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Agents, Apps, and the Next Platform: Build or Get Left Behind
10 Plays1 month ago
Guest interview with Blaine Wilson who discusses that OpenAI Dev Day wasn’t just hype. Apps inside ChatGPT, drag-drop agent builders (with evals), and code CLIs let you turn plain English into shipped software. With Blaine Wilson, we map the platform shift (where the prompt lives, value follows), real use cases you can build now, and the leadership posture to win: embrace the suck, celebrate learning, and follow trends over “the core.”
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Transcript
Introduction to Growth and Market Mastery
00:00:04
Speaker
The voice of growth, mastering the mind and market.
00:00:10
Speaker
Wow, this bozo has no idea what he's talking about. Failing a lot and and suffering along the way Where the prompt is is, is where the value is being captured.
Future Impact of ChatGPT Apps
00:00:21
Speaker
Apps in ChatGPT, that's going to be a very big thing. The future's already here. It's just not distributed evenly. We're all going to freaking die if we don't get with the program because someone else will eat your lunch.
Blaine Wilson: Early Product Development
00:00:40
Speaker
Embrace the suck. Blaine Wilson. In the flesh. Indeed. So we were talking here in the and the pre-meeting about how we met.
00:00:52
Speaker
Do you remember? Yes. Incredibly embarrassing. Once upon a time when I was a fledgling mechanical designer, knew just enough to to help others, not enough to help myself, I had some idea for product that was out of my segment, out of my area of expertise, but it just seemed eminently feasible that, yeah, someone should be able to to wrench that together. And I remember around the corner off on Grant,
00:01:22
Speaker
you had a ah startup or consultancy. I remember at the time you were working on a device that cleaned solar panels automatically. And I walked in like, I have an idea for a product I would like to to develop.
00:01:37
Speaker
And you were kind enough. I remember you pulled like two or three heads into the meeting and got about five minutes and went, wow, this bozo has no idea what he's talking about. And and kind of like thanked me for my time and, and, and, um,
00:01:50
Speaker
I remember the the conclusion of, wait a minute, no, no, no, you don't understand. I just need like a software developer, an electrical engineer and a mechanical engineer. We can bang this out. And you're like, great, 40 grand. and And I will allocate the resources to do that. and um since that time, after bumping into there, we kind of swam the same circles in in entrepreneurship and startup circles. i don't know if you remember Gangplank.
00:02:13
Speaker
I do. Or Startup. It's all coming back. And yeah, I would just like kind of see like, hey, you know how you doing? You're like polite. And um And then recently it was what, a tech mixer for Arizona Tech Council yeah and Renity there.
Power of Social Circles and Grit
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah. So I think it's all coming back to me, which is, you know, running in different circles is such a powerful thing.
00:02:40
Speaker
People don't understand. They they basically severely underestimate the power of running in different circles. So they did a study, they all find the reference. The people. The people.
00:02:54
Speaker
Where they looked at what were the the top markers of success? They looked at, were you born with a golden spoon in your mouth or a silver spoon in your mouth? Were You're talking about the Harvard 50-year longitudinal study.
00:03:08
Speaker
Yes. Where they recognize that raw intelligence is not correlated to health, longevity, success, or happiness. But... Personal connections, who you know, not what you know. And oddly enough, the degree of warmth in the relationship with your mother.
00:03:25
Speaker
Those are the two takeaways. yeah It's not that one, but I do know that one as well. But this other one had, um what they found out is there's two main issues that drove the success of an individual.
00:03:39
Speaker
And the first of which is grit. Being able to get knocked on the ground, get back up and say, can I have another? That.
00:03:50
Speaker
The second one is being able to navigate new circles. so if you So if you run with the same 10 people all the time, your your world's going to be limited to about that much.
00:04:03
Speaker
If you run with 10 groups of 10 people, it could be in real estate, could be in fintech, could be in software, could be beer drinking buddies, could be hatchet throwing guys, could be golf buddies, what and all that just opens up.
00:04:16
Speaker
So you can start making connections between your golf buddy and a software guy that needs somebody.
Social Adaptability in Business
00:04:22
Speaker
Yep. And and it's a skill. It's one of those things you pick up doing, say, outside sales or...
00:04:29
Speaker
really any kind of sales position, to just like a schmoozability. And it's not like schmoozing to be to be cheesy or deceptive, but the ability to socially float.
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. get by So yeah, it's all coming to me now. So one thing I've always admired in you and I i continue to admire is that you are insatiably curious.
00:04:54
Speaker
You're curious, you're like that terrier that's digging into the ground, trying to find the rat. And we don't find it, you just keep on digging. um And I also know you have got lots of rabbit or, ah you know, rat holes out there that you've dug. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, yeah. Failing a lot and and suffering along the way. it Yeah. I think Jensen Wang talked about that. You know, what I wish upon all of you is is suffering.
00:05:21
Speaker
And... the character that develops from that so that you can learn to persist.
Building Character through Shared Suffering
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, suffering and and discomfort are like these things. We try not, we try everything possible not to suffer, not to have our children suffer or fail or whatever. No, see in my household, we're suffer maxing. I actively look for opportunities to suffer with them because because shared suffering is really what builds the bonds. Yeah. Miserulous companies. Yeah. Yeah. Embrace the suck.
