That Tech Pod
Welcome to That Tech Pod, a podcast co-hosted by Laura Milstein, Gabi Schulte and Kevin Albert. Each Tuesday, That Tech Pod will feature in depth discussions about data privacy, cybersecurity, eDiscovery, and tech innovations with heavy hitters in the industry. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode! Visit thattechpod.com for more information.
That Tech Pod
Think Like a Genius: the Human Side of AI, Ethics, and Innovation with Ken Gavranovic
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This week on That Tech Pod, Laura and Kevin sit down with tech veteran and AI thought leader Ken Gavranovic, CEO of Product Genius, for a lively and insightful conversation that spans AI, ethics, innovation and pop culture.
Ken opens up about his challenging childhood, sharing how it sparked a passion for technology and a desire to build tools that could truly make a difference, much like the kid in the movie War Games. From early fumbles in fax software that made others millions but netted him nothing to working with tech giants like Disney and 7-Eleven, Ken walks us through his evolution into the AI space and why he believes AI will have the most substantial impact on humanity.
We talk about ethical AI and data privacy, especially when it comes to children and younger audiences, how to leverage AI insights without drowning in data and the key contrasts in AI adoption between big corporations and smaller businesses. Laura and Ken geek out about functional health, from UV-cap water bottles to proactive blood testing to the very real fears (ahem, Laura) about robot uprisings from a tangent on the movie Smart House, the series Cassandra and The Terminator movies. Plus, we discuss recycled toilet paper and sustainability with a shoutout to Who Gives a Crap, and wrap things up with a peek into Ken’s Amazon best-seller, Business Breakthrough 3.0, a must-read for any leader navigating digital transformation. Tune in for an episode that’s smart, human, and just the right amount of tech-weird.
Ken Gavranovic is a global keynote speaker, a seasoned technology executive, and the CEO of Product Genius, where he leads the development of AI-powered tools that transform real-time data into actionable customer insights, driving service improvements and operational efficiency. With over two decades of experience, Ken has helped businesses—from startups to global brands like Disney World and 7-Eleven—leverage cutting-edge tech to achieve measurable results. He has led 18 successful exits, 35 mergers and acquisitions, and an IPO, and has held key executive roles at New Relic and Cox Automotive. A global keynote speaker and member of Thinkers50 and the Forbes Council, Ken is also a co-author of the Amazon best-seller Business Breakthrough 3.0, a practical guide for leaders navigating digital transformation and scaling operations.
Hello and welcome to that tech pod. We discuss all things e-discovery, data privacy, cybersecurity, and tech innovation. I'm Kevin Albert.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Laura Milstein.
SPEAKER_02And each week we are talking to heavy hitters in the industry to help us break down these topics. Today, Laura, who are we talking to?
SPEAKER_00Today we are talking to Ken Gavrinovic, a global keynote speaker, a seasoned technology executive, and the CEO of Product Genius, where he leads the development of AI-powered tools that transform real-life data into actionable customer insights, driving service improvements and operational efficiency. With over two decades of experience, Ken has helped businesses from startups to global brands like Disney World and 7-Eleven leverage cutting-edge tech to achieve measurable results. He has led 18 successful exits, 35 mergers and acquisitions, and an IPO. And he has held key executive roles at New Relic and Cox Automotive. A global keynote speaker and member of Thinkers50 and the Forbes Council, Ken is also a co-author of the Amazon bestseller Business Breakthrough 3.0, a practical guide for leaders navigating digital transformation and scaling operations. Ken, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01Laura, thank you for having me and Kevin. Great to be here too.
SPEAKER_00I'm pumped for you to be here. Before we get started, do you are you like a water bottle kind of guy?
SPEAKER_01I am, although I don't have any water. Normally I've got my water bottle right here. I have a is that like one of those ones that has the UV cap on it?
SPEAKER_00That's why I was gonna literally they're amazing. I'm a water bottle person and Kev's looking like we're nuts. Kev, have you seen this? Look at this. I think I need to charge mine, so it's like not new. I have the exact same one.
SPEAKER_03I don't know if it's the same bottle, but yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's so good. But it lights up because it's like cleaning the water. Bright little tech gadget. It's it's what a sale. Too. It's like, how do I know? Guess who bought the water tester? Me. I'm a freak. I have like an office water machine in my home where they literally bring glass bottles and like fill it as if I have an office, like an actual building, but it's my home. And I have filtered water. It's just because I'm like, you never know. I like the specific type of water for specific reasons, just whatever. It's better for your health, just resume.
