23:17 wanted to give you a heads up that it it's uh it's very prominent. Oh, sorry about that. Uh

23:22 no worries. No worries. Go ahead. So, so the great question I had in consulting was not, you know, what do

23:28 you want to build? What technology do you want to use? It was what problem do you want to solve? And that's how you

23:35 should approach it. So, and then to start building an app, I wouldn't build an app until you have a conversation

23:42 with ChatGPT first. Start asking it about the technology. Start start asking it

23:48 about how you can solve your problem. Right? This is where I say identify the problem first. Tell it that you think

23:55 that an app could solve this problem and start having a conversation about it and ask it to critique you because ChatGPT

24:03 you know is build on that critique you. So you're say are so you tell it I know you're

24:09 already going to answer it but I'm just going to pop that in. Um so so building on that same thing can AI

24:16 build an app without writing code? Obviously the question is yes and you're getting into that right now but but go

24:22 on with what you're saying but that's fascinating to me that we can just p and

24:27 you you've been working on this only a yearish right yes

24:33 because we got some questions about softex coming up but go ahead okay so ChatGPT you know and I work

24:39 primarily with ChatGPT I know there's other uh LMS out there and you know choose choose the one you like because

24:45 they all end up being the same anyway anyone who has one feature gets copied by the other within a few months. So

24:51 pick one and stick with it so you get familiar with it instead of trying to jump to the hottest. So you you think so some people are

24:58 saying I should use claude now for this like for uh personality. I should use

25:05 this one for statistics and this but I haven't done that for

25:12 specifically I think what you're talking about getting it to know me is got to be

25:17 better than just jumping over to Claude or Grock when it's a different subject

25:22 or or approach right I mean stick with one is really actually important right I think so it gets to know you as you

25:29 say and and you know and then you don't have to keep learning if you keep chasing after the latest hottest

25:34 you're you're going to be wasting time relearning and retooling yourself, right? Good point. So, what I was talking about before is

25:41 as it's getting to know you. All of these LLMs are designed to please you. So, they all want to tell you what you

25:47 want to hear and that's what you got to be cautious about. Yes. So, you tell it say that oh this is the

25:55 critiquing part. Go ahead. Say that again because you could fall into this.

26:00 And it in the very beginning I was very proud of myself and then after a while I was like stop it knock it off. I

26:06 actually told it stop it. Yeah. You can tell ChatGPT you say hey I want to set up a fruit stand. And

26:11 they'll say that's a great idea. It's the best idea. Amazing idea. This is going to be amazing.

26:17 Yeah. And then you tell it you know you know I live in Alaska you know. [laughter] So I don't you know it's there's not a

26:24 lot of climate weather up. That was good. And you know, this is the thing that

26:29 these LLMs don't understand. And they're always trying to say, you know, they're always trying to make you happy. They're programmed to be nice. So, you can you

26:37 can circumvent that by specifically saying, "Hey, be brutally honest with me. Please attack my ideas. Look at my

26:44 competitors. Look at other other products. This is the prompt. This is the prompt. Go ahead."

26:49 And it will shift gears. It will completely change. And then you won't get such a nice ChatGPT anymore. It'll

26:56 tell you everything wrong with your idea. And actually, that's what you want to hear. You want to you want to flush

27:01 that stuff out before you start writing code. Yeah. You want to get a good plan for an application. Um, writing the application

27:09 is the is now the easy part. In ChatGPT, you can write uh this code

27:16 for for this app. Yes. So, try that. Yeah. It's it's it's pretty amazing. So,

27:23 that is pretty amazing. You just you just all you have to do is ask. It's just it's science fiction.

27:31 That has to be one of the best lines I I've heard on this show that I I can remember. So, here's one of the

27:38 questions about StockX. Gerard, he was on a long I haven't seen him in a while. I remember that name. How does SoftEXIT

27:46 handle changing business requirements? Hold on. Hold on. Before you answer, ask

27:52 that. build up on SoftEXIT for a minute. What is that? I know what it is,

27:58 but tell everybody who hasn't seen this show before or knows you. Sure. So, SoftEXIT is a business

28:05 application that is essentially like a super database. Anything that you need

28:10 to keep track of internally. It's not it's not like a publicly facing list that somebody can search in your

28:16 website. This is all internal stuff. Um you can see it in a form of one of the and we have several apps uh in our app

28:23 store that you could download and have pre-programmed ready to go. Customer relationship management CRM is is

28:29 [snorts] already part of our our app platform. We just released a contract. Wait, stay there. Stay before you move

28:35 on. CRM, I'm actually looking into that right now because this business is growing so much, you know. Um, so what

28:42 does your app your CRM app do and then and then continue on the next app you

28:48 were going to talk about, but I'm personally interested in what you mean by that CRM app. [snorts]

28:53 So CRM keep track of your leads, right? you, you know, you have a funnel and they come in through the leads and then

28:59 you work with them and then you convert them eventually to a customer, a paying customer or or signed up for a client

29:06 and then you need to keep track of those interactions so that every time you reach out to that customer, you're not

29:11 blind. You they don't you won't hear the conversation. Well, you know, you said that to me last time, right? So every

29:17 time you pull somebody up, you look at all the history of all the communications, you know the company size is. You know what the person's name

29:23 is, their title, and and you come to what they do, what they do, and you come to the call

29:29 prepared as opposed to every time you you reach out to this client that you're

29:34 you're starting from scratch. No, you're kind of where I am right now. Which is where I am right now, which slows down

29:41 the relationship because I don't know it as much, much less scheduled dates in that beyond it. Right.

29:47 Right. Exactly. So, it's it's keeping track of the relationship because you can't you can't memorize relationship

29:55 with a thousand people. You can't remember a thousand people's wives, you know. It's it's so you put all that in

30:01 the notes and then it it follows a process to all the way up till they're a

30:07 client and then once they're a client you have in our system you have a support module. So if they have a

30:13 complaint or anything you can log in the system and then you can assign those complaints to someone who will solve

30:19 that problem for that particular client and it's it's all about maintaining that relationship with the customer.

30:26 All right. So this so it's a it's a fullbuilt. So how how so I call you up.

30:32 I say I want that CRM app. Okay. I I have it now a download or however

30:38 however that business transaction is done. Right. So now I have it. Um

30:45 when I open it up, do I just tell it what I want? H do I have to manually

30:50 enter stuff still in or how how how does that CRM become effective?