00:05:51
Speaker
Embrace it. So we're doing something very different today.
Podcast Format and Recent Changes
00:05:55
Speaker
You know, in the podcast, I usually do a monologue one day a week. I produce a monologue um by myself. I have a a small team. We collect information on what's relevant, something cool to talk about.
00:06:07
Speaker
And we come up with ah with basically some bullet points and X, Y, Z. Then I do some guest interviews where I bring people from the outside to um really share their experience, share their expertise, share some stories.
00:06:22
Speaker
And we're breaking them all today because of a conversation you and I had a few days ago last week when you were in San Diego, was it? Or you in l LA? San Francisco.
00:06:33
Speaker
San Francisco, that's right. For the OpenAI Dev Day. And that lit a fire under my butt from your energy. And I thought we have to have this today. So we're gonna turn this one around really quickly and get this out there because it's so important to our audience of business owners, entrepreneurs, curious people about business.
00:06:55
Speaker
You know, the the podcast is about the mind and the market. And what I this podcast as this unfolds today is that the market is out there.
Mindset and Market Engagement
00:07:06
Speaker
This is a, you know, consumer behavior is the market and we have trends unfolding and all that, but the mind is the mindset, right? And there's another piece to the mind, not only the mindset, but also elements that help to feed the mind, enable the mind.
00:07:25
Speaker
And some things you said the other day were like, oh, this is going to really expand our minds. So with that, you want to start talking about event and then we'll go kind of from there. Yeah.
Advances in AI and OpenAI's Dev Day
00:07:36
Speaker
So last week was OpenAI's Dev Day.
00:07:40
Speaker
um OpenAI, as I'm sure everyone knows, is the creator of ChatGPT, where was it two or three short years ago if they launched ChatGPT 3 or 3.5 and was actually just supposed to be a little test demo or they yeah they threw it out not thinking it would be anything. Turns out that they they hit on the right combination of product features and interface and capabilities that just lit a rocket that that hasn't stopped taking off yet. It's it's still accelerating.
00:08:08
Speaker
um Their OpenAI Dev Day program, it was kind of a peek into what they've been working on. It it was a status update into the state of the art ah for for their respective field of LLMs and AI models and the things that you can create with them.
00:08:25
Speaker
It was a bit of marketing in there. It wasn't maybe as technical as would have liked. it was it was They had something for everybody. um Funny story, full disclosure, I applied to go to be at Dev Day, and I was not accepted.
00:08:41
Speaker
On a lark, my wife applied, her being a PM at a software development company, may have had something to do with it. She got accepted, and so her company sent her. I tagged along, made a good faith effort to crash the party and get in. Security was very tight.
00:08:57
Speaker
um but otherwise kind of loitered outside, followed along with the videos, picked her brain, watched the technical talks in the time that they've released them, which by the way, they've released all the technical talks on YouTube.
00:09:10
Speaker
I highly recommend everyone to go and get them aside from the networking component. There's nothing held back. it's It's all there for freely available consumption.
00:09:22
Speaker
So, so What is the what is that overarching theme that you felt after having been there, consumed it on you know the other channels and just what how do you feel about that event?
00:09:39
Speaker
The substance of the event, I should say.
Vibe Coding and Natural Language Programming
00:09:41
Speaker
It was good. they They did a great job at presenting, at having something worthwhile to present and kinda charting a path of of where it's all going. So I suppose for some context,
00:09:56
Speaker
I don't know the degree to which you might be familiar with vibe coding. little bit, yeah. um A better term for this might be natural language programming.
00:10:07
Speaker
It's plain spoken language. Make me a thing to do a thing. Make it like this. Make it do this. Make it have these features. And... Vibe coding has been tremendous for a lot of people in that you can take someone with no software development experience or expertise, and maybe they can't do ah mid-level software engineer's work. Maybe they can't even reach an entry-level software engineer's work but they can do something.
00:10:35
Speaker
they can they The tools are there that with little more than time and and interest and attention, you can start getting the ball rolling and building things. So the big three bullet points of of the show was the first one is um apps in chat GPT.
00:10:57
Speaker
So they are becoming a platform, ChatGPT is becoming a platform. No longer might you go to say Zillow and wanna look in this neighborhood for a house matching these specs and so but Zillow has offered their integration into ChatGPT. So the ChatGPT is the interface and with with full rich widgets, popups, feedback, API calls.
00:11:23
Speaker
And there's a saying that where the prompt is is is where the value is being captured. so Really? um Because are you are you going to extrapolate it out? Are you going to let it happen here, there, Claude, ChatGPT? Whoever is receiving the prompt is is ground zero. and So is the prompt, when you in the in the example here gave Zillow,
00:11:51
Speaker
is it Zillow living inside of ChatGPT? Or is it a ChatGPT Sitting on top Zillow. A little of both. the Zillow's opened up their their backend and APIs to allow integration with ChatGPT so that as much or as little as they would like, they're they're opening the the kimono and letting them inside so that now you have a new interface to these applications, be it Zillow, be it Figma, be it
00:12:25
Speaker
ah potentially your bank one day. As long as it gets the permissions, it it can deliver whatever information they they decide to share. So does that mean you could stack several apps on top of each other Now you see where this is going.