SPEAKER_01I don't want to get too crazy in that, but like I'm somebody I've got the eight filter water thing, so it's like super purified where you actually have to add minerals back into it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I have that in my fridge too. I know exactly what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_01And I don't know if you've heard of functional health item. I'm also someone that does like proactive blood tests, you know. Yes. Like you learn all kinds of things about how your body operates.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And so like when you're just drinking water, like you could be poisoning yourself. Anyway, people listening probably are thinking, we're freaks, Ken, but I'm glad that you're on my level. I'm really excited. So tell me more about yourself now that I know that we have a lot in common already.
SPEAKER_01Cool. Well, I guess on a personal level, these days really focus on health, you know, among business things. So I think, you know, mind, body, spirit, if you can show up and work as the best self, and you know, how do you do that? You know, aside from the the mind part, but the body part, that's like the hardware in our body. And so what can you do for that? So I yeah, we could probably have a whole segment about stem cells and blood tests and all that, but let's not have that one. I'm also a tech guy, so I started off. I always say this poor, not because I'm poor Ken. Like I've been very blessed in life, but one of the things is I've been able to meet billionaires and Andy Jassy and all kinds of different people in my career. You know, I think that when you have a tough childhood, it really motivates the heck out of you to not have that same experience as an adult. So that's what helped me. And you know, I've been blessed when I was 28. You know, I built a company from zero to 200 million, took it public, did the IPO, and have been able to have lots of different major impacts. You know, where I get to meet people, work with people like Andy Jassy or you know, benchmark capital. So been very blessed to have a lot of different experiences in tech throughout my career. And we could dig into whatever ones are helpful if you're interested.
SPEAKER_00Of course I'm interested. I'm interested in everything you said. First, I was like, I'm gonna note that we're gonna have to do another podcast just on health with some sort of tech twist, obviously. But yeah, I mean, you've done a lot. Like you were leading solutions for Disney, you did a lot of stuff with 7-Eleven. I mean, you've kind of had a lot of experience in a lot of places, and and you wrote a book. I wanna know how did you get into tech? Like what was it that intrigued you to be in this position from the start?
SPEAKER_01Great. So I'll I'll tell you the story because I used to do this when when I would do keynote. But I was a kid, you know, at the time, and there was this movie called War Games, and I remember going, I lived in Galveston, Texas, this small little island, and I went to see the movie. And what excited me was not the idea of war and all that stuff, but the idea that this kid could sit in his room and kind of have this massive impact. So I was like, wow, maybe I should teach myself coding. And I busily went to the library and grabbed a book and started teaching myself. And my parents were nice enough to put a computer in layaway, and you know, I'm teaching myself, and I'll just tell you a little fun story, just going back to think about a little kid is I came and showed my parents, like, look at I'm really great at coding. I'm just like cranking out code, cranking out code. And they're like, Hey, why are you doing that with one hand? I'm like, what are you talking about? That's how I learned to do it. And they go, What book? I go, this book, how to type with one hand.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that is a lot of skills all in one.
SPEAKER_01A lot of skills. I can still like crank it out big time on the right hand. So that's what started me with technology is I had this idea is with technology, you can listen to a problem and you can fix it. And so, you know, when I was 19 years old, the problem, again, I'm uh date myself a little bit, this old thing you probably never heard of it, called a fax machine. I was walking with coffee, and there was this huge line, and I'm like, wow, that's incredibly inefficient. And I wrote software that allowed everybody to push a button of fax from their desk. It was a two million dollar business. And that was when I was 19. The only mistake I made is I wasn't smart enough to negotiate for ownership. So, like the guy that I I did everything.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I would say from like 18 to 26, and this started off in Texas, and I went to New York and Florida and lots of different places. But 18 to 26, I literally made tens of millions of dollars for other people with nothing for myself until finally somebody saw that opportunity, saw that young guy who's working really hard and said, Hey, listen, whatever you want to do, I'll do 50-50, I'll fund it. And that was kind of the beginning of me starting to build businesses that actually created wealth for myself. So it was an exciting experience. But the key part that's really been my differentiator is being able to listen to problems and hyper focus on what the problem is and think about a solution and then actually implement it. Because a lot of times people think problems are technology problems. I always say it's people, process, and technology, and technology is the easiest part.
SPEAKER_00I love this. Also, you said Galvison and I just have to say, like, did you ever meet Robert Durst?