30:57 So the CRM all CRM are filled become populated. That's all CRM there's a little bit of typing

31:03 involved right we don't have the AI interface where it's doing dictation and all that I think at that point it would

31:09 get in the way in in the way right so as you got a customer on the phone you're not going to speak out of the side of

31:15 the mouth and go hey ChatGPT he just said this right so it's you're going to type that out um

31:21 that's a good point you know and that's that's the thing everyone seems to think AI is going to replace everything there are places you

31:27 can't talk you can't talk in a in a conference room with people because they're going to be like, "What' you say, James?" I go, "Oh, I'm talking to

31:34 my AI." So, there's still typing in the world. And I think that's how the our

31:40 CRM works. The AI, we have an AI generator in our in our system that builds the actual app itself. It doesn't

31:47 do the daily interaction with you. So essentially it if you need like an inventory system, you can just ask it,

31:54 hey, I need something that will track my supplies, the purchase orders, and uh

32:01 you know, whether I'm taking things in or out. Uh and then suppliers. Okay. So when I'm buying your app,

32:07 that's what's happening is you're telling it what you want to what I want. I'm telling you, yeah, I

32:14 want to build a CRM that has all these aspects and then I can and then I have a CRM

32:20 now. I have a a a Salesforce. That's that's the one I've always used, but I have a

32:26 CRM now and it it's it and then I populate it on my computer wherever I Right.

32:34 Yeah. A CRM is a lot more complicated. So, what we do is we supply that one in

32:39 an app, a pre-built app. things that take that are a little more involved that would take a lot of more iterations

32:44 and time. We put that in our app store and all our apps are free. Once you sign up for membership, you get access to

32:50 these apps and it's going to be an ever growing body of apps. So, but let's say you have a need that

32:56 we didn't build an app for and and I'm sure there's a lot of custom processes that businesses go through.

33:03 So, we have an AI architect that will build you that base app and you know it won't be perfect, right? So, but it'll

33:10 build out all the tables, the data structures, everything you need. And then you just go in and since it's not

33:15 generating code, it's configuring a stable application. You just go in and tweak it. You move, you know, move the

33:22 form fields around or you add a couple of fields or add a new table. You can do all all by hand without programming

33:28 because it's a noode platform, but you're not starting from scratch.

33:34 That is that is that is phenomenal. So you have both directions to go through here. And is this a club me stopped

33:41 exit? Is this a club membership kind of thing? A community membership kind of thing. H how does that what does the

33:48 company look like as a whole? If I'm going to become a you said it as soon as

33:54 you join join your community, you you have access to all this stuff. What is the community look like?

34:00 Well, we we don't have a community. It's just membership is just a term we use signing up, right? it makes it sound,

34:06 you know, more friendly and approachable than, you know, just sign up. So once you have that that membership, you get

34:13 access to all the apps and then you could download them all. So we're not just selling a CRM. We're not just

34:20 selling a contract manager. We're not just selling, you know, various apps.

34:26 We're selling a platform that once you're in into that membership of the platform, you can download all these

34:32 apps and you have access to it. Plus, you have access to the AI architect. So, you have a lot of tools at your disposal

34:38 to build systems that will support your business without having to write any code or hire anyone.

34:44 I love that. That is that is [clears throat] that is probably one of,

34:49 you know, there's a lot of support companies for businesses out in the world. Always have, right? I mean, it's

34:55 that's the it's the complexity of business. Uh contractors and this and

35:00 that. Um, and and and what's phenomenal today, and I'm going to get into this,

35:06 I'm gonna work into this question, but what's phenomenal today is the ability

35:12 to run your business in a way that uh 10, 20, 30 years ago could not have been

35:19 conceived by a mom and pop shop that they could run like IBM.

35:24 um that there there's no there was no ability and that's how fast AI is

35:29 moving, right? Because now people are just starting to understand

35:34 it to a degree as far as that there's all these additional benefits out there. But anybody under the age of 50, let's

35:43 say, and probably even a little bit older than that, but anybody under the age of 40, let's say, um you know, grew

35:49 up with this stuff. So the the the learning curve so that speed that AI is

35:55 running at now is only going to accelerate right is exponentially

36:01 um because the younger generation it's like uh uh you know I I was a high

36:07 school athlete. I was really good but if I started when I was three uh by the

36:12 time I got into college I'd be at another level because you know it's it's you just grew up with that right? So

36:20 I I know I can answer this question by saying both. [laughter] Is AI better for startups or established

36:27 businesses? It's obviously better for both. I just think it gives that unfair

36:33 advantage to uh startups because the businesses that are are have been around

36:39 for 50 years didn't have this this luxury to be able to start ahead of the

36:44 game like now. Or or is it is it I I'm going to pick a side in this fight. So,

36:50 okay. Yeah. Not because that's where I was just going. I was going, "Wait a minute. Maybe it is. There is a better

36:55 one or the other." Who's your side? I think it's better for startups. I knew you were going to say that because

37:01 the culture, right? It's Well, it they're on a clean slate. They don't have legacy stuff in their

37:07 way, right? And they can this the philosophy I would say is AI first, right? they're going to

37:13 go to AI and start asking and everything is going to be designed from an AI type of perspective. Very dynamic, very

37:20 nimble. Whereas large businesses, you can give them AI. Uh, you know, how many

37:26 times have you probably seen, you know, that a big business hires an Einstein and won't listen to them, right? So, so

37:33 you've just given them an Einstein with AI and you know, they they don't listen

37:38 to smart people all the time. How many times have you scratched your head and and looked at a company and say, "Why would they do that?"

37:44 Right? Because somebody was in the way, some legacy person, some, you know, hidden agenda or whatever. So, this is

37:51 where the little guy can actually be more nimble and and can actually eat the lunch of a large company. And I think

37:58 size is is, you know, it used to be security in large security of business

38:05 partnerships with large companies. And I've seen that with like a Deloitte. That's why Deloitte works with the government

38:12 everywhere and almost to a fault, right? Because they keep defaulting to a large company,

38:17 a huge company. Yeah. Because the that's what they know that there's an army of people that are going to solve their problem for them,

38:24 right? And they're they're literally to work with a smaller company because they have less resources. But I think the

38:30 advantage now is the smaller companies because they can turn on a dime with AI. They can leverage that. they can get

38:37 decisions to turn around quickly and they don't have to deal with, you know, 150 people's agenda and career

38:43 positioning to get in the way of good decisions. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's so true because uh

38:50 you know what's the old saying, you know, it's like comparing a speedboat to a a cargo, right? A car a car cargo

38:58 container has to take this big long turn and a speedboat whoop can go like that. Um and and and awesome awesome points

39:05 there. Uh Nick's Nick's got a great comment here that I would like you to read and respond to, would you?