00:12:41
Speaker
Have a long form discussion with ChatGPT about the flow of a process you're working on or or a web app idea. and have Figma bring it in. What's Figma? Figma is a graphic design application of sorts. It's what you develop a lot of front end parts or widgets or components. If you have an idea for a website you want it pixel perfect, you can program it and get there. That's one way. the other way is to have a designer design what you're after and then pulling that in wholesale.
00:13:13
Speaker
so To what you were saying, no, you can absolutely start wandering all over to determine what applications might be pertinent and and suitable.
00:13:24
Speaker
So maybe you use Figma to create something. You you would use a different thing to Maybe you could put in a Dropbox integration and say that thing you just made in Figma, save that out and store it locally, all from within ChatGPT. And they're still evaluating the monetization angle, because they they don't want to just take, they want to give back.
00:13:45
Speaker
But it offers a lot of potential in terms of both monetization and discovery. Because whereas you might just call Figma, do this, you might have a discussion say, what's the best tool to create this asset that I need?
00:13:58
Speaker
And it'll go, oh yeah, you need Figma. Here, plug it in, log in, rock and roll. um So apps in ChatGPT, that's going to be a very big thing that is going be ground zero. In fact, I think that kind of tangentially, all the money that Mark Zuckerberg has been throwing into the Ray-Bans and AR VR, he got burned when Apple...
00:14:23
Speaker
closed the door on a lot of tracking data. they They flipped a switch overnight and Facebook lost a lot of data and it it hobbled them. And they've been dead set on never having the rug pulled out on them again. They wish to own the next platform, whatever that may be. They're they're betting on it being physical hardware on your face, glasses.
00:14:44
Speaker
It feels to me like ChatGPT just leapfrogged their aspirations and said, oh, want to talk about the next big platform shift? Check that out. So it's, just again, probably moving in different vectors. No, I get it. So the first one is the app.
00:15:03
Speaker
Integration. So there was three, right? Yeah. What's the second one?
Agent Kit and AI Agent Capabilities
00:15:06
Speaker
Second one is called Agent Kit. So this last six month AI sprint, it's been a lot in the the realm of vibe coding and AI assistance.
00:15:17
Speaker
um A lot of people aren't familiar with the term agent or or what it means to be agentic. So an AI agent is one that can receive a query, think about it, dwell ponder, call tools to to do something and then observe the state after it's done something to go through the loop again until complete.
00:15:39
Speaker
So as an example, telling your iPhone to send your mom a text message. That's technically an agent. It's receiving your prompt. It's determining what you want, identifying the tools necessary to do it, composing the text, sending it and evaluating, okay, successfully sent. This task is done.
00:15:59
Speaker
um Agents in in software development are getting much,
00:16:04
Speaker
They're getting bigger legs, more legs to to just sprawl into anything and everything, whether that's using your computer's mouse and keyboard, computer use, whether it's browsing the web, whether it's interfacing with other applications to get information, create a a thing.
00:16:21
Speaker
So their agent building, the second bullet point, the the agent builder is is ah has three sub-components to it. One is the agent builder. It's a drag and drop. i don't know if you're familiar with N8N or Linde.
00:16:37
Speaker
These are agent building platforms. Low code, no code. You connect a bunch of wireframes. They built that. they They basically just knocked off that whole realm of of software.
00:16:53
Speaker
The second one being chat kit. So the ease of which you can take your company's data and create something useful, internal, external, but chat bots specifically, the bar just got much lower in terms of the technical aptitude required to do that.
00:17:12
Speaker
So Agent builder, chat kit, and then the third thing is evals, evaluations. So when you build a model, when you fine tune a model, when you build an agent, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it.
00:17:27
Speaker
So these are tools to help you measure how well it's performing. how well is it answered How well is it doing the thing that you wish for it to do? How well is it conforming to your company's performance?
00:17:40
Speaker
corporate communications requirements. How well is it actually giving the right answer? So an example, it's kind of like testing. You're familiar with test-driven development maybe. um a suite of evaluation software to help iterate and refine your agents to get better as well as select the right level of intelligence.
00:18:01
Speaker
so again, a lot of people who don't swim these waters, You can pick from ah dozen different agents or models of varying intelligence, cost, and speed.
00:18:15
Speaker
you You can just max it and say, i will pay any cost. i want the best possible answer. to Take as long as you want. Or maybe it's what you're doing is much simpler. You don't need a rocket surgeon to to answer every query. So now you can dial it to something more suitable in terms of time and cost.
00:18:34
Speaker
So helping you identify what level of intelligence you need. So model builder, chat kit, evals. Then the third thing that they they pressed on, they have, this is this is like a whole sector of of thing.
00:18:51
Speaker
Codecs.
Evolution of Programming with AI
00:18:53
Speaker
There are programming. Let me back up. Once upon a time, you go to write some code, you would open up Visual Studio, VS Code.
00:19:04
Speaker
They started working on VS Code's co-pilot. It helps with coding. it'll It went from completing a word to completing a line to completing an entire ah page of programming to entire applications.