SPEAKER_01I did not. I think that was much, much later. But it was interesting growing up in a 22 by four mile island. And what was the most interesting is so I did that, and remember I was, I told you a little story about I started making millions for other people. But the way I got to New York is I finally went to the the guy, said, Hey, listen, you made $1.6 million on my idea, my software, my this. Like I should get a little bit more. And I remember he said, you know, I'm paying you as much as both of your parents combined. You should be happy, was it was his answer. And so I quit.
SPEAKER_00And um yeah.
SPEAKER_01Some guys from New York had I'd sold them a system that they couldn't, the company that I left couldn't deliver on. And so they called me up and they said, Hey, would you come fix this thing? And so I flew up to New York, and in one weekend I had rewrote the entire system and had it working. So then they offered me a job to go move to New York, which I will say again, being the little naive Galveston, Texas guy, I was like, Well, do cars ever get stolen? No, no, you know, and I had no concept. So what they offered me was a tremendous amount of money for Galveston, Texas. And I was broke in Long Island, my car was stolen many times. But I always say New York, for the three and a half years I live in New York, those gave me the real, kind of toughened me up to have the real business skills. Otherwise, I would have just been a soft Texan. I love it. And how'd you get into AI? Ah, well, AI, it's funny, is most people like AI, what are you talking about? It's only started two years ago. Well, no, I've been doing AI for the last seven years. It's been around for a while. And, you know, where it started, I was at a company called New Relic, and I want to bore everything with all the details. But if you think about it, you know, not too long ago, we used to have mobile apps and it would crash and window random things and websites would crash. But if you notice, mobile apps don't really crash anymore. Websites mostly don't crash, sometimes they do, but very rarely. And that's because this thing called observability. So it's basically software that sends to like a company, and one of them was that I worked at was New Relic, that basically says, is this software working? And so if you think about it, like when you go to Disney, that app, it's literally transmitting, if you get any errors, it transmits that, it actually transmits the response time, all the performance metrics. And that's a tremendous amount of data for Disney and everybody to look at. And it's easy to go fix software once it's broke, but the next step is you want to fix it before it breaks. So that was my first run-in with AI, is we did what's called anomaly detection. So we we took all of these different data and said, what are the patterns? And what it started allowing customers to do is see what the when the system was starting to fall over before it actually fell over all the way, and so that they could fix things and resolve things before it was actually a major issue or something that you might read about in the papers. And that was my my first run-in with with AIs. And and I think it's you know, and again, that's where I think a lot of it started was using AI for that anomaly detection.
SPEAKER_02For me, what I always kind of find fascinating is sort of how different companies deploy AI. What would you say are the key differences between AI adoption in a large corporation like Disney versus just a smaller business? Do you find that there's more barriers, or do you actually find that it's actually easier to kind of plug things in there?
SPEAKER_01Good. Well, I'll say a couple things. First of all, I think AI is going to be the most transformative thing that has happened to mankind in the last hundred years. It's going to impact big companies, small companies. It's going to literally eliminate entire industries in many cases, like customer service, for example, is a great example that I think is probably going to go away. So, what's the difference between big and small companies? I would say enterprise, like they can invest. So you think they're, they're, they might be, and again, you tell me how technical you want to get, but you know, if you think about it, you might build a proprietary model, or you could use something like Enthropic or, you know, OpenAI's model. That might you might see a medium enterprise. Small business, they're how they're mostly going to use AI is probably the SaaS services that they're already purchasing as they add more features and functionality, or Chat GPT and Claude. And what's crazy about this, I do also do a lot of advising with private equity companies that are trying to AIFI their business. You know, just take legal, for example. I know companies that they used to spend $600,000, say $20 million, spent $600,000 in legal fees, that now they spend $50,000 because they can use it all with AI. So to answer your question, is I think small business today, they're kind of using package solutions, whereas medium and enterprise are starting to build parts of their business to automate entire sections of their business, which again, great performance metrics. Kind of scary what that might do on the human side for many people in many different spaces. So it's going to be pretty impactful. And I think you know, it's important for both small business and big business to get ahead of how that's going to impact their business, because if not, you're going to be in trouble.
SPEAKER_00You heard them. You're going to be in trouble. So AI is un you know, undoubtedly transformative. I'm not going to disagree with that at all. But you said that, you know, it's like the greatest impact on humanity.
SPEAKER_01You're saying I don't say if it's the greatest impact. I say it's most substantial.
