Let's Ride w/ Paul Estrada
Who else is trying to figure $hit out?
Welcome to Lets Ride w/ Paul Estrada – the podcast where a dad tackles the big questions of life, career, and everything in between, by talking to interesting people that have the answers!
When I turned 18, I lost sleep at night with questions that Google was not yet sophisticated enough to answer: What career should I pursue? How can I be more than just average? And how do successful people get to where they are (was there a secret handbook I didn't know about)? After 22 years of pondering these existential dilemmas, I’ve finally pieced together some answers – An answer that is sufficient for now, but one always in need of refinement.
Join me each week as my 6 ½ year old son, Adrian, throws out a thought-provoking question or idea, and I invite a guest to help me sufficiently respond to him. From learning about money and investing, to finding a passion in life, and exploring careers that can be meaningful for you, we cover it all with a dose of humor and some soundbites of wisdom.
So, if you’re a parent or a young adult navigating these tricky waters, or if you want confirmation that other people are sometimes just as lost as you, you’ve come to the right place.
Let's Ride w/ Paul Estrada
AI & Automation CEO: What Will Our Kids Do when AI Does Everything?
What happens when machines can do our jobs better than we can? This question is no longer theoretical—it's the reality reshaping our economy right now.
My conversation with Chadd Olesen, CEO of a company building AI systems that are transforming business operations, left me genuinely stunned. Hearing an AI system negotiate over the phone using natural pauses, regional accents, and conversational rhythm completely indistinguishable from a human was a moment that will stick with me forever. This isn't science fiction—it's happening today.
But rather than predicting a jobless future, Chadd offers a refreshingly optimistic perspective: automation isn't eliminating work, it's elevating it. Workers are shifting from repetitive tasks to creative problem-solving, relationship building, and data analysis. The value of human work isn't disappearing—it's evolving.
As a father with a young daughter, Chadd balances his excitement about technological advancement with genuine concerns about the world his child will inherit. "I'm terrified not of AI, but of the economy," he admits, wondering how future generations will navigate a transformed economic landscape. Will housing become increasingly unattainable? Will education systems adapt quickly enough?
We also explore Chadd's journey from corporate America to entrepreneurship, discussing why large organizations often "reward the agreeable, promote the political, and bury the bold." His insights on building an online presence, the acceleration of technology development, and how AI will transform entire industries make this a must-listen conversation for anyone wondering what skills will matter most in the coming decades.
Whether you're a parent wondering how to prepare your children, a professional concerned about your career path, or simply curious about how AI is reshaping our world, this episode offers valuable perspective on navigating the greatest technological transformation of our lifetime.
Subscribe now and join our community exploring the intersection of technology, business, and human potential. Your future self will thank you.
Do you know what AI is?
Speaker 2:Uh, I think so.
Speaker 1:What is it?
Speaker 2:AI. I think it's like a type of technology.
Speaker 1:It is or tech. Remember we could say tech. Yeah, so it stands for artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you know, what that means?
Speaker 2:Does it stand for technology?
Speaker 1:So basically it's like training the computers or robots to do jobs that humans do.
Speaker 2:Oh, that reminds me of something.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:In Miles. They have the ship's AI, so then the AI could do pretty much everything for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like around the ship. So like what?
Speaker 2:Give me an example want breakfast, and then you just say what you want, and then it would uh give you the breakfast that you wanted oh yeah, so, exactly so breakfast.
Speaker 1:So today, if you want breakfast, what has to happen? Dad has to get up and go to the kitchen yeah and cook you bacon and eggs? Right, yeah but you're saying so yeah, as like I can have a robot or something, do that yeah so when you get older, do you have any idea like what you're gonna do for work and and if you're gonna work like with ai and stuff?
Speaker 2:maybe yeah uh, you do I do I?
Speaker 1:yeah, I actually work with some ai stuff today and part of is like I don't know what ai is going to be like in like 15 and 20 years when you become a grown-up and then you start working does ai include your computer? It includes some of like what your computer can do, like the things that it can process and and it can like solve problems for you, and stuff like that kind of like my papa's truck.
Speaker 2:He has the ai that could answer stuff for it yeah he could actually make a fart noise.
Speaker 1:I've heard it once do you think when you get old, so when you watch like miles and because like that's it's called futuristic, when it's like it thinks of, like this is how people are going to live, like in the future?
Speaker 2:I know, but that's going to be a long, long time yeah like millions of years after I die probably.
Speaker 1:Oh, you think so.
Speaker 2:Maybe like a million or something.
Speaker 1:What do you think the world is going to be like when you grow up?
Speaker 2:Better, I guess.
Speaker 1:You think so. Yeah, how do you think it's going to be better?
Speaker 2:Because the AI could do more stuff for us.
Speaker 1:And if they, I can do more stuff for you, then what? What can you do? It's like fun, Like if I liked baseball still so you can get like AI and robots to do like your chores and like your homework, and then you just have to worry about baseball. Yeah, is that what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, that sounds pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Baseball players. Their homework is playing baseball their homework is playing baseball.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who do you think? If all the AI is doing all the work, then how are you going to make money? Because then the AI is doing all the work.
Speaker 2:So do they pay the AI money or do they pay you money? So they would pay the AI and then the AI would come and bring me the money.
