F3 Podcast - Faith, Family, and Finance
A Gaddis Premier Wealth Advisors Podcast.
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F3 Podcast - Faith, Family, and Finance
Matthew Weir | Episode 1 | Fractional CTOs, Cybersecurity Mastery, and the Power of AI Integration
Welcome to our first episode of season 2! Uncover the compelling journey from traditional IT roles to the dynamic world of fractional CTOs with our special guest, Matthew Weir from Fulcrum Insights. Matthew shares his passion for problem-solving through tech leadership and the boundless creativity that modern technology offers businesses. Our conversation highlights how today's CTOs are not just tech custodians but innovative leaders who bridge business needs with cutting-edge tools and solutions, moving beyond routine IT tasks into realms of automation and innovation.
We also navigate the critical realm of data security in a world rapidly shifting to cloud services. Matthew sheds light on the common pitfalls of inadequate cybersecurity measures and offers insights into the robust layers of protection provided by advanced platforms like Microsoft 365. Our discussion underscores the urgency for businesses to prioritize comprehensive cybersecurity strategies to guard against data breaches, emphasizing the pivotal role of specialized firms in safeguarding sensitive information.
Dive into the transformative power of AI in business productivity as we explore its seamless integration with existing technologies like CRMs and VoIP systems. Matthew and I discuss AI’s ability to enhance customer interactions through natural language processing and efficient scheduling capabilities. Lastly, we reflect on the themes of perseverance, faith, and community influence as essential drivers of personal and professional success. From personal stories of resilience to the importance of authentic relationships, this episode is a heartfelt exploration of what it takes to achieve one's goals with purpose and integrity.
Yeah, so so like what happens when, what happens when some data gets stolen, like what are those? What are those guys do with the data?
Speaker 2:Yeah that depends.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the F3 podcast, where faith, family and finance come together Real talk, real stories and practical wisdom to help you grow in every area of life. Hi, my name is Derek Hines and I'm a partner here at Gattis Premier Wealth Advisors. I have the pleasure of having a good friend on today, matthew Weir with Fulcrum Insights. He's a fractional CTO. So, matt, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Man, I'm excited. Yeah, so just what's a fractional CTO?
Speaker 2:That's a good question and I don't think anyone knows that. So I even like pause to use that word, because they're like a whatnot. Cto stands for Chief Technology Officer, and how I would usually describe it is in business there used to be most businesses would have what they would call a CIO, a chief information officer, and that kind of was representative of when every company had a big office or multiple offices, and so they've got lots of servers, they have lots of network, lots of people work in the office, so it's very like, kind of like old school, traditional IT and that's like. It's very like, kind of like old school traditional IT and that's like a CIO would kind of be like the top of that stack.
Speaker 2:Fast forward to today and we really have a lot more going on in like development world, like SAS products, which is just going to be like a, like web applications, Even like Facebook would be a SAS app. What does SAS stand for? Software as a service Yep, SaaS app, Um. What does SaaS stand for? Uh, software as a service Yep, Yep, so, um, and yes, any software you call service, like Facebook, Instagram, but then like the more business ones are going to be things like maybe like HubSpot or Salesforce, um, office 365. So when we stepped into that kind of stuff, um, the world changed quite a bit in it and it kind of turned more into like there was a lot of software development and a lot of like cloud considerations and just sort of like this overarching need of technology, not just in like traditional it and offices, but more like, um, like, uh, cloud infrastructure. Yeah, Custom development and CTO was kind of like the traditionally CTO would kind of be like the head tech guy in a software development company.
Speaker 2:But it's kind of evolved now to where most companies have so much of that in their business that a CTO is a pretty good fit for pretty much any modern business at this point where the CIO and no offense to any of my friends that are CIOs, I have a lot was really kind of geared more toward that more traditional setup. That's kind of going away Now. Luckily for CIOs they're still well-equipped to probably do the other stuff, but anyways. So CTO it's like technical leadership, Sure, and you know the job there is to have sort of like this even balance of consideration of technology, um and business yeah, so it's like I I'm not just going to find the coolest stuff, Um, I have to find cool stuff that solves the business problem and having to have things in mind like ROI and and uh, uh, you know what it's like to support it going forward. Does the, the choices that I made into these companies exist in three years? Stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So it's really like the, just the application of technology in business.
Speaker 2:That's probably better Like it was it, yeah, to put it shortly, yeah, yeah, I'd probably go too much, but yeah, that's accurate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool. So how, like what, uh, what drew you to that kind of work, or what got you started?