39:11 Sure. Great show, great conversation. Thanks for sharing your expertise.

39:17 Always happy to share. Thank you very much, Nick. And and read this one as well. Mike Zun Zunki,

39:25 uh loving the energy and practical advice in this live show.

39:30 We have 750 people on. That's bigger than our

39:35 last show. I think that's great. I remember if I remember right, I think there's more. I think we had 500 and

39:41 change. Something like that. I think something like that. Sounds about right. Right. So, um this is this is this is

39:48 kind of where we chatted about before and really where a lot of the discussion on AI is at the moment. You know,

39:55 there's a lot uh a lot of people in the know and out of the know or don't know

40:01 yet uh that are talking about all sorts of different things because we've all seen uh uh science scientific uh science

40:10 fiction movies. I don't know what is going on with my words today, but we've all seen those movies where the robot,

40:17 you know, killed off the human race and, you know, so there what role does human

40:23 judgment play still play? And and obviously that's the biggest focus,

40:29 right? I one of if not the biggest focus right now is is that human judgment and

40:35 this can be gone for for good and can be done for evil. Part of the answer to

40:41 that question here, what he's saying, what Adam's saying, I believe part of it

40:46 is we need to get better officials, you know, government people that are

40:52 quit trying to line their own and there's both sides of the aisle. I'm not this isn't political show. Um but we do

40:58 talk about politics because with AI coming if our politicians are they can

41:04 use it at a much higher level than we can until we get the the understanding and knowledge above AI should make

41:12 everybody wealthy. I believe in the civilized world a there's a point in

41:17 time where the cost of goods and services become so low that nobody should ever be have ever

41:24 live under the poverty line because I think all of those services are going to come at such a at a point that now we

41:31 have government officials can either aid that or or fight against that but in the meantime

41:38 what is what do you think about judgment and do you think we're doing enough about policing and and all those things

41:45 that people my age and above at least are scared of. Well, actually college

41:50 kids too for there's a lot of people that are going against u AI art and this

41:56 and that saying that nobody will will like it because it's AI derived. Well, I

42:01 don't believe that's true, but there's a lot of concern behind AI as well. What what do you say to that?

42:09 I think it's uh that's a bigger problem than this small brain can handle. It's

42:14 or this show. Yeah, it's a really big problem. But when just broad Bush, it's AI doesn't the thing is AI doesn't

42:21 really do anything on its own. It's all it all has a human driving it. And it comes down to the motives and the morals

42:28 of the individual asking the questions. Good point. So, and and the one thing I

42:34 think is funny is people talk about AI and hallucinations, how it lies and gives you an answer or whatever. And I'm

42:40 like, well, since you modeled it after human intelligence, and since we all, you know, we have a tendency to lie as a

42:47 as a species, why are you surprised by that? It it models our behavioral patterns to a

42:54 certain and it's only reacting to what we put in because I have had AI go on a what I

43:00 call hallucination but if you go back and correct your own prompt then it

43:05 gives you the information that makes more sense. Right. That's correct. It has to give you an answer. So if it doesn't have one, it'll

43:12 make one up. [laughter] Well, yes and no. I've actually had uh a

43:18 a a an agent come back to me and say, "I don't know the answer the way you're asking that question." And I'm not going

43:24 to make up like a date or something, you know? Oh, wow. I've seen that happen. I've actually had AI come back and

43:30 correct me and and and I've gotten into a couple political discussions like I ran for commissioner and so forth, but

43:38 there's certain things it's it's interesting. it it try it it will try

43:44 its best to not allow you to do something wrong. It's very cautious

43:51 about political discussions about facts, you know, it has all that information.

43:56 So, it can actually be a nice guidance counselor, you know, in presenting

44:01 information out into the world as well. Yeah, I've had it correct me before.

44:07 I Yeah, I love it. I love it. uh for you know reflection of ideas and you know

44:13 kind of really flushing them out. It it it's perfect for that. Yeah. Yeah. No, no doubt about it. And

44:19 well, my son said it the best to me when I first started learning this thing

44:24 because I do automation as well, right? Um he goes, "Dad, look," he goes, "Here's here's how you got to look at

44:30 this. Think of it this way. Automation is when you want something repeated time after time after time after time

44:37 perfectly for however long you want that automation running. That's automation.

44:43 AI is like having somebody to bounce ideas off of.

44:50 Yes. I call it That's the framework right there. Right. Exactly. And that's why I keep calling

44:56 it my virtual co-founder. Yeah. That I love that. I'm gonna I think I think I'm gonna I think I'm

45:02 gonna start another business and and and and use that that that title. Uh we have

45:07 a doc on with us. Doc Elie Adu, how do you keep customers at the center of your

45:14 development? Obviously, you get feedback from customers and I'm assuming that has something to do do with it, but how do

45:19 you keep customers at the center of your development? Just getting that feedback, right? So, yeah, I mean it's it's the same

45:26 that's the human element of the equation. Um so for example I've worked at two large

45:32 corporations and they had two different approaches for customers Motorola and Deloitte. Now Motorola was all about

45:38 providing quality products and they would take the customer's input as

45:44 advisement whereas Deloitte the customer was everything and they kept the

45:49 customer center at all times. They were the most important part of the entire

45:54 business equation. whatever your customer wants, we will build for you. And then that's a culture. That's a

46:00 mindset. So when you're asking these these AI elements, you need to keep your

46:06 customer at the center of those questions because AI is going to do what

46:11 you ask it to do. It's it's it's still very much a computer. If you ask a computer to do something,

46:17 it's not going to say, is this right or is it wrong? It's just going to do it. Yeah. There's there's no that's the

46:23 beauty of the the human brain, right? There's there's lived experience,

46:28 there's past experience, there's the brain's ability to to

46:36 not only filter out a lot of stuff by that process. In other words, you and I will look at something at the same exact

46:44 time at the same exact position and likely see two separate things or

46:49 receive separate information from it because all of our lives we we we've

46:55 looked at life through that prism through that tunnel through that filter of of what our past life experiences

47:02 have been. Um, so keeping that customer

47:08 I is that human element that AI maybe someday who knows someday maybe

47:15 the the the AI brain can be more than just a great database because that's

47:21 really what it is today in compared to the human brain. But what's the biggest

47:27 uh biggest challenge people face when turning their ideas into working

47:32 applications in AI? Is it just understanding that it's that you have to

47:38 understand what you're telling it to do? Just to build off of what you said a minute ago, is it that's is that the

47:44 most difficult thing to sit back and think I have to express this in a way

47:50 that that uh that then we can start working off of. Is that the most important challenge?