Speaker 1:Hi, let's Ride. Listeners, it's your friend, paul Estrada. If you've gotten any value out of any of the episodes, I'm here to ask you to pause this episode and take a moment to subscribe to the show. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, if you're a real go-getter, please take a moment to leave a review of the podcast. I'd be indebted to you forever. Thank you for supporting and listening to the show and for going on this journey with us. Pause, subscribe and let's ride.
Speaker 1:Our guest today is the CEO of a company on the forefront of automation and the AI revolution. When automation takes over repetitive tasks, what's going to be left for us to do? And 20 years from now, what kind of jobs are going to be left for our kids to do? These aren't theoretical questions anymore. They're the reality shaping our economy. Right now. His company is building AI systems that are transforming the way companies do business.
Speaker 1:Our conversation quickly evolved from business strategy to profound questions about the future of work, parenting and human potential in an increasingly automated world. I wanted to talk to him because I recently had a moment that genuinely stunned me Hearing an AI system negotiate with the person on the phone, with natural pauses, a regional accent and conversational rhythm indistinguishable from a human. But rather than seeing this as a job killer, my guests offered a different perspective. Automation isn't eliminating work, it's elevating it. Workers are shifting from repetitive tasks to creative problem solving, relationship building and data analysts. I'm excited for our guest today, chad Olson. All right, so, as I was doing some research for this conversation, I went to your company website and I think you like that.
Speaker 1:So correct me if I'm wrong. So just to bring everybody up to speed, I go to the website and it's literally one page. There's no corporate glossy images, the standardized images with a bunch of diverse people staring at a computer screen. It's literally just a homepage with hey, this is. It's like a couple words. This is what we do Contact information, and I was just like this is genius. I love everything about this. I'm assuming that was intentional, but what were your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3:So I used to have a website and then we came into Freight and we had a website app that was talking about what we were doing and literally a month later, someone started advertising that they could do the exact same thing. It was identical language and my board was like F, all of this, rip it down, no page, we won't tell anyone what we're doing. And that's really how we've moved forward, and I think that there's this really interesting beauty in your competitors not knowing what you do and it makes it really hard to sell against us. I think the industry, you know, is super incestual Everyone knows everyone.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:And if we run the automation for almost all of the top 10, it's kind of like what the industry needs to know if it works or not.
Speaker 1:I guess what it was telling for me, because I've never seen anything like that. So, again, you just go on the website. It's just literally a couple of words this is what we do, contact us and, like I said, you look at these other websites that people probably spend a ton of money on. They've got all these different click-throughs and you read a paragraph and you're like wait, I'm still not clear what you do, and so I don't know. It's refreshing, but more so, I think what it told me about you and you tell me if I'm reading too much into it was it told me that you think differently, that you're not going to fall into the norm of doing what everybody else is doing. You're just like, hey, this is us and we're going to run our business in this way. Am I reading too deep into that?
Speaker 3:I would say that we want to be different across the board, completely, even how we engage with customers. We do believe this model of I'm going to tell you you're wrong if I think that you're wrong and you get to make a decision on if you're right or wrong. I think that that probably turns some customers off, but some of my customers, I think, hire us because of how direct we're going to be and how, when we think of innovation, we're going to go out and innovate on top of ourselves. We're not really looking at the market. We're not doing what a lot of people do. It's core to us.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that is indicative of what I see on what you post about. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you today was because you're pretty consistent with your online posting, creating a social media presence for yourself, and I think a lot of people hear those things. And one interesting stat that I saw was something like only 1% of people on social media actually are creating content, and I find that fascinating. So 99% of us are literally the ones on there just scrolling through and you are part of the 1% that's actually creating content and putting ideas like the one that you just shared with us out there. So what was your thought process around saying you know what I need to be that 1%?
Speaker 3:I need to create this online presence for myself also happened when I transitioned into freight is that that market's pretty political. A lot of people have ideas, ideals that they want to share, but they maybe feel like they can't share them, and as I started talking with a lot of leaders in the space, I would hear something, and I'm like this is crazy. This has to be shared, and so my original LinkedIn posts two, three years ago were very raw and probably a little more hate into the market of why do you operate this way, why is this company doing X, and it's been an evolution. I would say that most of AVRL's business comes inbound from my presence on LinkedIn, though Is that something that comes natural to you to share your?
Speaker 1:I'm guessing the reason why a lot of people don't do this is because you're putting your thoughts and ideas out there, and if you're a more private person, that certainly doesn't come natural. So did that come natural to you, or is that something you had to build towards?
Speaker 3:Oh man, I think I'm still building for it, so much that I have a Sony digital camera right here on my desk that I bought like a month ago because I want to create video content, and I don't know if I'm, like I get anxiety about it. I don't know if I'm, like, ready for it, and I think that I don't know, like I don't even know how to describe it. Like I put a lot of effort into what I write. I have a huge notebook that I like write all my ideas in and I go through it every day and an idea that's like oh, I feel this today. I'll rewrite it in a way, but it's a lot of putting yourself out, even what you do. It's like you're putting yourself out there and that's hard. It's really hard.
