SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning. This is the Blaine's World Podcast, where conversations are worth hearing and seeing. You can watch each week on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn, or you can listen in on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. In addition, to get more information about past episodes, future episodes as well at my website, which is behind me, BlaineSWorld.net. I'm your host, Blaine Greenfield, coming to you from my Zoom studio in lovely downtown Fairview, North Carolina. Each week we focus positive news and share positive news and uploading stories about people and organizations in both Western North Carolina and throughout the country. And toward that end, it's my pleasure to introduce Stephen Shane, who's founder and CEO of Applied Momentum, for being my guest today. And Stephen, you can feel free to wave to all your fans and friends who are watching this. Okay. Thank you, Blaine. Thank you, Stephen. Stephen, as you mentioned, is the founder of Applied Momentum and author of the Comeback Guide for Entrepreneurs. With over 30 years' experience helping professional master masters technology, it changes fast. Today he trains realtors, small business owners, and working professionals to harness AI tools that cut busy work and free up time for the work that really matters. He combines deep technical expertise with real entrepreneurial experience, help his clients build smarter workforces, workflows, and get them their time back. So, Stephen, the question I always ask the first time I meet somebody on the air is as a kid, you grew up where? I grew up in New York.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

So about 45 miles outside of New York City, in uh Rockland County. Okay. A little town called Spring Valley.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Okay, and I was in the other part of New York on Long Island.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

So I was out there a lot. My uncle lived out there and we went out to uh he was in Dix Hills.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Okay, that's kind of far out. I I know that area a little bit. And so Stephen, growing up as a kid in um in the New York area, do you always know you want to be this kind of tech technological whiz guy?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Um I was always interested in making movies as a kid. I had friends that uh we'd come over, they'd come over to my house and we'd make stop-motion animation movies. And uh I was in the film and television program in high school and uh went to college for film and television, and I got into the technical side of things um early on. I had a Commodore 64 that I would program and play with, and then eventually um in college, uh RIT was uh a small, very small film program. So I went to RIT up in Rochester and they had a very small film program, but they also had uh as part of the program, you were in the school of photography. So we had access to dark rooms, uh, and we were also lucky enough to be uh to have as part of the program animation. And we got um my second year, we got uh computer to do computer animation. Uh I don't know if anybody remember these, but Atari 2600s or Atari 1600s. Okay, and that got me hooked on doing computer animation. Uh and from there I just started learning it and doing more of it, got an Amiga, uh, got more into the technical side of it, and started back you know when I was in in college. Uh, and then my love of teaching came uh when I graduated college, my first year out of school, I was a TA at my old high school, and I was lucky enough in that high school they had a full video production studio. So I taught uh editing and production in the TV studio.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

So is that what you did professionally in your adult life, or where'd you go from there?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Um, well, the funny thing is, I I hated writing as a student and I was terrible at it. But when I moved to Florida, I started doing training and writing curriculum for a school uh called the Orlando International School for Visual and Entertainment Design, which is a mouthful. Uh that was back in '92, '93. Uh, and then for full-time work, I was a designer. I was doing AutoCAD uh and started doing some 3D design work in AutoCAD way back in the early 90s, and had a really I love doing that. So that that became my profession was as a designer and animator. And then as a side business, I did training for AutoCAD and Autodesk products.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

So I know when when I took a seminar with you, you were telling us a little bit about that background. How did you get from there then to the Ashle area? Um, too many hurricanes. Um except when we came just in time for the big one here. Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Um, so in uh I moved to Orlando in 1990. So I graduated college, worked for a year at my old high school, and wanted to get away from New York. Um, if I was gonna work in New York, I was gonna work probably in New York City. And I as much as I love the city, I didn't really want to live and work in the city. So I looked around and it was a choice between um LA or at the time Orlando was becoming a really big film and TV hub. Um, so it became sort of, you know, I use air quotes Hollywood East back in the early 90s. You had uh Disney and Universal and Century 3 and a whole bunch of other production companies opened big studios. So I moved down there uh to try and get into film production, and I did manage to do some production work here and there. It was spotty. I had friends that had you know, ended up with friends that had production companies and worked with them. Uh but full-time work for that was kind of elusive, more elusive than I had planned. So I learned AutoCAD. I took an AutoCAD course at um uh in New York at Rockland Community College just to learn it. And then I took another one in Orlando, and from that course I ended up getting a job at an architectural firm. Um, and that was really the start of my design career. I worked for the architectural firm for a year uh and then started working on military design project projects at a couple of companies around Orlando. And from and at the same time, I got into computer animation as a side project, and I started a company called Spectralite Images as my side business to do 3D animation, uh graphics, graphic design, a little bit of everything. Uh and started with a friend of mine, uh Swami. Um I can't give out his real name. He'll uh but we I got involved with a group called Computer Animators Plus back, God it was 93, 94, and that met at this Orlando Vince uh Orlando School for Visual and Entertainment Design. And Swami was teaching a 3D Studio Max class or a 3D studio class, and he wanted to step down. He asked me if I wanted to teach it. So I was like, Yeah, I love teaching. And that's when I started teaching, was 94. Uh, taught 3D studio, got involved, was very involved with the Computer Animators Plus organization. That got me connected with Autodesk because the Computer Animators Plus group, we would have Autodesk people come out and demonstrate all their software. So that got me involved with them in 1998. I became an Autodesk training specialist. Uh, and that was one of 17 trainers worldwide. So that was an opportunity to really get much more into training on a business level. So I was teaching uh 3D animation and CAD at some major companies. Um I did some work for Disney Presentation Group, um Lockheed Martin, um Gap. Uh probably over the years I probably taught thousands of students.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