00:19:18
Speaker
Other companies beat them to the punch before they were ready, though. One of the biggest ones out there that even Jensen Wang is in love with and and mentioned publicly is Cursor. It started off as a fork of VS Code with agentic programming features baked into it natively.
00:19:38
Speaker
And so what that's looked like is you've got one panel of here's my code base and all the files. Middle one is here's the actual code that I have open. And the third one is a window to talk with something to go mess with those two other windows.
00:19:57
Speaker
We're still iterating, they're still iterating and refining what the optimal user interface looks like. We don't know. like They don't know. we're we're working it out, figuring it out. So it's gone from giant IDE programming environment to um a command line interface. It works out of your your
00:20:20
Speaker
terminal or or your command line in which you just talk to it, kind of kind of like ChatGPT, but it's it's in your system. It lives it is your computer. And so they're iterating towards that.
00:20:33
Speaker
It's almost like a headless AI. When you talk to it, you're not looking at the files it messes with. You're not looking at the outputs as much. You just instruct it on what you need it to do and and let it cook.
00:20:44
Speaker
And so Codex is... What started out by Claude or Anthropic, Claude Code, a lot of people may be familiar with, a lot of people are not.
00:20:55
Speaker
They came out with the first command line interface software developer called Claude Code, and people are moving to that space. Like they identified a new beachhead of UI and and everyone is just jumping on board with it.
00:21:08
Speaker
Codex being,
00:21:12
Speaker
the latest big one and in terms of how they've scaled it because it's not just a command line interface you can run it on your chat gpt app on your phone you can run it in your browser it lives in github so when you when you check in new software it runs and automatically does things it's it's sprawling everywhere so big three um apps and chat pt
00:21:36
Speaker
agent kit right and codecs, and they they just showed the ease of which you can begin creating and deploying with little to no
Impact of AI Tools on Business Operations
00:21:46
Speaker
code. and that's the That's the part, you know, for our audience in particular, because they may not have the deep yeah realm, right? Yeah, the typical choice. We brought you to talk about it.
00:21:57
Speaker
But I'd like to really bring in some more relevant and germane kind of activity and conversations about what this means for a business.
00:22:09
Speaker
So I went out there and I got a handful of interesting real world potential applications of what is happening here. And of course I used ChatGPT to give you the answer. you know Why wouldn't I?
00:22:25
Speaker
But there's some, I'm going kind of talk about some of these things and then you maybe you can give some of your thoughts on it. The first thing that they said is agents everywhere. yep The idea of of all these OpenAI and DeepMind and Microsoft Copilot and all these, where these agents are converging to an autonomous to be able to use all kinds of tools that operate apps and browsers, which is kind of crazy.
00:22:51
Speaker
And this will completely begin to unfold like now.
00:22:58
Speaker
The future's already here, it's just not distributed evenly, right? So yeah, you've got that top 1% bleeding edge of agent all the things. um I feel like most people, however, are still on a free plan of ChatGPT going, yeah, yeah, I'm down with AI, I've used some ChatGPT, uh-huh.
00:23:19
Speaker
when When they're there's there just, only just begun scratching at the surface. You know, this is funny you say that, and um' I'm actually guilty of it as well. You talk to people that lived through the internet revolution.
00:23:35
Speaker
You talk to people that lived through the mobile revolution, right? And there's always this sort of trepidation oh man, I wish I would've gotten in earlier, dot, dot, dot.
00:23:46
Speaker
Right, there's always this thing. Well, here is a new revolution. We're in the middle of this revolution. I wouldn't say we're in the middle, we're in the beginning of the revolution.
Nascent Stage of AI Development
00:23:55
Speaker
I heard a great analogy that right now, if you were to map how far along AI is, it's basically an amoeba.
00:24:05
Speaker
It's a single cell little organism with a tail cruising ah around you know a pool of water. I'd go sooner than that and just say it's like that first initial spark of life. It's it's not even to that degree. it's it's We are so early, it's ridiculous.
00:24:21
Speaker
All right, here's another one. Compute sovereignty. sovereignty OpenAI's Broadcom deal echoes Google's Amazon Microsoft custom silicon moves, which is interesting that they're but basically doing some early hardware integration and conversations to get NVIDIA out of the way, which kind kind of sounds crazy.
00:24:44
Speaker
Was that talked about at all? I'm aware of a new deal that they're inking with AMD, which makes you wonder if they're they're stepping, not stepping on toes of, but...
00:24:56
Speaker
if that signals some deterioration the relationship between OpenAI and and NVIDIA. That said, I feel like all these companies are in a position where they're gonna sell every piece of hardware they make for the foreseeable future and to the point that power is the the limiting function now.
00:25:18
Speaker
Which is crazy. So, you know, ah the company I run, IRLabs, we're in the business of making tools for the semiconductor industry. And so we're kind of at the forefront of some of this technology.
00:25:30
Speaker
they' The big conversation is about backside power and heat. We're having separate conversations with some new technologies that will potentially alleviate that. So all of these things are kind of converging.
00:25:43
Speaker
We went to a quantum show about six months ago. Did you or did you not? Or you're just more likely to have gone? What? Sorry, quantum joke. Got it.
00:25:54
Speaker
But it's just crazy how these things are converging. So here's some use cases. I wanted to have some real world quote unquote use cases.