47:56 Well, there's two ways. There's two ways to look at that, right? The the greatest challenge of turning your idea into an

48:02 application. There's less friction now because you can ask for it and it'll start to build it. Looking at this

48:09 question differently, I would say the biggest challenge really I I think the the key word that it might be missing

48:16 here is a successful application. So, you can build anything now. Uh

48:22 that's easy. It's it's your idea. Ideas are so important nowadays. And you need

48:28 to have the right idea for it to survive and succeed in this world, right? You

48:34 have a great idea. James, can you do me a big favor? I've got to go grab one thing. Can you build

48:40 off on that and give me some time to run back here? Yeah, absolutely. All right, babes.

48:46 So I I think putting a lot of thought into an idea is extremely important that

48:52 you can build anything today. You could build a perfect application for two people and then you know what was the

49:00 purpose of that because you only had two sales or two clients. What you want to

49:05 do is really think through your ideas. So how does it address the masses? How

49:10 do you write something that's successful for the general general audience or your

49:16 targeted audience? So just building something you can build anything nowadays and you could call that a

49:22 success but will it be used? Will it be useful for that entire audience? Is it

49:28 flexible enough that it could expand beyond that audience? So the the idea is

49:33 literally the most important thing today. You have to come up with a good idea and you need to spend some time

49:41 building that idea and building upon that idea before you actually start writing code because now that's the

49:46 easiest part. So before an idea could evolve over time because it took so long

49:52 to build an application. You would tell your developers, hey here's an idea I'm thinking about. Let's kind of put it

49:58 together. And it you might spend a year doing that before your app even hits the public. So that was the process before

50:06 but now it's accelerated consistent uh considerably where you can say all right

50:12 let's build let's build a minimal viable product by the end of this week that's very possible and it having that kind of

50:20 speed it you don't have as much time challenging yourself when the idea so

50:26 that's what you got to be careful about is the idea interesting I like that Um, and just to

50:34 build off of that, um, Mech Mech, uh, do you believe AI powered apps development

50:42 will create more opportunities for small businesses to compete with larger

50:47 businesses or larger companies? I don't know if that's necessarily the answer to that's obviously yes. We

50:54 kind of went through that earlier in a couple of uh questions ago, but I want to change the this why I like to ask the

51:00 questions. I want to change this a little bit because

51:07 it's it's not in this case it ain't about competing with larger companies.

51:12 It's about and you you brought this up a little earlier. It's about being able to

51:18 have the resources to create the idea for an app uh for another app and then

51:23 what happens and then hey I got this other idea and then one idea spawns another idea which creates another idea

51:30 and and and I I think I really want to look at this more as I think larger

51:36 companies can do R&D better. they have more resources and uh before certainly

51:42 now with AI and some of the the abilities to to work like larger

51:49 companies even no matter what size you are if you have all the other human aspects of competition and wanting to do

51:56 right and you've got your ideas um but I think that this what we're talking about

52:04 now just to change Mac's question a little It probably gives smaller

52:09 companies more ability to have more ideas, have produce more products, have

52:15 have better products, more efficient, but also more, right? [snorts]

52:20 Yeah. I mean, it's it's the iterative thing. That's that's what I keep coming back to. The the challenge is no longer

52:27 the building the application that you have to get it right the first time. You can start out with a minimal viable

52:32 product really fast now and get feedback from your customers and start to incorporate that feedback in a tighter

52:39 loop than than ever before possible. And and say that last part again. The

52:45 the tighter loop your feedback your feedback loop is tighter than ever before. Be you know

52:51 before you'd have to spend two years building an application. Then you get customer input and then it would take

52:56 you another six months for your next release. Now you're talking you could have an app built, you know, let's say maybe not

53:03 something as complicated as as SoftEXIT Studio, but you could have an app built maybe in a month and then and you can

53:10 get feedback and a week later you could have that feedback incorporated into your release and a week after that.

53:16 You're not going to get that with these largecale company software packages as you know I keep falling back to to

53:24 Salesforce but something like that. They're not going to be able to turn that ship on a dime. Oh god, no. Trust

53:30 me. And and it's not going to cost you just a dime either,

53:35 right? So this is why I think the small companies have a huge advantage.

53:40 They do. However, what comes with that though is a tremendous amount of competition and a

53:46 very crowded space. And I think so now more small companies. Ah, gone. Gone.

53:51 Yeah. it's more small companies and then you're going to have a longer sales cycle because people or you're not going

53:58 to get a any movement at all because your clients are going to be so overwhelmed with choices they may not

54:04 make a choice at all. And so that's the future I believe that you're going to see smaller companies, more product

54:10 offerings, so many things to choose from that people will have a difficult time making a choice. And I think that's the

54:16 challenge in the future. So yeah, I got an app, right? Yeah, I'm out there. This

54:21 is great. I never thought I'd be in this space. And then you look around and there's like a hundred other people

54:27 doing something very similar. I think there was a there was an old movie where a guy says, "I'm unique." I can't

54:33 remember the the movie, but he gets off the train and he's in a white suit and a white hat and he gets off into a crowd

54:38 of everyone in white suits and white hats and he's no longer unique. That that is hilarious. And I I love the

54:45 points because it it's true. you know, the human element that that who you are as a person still really uh develops or

54:55 says how how successful a company's going to be because now I can compete with the larger companies which I'm sure

55:00 they hate, but now I'm also competing against a lot of more of me. Um and and

55:07 so the things naturally break down. Um there was a point I wanted to bring up.

55:12 It was uh you made you made a comment as far as when people have too many choices, they

55:20 they have a difficulty making a decision, right? Yes. And that really goes back to the uh the

55:27 uh the car colors. The colors of cars. And the reason there

55:34 are only actually seven colors of cars is because if they had every

55:42 because of exactly what you're talking about, they gave them the red, the green, the black, the blue, you know,

55:47 that kind of colors to choose from. So they had choice. But if that that kept expanding and expanding, uh they they

55:55 which they did for a little while. Now there's shades of course you know shades I'm not talking about that but car

56:02 makers car dealers said no more than seven available because people

56:09 car sales went down because people couldn't make up their mind. [snorts] You know I I'll I'll tell you a little

56:15 side story that I tell all my uh technical staff and they'd all be laughing if they're watching this now

56:21 because I've told this I it's called the three shirt story. So when I was in high

56:26 school, I worked at a habadasherie and you know I made commission and I used to

56:32 compete with a guy who sold shirts and this guy sold shirts like crazy and I for some reason the people walk out the

56:39 door and not buy a shirt. And I said, "How do you do it? I don't understand. How come you I I'm selling the same

56:45 shirts. You're selling more than me." And I thought he wouldn't tell me. And he did. And he said, "James, it's really

56:50 simple. People can't make decisions." He goes, "So what I do?" and and it was a shirt and tie combination. So he says,

56:57 "What I do is I show them only three shirts." And I said, "Okay, I've done that. I've shown people I pick the three

57:03 best shirts and I show them." He says, "Well, that's where you're you're going wrong. You're [clears throat] giving them three choices. I give them two."