So what got you from there then? So you're still in Florida. What so I'm still in Florida.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

I got married in 2006, uh, and we decided we wanted to get away from all the hurricanes. We had 2004, was three in a row. Three of them went right over my house. So I said, you know what? All right, let's let's find someplace. So we uh had gotten away from one of the hurricanes and come up to Asheville. So my sister lived up here, and she was in Swantanoa. Um, and we loved it, just fell in love with Swantanoa. So in 2007, uh moved up to Asheville and was looking around, trying to find a job doing some design work, uh, landed with Volvo construction equipment, designing their uh pipe layers and and some of their equipment. And that was great. Uh, and then 2008 happened, 2007-2008 happened, and the economy turned down. Uh, Volvo closed, and I decided, you know what, I'm gonna take the time. I went back to school, I went to A B Tech and took their entrepreneurship program, which is a fantastic program. Um I went through their two years and not only learned a lot, but also made a lot of really good connections. And and the best connection was with the small business center. And at the time, I don't remember who was running the small business center, but um now it's Jill Sparks and Dwayne Adams. And I got my business into the student business incubator, wow, incubator, um in 2008. 2009, I graduated into the full incubator, took spectralite images from just a side business, uh, incorporated that as an LLC, and turned it into a training program, a training company doing training development and training for what I had been doing, 3ds Max and all the Autodesk design stuff or a whole bunch of it. So it was it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed doing that. And the incubator was a great place for me to, you know, if I fell uh flat on my face, you know, there's people around to like pick you up and dust you off and say, okay, well, keep moving.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

And Stephen, for the benefit of the folks who don't know what the concept of the incubator is, could you just explain it? Because it's such a great thing for guys like you and a lot of other people. What is it that they set you up in an office? So explain what what it was all about.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

So when I got in, they gave you an office space. Um, the student business incubator uh was free when I was a student. And then when I graduated, it's it's paid, but it's it's very inexpensive office space. Right. Um, you do regular reviews of your business, you know, see how things are going. There's a lot of accountability, which is one of the greatest things about it. Um, is you have people that are there to support you. And there's also other people that you can talk to, whether they're mentors or other business owners that are in the incubator. And the incubator program is really just there for you, you know, to help the business owner build their business and grow their business. And, you know, every now and again, uh, you know, you you're working on your business or working in your business sometimes, and you get lost. You know, you you might take a direction and you and you didn't expect to go that way, and it just is a dead end. Um, but there's people there that can help you get back on track, and that's one of the greatest things, and that helped me grow SpectroLite images from um just a one-person operation doing training to having five employees and developing training material for four different companies. Um, we ended up I ended up selling the company to our biggest client in 2016.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

And one of the cool things, if I can jump in about the incubator, and I think you being a good example, is the idea that eventually the goal is to kick you out of there, you know, so you can't spend your life there. I guess is that that's kind of what happened with you? You were there for a bunch of years.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yeah, I was there um from 2008 until um let's see, I was there for five years. So 2012-ish, 13, and then I moved uh to Crest Mountain, had some office space that we rented in what was um a school. It was um it was where I can't remember the name of the school, but there was a school there, and they had a couple of offices, and myself and Boomer Sassman, who has uh Big Boom Design, um we we were in the same, we were in connecting offices at the incubator, and when we moved up to Crest Mountain, we both moved in next door to each other because we got a really good deal on on the space.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

So so if you would transition then from that business to then how'd you get into applied momentum?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