AI in Personal and Health Optimization
00:26:02
Speaker
And based on what you know, give me your thoughts. So personal scheduling and life assistant.
00:26:08
Speaker
yep
00:26:11
Speaker
It's already begun. If you're on the $200 a month OpenAI ChatGPT plan, you get um Prime Pump. They have a product that is so compute hungry that they're only letting the the big spenders even touch it, that using what they're calling connectors, you know connect into your Gmail, connect into your Outlook, will pull in all your information and start thinking about what's important to you, what's coming up, what should you be focused on, what do you want to be focused on, what what can we do in the background to just kind of maybe maybe we'll do some digging to see what's relevant to you that's either news or information or
00:26:48
Speaker
all the way down to good morning, don't forget you'd need to drop your daughter off at her dentist appointment at 1030. Like that that kind of pre-active. Yeah, so this is what it says. An AI agent that monitors your calendar suggests optimal times, book slots, handles all the kinds of conflicts, reschedules, sends reminders, tracks deliveries, and so forth.
00:27:09
Speaker
And so the idea of a virtual agent or virtual assistant, I mean, people use them today, right? But this is a different level. Yeah. Maybe there's there's, there's two kinds of software that I've been reading about deterministic and non-deterministic. And I might be butchering the definitions. Forgive me if I am deterministic software, you run it, you get the same result each time.
00:27:32
Speaker
Non-deterministic software, you give it a prompt and it may say one thing. It may say another 80% the time it should kind of get about the same result. Um, Those kinds of of agents or programs to do that, that exists now today.
00:27:48
Speaker
But in writing something that's a deterministic program, if this happens, do this, that can that's where there's a lot of low-hanging fruit to make that software where you don't you don't have to plug an agent or an AI or a chatbot into everything. You can just use these to bang out little bits of software that add up to big savings of time. How about Health and Wellness Companion?
00:28:13
Speaker
This is- Do people want that good advice? Well, you know, there's there's already apps that do this, like MyFitnessPal and others that track your food, but it requires a lot of involvement. You should go walk around now. You've been sitting for a while.
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah, but this is ah this tracks your data, your sleep activity, diet, reminds you of medication appointments, will begin to give you more advice that it draws from, was presumably a wellspring of information.
00:28:41
Speaker
to basically nudge you along the way. And rather than interface with it, having open app to do it, it's going to be more interactive. Maybe it'll send you text message.
00:28:52
Speaker
Maybe it'll it'll maybe give you a call. Who knows? I think you're hitting on something where a lot of this, they're wanting to move. that There's the target on the wall. There haven't been a lot of steps towards the target, but predictive, uh,
00:29:06
Speaker
technology, predictive apps. The idea that Chattapiti knows what you're about to ask before you ask it based on the context of maybe what it's heard, what you've done, what's on your calendar.
00:29:18
Speaker
But predictive technologies is they've identified it as a target. People want to move towards it. And boy, when that one gets shaken out, that's that's gonna that's going to spook the normies.
00:29:32
Speaker
Yep. I'll read a couple here. These are all basically very much self-evident. So tutoring assistant, that's pretty self-evident. Personal finance and expense agent.
00:29:44
Speaker
Again, the idea of the connectors, which brings another conversation regarding safety and all that, you know, security and whether or not this agent's going to have access to all your your data.
00:29:57
Speaker
But I... I have conversations with people that are hardcore, like, there's they like they don' they like they're not xenophobes per se but they hate people.
00:30:10
Speaker
They want to just in like the woods and not mess around. They think the government is out to get them, which is- What? Our government? Yeah, our government. um And so they they don't even wouldn't even think about sharing any information about any of this.
00:30:26
Speaker
But at the same time, I'm like, dude, you're not that important. There's that and once upon a time people never would have taken an Uber or an Airbnb. Right.
00:30:37
Speaker
Or even ride in an elevator without an operator. Like it is. Don't get in a car with strangers was like one of the the tenants of, you know, if you're were less than 10 years old, don't get in car with strangers because that was a big deal in the day.
00:30:49
Speaker
Now there's like a Lyft for kids, right? You can actually sign your kids up so they can get picked up by somebody and taken class or whatever. It's insane. ah Content creation and media agent, pretty self-evident.
Home Automation and Open-source Solutions
00:31:03
Speaker
home Home personal automation agent. That one's kind of interesting. What are thoughts on that one?
00:31:10
Speaker
I'm here for it. um ah Home automation agents, there's a hardware sector that needs more love. I know that you Google's Nest and and other companies are diving into that space, but A lot of people don't trust Google. And it seems like one of those things that ought to be open source. Like, why am I paying Ring doorbell nine bucks a month to use a hard drive when, why can't I use a hard drive that I have at home?
00:31:36
Speaker
Yeah, that that whole ah home automation thing, it always was very interesting to me. from a conceptual level, like, oh be great. You know, this can manage my electricity better and this and that, but practical level, i like I just never really dove in and now I'm kind of beginning to put my toe in the water and it's a lot of fun.
00:31:55
Speaker
remember being younger, reading about Bill Gates's house and how smart it was, you know, 20, 25 years ago that, you know, when he moves from room to room, the lights go on and off and the music follows and and little details like that of responsive nuanced, intuitive yeah features or you magic.