SPEAKER_00It's most substantial. So okay, but there's a lot of good things. I mean, you have quantum computing, you have AGI, you have brain computer interfaces, B, C, I. I I guess I should be saying what these are. Like, there's a lot. Biotechnology, uh, genetic engineering, things like that, nanotechnology. So you really standing behind AI. Is AI linked to all the things I'm saying? I mean, obviously, kind of with AGI, but do you think that those are separate? Break that down.
SPEAKER_01Well, those are all transformative, but I think they're they're all going to continue to move things forward. So let's just take example, you and I talked about blood tests, and I don't know if you use functional health or inside tracker, but you could take your blood test, put it in Claude or Chat GPT, and put your supplement ratio right now and get better information that probably a functional doctor or a regular, your regular medical doctor will give you. And that's right now. So what I would say is I think AI is going to make everything go faster, like the transformation. So whether and you see this, you know, you think about biology, you think about stem cell research, you think about things like hyperbaric chambers, like AI just makes all of those things go faster. And when I say really important, like I think many things are going to be great. But I think, you know, like I don't know for a segment of its population, like I'll say customer service, like that's probably a place that most businesses, unfortunately, are probably going to automate people out of. Like, even for you as you and me as consumers, the only good thing is like sometimes that AI is going to be able to talk to us just like a human.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I wanna I want to press you a little bit. I have a few questions here. So let's go old school the Jetsons. We all know that you know Rosie became the Roomba. Awesome. Not mad about it. Minus that the Roomba can't like come over and like serve you drinks, but like whatever. Then we have Smart House, uh Disney movie from like the early 90s, where like the house can pick out your clothes and stuff like that. Still doesn't really exist, but you can get like heated floors and things like that that have kind of improved the house. And then there's a movie that I think came out like last year or something called Cassandra. Has anyone heard of this movie?
SPEAKER_01I think I saw that.
SPEAKER_00Like scary, it's like so freaks me out. It was it was horrible. It was horrible. Watch it. It's not even a movie, it was like a series that like every episode just got darker. And if you do watch it, like I don't recommend it, but like still watch it. The husband, oh, I hated him throughout the entire stuff. I was like, what a weak man. I don't want to ruin it for everyone who shouldn't watch it, but like still watch it, but infuriating. But again, the concept is like the home, the you know, you have uh instead of having a person that you might hire to cater your house when you have gas or do your laundry or any of these things, the home itself is a robotic feature that can do all of these things. And there's that fear where I think a lot of people have the fear of is the robot gonna take my job? And that's a huge thing. But my fear is more of like Cassandra, like, is the robot gonna murder me? Is it gonna be amazing because it picked out my outfit for the dead, didn't have to think about it? It has made my breakfast and it is, you know, I have uploaded my blood type and it knows exactly what to feed me for what I want and all of the great things that I would definitely want. But then if somebody, you know, you have a lot of hackers these days. So let's say somebody hacks into that, and now this robot murders me in my home. Who believes me? Like if you saw Cassandra, you would understand like no one believed her, no one believed the mom. I mean, if you don't know what I'm talking about again, watch it. It's horrible. But don't watch it. All right, Ken, thoughts.
SPEAKER_01Good thoughts. Well, I would say the good news for right now is AGI is not here. So as smart as you everybody thinks Claude or ChatGPT is, all it is is derivative. If we could take all of the history and all of the internet and put it in our brain and just spit things out, that's what it does. It does not do original thought. Like there was a Harvard Business Review study where they, I think it might have been Colgate, where they put like eight executives together and said, partner individually with Claude or ChatGPT or one of the engines and come back with an idea for a new product, and 80% of what they presented was exactly the same. So I would say today, probably less concern. If AGI happens, so kind of general intelligence where now it can kind of have original thought, then that's an interesting time. And you know, I think whether it be regulations, because then you get into Terminator and all kinds of other things, I think that's an unknown area. But I'm just gonna trust that so far the human species has been pretty resilient and whatever's been thrown at us, we figured and we've pivoted, and you know, we have a pretty long track record of doing that. And I'm hoping that this will be a technology just helps us move forward faster. And hopefully, again, if you think about like when someone has a job like customer service, what is that job? Know this information, follow steps one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I don't know if that's a great job for the human spirit, right? So I'm hoping on the positive side that we automate all of the low value work that people have done. And so we're doing things that are more worthy of a human spirit.
SPEAKER_02For me, one of my biggest worries is one of the things you mentioned is sort of the human side of AI, especially with like all the AI-driven personalization. My biggest worry is now we're collecting so much customer data that do we need all this, right? And and are companies using this ethically, especially when we're collecting data from like young people and kids from like Instagram and some of these other websites. What are your thoughts on that? How do you control for companies taking this, all this data and weaponizing it against us or against our children?