Speaker 1:I would consider myself a more private person, although you wouldn't think so, because here I am hosting a podcast. Before this, I was not on social media. I was part of the 99% just scrolling, and even with my family and friends there's some things that I put out there, but I keep a lot to myself, and so to come into an environment like this, part of it is almost like a therapeutic, in a way of just like hey, you know, I need to be more open with people. I want to share more of myself that I've been unable or unwilling to do, and for some reason, when you put a microphone in front of me, all of a sudden the thoughts and ideas that I wouldn't otherwise share start coming out. So, in a way, what I'm doing here is a little bit selfish, but part of it, too, was with raising kids and saying I'd like to document some of these things, and maybe one day they're going to want to hear some of the thoughts and ideas that I was going through in my career journey. They know what I do for a living, but this provides a little bit more of that nuance, and so, as they're growing up and going through that, maybe there's a couple of tidbits, and so you mentioned in there.
Speaker 1:You have these journals and things that you're writing in, and that's basically what this is right. You think about 20, 30, 40 years ago. People have these journals that they write in and you see it in those movies like for your eyes, only this is not to be shared. And now, all of a sudden, we're in this world where it's like no share as much as you're willing to share and put yourself out there. So have you come to some truths through this process? Has it helped you learn anything more about yourself that you didn't already know?
Speaker 3:What's interesting about writing is it's like anything. It's like almost like a skill. So the further you go down your path of journaling or writing, the easier it probably gets to come up with thought and it also becomes easier to come up with creativity. I obviously struggle with like mad ego issues, probably when I started my own company, and I think that journaling has, and writing online has, gotten me connected with a lot of people who also struggle with the same thing, and it creates really interesting and deeper conversations that people don't see on the other side. This like probably the biggest like transformative thing that's happened to me is that I'll write something on LinkedIn and it might go flat and no one likes it, but I might get like 10 or 15 texts or like some direct messages that someone's like hey, I really felt like I really felt that this is great and it really does spur a lot of conversation that happens behind the scenes. It's been really interesting.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying. Right Is that people see things online and they want to say something, but I think they. Maybe they go to that comment section and they start typing. Because I'm guilty of this. You start typing like, no, I don't want to put this out there. I do want to talk about this, but I'm going to text this guy or I'm going to DM them and talk about it that way, not put all my thoughts and ideas out there for everybody to see. It sounds like you're experiencing.
Speaker 3:I would say probably some of the people who I would consider my best friends in the industry came from either they were hating on my posts and then we ended up connecting offline and then maybe we're too similar to one another and that's why there was a clash or someone, that really some of the stuff that I was writing resonated with them and we just started talking.
Speaker 1:There's a lot to this, because the other thing is, you know, okay, so you're putting ideas out there. It's helping with your business, it's helping you in a personal way, and the other thing is it kind of forces you to these moments of self-reflection and I've talked to people in the past as well where not enough people are being deliberate in taking a few minutes out of the day for self reflection and you have no choice If you're going to come up with content. It basically forces you to quiet your mind and really think through. Okay, who did I talk to today? What are some interesting takeaways from that? As opposed to you're in meetings all day, you're bouncing from one meeting to the next, you're having this conversation and that conversation you get through the day, you're exhausted and you don't even remember half of the things that were talked about. Versus you're having a conversation and you're thinking of it, maybe with hey, I need to jot some of these things down and so those ideas and thoughts are sticking with you more.
Speaker 3:I definitely think that there's something there. I think there's also this confusion that people have, where, if you want to start writing online, you think you maybe have to write it for like an audience. A lot of what I write I'm just writing it for myself. Even some of the leadership stuff that I write on there, it's not the type of leader I am. It's the type of leader that I'm striving to be, and I'm literally writing it out there and putting it out there because I'm like I need to become this person, trying to hold myself maybe a little bit more accountable, to trying to be the person that I write about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting Again, I think it comes back to there's this openness that you're. It seems like you've come to this realization that there's a lot of value. Even though there's maybe a tentativeness and there's a little bit of apprehension, you've come to realize, it seems like relatively quickly, that there's just way more upside than there is downside.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the downside I don't think exists at all. I just think that if someone didn't want to work with me because of something that I write or say, I probably don't want to work with that person. If someone clashes with me because of what I write, there's probably something that has to do with them and not me, and I really have only seen like positive benefit for myself Just listening to this other podcast.
Speaker 1:It's called Diary of a CEO. He was doing this episode with this guy named Daniel Priestley and they were talking about the advent of AI and all the things that it's going to change. And one of the things that the interviewer asked is like well, how do I set myself up to make sure I don't become obsolete with all of this? And the number one piece of advice that he had was creating an online presence, an online persona, because that really can't be replicated. You're the person, you have a uniqueness about you, you create your own brand and, all of a sudden, all kinds of different doors open up for you.
Speaker 3:That's true though? I think that is true, and I think that, as a person, you're constantly evolving, based off of the adversity that you face and how you endure in life, and so I don't know how AI evolves the way that a human being would. A lot of the human being evolution is personally based off of emotion.
Speaker 1:I just think about that in terms of my kids, right, personally, is based off of emotion. I just think about that in terms of my kids right, which is how do I set them up for this world that's coming to be? And again, part of that conversation was to think about. It was well, think about a couple hundred years ago. The economy was based on agriculture and then so there was hundreds of people on a farm that you needed to be able to produce the things that come off of a farm. And then, all of a sudden, we switch over into the industrial age and now people are in offices and they're working in factories, but you still have there's this transition period where all of a sudden, this machine comes onto the farm that can do the work that 300 people were doing, right? And people are like, oh, what am I going to do? I'm obsolete, right? So they go into the factory.