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I'm a nerd, I think, like that's a, that's a big part of it is. I've I've always um just really enjoyed technology and computers, and the more and more that I worked in tech, just the more and more I saw um opportunity to solve big problems in really creative, cool ways. Yeah, and specifically the ways that I started seeing were through automation in the MSP space, that'd be Managed Service Provider, and Managed Service Provider it's basically an outsource IT company. It's an IT company and they serve lots of companies. And I was at an MSP for a long time, like nearly 10 years, and I just started really seeing, like all of these problems that we dealt with every day where it's like fix a printer, fix this, whatever, um, that there was actually ways through code, through scripting, to identify those problems. And if you could identify those problems and, like you know when they're happening and a lot of times you know when they're happening before someone notices they're happening and it turns out that you can also make the same kind of scripts to do the work that you would have normally done to fix it yourself.
Speaker 2:And I was like, well, I think this is kind of like a cheat code, this is, this is cool and I just got obsessed. I got completely obsessed and uh, you can ask my wife, she's here today Um, I worked way too much, I cause. I just got absolutely obsessed, I you know, staying up all night just writing stuff, just writing code, and and uh, it was just really cool to see there was no limit to how much you could automate. And so I think, like that whole tech thing just kind of like led me like slowly into like I like tech, I can solve problems with tech. And oh my gosh, there's like a this creative aspect to tech where you can just do really cool stuff more than just like reinstall a printer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I know you know some of the things we've talked about in the past. There's like a whole nother language in the world that you live in. Yeah, so you said code and scripting like what. Yeah, what is?
Speaker 2:that, yeah, I know. So I'm sure most people have heard of things like code and scripting at this point. That's not true, not true, okay? So imagine you have a text file and you write a bunch of words. There we go, so like a Word document, word document, okay, and in that document you essentially describe a series of events that you want to happen. Sure, so a really interesting thing here. That'll probably help. So, like telling a story, it's telling a story, but through text. So a really important thing that most I would say almost no one understands. And if you take anything away from all this nerdy stuff, I'm saying this would be a really good one. Away from all this nerdy stuff, I'm saying this would be a really good one.
Speaker 2:Everyone seems to think that you can automate or make software to make your problem go away. But the problem is you can't automate or make software for anything that you don't have a well-defined process for first to do it manually. If you don't have a manual process where a person does this stuff, and not only a process but a proven does this stuff, and not only a process but a proven process, because you can make a process to do anything and that doesn't mean it works and might be terrible, or well, right, or maybe it's like it needs improvement, like kind of inefficient. The second, that you put that process into code. It's infinitely more expensive to keep changing the code than it would be to like change like the, the to-do list for your, you know, minimum wage, staff order, right. So you change that list, change that list until it's like perfect, and then you essentially would take that list of like do this, then do this, then do this and do this, and then this happens, right, you take that same list and in that text file you would write code. And then this happens, right, you take that same list and in that text file you would write code. And there's a lot of languages out there in the IT space it's largely something called PowerShell.
Speaker 2:Powershell is like this, like underlying stuff underneath windows, that anything you can click, you can actually type into a text document to do all the same things that you could do with a mouse. Okay, but the text document does it for you. Yep, this is really dumbed down. So don't have issues if you're a code guy, nice disclaimer, we're doubling it down for me. Yeah, so you take these to-dos, this process, and you put it into this text file to-do. And so now the person that would normally have to like, click this, then click this, then click this, I can say, click all those things through the text document and I basically put that code into production somehow.
Speaker 2:That's another thing to explain, but the short of it is now that code would be able to do that same set of actions that the person used to have to do. Well, the person doesn't have to do it. Yeah, you got it. And then it gets really important, because if you had to do that once or twice or 10 times, um, it wouldn't make sense to make that code. But if you have to do it 10,000 times, a hundred thousand times, 10 million times, you wouldn't need any more people to do it 10 million times versus a thousand times. Uh, because it's, it's written, it just exists and it just does the thing. Yeah, so it's really really powerful. And that's kind of what I meant by there's no, there's no limit Once you identify those things that really can be automated away. Yeah, it's game changing.
Speaker 1:And is it almost like a like a, like an if, then statement, or so that way that I mean the code is probably dynamic.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah. Well, good good code is dynamic when you first start, not so much, it's very, very like static, like yeah, do this thing, do that thing, but when you yeah, when you get better at it, good code is dynamic, It'll recognize a variance and make an adjustment.