SPEAKER_01That's fair. Well, I think my biggest fear in that is especially around marketing and trying to influence us to do things that aren't helpful, because my just philosophy on how the brain works is it's focused on keeping us alive. And so sometimes it wants to do things that aren't necessarily in our vested interest. And so I think marketing can really manipulate that. So I think there are some things that scare me, scare the heck out of me with AI, in particular around marketing and manipulation of people, or you could say in social media and those type of things. And I just look at it as AI is it's not like AI is not going to happen. It's going to happen, and it's going to happen at a, if you look at the adoption rate at AI, it's faster than any technology, you know, faster than the PC, faster than the internet. So it's coming, but this is where I think humans need to be smart. We need to be smart about how we deploy it and what rules we put because it has an absolute huge opportunity to do massively good things, like it's vacuuming our floor. Is that really good? I don't like vacuuming my floor, but it's great. I've got bots that vacuum the floor and the floor is clean and it's mopped and all that kind of stuff. So hopefully we can keep it focused on the things that again add value versus take it away. But that's going to be something, you know. I wonder, you know, I wouldn't be surprised at some point if you get into some legislation, because unfortunately we've seen it. There's many great things about humans, but what humans do to other humans, you know, and and they can infuse AI to make that go faster too. So I think that's a real danger. I think you're you're right on there.
SPEAKER_02Do you worry about the data trap of companies just sort of collecting everything and most of it being completely irrelevant to what they actually need?
SPEAKER_01Well, here's what I'd say is I'll give you an example. Like I'm involved with a company called Product Genius, and just capturing feedback from customers allows us to give insights to business to say things like, you have a staffing shortage on Fridays at from six to seven. So you never know what that data that doesn't seem really important when you look at it from patterns. You can actually sometimes really get really informative data that might make you help your business or do the better things. I would say I think a lot of us are already tracked. And I hope, like, this is where I would say I think Europe's done a pretty good job of kind of setting some rules on what happens with their personal data and giving us some controls. I hope that we maybe follow, you know, I think that's something that Europe, I think, has done a pretty good job in leading. Like, for example, if you want to be forgotten in Europe, you could just say, I want to be forgotten, and the search engines have to erase you. Here you might have to hire reputation.com.
SPEAKER_00That's fair. And here, even if you hire like a company to get rid of you, like you can we're still gonna find you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, which is that's always my worry with even in Europe. Like, how do you how do you trust that you're actually been removed? How do you know for sure, other than you just keep searching for yourself? But like I feel like as you say, like we're always being tracked. Yeah, you've been removed today, but then tomorrow you just immediately put right back in the in the algorithm.
SPEAKER_01I think that's fair. What I always say is I think I tell my kids, like, I've got uh one that's graduating high school, another one's already in college, is like assume that whatever you do on social media or anything, assume it's all tracked, it can all cut hunt back to you. So to me, is things that you wouldn't want people to know, like don't put that on TikTok, don't put that on social media, don't do that post because you're right. I think a lot of that data, one way or the other, might be in, you know, come back and haunt you. And you see that, you know, people especially go into Polix Ticks or someplace where you're highly scrutinized, some random post that you made about something that was a hot button for you at 10 o'clock comes back and bites you three years later.
SPEAKER_00I want to talk to you about uh earlier you mentioned that, you know, AGI, for those of you who don't know, artificial general intelligence, it's not quite there yet. Doesn't actually exist yet. So AI, and please tell me, Ken, if if I'm wrong on this, but AI, we're talking about chat box. You're talking about, you know, recommendations and algorithms, self driving cars, all of these things are all gonna fall under AI. But a GI is a little bit different and it's kind of like the next step. So it's like solve. Solving problems across multiple domains, but solving them as if it's you're a human. So switching between tasks, understanding the abstract concepts, and even developing its own ideas, which is the scarier one. And you're saying that it's not actually here yet. So my question is, are you sure?
SPEAKER_01Well, is it in some secret laboratory that neither of us know about? Certainly possible. Does our government have access to it? Certainly. Elon Musk isn't tweeting about it. I think he's in the middle of it. But I do think it is coming. You mentioned earlier quantum computers, and again, this would be me speculating, but I think a lot of people think that we need even more compute power. Because that's one of the things like they're literally firing up Three Mile Island again just to power, you know, artificial intelligence. It consumes tremendous amounts of compute and power. I think that you probably will see that at some point. I don't think it's here yet, unless it's, you know, again, the laboratories. But it will, and again, how powerful is it? We don't know. But going back to if you think about how fast this is moving, and we're already starting to use AI to build AI, that's going to mean it's going to move even faster over time. So I'm expecting at some point, maybe in my lifetime, we'll have something that can have original thought. And then what do you put that? And again, that's where I hope that we're smart as uh you know human beings to make sure it's still helping mankind versus hurting.