Speaker 1:Now jobs change. You have engineers, you have people working on the mechanics, you have all kinds of new jobs that were created, but in order to do so, there was this transitionary period where people were lost and probably scared and wondering what the heck was going on. And so fast forward to today. Now we're transforming out of the industrial area into the digital era. Right, and people are scared. Now there's automation, there's AI, and people are wondering like, okay, all my the factory job that I had is going away, or this job that I had is no longer going to be, and so I found that really a fascinating corollary between those things. And so and that's why I wanted to talk to you, because I know you're very heavy invested and involved in this space but so, as you think about you know, for those people that don't know anything about it, that are way more detached, like, how do you see automation and AI integrating into people's lives and affecting how they do their jobs?
Speaker 3:AI and automation only helps the person. I think that it helps with output. It helps them perform tasks at a faster rate to actually add more value to an organization. I think that in a lot of industries, these organizations have to figure out how to continue to grow as an organization without just hiring and hiring and hiring, and for the longest time people would outsource or near shore to basically create arbitrage on employee versus, like margin expansion, because we're constantly seeing like margin erosion out of everything that exists. Prices go up.
Speaker 3:People shouldn't be afraid of AI in the sense that it's going to take their job. I just think, like what you're saying, the job evolves into probably being more creative, probably be more communicative with the human, like human to human interaction. I think that I don't know what it looks like in 20 years from now. You know, I just had a daughter in uh, january and I like have been thinking a lot about, like, what does work look like in 21 years or 22 years or 25 years from now? I don't know if I can predict what it looks like. I think that there will.
Speaker 3:There is this combination of humanist, like assisted sisted, like AI. Like you have people who know how to write prompts. You have people who know how to use the AI really well that probably elevate themselves in their career. I think a huge downfall for some people is that if you look at large corporations, some people grow their career by being political and um moving in this political, you know, like the water cooler people. I have some friends that are like this, that work for amazon, who they've like come up the ranks being vp because they were out networking. I think like jobs like that are probably going to be like impacted. It'll be harder to do unique things like that because the value creation that a human being will be able to perform in the market will be far greater than you could probably perform today without AI.
Speaker 1:I just had this aha moment that really got me thinking, and that was I'm sitting in this meeting and a lot of what we do is people need to get on a phone and talk to other people and maybe negotiate a short-term contract or even just a one truckload transaction, and they pull up this. They said, hey, we're starting to use AI and automation in what we're doing. Can we show you an example of how we're using it? We're like, yeah, absolutely so. They pull up just some media and they start playing a phone call and the phone dials and on the other, end somebody from a trucking company picks up, presumably the driver himself or dispatcher, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:And this voice just starts talking, starts giving load into shipment information. From where is it?
Speaker 3:going to? Where is it going to? What time does it pick up?
Speaker 1:what time does it need to deliver? And then the other person on the end of the line says, okay, yeah, somewhere, and I'm interested in that? What do you pay him that the voice offers, the price is that the other person, the dispatcher, says uh, you know, let's say they throw out 700, oh, can you do 900? And then there's like this pause like uh, how about?
Speaker 1:right, and so then this negotiation begins and it gets to a point where the guy negotiates down and a little bit and then he goes oh, I need to go talk to my manager and see if they'll agree with this. Again, pause comes back. Okay, yeah, that will work. End of transaction. Right At the end of that call he goes. That was not a person and it's not like when you guys normally click into an automated system and it sounds, sounds like very like ah, you have called up right. It's like. It's not like that, like it uses all the human pot, like natural pauses in conversation, the slang that would be used, like it was all there and I was like literally, like I rarely have, like where my mouth is dropping and open and that call ended. I was like whoa, and that's like a moment that's probably going to stick with me the rest of my life, to be honest.
Speaker 3:I was doing an implementation yesterday with this company that you're talking about, with a carrier, and they were calling outbound Alabama and they use like a thick southern accent and it's super awesome.
Speaker 1:No way I didn't even know it could do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they can change like the accent based off of the geography of where the either carrier is at or calling like where they're calling from. That's pretty sweet.
Speaker 1:So I listened to that and then my brain immediately goes to well, what in the world are these? Because there's literally thousands of people whose job is to do exactly what that voice just did. And so what are those people going to do now? That's the first place that my mind went to. And then, to your point, I started thinking about well, maybe, instead of making these transactional calls, they're not going to make a hundred dials anymore, they're going to make five, but they're going to get on the phone with, maybe, the head of that trucking company and they're going to start hey, how was your weekend? What's the weather like in Minnesota, and how about your favorite sport? They're going to start building. These people are going to shift from being highly transactional to building these relationships that could yield even more meaningful partnerships.
Speaker 3:I do. I think if I worked at a 3PL right now and I was a carrier sales rep like you're describing, or I worked on the account side, I'd be doing everything I could do to understand data, to understand pricing, to understand rates, like how to arbitrage certain things Again, the description that you did with them negotiating with a carrier. There's a margin expansion or an erosion opportunity somewhere in there and I really believe that the future of freight is really strong analysts who are looking at the data that's being collected by the machines to figure out how we can create some type of margin expansion.