Speaker 2:And even like context, and you can write some really impressive stuff and AI is coming in to help us do a lot of that. So where you don't have to be as creative even in your sort of like if then else, because AI can kind of analyze that for you and just come up with the outcome of what should happen. And there's a lot of guardrails. Ai is not the it's done sticker or whatever. Yeah, easy button. That is not. It's not the easy button, but yeah and yeah, I don't know that's that's probably yeah, no, cool, I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 1:I took a, so I dropped one class in college. Okay, that was C plus. Yeah, so I dropped one class in college. Okay, that was C plus. Yeah, well, c plus is that's a lot. That's good that. That that justifies me dropping that class.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll give it to you. I, I don't even, I don't even know C plus, but I tried to learn it for like a minute and I was like I, I, I hate this. Yeah, that I work with that are much better than me. I learned enough to do really cool stuff, to figure out the opportunity, yeah. And then I brought in people that had been doing it for their whole life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's smart to do it correctly. Yeah, yeah. So on the MSP side, I know we were introduced. I think we were talking at church. I told you what I did, just like offhand. Yeah, like that's interesting, we've we've done some work for some RIAs, yep, so can you. So I was telling you about what we, what we were doing for some problems we were having. Yeah, you came in and consulted with us and so can you tell me a little bit about, like, that process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you guys were the.
Speaker 1:Why it's important to do something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, critical you guys were the. You're a classic example of a company that was just ripe for improvement, where things were built not incorrectly, they were built correctly to I appreciate you saying it Right To what used to be the standard it was. Actually it was fine, like there was not really a problem. You get into problems if you want to scale and if you want to be secure, though, and those are actually both like fairly new considerations, like you could say, like everyone's kind of aware, like it needs to be secure, and we had our own ways, but nothing like what it's been the last, even five years, just since COVID Attacks have gone up like crazy. It's been insane. The entire cybersecurity world is insane, and I've had a good time working through that. It's been fun.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, you were a classic example of. You had a very traditional infrastructure and it's difficult and expensive to secure, and it's difficult and really expensive to scale and even to maintain Um. So I don't I don't know like how, how specific, you want me to go into Um, but I'm just I'm just curious.
Speaker 1:So with with an old, like an old system or older systems, you see, maybe not even using us as a us as an example, like that might be too specific. Yeah, but why is it important to do those things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll say yeah. A good generic example is most companies are running lots of servers. Um, the existence of a server by itself, just the fact that it exists automatically, has all kinds of widespread implications of things that you need to secure, and then it's all your fault, it's all your problem, it's, uh, your liability, your fault. So if you don't do a good job, you're on the hook, um which it's really kind of silly because it's 2025 and almost entirely you can replace everything you'd normally have on your server with cloud services that are incredibly affordable and secured for you. Someone else's responsibility loosely someone else's responsibility you're you're responsible for, like, maintaining and the configuration. Right, there's some, there is some stuff there, but it's a fraction of what this would be, and there's no maintenance and there's no. I need to buy new servers this year. I need a new data center, and I have this graphed out in a bunch of different ways, where the second that that server exists. It's like you have more to support, you have more to maintain, you have more capital expended, you have more security to worry about. You have more to maintain, you have more capital expended. You have more security to worry about. You have.
Speaker 2:It's just crazy how quickly this goes, and so a lot of companies end up spending a whole bunch of money maintaining that and keeping it going. And there's a lot of IT guys out there that this is the system, the thing that they know what they're used to, and they're a bit scared of the new stuff. But the new stuff is not like we're just trying it out and we're not sure the new stuff works. Yeah, it works really well. Um, it's much easier to secure. And not only is that much easier to secure, we can make it much more secure, just completely. Um, a really good example of that we can make it much more secure, just completely. A really good example of that and this is a thing that we did for Gaddy's is this whole concept like people used to think, like a password, like I need a really complex password so that nobody can take my account, nobody could like hack me or whatever, right, but today, like a password's pretty insignificant, like a password doesn't really matter, a password's really easy to take, to crack, to do whatever.