57:09 And I said, "I don't understand. You're showing them three shirts." He goes, "I pick an ugly shirt."

57:16 He says, "They immediately look at the ugly shirt and they say, you know what? I don't want that shirt." And they put

57:21 that aside. Now they're down to a choice of two. And usually people can make an eitheror decision fairly easy.

57:28 So, and then he said there's a side effect to this equation. He says sometimes they pick the ugly shirt. He

57:35 says because they have no taste. And he goes that's 30% of the sales I wouldn't have gotten because I never would have

57:41 showed anyone that shirt [laughter] with. So he says people were surprised.

57:47 Smart guy. And he sold more shirts than anyone else. And I went to that system and my sales went up and I realized I was

57:54 trying to oversell. I was trying to over I was trying to provide the best possible service and what I was doing

57:59 was overwhelming that customer with choices and then they they you know and what happens when somebody can't make a

58:05 choice, they don't make a choice. Exactly right. Exactly right. Would you do me a favor and read what David has to

58:11 say here and then respond? Certainly. Really enjoying uh this live.

58:17 The future of app development looks exciting. Absolutely. Look at look at look at he's mean. Look

58:22 at look at that thing. He's got gray hair all over his [laughter] face. That is good to see. Would you also read what

58:28 Gerro says there? Yeah, great point about keeping customers needs at the center of

58:33 innovation. They're the ones buying from you. They're the ones who are you're ultimately answering to. I don't care if

58:39 you're a soloreneur or a CEO. You answer to your customers. Period.

58:44 100%. 100%. Otherwise, you don't have customers, right? Yeah. You know, we've been going for an hour

58:50 now. Oh, it doesn't doesn't feel like it. No, it's like bam. So, Cecil here. Um,

58:57 amazing disc. Actually, there's a comment and a question. Why don't you read Cecil what he's got to say here?

59:04 Amazing discussion. How can someone with great with a great business idea get started building an app using AI today?

59:11 Okay. So, you've got the idea. Um, essentially now you ask it. You you

59:17 literally ask ChatGPT you say you know first you pick a platform right it's going to be either Apple or Android um

59:25 and then you say build me an app in swift UI which is their latest software

59:31 development language say build me an app in swift UI and it and it and then give it to me in separate files that I can

59:38 download and it literally does that and then you download those files and then you install them into the um I think

59:45 it's uh I can't remember what it's called. It's right here. Hold on, let me take Xcode. So, you install those in

59:50 Xcode and it compiles. You run it, you test it, and you rinse and repeat. So,

59:56 that's how you build an app. Um, there are easier ways to build an app. There's

1:00:01 things called codeexes where you can give the uh ChatGPT directly direct access

1:00:09 to your file system and it will create the files for you there. Yep. I'm sorry, I don't have that kind

1:00:14 of trust, so I [laughter] rather cut and paste. There are a lot of people willing to turn their entire computer and lives

1:00:20 over to AI. I'm not one of them. So, I I'm not a good person to ask how those

1:00:25 tools work because I don't trust uh years in software development have taught me that hardearned lesson. So I I

1:00:33 do the cut and paste or I do the file transfers and install one by one so I can look at the files and make sure that

1:00:40 it's building is is is in good quality. Well, it it's funny you say that too because um you know there's a lot of and

1:00:48 my son my old my eldest son uh says that there's going to be some change in you

1:00:53 know unemployment numbers and because there's going to be an evolution that is coming on and in and not people

1:00:59 necessarily losing jobs but jobs changing the requirement of of positions

1:01:06 changing. You you said you said it there and made me think of this. He said, "Now

1:01:11 what we're going to have is there's probably going to be less people creating code. There's going to be less

1:01:17 people doing this or less people doing that. But with all this AI, these these

1:01:24 these um not bots, well, the bots are the these

1:01:30 these uh what are they called? What are your assistants called? Uh what do they call them?

1:01:36 Agents. Agents. So your agents are going to be starting to create code or writing our

1:01:41 more code. They're doing it already. But what's going to happen is you need managers for these agents, human human

1:01:47 beings that can correct and and and and edit and and make sure that the stuff

1:01:54 that's being written is being written correct. We're going to lose some employees and then people are going to

1:01:59 be reworked, re-educated, re new job titles and and and [clears throat] so

1:02:04 the jobs coming in the future are going to be considerably different than the jobs in the past. The plumbers, the

1:02:10 electricians, those aren't going away. I mean that that's infrastructure and I I don't see that kind of stuff going away.

1:02:17 But I think the office numbers are going to have a u have an adjustment. Rob

1:02:23 Thomas, as you may or may not know, is my favorite singer in the world. This is not him. Matchbox 20 if you if you know

1:02:29 the group. Um, and then his solo career. But, uh, would you read what? This is

1:02:35 another one of the statements and questions. Would you read his statement here and then uh and then and then read

1:02:42 the question and answer it if you Excuse me. So, it says, "Thanks for sharing these insights. What do you

1:02:48 think will be the biggest breakthrough in AI app development over the next few years?" Great question here to me

1:02:55 and hard one and a hard one because stuff moves so fast, right?