Speaker 1:So you're going away from these repetitive tasks that really, I mean you follow kind of ABCD, abcd, that's it right. You just kind of follow the same playbook versus okay, jobs are going to become more creative, like you said, and maybe there's no template anymore, because where automation really works is when it can follow a repetitive task over and over again. That doesn't have too much. Well, it's getting better to where it can handle some deviation, but for the most part it's like OK, it stays within these bumpers, right, Whatever you programmed it to do, versus a person that you know to your point can now start to get more creative and figure out how do I deliver even more to my organization because I'm not bogged down by these repetitive tasks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've seen some account reps or account owners who have started to get really involved in pricing, starting to get really dialed into understanding how the markets move, what the nuances are in the markets, and I am fearful for the ones that don't, because if you're a shipper, you probably are going to expect a different level of service once you know everything is fully automated on the carrier sales side. You're like okay, bring me the data that show. Like I want to see the data on where are the holes in my routing guide? Where is this? What is this? Like you want them to become more of a consultant and consultative into like your relationship, versus showing up to a QBR and then you presenting them with your findings.
Speaker 1:And outside. Let's step outside of freight transportation logistics. You're, you know, you're an expert in all things. I'm going to say AI what are you just seeing in the broader market in terms of how it will play a role, just in the economy overall?
Speaker 3:I think the biggest impact that AI has is in software creation. I'm watching my engineers build tooling and applications with assistance in writing code, better standards. I mean you don't want to take the code live, but to help build, like the frameworks to build certain unique characteristics, even building interfaces, etc. Something that would take someone weeks and weeks and weeks. You're talking about pulling it down into hours and so I think the evolution of technology is going to be like moving at a pace that we've never seen before. I don't know what that does to the broader economy, but I can only imagine, you know, if all the engineers that Microsoft has, or the best engineers that they have, are using assistance, ai assistance and writing software, the evolution that they'll have on innovation is going to be something that we've never seen before, and I do believe that. Look at pre-Henry Ford, then the combustion engine and this evolution. If you go and look at the ramp, it was so fast, but I think that we're about to enter into a pace that we've never seen before.
Speaker 1:Like exponential growth, yeah, yeah. So basically, what you're saying is the same people are going to be working, but maybe, because they have assistance from technology, their output is going to go like two, three, five, x what they're capable of doing today, which is what's going to facilitate the growth.
Speaker 3:I think maybe like 15 to 30 X, okay, so just like yeah just because like especially like when you look at writing software.
Speaker 3:If I'm an engineer and you're an engineer and we have two different styles of writing code, that if I had to come in and audit your code it would take me a really long time because I'd have to understand how you write and if there was an error or a problem and you were on vacation, it takes me a really long time to understand that.
Speaker 3:What ends up happening is, if you're using like assisted application to write software, you're legitimately writing in the same format. You and I are writing in the same format because it's literally being standardized by the machine. I think about certain cases like that. I also think about the innovation that happens internally. We have a team of engineers they're like our Navy SEAL Team 6, and they're just working on internal projects with AI. Where they attacked first was on our communication, like via customer service with ticketing, and I think we eliminated maybe 40% of our ticketing engineers just because of the applications that they were able to develop to help us be more efficient as an organization. We're not pouring all of that money into innovating on our products for pricing.
Speaker 1:So let's pause there, because I heard something that maybe, if somebody's listening might get concerned, and that is you said hey, we went and solved this customer service problem and I fixed, I reduced it by 40%. So I'm like well then, what happens to those people that were trying to solve those problems? So, in your case, what happened to those people?
Speaker 3:We eliminated those roles and then we started hiring new people to work on new product and so just sort of different type of engineer. That it wouldn't be a good transition and so I don't necessarily know if the jobs go away like 100%. I think you're repurposing the funds to perform different tasks or to go after new innovation initiatives.
Speaker 1:The point being, you're still hiring people. It's just a different kind of person. Yeah, so it's not like. Yeah, right, With all this in mind that we're talking about and maybe getting way too ahead of myself here but you did mention you have a four-month-old daughter, so you're probably still in the baby moon phase and all that sort of stuff, but have you given any thought to what this means for her?
Speaker 3:as she grows up. Yeah, I'm terrified. I'm terrified not in the AI, but in the economy. So if we hyper-launch economy, what I think the most about is, how do kids my daughter's age afford homes, how do they afford certain things like that, if you have many jobs that get replaced by automation or AI and then get repurposed to maybe a higher level of jobs? I don't necessarily know what the economy looks like. I don't know what a coffee shop looks like in 25 years from now. I don't know what a McDonald shop looks like in 25 years from now. I don't know what a McDonald's looks like in 25 years. Does everything become exponentially more expensive? Definitely, I don't even know what education looks like in 20 years, and so I think what is fearful for me is just the unknown unknowns. And I think for the longest time, you could probably look towards the future, and I think they were like oh, we're going to have flying cars in 2050. We probably won't, but maybe we will. I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I think this goes back to my earlier comment about the switch from the agriculture to the industrial. I have to imagine people were feeling the same way at that time. It's like, oh shoot, I can't pick up my shovel and pickaxe anymore and go out and do this. What the heck am I going to do? And I'm more of, maybe more, optimistic, based on just some other things, and I'm less close to this than you are, but just listen to other podcasts and whatnot about there's going to be opportunity, it's going to change, but, like you said, the fear you were terrified, but the fear that people have of the unknown and I don't know. I just it seems like people are resilient. We always kind of find ways to shift and figure things out, and that's that's what I'm hoping for. That being said, I'm not I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't have some of those fears as well, which is kind of why I'm doing this which is, how do I help? And for people that are listening to this, like, how do I help give people ideas or access to people that will help them get ahead of this in the, let's just say, this event where because my wife mentions the same thing, where she's just like I don't know how our kids are going to afford a house.