Speaker 2:And even this concept of what you would call like MFA or 2FA, where you get like a code to your phone, or a little six digit code that like cycles in and out, right, all of this stuff is defeatable, and the only reason that it doesn't get defeated is if no, um, no one has decided they want your stuff badly enough, yeah, and if they did they, they would take it that Um and so, uh, there's new. In these new platforms, like Microsoft 365, for example and I hope I'm not getting too technical here you can set all kinds of conditions that say like I don't need just a password, I need some kind of proof that this is a computer, that's a company owned computer, this is a person that works there. They have not only their company computer but they have a company phone, and maybe not only do they have all those things but they're also currently connecting from an approved location, whether that's this office or someone's home. And you get to kind of set up all these different conditions that say, for someone to log into this account and get keys to the kingdom, access to data of your clients, they have to meet all of these conditions.
Speaker 2:That's very difficult. It's very difficult to meet all of that. It's very difficult to get past all of this, and so what it does is it makes you just this absolute pain in the butt to get access to, especially when most companies like yours don't have a fraction of this stuff, and so it just kind of takes you off the radar largely. Um, and you guys made the investment to do all of that. Yeah, and that's that's awesome. Yeah, I was just I was so yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, cybersecurity is. I mean, it really is scary because most people, I mean we, we know nothing about it. Yeah, and it's well, one of our partners, you know, from one office to the next and it really that's the perception. It's like this magic rainbow that all of our information goes back and forth on. Who knows where it goes or what it passes through to get out of our office. And I know it seems like I mean every day you're hearing about some kind of security breach or a cyber hack. You know, we, us that work in a business. Well, I mean, I don't, I don't think it matters what business you're in Like. If you're not in like the cybersecurity business or the MSP space, you don't have the skillset to protect yourself. So you're completely vulnerable. Yeah, unless you take measures to.
Speaker 2:You know, hire an individual like you or a firm like yours to to to do the things that you do, yeah, and for most of those like data leaks, where it's like we've been hacked, what can we do? It's normally just absolute negligence. Yeah, not some impressive hack, it's just negligence. Like some company just like failed to invest in their cybersecurity program. They didn't have policies, they didn't have protection, they didn't in their cybersecurity program, they didn't have policies, they didn't have protection, they didn't have anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they didn't have any of the stuff I just described for sure, and it's like pretty easy to take their stuff and then eventually someone just takes their stuff and they're like, oh God, what? What could we do? You know we've, we've been had, and it's it's their fault, you know, and and it's it's terrifying, how much data is out there now. It's terrifying, oh yeah, and it's it's even more terrifying how many companies either don't know or do know and don't want to spend the money to handle it because it's expensive, cost money. Like you have to pay for this stuff. People won't do all of this for you for free.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so so like what happens when, what happens when some data gets stolen, like what are those? So so like what happens when, what happens when data gets stolen, like, what are those?
Speaker 2:what are those guys do with the data? Yeah, it depends, and it's a gamut, so, um, usually it's something like um, the post it to the dark web and you can buy it, like by a download, and so it's usually going to be like like an Excel sheet of of names, social security numbers, a phone number maybe, maybe address, email, that kind of stuff. Um, and depending on how like big the data is and how valid the data is and how much of an overlap there is or isn't, because there's lots of different leaks, right, so if they're pretty unique leaks, um, the cost is going to vary.
Speaker 1:But essentially, people buy them and and um, and then what do they do with them? Take your identity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and this is why, um, this is why, from like a consumer, like a personal, you know, like there's only so much you can do, right, even if, like, your company is the most secure in the planet.
Speaker 2:Um, your customers and just like people walking around their, their, their stuff's a mess, like, everyone's probably got their social security numbers and everything just sitting on their laptop that doesn't have anything that I just described for sure. So like, why would someone come, you know, try to hack, you know Gaddy's premiere, when, when, like everyone that puts their social there also has all that information on their laptop and would gladly download a, a toolbar for 20% off, that turns out to not work for some reason? Why didn't this work? Well, it worked for what they wanted it to, but, yeah, now you're 20% off and so people just freely give their information every day. So this is why I would say practically the best thing to do, since it's a bit hopeless and your social security number is probably out there have your credit locked at all times, unless you're going to use it, because almost surely it's out there and that's really all you can do, yeah, so I'm going to show my ignorance here.
Speaker 1:How do you lock?
Speaker 2:your credit. You have to contact the different bureaus and do it, and I think there's, um, there's a couple companies and I don't remember the name offhand That'll do it. That'll do it for you. It's like a, it's like a fee a month and basically you can like use their dashboard and they'll. They'll kind of like do on your behalf, kind of thing. Um, yeah, so probably a service like that's the easiest, but you would just reach out to the individual you know bureaus like Equifax or whatever you know all the ones are and lock it down, which is a pain, because then you want to get a new credit card. You have to like call, call them to unlock it, unlock all of it, get your card, call, lock it back up. But it is much better than the alternative. Yeah, yeah, that yeah bare bad news, sorry guys yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1:I mean the world just keeps changing, like what uh, you mentioned ai earlier. Yeah, so I mean, does this thing get worse with ai? Is ai gonna? Is ai the temple? Uh?