So I started um another business called Spectra 3D, which was a 3D printing business, and it was an offshoot of Spectrolite Images. Towards the the latter part of Spectralite Images, I have happened to be teaching at a trade show. So I I teach at a conference, uh, Autodesk University, and I've been doing that for the last 14 years. I was at a conference in 2013, and somebody asked me, uh, oh, I had a design that I was doing for a client. I wanted to see if I can get it 3D printed. And I was out at a trade show and I was talking with uh 3D printing manufacturer, and they said, Well, you know, if you want to do that yourself, we can set you up with a printer and you can become a reseller. So I became not only was I doing training, but I became a Stratasys reseller for their 3D printers. And it was sort of a an interesting mix. I don't know if it was, you know, looking back, I don't know if it was necessarily the best mix, but it was a lot of fun. We did a ton of 3D printing um along with the the training that we were developing. And when I transitioned out of the training, um the 3D printing, I had a contract with the company that bought us that I was gonna work for them, and I couldn't do anything in the 3D printing side for two years. So I found a friend of mine was uh into 3D printing. He had taken a class I taught at A B Tech uh on a design for 3D printing class. So I said, Yeah, you want to run a 3D printing company and help me grow it. So he took over. And for the first couple of years we were growing. Uh we were just about in the black, COVID hit, and all our big clients disappeared. So we pivoted uh and we held on for a couple more years. In 2021, I left um the company that bought us 4D Technologies and went back full-time to work on the 3D printing company, Spectra 3D. And we were we were really trying hard to build it. Um but just the the headwinds that we had taken, we had taken on a lot of debt. Um and the business model that we had just wasn't working. So 2023 I decided, you know, I'm gonna cut my losses, close the business. And uh in 2024, I ended up closing the business, filed for bankruptcy, um, and decided to move on. And moving on meant coming up with something new. But you know, my wife and I talked, and she's like, Why don't you take a break? Give yourself you know some time to think a little bit. And that's what I did. And while I was thinking, I ended up writing the book, Comeback Guide for Entrepreneurs. And that started me on this new journey of building what is now applied momentum. The first iteration of it um was called AI Performance Partners. And it came out of um the five steps that I talk about in the book. And it's you know, I conducted an honest self-assessment of my, you know, where I was at, you know, both mentally, emotionally, financially, you know, business-wise, like what is it that I wanted to do? And then um the other part is is just building a resilient mindset. So instead of letting the business closure knock me down, it gave me an opportunity to learn and grow. And a lot of the people that I've talked to that have been through the same thing that you know continued their business or started something new, I'll say the same thing. Like it was the greatest learning experience of their lives to close that business and file for bankruptcy and have to start over really from scratch. Like I had a friend of mine uh at a trade show, we were I was telling him about he's like, Hey, like hit you know the reboot button on you know on your on your business and and financial life. And that's so true. Um and then the other the other part of it and and the things that I learned going through and and writing the book were you know, like setting clear goals, you know, not just smart goals, but aligning the goals that you have with um with who you are as a person, like who are you without your business as an individual? And that's that was a big deal. Um and then I started working on a uh on an action plan and building a support network of people that I could call, I could talk to. Uh, you know, that's what got me back on the road to building a new business. And like I said, the first iteration was AI performance partners. And because of my background in training in the AEC market, like architects and engineers, construction, manufacturing, I was really focused on AI in that market. And it was much more of a hands-on approach as opposed to training. It was going to be more implementation. And I really sat back and I thought about it and I said, you know, it's not really what I want to do. Like I'd like to train, I like to teach people. I've been doing it for 30 years, I'm good at it. Um and I was trying to come up with a good name for it and applied momentum. Does seem to fit like the way I was thinking um is you know you're applying new knowledge to continue moving forward. So that's where applied momentum came from.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

If I can jump jump in here and ask you a question about that, having to do with your office right now. So you started applied momentum. When did you start the when did you start it?

SPEAKER_01 22:29

So I I came up with the name Applied Momentum about two months ago, two and a half months ago, and then formed the LLC. Um no, it's been a little while because I formed the LLC in February.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Okay, so it's applied moment, so it's relatively new. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

But I have to give a compliment if I can. So I'm impressed, even though this is relatively new. I'm impressed. You already have an office, and I'm impressed with your office that I'm looking at this, and it looks pretty cool that you you know, you after two and a half months, you have a logo, you have everything set up, and you're at the uh offices now of uh applied momentum.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Um well, it's it's the office that's in my house. But I did that, yeah. I I did um I'm actually gonna be uh getting back into well, hopefully getting back into the um small business incubate incubator again. So I I had at after the last uh AI class that I taught, um that was when was that? That was April. I think that was April 1st. Yeah, it was April Fool's Day, I remember that. Um I spoke with Jill Sparks and we were talking about it, and she's like, why don't you apply to the incubator and get that business back in? So I did. I applied, um, submitted every all my paperwork and just you know, probably, you know, if all goes well, I'll be moving in beginning of June to start building applied momentum again.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