00:32:15
Speaker
Home as agent, right? Imagine your your home is alive. What was the book, the short story about a smart house that was out of control? but It's insane. and and what I love about this time and age, you know people have, well, there's always the glass half full, glass half empty.
00:32:33
Speaker
Then there's a third one saying the glass was designed wrong. I think that there, I mean, for me, i'm ah I'm a totally like glasses half full, but getting more. Early adopter.
00:32:45
Speaker
I just love it. But at the same time, you know, I see this for an an for an entrepreneur or business person.
Entrepreneurial Opportunities in AI
00:32:51
Speaker
It's the greatest time to be alive. It is so much opportunity right now to to make money. I mean, I just listed off a handful of ideas that you already know people are working on it, but there's there's going to be a need for more.
00:33:04
Speaker
Yep. There's not just one soft drink. diet I mean, there's not just Coke. There's hundreds of different brands. Like, be part of that that framework. Well, I guess it comes back to what is the intent? What is it that you want the house to do and never have to clean again?
00:33:16
Speaker
To be more comfortable? To be safer? to No, when you're going off to San Diego and your dog is making a mess.
00:33:28
Speaker
Yeah, I guess these are all challenges that need to need to be looked at for sure.
00:33:35
Speaker
I see it coming. It's all coming. So what would you say if you were across the table here from a young version of you, Blaine 18 years old,
00:33:49
Speaker
and you had some magic seance where you could talk to to Blaine and and you can give Blaine a couple words of advice. What would you say to Blaine? Drop everything and learn software development like the world is ending.
00:34:03
Speaker
um I've worked in hardware design, engineering, manufacturing for 15 plus years. And the number of years you have to put in to match entry-level software positions is enough to hurt your feelings.
00:34:20
Speaker
that it yeah know there's this whole re-industrialized movement going on um to to onshore manufacturing, to boost American manufacturing, to to expand it beyond the scope of just ITAR work, but full-fledged American manufacturing mayhem.
00:34:37
Speaker
And it just seems like the supply and demand is so out of whack that you can be you can you can be a senior machinist, tool and die maker, 30 or 40 years experience under your belt,
00:34:50
Speaker
And compared to even a novice software developer, you're you're not going to outshine them in terms of compensation, which you don't want to tie everything to money, but it's an important incentive. what about the idea that that code will become irrelevant? Coding will become irrelevant with the advent of these these software agents and one There's a little Jensen's paradox.
00:35:11
Speaker
it gets thrown around a lot with software development and vibe coding and and AI assisted coding. The cheaper something gets, the demand doesn't fall off, it actually picks up.
00:35:23
Speaker
So as oil gets cheaper, the number of applications that someone can purpose oil for goes through the roof and now the demand, some total is is far greater than the price that remained static.
00:35:36
Speaker
Same thing with software development. The need for software is not gonna go away. In fact, now the the threshold, the barrier to entry of, i have a small business, I have 10 or 12 employees, I don't have the bandwidth to hire $120,000 software developer.
00:35:50
Speaker
But boy, if someone could just bang out a few programs, a few scripts, if someone could look at what I'm doing, and and find ways to save time on the low effort low or low low ROI activities so that you can focus on the strategically important things.
00:36:08
Speaker
The demand for that is going to balloon, in my opinion. that that You're going to see a lot of demand pick up there. So all there's always a part b And the part B is if you were to have a similar seance, maybe different day,
00:36:26
Speaker
And you're looking at a 75 year old Blaine across the table with a long beard. <unk> What would you ask Blaine 75?
00:36:37
Speaker
Where one you're telling and the other one you're asking.
00:36:42
Speaker
Man, that's, that's, didn't were going to go all deep on me.
00:36:51
Speaker
Did you make it to Maui?
00:36:55
Speaker
And if I didn't, then I would need to adjust course somewhere. Yeah. I know the reference.
00:37:01
Speaker
So yeah, that's amazing. these Figure out how close you came to your target so that you could adjust fire and and see if you'd come a little closer the mark. What's crazy. and And I've mentioned this in previous podcasts too, is it's definitely an exercise in a different form of thinking about your future, your past, your present.
00:37:23
Speaker
And what's common between all three is it's you. And we, all we have is now, i mean, now I'm going to get all stoic on you, but the idea is, you know, all we have is now and and we need to make the best of what we have.
00:37:37
Speaker
I mean, the stoic principles really, they start off with sort of wisdom and courage or the bedrocks, right? Because wisdom comes from making lots of mistakes. Wisdom comes from certain level of self-defense. Sometimes. sometimes And then the courage. Courage is one of those things that it's not really talked about.
00:37:56
Speaker
It seems as though you're only courageous if you go into a but burning building to save a kid or a cat or whatever. Courage comes in into a lot of different forms. Can't fake it. Can't fake You got to go out there. You got to make mistakes.
00:38:07
Speaker
You know, you're I'm glad you have that sentiment about making
Embracing Failures in Business
00:38:10
Speaker
mistakes. I'm all for a a family structure that that really celebrates and encourages failure. Because as kids, you're taught exactly the opposite.