Speaker 1:We live in California too right. It's like if this is the home price today, what's it going to be when they're trying to buy a house? Like we're going to have to set up a place in which we buy them a house or give them a leg up, and I love that. Obviously, I want to give and do everything that I can for my kids. At the same time, it's like part of me wants to think that if we've given them the right tools, resources, they're going to figure this out. They did great things for me and my parents, but at some point as a parent, you have to let your kids kind of figure it out. So as much as I want to give them a leg up and help them and I'm going to do that in certain ways I'm not going to go and buy them a house and sit on it for 15 years, because I'm afraid that they're not going to be able to do that when they're of age.
Speaker 3:I didn't have these feelings until about four months ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm surprised, sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like I didn't sure I. Yeah, I mean this constant like evolution, like we evolve as people constantly, and I do think that there is this adaption mechanism. I don't, I don't know what you know like how universities adapt their education models right, I don't know, like, at what point are universities like okay with ai and they're helping people like be able to use it the best way possible to write and things like that, but then, at the same time, do does our nation or our world, or definitely our world? Does it lose the ability to think creatively? Does it lose the ability to handle, like, complex thought the way that we used to have, I mean, google search, like massively changed and transformed how we looked up information? This, this is like that on steroids, where you don't really need to know anything. You could just ask AI and it gives you some response. It doesn't even matter if it's accurate or not. What you take from it is probably what you go out and shout into the world, which is, I guess, how our media operates.
Speaker 1:I see that. And a good example yesterday I'm driving in the car with my older son and he was wearing a shirt that had his baseball number on 18 for the Dodgers. And he's like, dad, who on the Dodgers is number 18? I'm like I don't know. He said, well, ask your watch, okay. So I go, hey, who's number 18 on the Dodgers? And it gave me an answer Tony Gonsolin, a pitcher. And I'm like my son goes that doesn't sound right. He's like ask it again in a different way. And so I said who's number 18 on the Dodgers in 2025?
Speaker 1:So I added that additional qualifier. It's like Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the number 18 for the Dodgers. And so I think that's a very simple, maybe silly example, but that is kind of what it is right when it's. You have to learn one. If you would have just went with that first answer, you would be wrong today, and so then you'd maybe go off and use that answer and make some mistakes, doing something versus knowing how to write a prompt with the right amount of detail that will actually give you the right answer.
Speaker 1:And I think maybe that's the part people aren't realizing.
Speaker 3:I actually have been talking to a lot of our customers about that in general, like, if you're going to be using the AI, you need to learn how to write better prompts, and I think that that actually probably will end up being a skill for people is how well you can write prompts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I get it where I'm writing things down and then I still write, I'm going to say 80 or 90% of it, and then I do put it through AI and it will fancy it up, maybe use a bigger word or some other exciting word that I wouldn't use, and then I'm like, okay, yeah, that that enhanced. I wouldn't say it didn't do the work, but it enhanced what I did. So, and I know we're early stages yet, but that's that's kind of how I'm how I'm thinking about it. I like that. Yeah, all right, so I'm going to move on. So, one thing that you did talk about we talked a little bit at the beginning about your social media presence, and there is one common thread that I do see and, by the way, guys, this is a podcast. In the background he has a picture of a skull doing it. What is that? It's like wearing a sombrero, doing some sort of dance.
Speaker 3:What does it tell us? Yeah, it's like a little Monopoly-esque. This is this local artist in Austin and it's a Dia de los Muertos situation. My point is.
Speaker 1:I'm getting this like little rebel-ish vibe from you, whether it's just that or, but just and again in your writings as well. And you know what Chad? I love it because I've talked about this a few times and if you look at the logo for my podcast, actually it was intended to have like a punk rock vibe for it, cause that's how, that was my mentality growing up, that's who I was, and so I'm getting that vibe from you a little bit. And as I read your, your, some of your messages or posts, one really stood out to me and I'm going to just read it word for word here. It says we live in a world where corporate America rewards the agreeable, promotes the political and buries the bold. There was more to it, but that's paraphrasing a little bit. But let's go deeper into that. What are you telling us there?
Speaker 3:Oh man. So for the past couple of weeks I had been really on this kick of writing about corporations, but it's mostly because someone who's very, very close to me, I feel, has been taken advantage of from the corporation in which she works. For In what way? In the way of this corporation's been on a hiring freeze for three years and they've given her two promotions and no pay increase.
Speaker 3:And I think that, um, I think that a lot of times corporations would use like, if you just like do the work or you keep doing this, then you're going to get rewarded.
Speaker 3:And I really don't think that sometimes employees maybe stand up for themselves the way that they they likely should. And if you know, if the corporation and them disagree that it's, it's okay to leave. And I do believe that because of the politics that exists inside a lot of corporations not every corporation that they do reward the agreeable they, they reward the people that do what they say. And there's this like famous quote I don't know who it's from and I don't know the exact quote, so I'm not going to say the quote but the best way to fence cattle is to give them a pasture, and they don't think that they're necessarily in a fence or a closed environment, and I think that some of the biggest and best corporations in the world are really good at giving people what they think is freedom without freedom, and if you are bold and you push back in any way, you're not rewarded for being outspoken, individual, et cetera. It's one of the reasons why I don't work in corporate America anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for perspective, how long did you work in corporate America? Two years, okay. So you came to that realization very, very quickly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for perspective, how long did you work in corporate America? Two years, okay. So you came to that realization very, very quickly. Yeah, I had a leader who told me that I should probably just go start my own company. I was raising money for a private corporation and I'm not a very good teammate and that's a comment for another day but I had been lead on like 18 deals and I wasn't a team member on any deals and I didn't get a bonus because I wasn't a team member on anyone else's deals. And that was like really a situation of like I am leading the like the team and all of this and not going to be rewarded, and I was kind of told that I should probably go and do something about myself. And then I went and raised money for myself and started ABRL.