SPEAKER_00I'm glad that you said in your lifetime, because I don't think that that's a in the next five years thing. I think that's either in the next 10 to 20 years or maybe even in the next like 50 plus years. Do you think that that's a more realistic timeline?
SPEAKER_01Well, if you talk to the experts, they all say 10 to 20 years, which isn't you know that far away. And that means that you probably got a version of it. I think a lot of them are thinking if they can figure out quantum computing, that gives the massive amount of computing needed to do that. And again, from a power sink, you know, that that's the other part is this, you know, like my daughter's like when I say, Hey, why don't you know, she asked me a question, I say, use Chat GPT. And she goes, I don't want to cut down a tree because it does use a tremendous amount of power.
SPEAKER_00I'm cutting down trees for a lot of things. But speaking of a random, sorry everyone that has to hear me say this, but to not cut down trees, have you used the um gives a crap or I don't give a crap or something toilet paper?
SPEAKER_01No, I haven't.
SPEAKER_00Okay, it's this toilet paper, and it's called like I think it's called like who gives a crap or you should give a crap or I don't know. But it's basically like healthy toilet paper. And I don't say that without sounding just like a complete weirdo, but it's not from trees, and it's supposed to be because when you use toilet paper, like you use it on your bits, right? And how do you really know like what you're putting in yourself in those capacities? And it's supposed to just be like better for you toilet paper. And since I am one of those people who is constantly like, don't trust it, it's my toilet paper of choice, even though I don't know what it is called. But I recommend it. What's the name again, or you don't remember? Um, hold on, I'm gonna look right now for everyone so that everyone knows.
SPEAKER_01This is something we should all consider. Like, I know tell my wife, and I'm pretty sure she'll be putting it on the Amazon order list.
SPEAKER_00I was literally just gonna be like, I have some coming today.
SPEAKER_01Is that what you're talking about, Laura? What is it?
SPEAKER_02Who gives a crap? US. Who gives a crap? Oh, there you go. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00That's what it's called. Yeah, literally, who gives a crap? That's exactly what it is.
SPEAKER_02So funny.
SPEAKER_00That's just looking it up right now while you're talking, it's a because like everything everything does matter. And if you think about it, like you have one life. I want to be the smartest, the healthiest, the the best in everything that I do. And am I always that? Yeah, to me. And that's all that really fucking matters. And so this is the toilet paper that I use. So if anybody, I know everyone's been wondering what toilet paper do you use? And now secrets out. So just putting that out there. But for your daughter, so if she really supports the trees, they're well.
SPEAKER_02I just made a note for it. All right, so just to provide more context, just you know, so it's recycled toilet paper, but the whole thing with the company is that they give 50% of their profits to or donated back to clean water and to sanitation companies to basically make sure that they're working with sanitation nonprofits around the city. That makes sense. Yeah, that's so nice.
SPEAKER_00That's not even why I use it. But that's extra why I use it now. That's definitely also why I use it.
SPEAKER_02I mean, that's the real reason. All right, fair enough. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So everyone should get it. Speaking of trees, where are you located, Ken?
SPEAKER_01I'm in Alpharetta, Georgia, which is like on the north side of Atlanta.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. I'm in uh Charleston, South Carolina. So we're uh not too far from each other. So are you experiencing the pollen that I'm experiencing?
SPEAKER_01Oh, we have like my car's c coated green.
SPEAKER_00It's horrible. What I was reading recently, and I don't know if this is like a a real thing, because I don't know enough about the tree and pollen community, but I'm gonna look into it more. But in the southeast area, so us, apparently, so many when they were like planting trees throughout the years, they planted too many male trees. For those listening, male trees are the ones that create the pollen because pollen is basically male sperm, tree sperm. So when you wake up and you're like, oh my god, I'm covered in pollen, you know what you're covered in. It's a podcast, I can say it. But apparently that's a thing, and so there's not enough like female trees that were planted to like take that, and so it's just crazy now. And so we're just gonna not be able to breathe for a long time.