And by the way, we're kidding, but you mentioned the background, of course. That's in your house, that's not your real office, is that no, but it looks great though. You just created it, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:17

It's a combination of um AI generated with Chat GPT and Photoshop.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

But talk a little bit about what you just said then. It's kind of cool. That even though this is a business, you're working with AI, but you could do it at home, that's the rest of your life. But you chose, I think it's kind of an interesting point, you chose to go back into the incubator. Why so? What's the advantage?

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Um so the the advantage is that it gives you as a small business owner, it gives me a couple of things. One is office space that I can meet clients at. So if I want to have so one of the things that I'm going to be offering is one-on-one sessions. Very cool. Um, and that's for small business owners, realtors, professionals, you know, that are that are just either interested in AI and trying to figure out what to do with it, or they've played with it. What this is probably the the thing I get the most is people that have have started playing with AI, but they really are not they're not getting what they want out of it, uh, and they're not sure how to proceed. And they've watched a million YouTube videos, but they they they want to work with somebody that they can do hands-on work with. And that's that's the differentiator. Plus, A B Tech has classrooms that I can use for larger classes. Like I've got my first um applied momentum class scheduled for June 24th. Uh, this is actually the first time I'm mentioning it to anybody in the public. Um, but June 24th will be the first applied momentum class. And hopefully, if all goes well, I'll be able to teach it at A B Tech in one of the classrooms at the incubator.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Yeah, that's going to be um, you were telling me off there, that's going to be geared uh primarily for realtors. The first one?

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Yeah, the first one is uh is gonna be AI for realtors, and it's a hands-on session that's gonna go through um three main topics. Uh I'm still working out the details, but it's uh essentially working through using uh Claude and Chat GPT for everyday work. Things that you do every day that take a couple of hours, we can do it in a few minutes. Give us an example, if you would. Um so one of the things that we'll go through is taking uh walkthrough notes of a house. Okay, good. So if you're you're writing down walkthrough notes of a house, you know, it's got this many bedrooms, this, this, this, um, and taking those and converting those into a uh usable publishable uh uh property description that you can put up on you know MLS or the or your website or wherever you're gonna put it. So it's it's taking it and you know, everybody will bring their laptop, we'll walk through everything step by step, talk about you know how to prompt properly, how to take if you have an example of one that you want to, you know, a specific format, make sure that that format um is used, and then get something that is then uh almost a finished product. So I always keep with especially now with AI, you have to have a human in the loop. Like you've got to have a human that reviews everything. And if you rely on just the AI to do its thing, you you open yourself up to liability because especially with real estate, you have issues like fair housing and uh language that is not supposed to be in a real estate listing. So those are things that we go through, and it's a three-hour class that'll step us through you know, that's one of the topics. The other one is creating social media content, uh, and the other one is is correspondence content. So the goal is that everybody who comes in, because we're working hands-on with it, um they'll walk out with something that's complete.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

And the cool thing you just described, especially for realtors, is you take an activity, not only takes a lot of time, but also something that you don't necessarily enjoy doing, you know, like you you were saying, I can see realtors like being in front of people and you know, belly-to-belly, but not doing the paperwork. You know, that I guess that's the biggest complaint that that people have, they don't like doing the paperwork. And so AI can help them in that.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Um, yeah. And you know, and a lot of realtors don't have somebody they can hand off the information to. So if a realtor you know works in a small office, it they may be doing 90% of their paperwork. So to be able to hand it off to an AI tool to do the heavy lifting and take your notes, and with all these tools nowadays, you could nowadays you could talk into it and say, you know, this is these are my notes, and turn it into this, you know, turn it into a listing. And if you give it a sample listing, it'll use that sample listing as a format.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

I I can see this being not only being great for realtors, but going further on this, um, Steven, what other industries? I mean, I can almost see this being a series of of courses you could do for realtors. Who else do you see being able to do this for?