Speaker 1:Wow, well, that's part of it is unique. I don't think I don't know that there's that many situations where people are like you should probably go do your own thing. That seems maybe a little unique to you, Chad. I could be wrong there, but I guess in a way he did you a huge favor, or she or she did you a huge favor, right yeah?
Speaker 3:definitely, I still talk to that person a lot. I actually have an employee on my team Her name is Madison, so my lead salesperson and I think that she should be an entrepreneur and I just think that when you meet certain people, you're like, oh my gosh, I think this person, like they work as if they're an owner already and I think that that's like this really unique thing that you don't see a whole lot and people or employees who take like full ownership in, like what they do and putting in like full effort and things like that, they probably could be successful entrepreneurs. But I understand that for a lot of people it's really hard to like remove the safety net, really hard to go and bet on yourself, and there's a lot of things that exist there.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's a lot of fear. I think Chad, where it's just like hey, you know what the idea of entrepreneurship sounds so awesome. In fact, I went to school. I went to Cal State, Fullerton. I got an undergrad in business administration. You had to get a concentration. They had a concentration in entrepreneurship. So I took that right. And here I am, a 20-year-old thinking in my mind okay, because I'm going to this school and I'm learning these things, I'm going to finish school and I'm going to become an entrepreneur. And they had these different I forget what they call them where you could go up and pitch an idea to local business owners and possibly get funding, and so they're doing all these things.
Speaker 1:In my mind, I'm like I'm going to be an entrepreneur Like this is my path. And then you get started, especially without any really prior work experience, and you start to get into that and you're just like, oh, this is way harder than I read it in the textbook. And then you know, go on into the corporate, go into a W2 job and just kind of find something and move on. So I think a lot of people probably, I know, have that fear of not wanting to bet on themselves and just saying, look, I'm going to make the best that I can here and that's going to be it. What would you say to those people that maybe have had this hankering or this pool within them that tells them that they want to pursue this but just won't act for whatever?
Speaker 3:reason. First of all, everyone has their own situation, and so I'm going to be very careful about how I respond to this. But when I was looking at my own situation, I was like, look, what's the worst thing that happens for me? I go, I try it, it fails, and then I come back or I go and do something very similar. Maybe I even get a better job, maybe I don't. Maybe I have to start over For me. At the time I was in my mid-20s, and so that's a lot easier. It's a little bit more palatable than it would be for me today, but I actually think that it probably is worth the risk. Is it going to be hard? Absolutely. Is it going to be a slog? Absolutely, it's probably harder than anyone could imagine it being for themselves, but I think that at the end of the day, even if you fail, you've probably learned a lot. You've probably learned a lot about yourself. I don't think that there's a ton of negative to trying, even if you do fail.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, so I want to go back to something you said, which is how many people do you have on your team that work for your company?
Speaker 3:70, maybe 80, somewhere between 70 and 80.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I know maybe you're going short on this, but you mentioned one person out of 70 or 80 that you're like oh, without a doubt, this person should be an entrepreneur. So if that one person goes out and does it, they probably have a high degree of success. But what about the other 79? Should they be going out and doing that too, or not?
Speaker 3:So that might be the best question I've ever been asked on a podcast. I don't know. That's interesting. My point is.
Speaker 1:Is everybody built to do it? They want to. It sounds great in their head, but should they be doing that?
Speaker 3:Probably not. You're probably right. I think that you have to be willing to give 100% to what you're trying to do, even if that means throwing relationships from the past away. You have, like you really have to be in this like right mindset to be able to do it, one of the things that I feel like maybe proud of myself for. When I was in my 20s we started AVRL.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't go out on, you know, friday night, saturday night, sunday night there was no nights. My friend, my wife, would make plans with me. I wouldn't like go, you would like stay at home, like we would stay at home, she would go out. And I look back at that now and you know, when you have kids and you grow, you tend to stop spending as much time with, like, the people that you went to college with and things like that. And I'm sure that my friends from college had a great time post-college, like going out to the bars and doing things like that. I never attended and at this point they don't hang out and I don't like I'd probably have a better relationship with them now, but I was able to set myself up in a way that I probably wouldn't have been able to do without it, but I do think you have to be willing to, like be okay with, okay with losing everything to build a company, and I don't know if everyone is okay with that.
Speaker 1:I tell you for 100% certainty, not everybody is okay with that, and so that's kind of what my point is, and that's not to discourage the other 79 from not wanting to pursue, but it's just like there was something right. Whether it's their personality, I don't know right, or whether some people have said like, oh, it's the schooling system. The way that they educate and teach people is to be workers, not to be entrepreneurs, which I think there's maybe a degree of truth to that as well. But yeah, I guess. Going back to the question I had about being a parent and raising a kid, I think part of it is how do I instill these ideas? How do I help get them to be that one out of 80? Because that's what I would like for them, right? I would like for them to be that one out of 80. How do I even begin to teach them that I?