00:38:20
Speaker
Right? You get a B or something, you get a C, you get ah a, you know. Huge culture divide. i I forget what company it was. I think it was maybe somewhere in South Korea. But culturally, they celebrate failure in a way that is different than here in America, where we hide it. We we play it down.
00:38:36
Speaker
We try to minimize it. Whereas there, you know, at their at their Christmas celebration whatever, their annual all-hands meetings, they, you know what was the biggest mistake we made this year? was the and And there's no shame to it. We're not going to beat somebody up over it.
00:38:50
Speaker
And I always looked at it like, you've paid for a lesson in that mistake. you You got burned. You touched the stove and got burned. You may as well reap the benefit from it and and show your friends and go, to stove, hot, check check this out. And you know So many companies, they they if you were to suggest at 100 companies, we should make a boo-boo list.
00:39:11
Speaker
We should have a thing on the wall. And every time you make a mistake that costs more than X dollars, put your name and the context in there to disseminate the information, to share the lesson.
00:39:23
Speaker
That would not go over well. Especially this culture, yeah. and I was part of this thing. and it I'm not sure if it's still going on. It's called F-Up Nights. This is the PG-13 show, so I can't say the real word.
00:39:36
Speaker
F-Up Nights, which is a night where entrepreneurs come to the table. There's usually three or four speakers, and they spend 15, 20 minutes basically detailing all the F-ups I've had in business.
00:39:50
Speaker
And there's usually booze involved, but it doesn't have to, you can be a teacher, fine. But the idea is that you share these experiences in a forum where people can ask questions and it's presumed that you've achieved some level of success that you're not just a complete failure.
00:40:05
Speaker
But even then, complete failures, you can learn a lot from- A winning failure. From who fail all the time. I mean, I have friends that are like, They've made a ton of money. They've lost a ton of money. They've they've had love. They've lost love.
00:40:17
Speaker
And I don't hold them at any level different than people that I know that make tons of money. I got one for you. Sure. How many startups do you have under your belt? Failed startups. Failed? How many skeletons in that closet? 20.
00:40:29
Speaker
Really? At least. You have 20 LLCs, yeah EINs, corporations under your belt. Holy cow. Well, they're not all alive. Well, right. So the ones that are alive are probably like five or six. But that made a dollar and then wound up. Yeah.
00:40:46
Speaker
I feel I've maybe got two or three. In every single one, there's a myriad of lessons you can take from it, but it always stands out. There's like that one big lesson.
00:40:58
Speaker
What's one of the big lessons you've learned from one of your your crash outs? Man, I had a um ah company we were developing the scientist was was developing a new kind of fuel injector for the diesel industry that atomized the fuel in a much better way in XYZ.
00:41:16
Speaker
And I remember that we brought a lawyer in that was going to also bring money in the table. And I remember a conversation I had with ah the founder who was a Russian scientist that actually designed the Suye's rocket nozzle. So this guy was literally a rocket scientist, brilliant guy.
00:41:36
Speaker
And the last thing I learned was twofold in this particular startup. The first of which is don't give a kid in a candy store too much candy.
00:41:47
Speaker
Because the minute we received money, the kid in the candy store, which was not me, was the Russian scientist. We won't say who he is, but he spent it all. Literally spent it all. um I mean, I raised this money and he just went off.
00:42:02
Speaker
Like water. Crazy. So that's the first thing. got and you know We could have rented things he bought. Things like that. He brought in his family to work for us, which I was like, where did this come from?
00:42:13
Speaker
So everything, that's number one. The second thing is this lawyer I talked about earlier. he So he put a contract across the table for this guy to sign.
00:42:26
Speaker
And he signed it and he gave it to me before he gave it to the lawyer. And I spent five minutes going to quick glance.
00:42:39
Speaker
And I found a buried clause that said that he would give the lawyer the entirety of the company if certain things that were like going to happen were to happen.
00:42:51
Speaker
So read the contract. Two lessons. Oof-tah. The one that that actually resonates the most, that's the reason that I have this podcast.
00:43:02
Speaker
That's the reason that i have really changed the direction that I do business. I mean,
Adapting to Market Trends
00:43:08
Speaker
it's like fundamental. The reason, the big thing had to do with a moment when I had my company Aztara. I had grown it very quickly, had a beautiful building, had all this stuff happening.
00:43:18
Speaker
The market started to to change and our revenues dipped down a bit and I was like, what's happening here? I went to my advisors. I had some advisors that were almost like a informal but board of directors. ye And i kind of presented what was happening.
00:43:36
Speaker
And to a one, they all gave me the same advice, which was all wrong. They said, you know, all this ah chatter, all this noise it's that's pulling you away, get rid of it.
00:43:47
Speaker
Focus on your core. Lean in. You know, nose to the grindstone, just what got you successful, that's what is going to get you successful. Stick with that. And I'm like, but, but no, stick, fuck stay with her core, follow your core. Don't, that's it. And your intuition was telling you otherwise. My intuition was like, something's wrong here. I need to do something different.
00:44:09
Speaker
And 18 months later, I closed down my business. Damn. What had happened is the market shifted. Those voices that were calling my name were the new trends that were calling me to follow it.
00:44:23
Speaker
And the idea of following my core is what killed my company. And that came with a lot of heartache. That was a huge lesson for me. Years later, I met a guy named Adam Hartung, who was Vistage speaker and literally stood up and said, never follow your core, always follow trends.