SPEAKER_01 30:26

So any small business owner, whether they're they're you know uh somebody in in um retail or they just have a small gym. It doesn't matter. Any small business owner is you know, we all deal with the same thing as small business owners. We have a lot of paperwork, we've got to promote the business. Either we're hiring somebody to do half of this stuff, or you know, for a lot of small business owners, they're doing it themselves. And there's a lot of people out there that are using AI already to do a lot of this stuff. The probably the number one thing that I hear, not only from the realtors that I've talked to, but pretty much everybody, is oh yeah, I've used AI, but I'm not getting what I want out of it, and I'm not really sure what to do. I've watched a million YouTube videos and and I'm not really sure. So the the goal with uh applied momentum is to have sort of three levels of classes, uh, starting with the the realtors. Um one of the one of the um things that I always tell other business owners or people that when they're starting a business is is find the tip of your spear, like find that entry point into a market and use that. So realtors for me is the tip of that spear. It's the it's the sharpest point that I can use to start with AI training because there's a realtors have a very specific need around um you know what they need to write, how they need to write it, the the legal issues around what they're putting out there. Uh so it's it's easy to package. So that's the first level, and then eventually what I'll do is open it up to small business owners um and have multiple levels of classes. So with things like Claude Cowork, um Chat GPT uh codex and Claude Code, and also all the Google stuff. I mean, Google has uh Gemini, that's really powerful, and Google AI Studio, there's all kinds of stuff that can be done. But for people that are working in their business, uh, they don't really have a chance always to work on their business. And if I can work with them and help them save time doing the in-business stuff, like all the paperwork and all the minutia that they have to get done, then they'll have time to work on their business and do more.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

And and one of the beauties I see of working with, for example, applied momentum is as you said, you can look all you want on YouTube, but some people are really good at that. I'm not really good on that. And so always I have questions afterward, you know. Right, what do you do? And and I don't understand it. And you get frustrated because chat, you can go back and they'll try to explain it to you.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

But at some point in time, you'd like to have a one-on-one ability to work with somebody, and you're and it helps, yeah, even if it's just to bounce ideas off of.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

I guess you're kind of that guy, Steve. If somebody wants to, Steven, if somebody wants to find out more about you, best bet we'll talk about two ways. One, how do you find out more about Stephen Shane?

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Um well, there is a stepenshayne.com, but I don't know what's actually there. Um, but right now um I'm on LinkedIn and people can reach me through my LinkedIn profile. Um, and just search Stephen Shane. I'm in the process now with uh Applied Momentum of converting all of the AI performance partners um social media over to applied momentum. So right now on my LinkedIn is the AI performance partners, and that will that will be gone um shortly. There is an applied momentum website, it's appliedmomentum.us, and that is uh just a rough first pass at a website that actually, I mean it it came out pretty good. Um I used uh Gemini and uh uh Google Anti-Gravity to program it and get it set up. So it's it's there. People can uh through my website uh schedule a 30-minute consultation with me. That's an online Google Meet consultation.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

And and people also want to take that course coming up, especially I'm gonna tell my realtor about it. What a fantastic course. What's the best bet to find that information about it?

SPEAKER_01 35:40

So uh the the page for that which should it will be up by Wednesday, the uh today's the 18th, so the 20th of May. I'll have a page up that links to the registration for that class.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Okay. And that pay that page will be what at the A B Tech web website.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Uh no, the registration will just be uh I'm gonna use Eventbrite for the class registration because it's not through A B Tech.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Um, I'll I'm still determining where the class will be. I'm hoping that I'll be able to do it at A B Tech just because parking is great, it's a lot easier. Right. But there's a new co-working space that opened up, and I uh the name eludes me. Um but they are on the east side, and they're a brand new co-working space, and they have a couple of really nice training rooms as well. So if first comes to worse, and I can't do it at A B Tech, um, and it's the A B Tech Anka campus, right? Not the main campus. Um, then I'll be at the co-working space in East Asheville.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Well, what I'll do, Steven, is so when I post this show, if you can then get back to me afterward with a specific link or where they get more information, I'll uh add that into the description. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that'll be great. Sounds like a great course, especially if you're a realtor. Um, and again, nice thing is you can, as you said, look at YouTube all you want, but it's nice to have somebody with a one-on-one basis. Right. And and that's that's Stephen Shane with Applied Momentum. Anyway, my friend, thank you very much for joining me. Oh, thank you very much, Blaine. And uh, I'll hopefully bump into you uh sometime in the future, if not in another course. I should give an unsolicited um commercial, though. I did have the pleasure of taking Stephen for one brief course. I wish it'd been two, uh I got in too late, but it's very informative, very easy to work with. I think folks will get a lot out of working with you. So I'm so excited about this kind of new direction you're moving into. It sounds great. Lots of luck. I'm excited as well. Thank you very much, Blake. Be well.