Speaker 3:don't know, because then you have to balance the like. I can't mess this person up. One of the things that's so weird and it's too much insight into me as a person, but I'm going to say it anyway is for the first three months I didn't know how to talk to my daughter. Like I'm not like, not an adult Like, and so like. That's been like really interesting, but I think that there's like. There's like everyone has their own parenting style. I kind of like parent like. What sounds like very similar to you is like my job as a parent is to get this person prepared for life, not to protect them, not to do things for them. Sure, I want to set them up for success, but they get to define what success means for them. And I only have one child, so I don't know how this feels. But like you're parenting, you have two kids.
Speaker 1:I have two, with a third on the way.
Speaker 3:All right, cool. So, like each one of them, you parent a little bit differently because you're in a different place in life.
Speaker 1:Well, they have that and they have different personalities.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and your third child congratulations will be parented differently, because now you have two, you're more experienced, you're a different place in your life. This will be a different person. And so, like, how do you provide a similar outcome or same type of outcome without just like messing them up?
Speaker 1:Because, yeah, yeah, no, we talked about that. Actually, I was having this conversation with someone last night in as it relates to sports and it was. There is such a thing as over parenting, over coaching, and the scenario we were talking about was when you've got these really, really good athletes and you could see it even at six, seven, eight years old you can see that they're different, they have something in them, and then they get over-coached or they have a coach that's just way too hard on them and just starts to sap their joy and love for the game because of an experience that they had. So I am trying to be very cognizant of, like, yes, I want to be very deliberate in the things that I'm teaching and coaching my kids, but also be aware that I can't overdo it or I could completely lose what I'm trying to gain with them. And that's just like a constant check that I have to do with myself to see where I'm at and how much do I have to go forward backwards, like what do I need to do?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like, I, I almost I feel very like interesting about the. I have very interesting feelings about the education systems. There's this like, there's this cartoon that I've seen before, which is like a person sitting behind a desk talking to a bunch of animals and it's like a monkey, it's like a, it's like an elephant, like a cow, like a cat, and the person's like okay, for today's education session, we're going to learn how to climb a tree, and every person is so unique. The monkey obviously had is like this is the perfect thing for that, and a cat right. But a horse and an elephant is just not possible. And I don't know if our education system is built to handle everyone's, everyone's exceptional at something, everyone's great at something, or maybe is like something different or has like different characteristics that make them very unique for them. But we don't do it in the education system. It's something that I'm very conscious of with Sloan is trying to help Sloan find what like she's passionate about, what she's good at, what she likes to do. Not force my agenda on her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, she's four months old, so you have a little bit of time. But I was talking to another guy that was saying that's a business owner. He's like even now, let's say, it's my turn to be on bath duty and I'm talking to her about the meetings that I had that day or some business decision that I'm trying to make and see if I get a smile out of her, and maybe that will help direct me a little bit. But talking to another guy as well who was not born in the United States, grew up in another country, whose family were business owners, and he said I remember being seven, eight years old and sitting in a boardroom listening to my uncles and dad talking about business.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what they were saying, but I saw people dressed up in suits, I saw people shaking with firm handshakes, I saw the tone with which they were speaking and just by being in that environment at that early age, they're starting to form these thoughts and impressions. And it's, I mean, who thinks like people don't think that you know that that's maybe, oh, that's a very European thing, or that's a very, whatever different thing to do, but and we're not, we don't do that at all, right, and so it's a fascinating way of thinking about it. So I don't know where I was going with that, but I just want to tell you that story. And it immediately gave me a spurt, because I remember very distinctly there's cameras everywhere now, right, so we had cameras set up in the baby's room and you got the rocking chair in there with the books. I'm sitting there for the first time as a dad reading a kid's book and I'm very self-conscious about it. I don't want to sound like an idiot.
Speaker 1:I don't want to use the's voice, like speak in the animal's voice, and I just very just like stiff about it and I'm like God, I got to learn how to even like read a book to a kid.
Speaker 3:So I haven't done that yet, but now you're getting anxiety.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, when you do, yes, it is. It's just like I don't know, like I'm so serious, I'm such a serious of years and I finally have figured that part out. But I remember I was like, oh shoot, this is going to be hard. I have to come way out of my comfort zone even to be comfortable reading a book. So I get up like let me, just, I'm going to turn the camera, even the only one looking at my wife.
Speaker 1:I'm going to just turn the camera for a minute so I can be myself and then get it out. But that's my one piece of advice is just let it out. I know you're a business owner, you're a high powered CEO with a lot of people, and you probably have the cameras in there and stuff too. So put a blanket over whatever, but just let loose, be yourself. You're learning a lot through all the journaling and things like that, but they're going to teach you a ton more. So, yeah, I'm excited about it.
Speaker 1:Thank you, all right, chad. Well, I really appreciate it. I'm hopeful for the future. I know you are too, and I just appreciate you giving us some insights. Like I said, a lot of parents out there my parents, I know, especially too are just like what the heck is all this stuff about? And I don't think it needs to be this scary three-headed monster that's hiding under your bed. I think if we educate ourselves on it, it can be something amazing. I agree. All right, chad, we'll catch up soon. Thanks, man. Thank you, the rain. Come on and take me anywhere that you wanna be.
Speaker 2:Let's ride and let's ride. Let's follow the skyline and when we make it to the other side, we'll find all the bluest guys.