SPEAKER_01AI could probably do fantastic planning to make sure those ratios are just right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, somebody should have talked to AI and been like, hey, is it does it matter if I plant only male trees? And the algorithm would have been like, you don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_01Right. That's not a good idea.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00So I wish that AI didn't, so we weren't all like, huh. But yeah, I didn't know any of this. I was just like, why is it so bad this year? Like it's so much worse than usual. And apparently, yeah, it's because there's too many male trees. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I I thought that was a good thing to share.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if I ever really thought about there being male and female trees. I feel like that. I just learned something right there.
SPEAKER_00Did you did you realize that when the pollen is all over your car that that's really tree sperm all over your idea?
SPEAKER_02I just looked it up again. I'm I'm learning a lot today. This is a really great time for me.
SPEAKER_01I forgot there's like I something with pine cone trees where there's like the pine cones are also had some male-female thing, and like certain ones, like the leaves go higher, so when they fall, there's a better chance that you know they uh procreate. That's uh it's pretty wild how nature how how amazing nature is, right?
SPEAKER_02So what I'm learning is that male trees produce pollen and female trees produce fruit or seeds, and so they kind of break down that way.
SPEAKER_00It's the same with pine cones, just so you know, the the male ones also for pine cones. Did you know pine cones can also produce pollen? Fun fact. But the women pine cones also like the trees, uh they contain the seeds. So also similar to humans, fun fact, in a lot of ways, a lot of similarities.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but well, on that pine cone, just to go back to that random part for a second, is like we were we were on some trip with the kids and like some ranger was taught, like you noticed how that tree's really tall, because that's the pine cones that are male, and so it grows taller so that it can has a better chance when it releases the pine cones that it will pollinate the female pine cones or however that works.
SPEAKER_00God, I love that. Yeah, this is this is a really tw twisted uh podcast episode in the best way. We're really focused on everything. You thought it was AI, it's actually about nature. Earlier it was a health podcast, then AI, now nature. Yeah, this is I love this episode. For all of our listeners out there, again, is there anything that you would advise them? Any advice that you have for our listeners?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, I don't know if it this would be like a new thing that we haven't covered yet, but I'll say two things. Is one on AI, I would say I think the the important part I think for everybody is it's kind of scary because it gives you so many of the answers that would have required critical thinking. And like when I think about what scares me as far as AI, like the next generation of kids, like they can just ask and get answers. And so, you know, the brains, just like any other muscle in our body, if you don't exercise it. So I do think it's important, like if you have kids or whatever, is make sure that critical thinking is still going on because too many of the hard answers are easy now. And then, you know, uh the other part, Laura, just I'll throw it out to you. I think it's only fun, is like you've got you, obviously you had a vision to start this podcast. One of the things I always think that's fun is a lot of times people when they see people that have been successful or they're doing something or going for it or whatever it is, is how do you do that? And I'll just share one short little philosophy I have with that. I think you know it starts with first that vision, right? A lot of people are like, where do I want to be? Where do I want to go? Now, what most people do is then they jump to the how. And I think that's a mistake. How am I going to get to that place? Jump to the why. Why do you want to go to that place? And then ask yourself, is it a must or a should? And what I'll just say to anybody that's thinking about doing something different, you know, not getting a corporate job and kind of breaking out of the mold, I think if you know where you're going, you know why you're going there, and it's a must, not a should, amazing things happen.
SPEAKER_00That is one of my favorite advice that has ever been given on the show. And the reason I like it is because not only is it honest and real, but it's actually helpful. It is one of those things when I've interviewed a lot of people that are investors, whether whether it's to invest in an individual, in a company, whether it's an angel investor or a VC that's looking for, you know, more growth uh potential in what they're investing. And one of the things that they always say is very similar to part of what you said, and it's why. They want to invest in the person for sure, but they want to invest in why are you doing it? What problem are you solving? What is like not how am I gonna do it? So you can wake up and be like peanut butter. Okay, well, peanut butter exists. Why is your why is it different? Why is there a need for this type of peanut butter when I can go get six other types of peanut butter? Is this really worth it? Not okay, well, how can I make this peanut butter? Or well, my peanut butter is better. Why? And does that matter if your peanut butter is better if I don't see a value in it, other than it quote, is better? So I I love your advice. Thank you for sharing that.