00:44:44
Speaker
That to me was the set me in a new direction of understanding why trends are so important. um And so that really, that was huge. That's my number one lesson right there.
00:44:55
Speaker
Was it Darwin said nature doesn't favor the strongest, the fastest or the smartest, but that which best adapts to change. 100%. was
00:45:04
Speaker
So everyone that's listening needs to adapt to the change that is going on with ChatGPT and other models and focus heavily. Because I've had some interactions with other managers and executives. And one of the trends I'm seeing is that looks really good.
00:45:23
Speaker
And I might even like to have some of that ah process internalized and and utilized. But I don't need to be the one that does it. And all culture comes from the top. everything trickles down, if you don't have buy-in at the highest level, if you don't have that that
00:45:43
Speaker
founder authority almost, or, or you know, that that that person that points and and doesn't suggest, doesn't nudge, but actually sounds the alarm. And we're all going to freaking if we don't get with the program because someone else will eat your lunch.
00:45:59
Speaker
Someone else will send their kid to private school instead of yours because you failed to adapt or, you know, whatever your goals are. Yeah. Well, there's ah there's a great saying by Peter Drucker that culture eats strategy for breakfast.
00:46:17
Speaker
I added the following, i added, but trends set the menu.
00:46:23
Speaker
And 100% agree. I mean, the culture is needs needs to come from the top. and know It's kind of twofold, right? The culture trickles down from the top, but also comes up from the bottom.
00:46:36
Speaker
And I've seen and I've worked for CEOs that were basically mini tyrants. They'd come in and if you didn't like the way that they were doing things, you're out, which is fine. they they They're welcome to do whatever they want. Works for Elon, yeah. Then I've worked worked for others that are the opposite. It's all kumbaya and there's like, anybody can do whatever they want.
00:46:55
Speaker
And that doesn't work either, in my opinion. I think the first one works more monetarily. The second one, there's not enough leadership and there's not enough like this is the framework from which you can play and draw inspiration and resources.
00:47:08
Speaker
Go. So when I became a CEO early on, I tried different techniques and whatever. And the way I do things now, and this is very public, I've said it many times, I have two jobs, 2.5 jobs as CEO.
00:47:21
Speaker
as a ceo Number one, set and execute the vision of the company. Number two, block and tackle. Meaning my employees need something, I block and tackle. I make those things happen, resources.
00:47:35
Speaker
And the point five, the reason it's kind of a point five is because it's more done under the hood, is I develop my team. I help to help them grow. Talent, recruitment. Recruitment, retention, expansion, all that.
00:47:48
Speaker
um But it's not truly the, I mean, for me, like COOs are better at that, but sometimes I'd lean in to at least enable that to happen. Yeah. I always, I don't know if I'd read this somewhere, but it always seemed like that was actually like the number one job of a CEO is to do, yep. Have the vision, share the vision, beat the drum, repeat yourself.
00:48:08
Speaker
But then to...
00:48:11
Speaker
focus more highly on acquiring the talent to execute. in order Because it seems that a lot of people fall into the trap of, I'll just do it. I could do it in an hour by myself for two hours with your help. So I'm going
Roles of a CEO and Balancing Well-being
00:48:25
Speaker
I'll do it. I got it. Yeah. And that's a huge mistake.
00:48:28
Speaker
It's a huge mistake. Can't trust, can't let go. a lot of CEOs are very much control freaks. And luckily I've not really, never have been, but I have friends that are.
00:48:42
Speaker
And they sign every pay paycheck, they sign every check that goes out that door. And these are a hundred million dollar companies. oof And they wanna be involved in all these conversations, which is fine. Elon Musk is very much like that, right? He knows a lot about everything in his companies and that's his thing.
00:48:58
Speaker
The other half of the podcast, right, is the mind and the market, the mind side. And we want to create entrepreneurs and business people that are that are grounded and have joy and peace in their lives.
00:49:10
Speaker
Man, I have friends that are have two friends that passed away, both around 50 years old. um I don't know if due to stress, I don't know what. These were both very healthy guys, both runners, both... um at the top of their you know their game and they both died instantly.
00:49:30
Speaker
And then I have two other friends that also died from other reasons, more sickness in their 50s. The one I always hear about is retirement. The retirement is always what gets you left without a mission. That's very true.
00:49:43
Speaker
How can folks get ahold of you if they want to learn more about you? I'm on Twitter under Opto Machina. don't know if you ever saw Ex Machina, yeah but... my My background's primarily been in optomech, so optomachina.
00:49:57
Speaker
um I have a sub stack that I think I've written an article or two on called Shop Noise. Put like a state of the art, or was it the state of AI a couple of quarters ago? needs to be updated and revised. And it's been interesting to follow it from helping with software to handling software. And and now it's where...
00:50:18
Speaker
Everyone's choking on writing bad software. Like vibe coding is a great way to produce lots of slop. So the trends and techniques of how to constrain and control that and get the results need.
00:50:31
Speaker
That'd be a good topic for another time. Thanks for your time, Blaine. Really appreciate it Anytime. Thanks. Cheers. Yeah, buddy.