1:03:00 I think we're here. I mean I I the code. So at the beginning of the year [snorts]

1:03:06 I saw a lot of flaws. I saw like um what I call feature drift where features

1:03:12 would drift would be taken out. AI would make decisions and remove features without telling you and you know and and

1:03:19 really caused disruption and it was you had to keep an eye on it. It was a lot of work. That's all been solved. I

1:03:25 haven't seen feature drift in quite a while. I think that's the big breakthrough. I think in you know the

1:03:30 only I think it's incremental now maybe better quality of code over time, more

1:03:36 uh keeping security in mind at all times when it's building code. But I think you can just ask for that. I think I think

1:03:42 we're here. They really do. That's an interesting response. Now, now that I think about

1:03:49 it, I thought uh what is going to be the next great innovation in uh in writing

1:03:56 uh AI apps, right? Or writing apps and AI development, right? Um and then you

1:04:02 said, I think we're here. And then I started to think, okay, that makes sense because

1:04:08 the the the stuff that's going to develop out of this is what's going to develop out of it. That's where the next

1:04:15 Yes. But but what you just said, you just said that the gatekeeper, I don't know if that's the right word or not,

1:04:20 but the gatekeeper, the thing that is developed that ability

1:04:26 is is there is here. You said you said the words. I think we're here. And and

1:04:31 so all the development is going to be coming after this, right? Yeah. And I think I mean just to answer his question,

1:04:38 right? I think you know I hate to say this. It really pains me to say this. I've had

1:04:43 deep discussions with this uh on other shows is I think coding by hand is is

1:04:49 over. I really do. I think the companies that are still coding by hand 100% I think you're 100% accurate. Yes.

1:04:56 I I think they haven't caught on to the fact of just how good it is. And I think there's a lot of people are stumping to

1:05:01 keep the coding jobs. And I think they're dead man walking. I think there is 1.9 million jobs that have been

1:05:07 absolutely made redundant. And the world hasn't figured that out yet. And they're slowly figuring this out. And they're

1:05:13 going to be forced into it when small companies are able to build very sophisticated apps with a handful of

1:05:19 people that, you know, it's only a matter of time before they have to give into that idea. But I don't think the

1:05:25 it's the end of the lives of the coders. I think they changed their role. Yeah. They go into more of uh instead of being

1:05:33 in the orchestra playing, you know, an instrument that now they're the conductor of their own orchestra, right?

1:05:39 And now they can write their own songs. So, you know, that's the layman's terms of, hey, now you can start your own

1:05:45 companies because you have the technical background to ask better prompting questions because I guarantee you

1:05:51 somebody who knows technical uh knows how to program can ask for better

1:05:56 programming from AI. So, that's a huge advantage and I think they need to get over the shock of, you know, I love to

1:06:03 code. I, you know, I've been I've been doing it as my hobby. I come home and I I work, you know, you saw the old

1:06:09 machines I had from the last show that you know, I like to work on old stuff. Yeah. Where'd you Hey, you're you

1:06:16 changed studio. I You know what? You're right. Because I love that stuff that was there. But here, I'll pop I could pop it over.

1:06:22 Let's see. Let me see. There. There's my That's the one. There it is. [laughter]

1:06:28 Those are old 1970s. Like it was like the first PC ever. Yeah. Is the uh Altter over there.

1:06:34 The one on the left, right? Yeah. had a third one. Yeah. And then uh the one before that is an

1:06:39 IMSAI that was on War Games. So I mean I I love the code and you know

1:06:45 this that's the kind of equipment I I you know I didn't work on those that those predated me but you know the Mac

1:06:52 one that the old Mac original Mac that was the computer I worked on. So you know

1:06:57 I had one of those. I had one of those. I remember the floppy. But you know, I I

1:07:03 have to admit that those days, you know, if I want to code, it's a hobby. It's you can no longer code for work. But now

1:07:11 you need to transition. Those programmers need to transition. And because their days are numbered before

1:07:16 companies figure out that writing by hand now is is less efficient. So it's less efficient. It takes 10 times

1:07:23 as 10,000 times as long. And uh and and you still have to correct for errors

1:07:30 no matter what, right? Yeah. And I you know I talk to really good developers and they say, "Well, no AI can code as good as I can." And I

1:07:37 said, "Well, you haven't worked in a big corporation because no one in the corporation can code as good as you

1:07:42 either because most of the coders out there are average and AI is better than average." So, so you know, we need to

1:07:50 read the writing on the wall that those those days are are gone and we need to start shifting those people. So, I think

1:07:58 the the the job apocalypse is going to be in the technology field, but I don't

1:08:03 see it spilling over into the real world like I originally thought because it's interesting if you look at the tech

1:08:10 world, you know, Microsoft just announced that they're trying to get 60,000 programmer or people in their

1:08:16 company to buy out to get out and um essentially they know and that's 25% of

1:08:22 of Microsoft. They now know that they can employ this technology and they

1:08:27 could reduce their company by 25%. I don't think that translates into all the

1:08:32 other companies. I really don't. I think because AI is really good at coding, but AI is not necessarily good at making

1:08:40 business decisions and I would never ever ever turn over business decisions to a machine. You need the human

1:08:47 involvement in there to make good judgment on on because AI doesn't know everything every nuance about your

1:08:53 business. It just knows everything about the world, the facts, but it doesn't know the nuances. And that's where the

1:09:00 human element is of extreme value, the judgment call. Nuance. What a word, right? I mean,

1:09:06 that's that's probably going to become one of the bigger words in the world. Uh, and moving forward, uh, this is

1:09:14 incredible. We still have over 700 people and I've got a couple more comments. It looks like the comments are

1:09:19 slowing down a bit here. Um, but uh I I I I want to uh have have you and I go

1:09:28 through these comments uh before we do that. There's one question here. The rest look like Oh, no. There's two

1:09:34 questions and several comments. But one thing I I' I've really become proud of

1:09:40 and I think I mentioned this to you on the past show is my copy and paste uh

1:09:46 skill sets. I I I'm really proud of the the the importance of of my work and how

1:09:52 I've been developing that. How what in your opinion did I do okay on on the

1:09:57 copy and paste of SoftEXIT.com? Oh, I gotta take a look because my

1:10:02 screen is really small here. Yes, that's AC. That's accurate. Thank you. Thank

1:10:07 you, Rod. I love my practice. It's helping me out. But let's go back here. I'm gonna have

1:10:12 you read this one. No, I I'll read this one and the next one. And then I have

1:10:17 two comments from another show and somebody named Natalie. And then I'm

1:10:23 going to have you go into your close. uh any final thoughts or comments that you want to leave people with now that I

1:10:30 know my my my uh copy and paste skill sets are are still holding holding true.

1:10:36 So, I'm going to read the first one here. It says, "Excellent conversation." Thank you, Paula.