SPEAKER_01And that must part, I think that's the the energy you'll put again it. So when you have the adversities, you'll keep going because you must accomplish it. You know why? So that kind of gives you that that that power. And then the must is like no matter what comes out, I'm gonna I'm gonna bake through it real quick thing, turn it back over to you. But I remember one time I was sitting with Bill Gurley, so he's the guy from Benchmark Capital, if you've heard, you know, very well-known VC fund. And we were talking about Zillow. And at that point, Zillow was not doing well at all. And I was like, Bill, like just out of curiosity, why did you invest in Zillow? He goes, Well, it was the whole Expedia team. And so we knew whatever it is, they'll pivot, pivot, pivot, and figure it out. Because again, they knew the why, and it was a must. They're gonna figure out a way to do it. And I think that that motion is what a lot of times VCs and investors look for because that's what that's what builds big businesses or creates amazing podcasts.
SPEAKER_00I agree with everything that you just said. So before we let you go, I did want to ask you one last question. I do want to just uh end this with your book. So you wrote a book. Did you write one book? Tell me about it.
SPEAKER_01One book, uh, Amazon Bestseller called Business Breakthrough 3.0. And and in essence, I've been blessed to see so many things and see the pivot point. When do you go from a small business to big business? When you what are those inflection points? And a lot of it goes back to I mentioned earlier that term people, process, and technology. And so what I try to do in the book is really outline proven patterns that you could take to kind of get your you give yourself the best chance to have that high-level pivot. Like even right now, I may I'm working on joining a high-flying VC funded company. And you know, the key part is they don't have the metrics, like they have got the vision, which is you start with the vision, but then you've got to get data driven to make sure you keep tuning it to go to the right place, which a lot of times, you know, when you start, you might have the initial vision, but you don't you haven't learned how to put all those frameworks in to start getting everybody aligned and and driving you know in the same direction.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. I'm definitely gonna check it out. And if you look at our mail out, which you should, you've probably already seen it if you're listening right now. And if you haven't, go back and check it out. Don't embarrass yourself. We will put the book in there so that you can click on the link, get the book, and uh, I'm gonna get the book so I can find out if if you're legit or not, Ken. But I think this episode really broke that down for me. So thank you so much for being on the show today.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_00So, Kevin, we just talked to Ken. What are your tech takeaways?
SPEAKER_02I thought it was really good. I I think we covered a lot of topics. He, you know, obviously very knowledgeable in all things. I feel like this could have been a seven-hour podcast if we had let it. But you know, overall, really good. I learned a lot in this podcast, so I really enjoyed it. It's one of those things, like especially when you get somebody who like for me who's really passionate like that, you can tell they just live it, they breathe it, they you know, like they do this all day long. And I'm glad he had an opportunity to share his thoughts. Uh, really good overall. Um, I really enjoyed it. What about you? I totally agree. Yeah, sorry, guys.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sorry, I'm I'm just so excited to tell you I agree. He was great, he's really knowledgeable, and I like that he has like a such a wide range. I love that he was so young and working so hard with such a great skill set. His story of being 19 years old and in that position. I'm just like, wow, that is so cool and so powerful. And he's come such a long way. So I'm really excited to see where he he goes in the next few years and how that his journey continues. And I definitely want to check out Product Genius and check out more of what they're doing for sure, and get him on to talk like let's talk a little holistic healing.
SPEAKER_02I also agree. I'm gonna definitely, as you mentioned in the bottom, I'm gonna get the book. I think the uh reading the the blurb of the book seems really interesting.
SPEAKER_00Totally. And y'all should too. And tell us what you think. Email us at contact at thattechpod.com, head on over to www.thattechpod.com, enter email to subscribe, even though you probably already have. I get it. And if you're on social media, guess what? So are we. LinkedIn, obviously, the social media of everyone's choice. Oh, speaking of, I'm gonna interrupt this to tell everyone. The other day I met someone at a work conference, and he said to me, Hey, do you have social media? So naturally, I pulled up my LinkedIn, and he was like, No, on I mean Instagram. I was so offended. I was like, what? We're at a work conference. Yeah, so I was like, I'm not interested in that. Uh and he said, Oh, okay, Facebook, and I was more offended. Said, no, I have a LinkedIn, and at and this is like a a partner in a law firm. He said, I mean, I have a LinkedIn, but that's not social media. It is social media, and it is my preferred social media. And if that is not yours, you're not my people. So go to LinkedIn.com slash that tech pod, follow us, get crazy. Gav, anything else our listeners can do?
SPEAKER_02Yep, absolutely. Go to EverGood Pods, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartMedia, or what have you, and leave us a review, leave us a rating, let us know how we're doing, all that stuff helps us with the algorithms and gets us out there, which is much appreciated. Thanks, everybody.
SPEAKER_00Thanks everyone.