1:10:41 What kind of everyday business problems can people solve with AR AI powered

1:10:49 applications? Now, I mean, I've what we've talked about maintenance stuff. You're basically creating an app that

1:10:56 solves a problem by telling it what to do. Is that what how do you want to

1:11:01 expand off of that on what Paula is commenting on here? So, I would say it's really great at

1:11:08 analyzing large amounts of data. This is something that humans or especially me

1:11:14 are not particularly enthusiast. Right. You could give it, you know, let's say

1:11:19 you've got like 10 15 spreadsheets or something of data and you're trying to make sense of something and somebody's

1:11:25 asked you to figure out something like let's say you have a whole data or a whole uh Excel spreadsheet of trucks,

1:11:32 right? And then you have and then and they're flagged as whether they're working or not and their locations. And

1:11:39 then you have a nationwide business of locations in another spreadsheet. And then you could say you can hand like AI

1:11:45 both these spreadsheets and say look I need to move things around and I need to

1:11:50 you know I don't want to move a truck from California to New York when when there's a truck in Chicago right so you

1:11:58 say can you look at all of our inventory and all of our assets and all of our locations and find the most efficient

1:12:05 way of moving working vehicles to those locations and that would take you maybe

1:12:10 all day if not a couple of days. AI can do it in 30 seconds. So, you just

1:12:17 literally shove the spreadsheets in because it can read spreadsheets. It could read documents and you tell it to

1:12:23 analyze it and to give you some sort of a a return answer to your question and

1:12:29 it will do it. It will take that the drudgery out of going through lists comparing item for item. And that that's

1:12:37 what I love it for because those are the kind of tasks that I'd rather do something more interesting, come up with

1:12:43 a new idea than trying to analyze lots of data. And that's just two

1:12:49 spreadsheets. Can you imagine if you had 50 50 spreadsheets? Well, that might take a whole 60 seconds to analyze and

1:12:56 come back with an answer. Yeah, absolutely. I And I I've just

1:13:01 recently experienced this myself. if I have an estate and and there's budget

1:13:06 documents and you know different legal uh documents and this and that and and

1:13:12 then a series of 372 pages of bank accounts and it

1:13:19 analyzed all that to give me where it believes that position should or

1:13:26 shouldn't be. Right? And uh so I' I've experienced this firsthand.

1:13:32 How do you keep customers at the center of development we already talked about, right? That that so so it looks like

1:13:38 Kenneth just just add back on what we were talking about before because it's the customers

1:13:46 that you're serving. That's basically what we were talking about. Just add a little bit of color between the layers

1:13:51 and then we'll get into a couple comments here before your final state. So that that comes down to your culture

1:13:58 of your company, right? Yeah. Yeah. and you know keeping you there are there are companies that that

1:14:04 say the customer is important and then there are companies that the customer really is important right and I learned

1:14:10 this at Deloitte um interesting quick story on this is uh when I first started at

1:14:16 Deloitte I didn't really fully appreciate this customer first the way at the level that they do I remember I was on a

1:14:22 conference call and I told the customer well that can't be done right and because it really couldn't so somebody

1:14:30 pulled me aside after that meeting and say, "Well, one, we never tell a customer no period." We tell them either

1:14:36 here's your options, which goes back to the three shirt story, or here's how much it costs, and the ugly shirt could

1:14:43 be the high price cost, and they choose not to go with that. But we never tell a customer no, right? That's a customer

1:14:50 first mentality, and it's a culture. And if you don't have that in your culture, it's not going to come through AI at

1:14:56 all. It's got to come from you. That's 100%. And and it's that was Deloitte

1:15:03 you said, right? Yeah, Deloitte. Um, isn't there

1:15:08 Toledo or isn't there another part of that name as well? Deloitte.

1:15:13 Delight and Touch. It was Delight and Touch for a while. I don't know why it changed. I never looked into it.

1:15:19 Do they build scales? Do you remember what they do? They're completely a consulting firm.

1:15:26 They're they're Okay. Okay. Delight. Yeah. Delight is all all about service.

1:15:32 They make sure that whatever you're doing works. So my son works for that company. It's a

1:15:38 multi-billion dollar multi- international company and they do and they also take care of their their

1:15:43 employees. The people that that that you know that that culture goes throughout the company

1:15:49 um uh high to low what left to right. I mean, it's it's very very important. And

1:15:56 that's people, not AI. Why don't you read what the real estate podcast has to

1:16:02 say? Oh, is this guy out of Chicago? Is that a Chicago Cubs hat? That's where I'm from. Anyway, go ahead.

1:16:08 Fantastic insight. Looking forward to seeing how AI app building evolves.

1:16:14 Yeah, I mean it basically you said it's we're here. Anything to add to that as

1:16:20 far as the evolution? Yeah, I think it you know right now it builds very small parts of an

1:16:27 application very well and you know you could you can't ask it build me

1:16:32 Salesforce right it's not going to do it it's going to give you something that kind of looks like it but it doesn't really do it doesn't have any depth to

1:16:38 it doesn't really do what Salesforce does correct and then you have to build that module at a time and you could do that through

1:16:44 AI very well maybe one day it really could do that um but I think what you'll

1:16:50 get is you'll get copy copies of existing you won't get anything that's a differentiator and I think that requires

1:16:57 iteration and and you need to build that in smaller chunks uh to come up with ideas that differentiate yourself from

1:17:05 everyone else and I think the differentiator for everything now going forward is the idea I think ideas are of

1:17:13 more value now than ever before and that your idea needs to be better than the

1:17:19 other ideas and that's how you stand out. Oh, sorry. I just flipped over to look

1:17:26 at something when you when you when you finished there. Um, yeah. I mean, and it goes back to, you know, from the inside

1:17:33 out. I am going to compete against Jill and Joe in our business. And it's me

1:17:40 that's going to make the difference in the success of that business. Right. Right. And really nothing's changed

1:17:46 there. Right. If you're sitting in a boardroom and three people have their idea and they put it forward and it's,

1:17:52 you know, really comes down to who can articulate it better, who can who can sell it and which idea is better and

1:17:57 that's the one that gets chosen. So you're now the executive in the boardroom. You're no longer, you know,

1:18:03 the worker be. So yeah, that's that's what it's elevated all of us to a new level in the playing field.

1:18:10 All right. So last comment here. I don't see anything else uh at the moment. If

1:18:16 something pops up, then we'll jump back on it. We've been going an hour and 20 minutes now.

1:18:22 And uh and this is the last comment that I see here. We got the the SoftEXIT

1:18:27 done correct. So my job except for wrapping it up is almost done here. So,

1:18:33 I'm going to ask you to comment uh read Natalie's comment and then remark back to her and and then roll that right into

1:18:40 a a final thought or something that we could cover that we didn't cover that you wanted to.

1:18:46 Sure. So, it says, "Thanks for making a complex a complex technology easier to

1:18:51 understand." I agree with that. Yeah. And you know, it's it's complex under the hood. It's easy to work with.

1:18:57 So, it's it's uh don't be intimidated by it. You're not going to break things. just start talking and interacting to

1:19:03 it. So, and if you want to see a complex application, you know, here's where I do the shameless plug, right? So, take a

1:19:11 look at uh our app. It's uh SoftEXIT.com. We have SoftEXIT studio. We now offer a

1:19:16 21-day trial, so you can actually get in and use it. Oh, so so you can actually I did not I

1:19:23 was not aware of that. So you people can actually use it for three weeks before uh

1:19:28 that that that decision has to come up. Yep. You can get in there. We you know the AI architect is included in that. So

1:19:36 um you can get in sign up and start I think I think we give like three licenses that you can test with three

1:19:44 people. You could build something. You could you know install the CRM. You could uh use the AI architect to build

1:19:50 your own type of internal support app. give it a try. It's uh never been

1:19:55 easier. And and if you're running any problems, let let us know because the trial is very new. We just released

1:20:01 this. Uh we had a lot of people who really wanted to get their hands on it before they signed up. And I said, you

1:20:07 know, that makes 100% sense. And uh so we built in the trial and you just

1:20:12 simply sign up. No credit card needed. Just sign up, start using it, and tell us what you think.

1:20:18 And obviously support is is part of that as well. Yes, we have email support uh

1:20:24 you know supportsoftexit.com and uh we'll help you out. We're very interested in get pe getting people to

1:20:30 use this. So, we're pretty responsive. I I would imagine that you would want to

1:20:36 be it would make it would make the most sense to do that. Any final comments before uh you uh you want to say and

1:20:43 give everybody a big wave goodbye? No, thank you. Rod, thank you for having me back. Uh

1:20:49 it's always a pleasure to talk with you. Yeah. And you know, I get a lot out of it as well. So, it's it's uh hearing what

1:20:57 other people think who are are not as versed in AI is very insightful because

1:21:02 I have a tendency to get in my silo and not see the outside world. And you allow

1:21:07 me to open the window and poke my head out and say, "Oh, okay. That's what's going on in the world." [laughter]

1:21:13 Well, and this is and this is an important time to to have these conversations and to have them in long

1:21:18 form. Like I said, we've got 700 people after an hour and a half. So, um, any

1:21:24 any last last remark or a wave and I'll catch up to you after I do the closing monologue.

1:21:30 No, I thank you to the 700 people who have listened and, uh, really appreciate

1:21:35 that you're interested in the topic. And again, thanks, Rod, for having me here. Appreciate it.

1:21:40 My pleasure. I'll hook up with you and keep your hands off the green M&M's. Okay. Okay.

1:21:47 Uh, James, thank you. Thank you for coming. You know uh and you know for coming back and and for continuing uh

1:21:54 this conversation. You know something has stayed with me throughout our

1:22:00 discussions not just this one. For most of my working life the question was

1:22:06 whether we had the money the equipment and the people to build what we

1:22:12 imagined. Okay. Today we're beginning to ask a different question.

1:22:19 What can we imagine now that some of those barriers are coming down?

1:22:25 And I think that's an I think that's extraordinary. But I also think

1:22:32 we need to remember something. Artificial intelligence doesn't know

1:22:38 what it's like to run a small business. Has no idea. and and and worry. It

1:22:44 doesn't make it doesn't worry about making payroll, right? It doesn't know

1:22:49 what it's like to stand in a workshop at 6:00 in the morning.

1:22:54 Look at a problem that has has been solved before the the day can even be

1:23:01 begin. People know these things, right? And and those experiences matter. The technology

1:23:09 may be changing, but human judgment, no. Creativity,

1:23:15 no. And determination, those are still what give give it

1:23:22 purpose. Everybody watching today, especially those of you running small businesses,

1:23:29 raising families, or carrying around an an idea that you've never had the

1:23:35 resources to pursue. Don't Don't automatically

1:23:41 Sorry, the director just came in. Say hi to everybody, Joe. Um, that's the

1:23:47 director of the library here. They're they're building out the uh the uh the haunted house. Actually, for the next

1:23:53 several days, I'm going to be enclosed in a in a plastic black wrap. But, um,

1:24:01 learn what's possible, folks. Ask questions. Challenge the promises

1:24:08 and don't be afraid to explore something new because the next great innovation might

1:24:15 not come from Silicon Valley. It's probably not going to. It might come from a small shop, a kitchen table or or

1:24:24 a little town like Mangum, Oklahoma. Wouldn't that be something? Before we

1:24:30 go, I want to ask you to to help us keep these conversations reaching people. We're building our new

1:24:38 public uh Facebook community. So, what we have now is we have the profile,

1:24:44 right? Got I three 4 thousand people on that and and two pages. One is for IMS

1:24:50 Try, which is my old machinery business, and one is just rocked up, which is this

1:24:55 website. trying to get to a thousand followers on that. In a couple weeks, we got to almost we got up to 200. Um

1:25:04 because I'm trying to unlock further spaces. We've got about uh what do we

1:25:11 got? A little over 25,000 in our community and and I want to continue to

1:25:17 grow where these messages go. So, help us get there with the uh Rodd Duff

1:25:24 Facebook page. um which is my own pro profile page. And

1:25:30 if you believe independent conversations like these deserve a place in our communities, you can support us on Kofi.

1:25:37 That's ko-fi um uh.com roduff insights. Um you can

1:25:45 also find James and explore what he's building at softex.com. That's in that's

1:25:50 in the description, but it's also in the comments here. Uh if you take a look. Uh I appreciate your time uh your

1:25:57 experience and your willingness to talk about the possibilities James and the and the realities. Right.

1:26:06 So thank you James for again being here and and to everybody joining us right now. I'm Rodd Duff and this is Insights

1:26:14 and Straight Talk. Empowering the great middle class one conversation at a time.

1:26:19 Remember the future doesn't belong only the people who understand the technology.

1:26:25 The future belongs to the people who understand what needs to be done with

1:26:31 it. Till next time, take care of yourselves, take care of one another,

1:26:37 and keep the conversations going. And like I always say, right at about this

1:26:42 time, why? Because I'm out. Before you leave, if

1:26:48 you'd like to watch another one of the podcasts, click the first link in the description. We love having you here and

1:26:55 we appreciate all your support. And with that, producer Barbie and I are out.

1:27:01 And it's luck.