Speaker 2:um, ai is a a long topic. Um, it's a big topic, so I I'm I'm mostly optimistic on AI.
Speaker 1:Um that's a lot, that's a lot.
Speaker 2:So, okay, here's I'm trying. There's a lot of a lot here, so I'm trying to figure out a way to say something meaningful without like a three hour lecture here. So I'm trying to figure out a way to say something meaningful without like a three-hour lecture. Um, ai unlocks a lot of possibilities for us, but AI is only really as powerful as sort of like the subsystems, like the infrastructure that we've built for it over years and years and years and years. In large part, right now, ai is more or less just a language, a natural language model, so like, basically, what it's good at is like interpret. It's like reading what you say and responding to you in a way that sounds like another person, right, so it's like everyone's used chat, gpt pretty much at this point. So again, not true, not true in my world, in your world. There he goes Um, well, you should use it. It's, it's, it's cool, so, but it's it's mostly like natural language. But I would say like the kind of like caveat to that, it's pretty. It's really good at like, um, reading other language like natural language, and sort of like making assumptions or summaries or things, things from that language. Right, that's cool. But it's not um, it's not like, uh, that's not going to let it take over the world, right? So what happens is people say things like AI can do anything, but what they actually mean is like AI is sort of like a layer on top that sits on all kinds of infrastructure that's going to let it do anything. So, for example this is a perfect way to show this there's something called a CRM Sorry, something called a CRM. It's something called a CRM, and a CRM is most all businesses use these. It just has all of your like contacts in it that you're trying to market to and you're trying to sell them Right, and and it's going to do like drip campaigns, is going to send emails out like, hey, buy our stuff, and it's going to help track their activity. And then also, most of the time, your sales team is in the CRM and they're calling those people in the CRM that are potential customers and they're saying do you want to buy our product? Can we do a follow-up? Can we have a meeting? And they're keeping all their notes in that CRM. So there's currently AI that can connect into your CRM, that can read through all of your customers, read through all the notes that you've ever made on them and make outbound calls to all of them for you and have a great conversation with them. It's almost instant and sounds very natural. So it sounds something to the effect of hey Steve, this is Bill from Gaddy's.
Speaker 2:I know we talked back in December, just checked up, wanted to see how things are going, if you wanted to meet up, maybe sometime in January. I've got openings toward the end of the month How's it looking? And they'd say and in that I would need to say, by the way, I'm an AI agent. And normally the response is something like wait, this is AI. And I say, yeah, I'm AI. And they go okay, well, okay, yeah, I mean, I guess maybe I'm interested in a meeting, like what can you do? Hold on. And they have questions, right, because they're like I'm being talked to by AI. They realize they were talking to AI and in a really interesting way. It almost like it's better than the real salesperson because it's very intriguing. Now they're like, yeah, how's this working? So they'll talk to him. So, anyways, what will happen is they'll talk to this and that same AI agent hooks into your CRM, can also hook into your calendar, and so it knows your availability. So if they want to meet with Derek Hines. They're going to say, well, derek's got some spots on Thursday evening and on Friday morning around 9am, what does work for you? And they're like, well, I guess Friday at nine works. Okay, great, let me get that sent out. What's a good email? Or should I use the email in here? Blah, blah, blah, blah blah.
Speaker 2:The one in the CRM, like that'd be, that'd work for me, and so it'll shoot it out right. Crazy, okay, but to be an important part of it, that it was a bridge of a whole bunch of different technologies. Yeah, so if we didn't have VoIP calling, which is the ability to make phone calls over data, over like the internet instead of like a traditional phone, it wouldn't have been able to call people. That took us years to perfect. If we didn't have a CRM, this entire industry like CRM is like this massive industry that's been being built out for years and years and years. So now this thing exists that has all this important information and context about all of your customers and their contact information, all this stuff, so all the data that someone would need to do this is all there. And then calendars exist in all these. In, by the way, between all of these things. Not only do they all exist, but these connectors exist it's called APIs that it can hook into to talk to all of those platforms through code.
Speaker 2:So again, what did AI do?
Speaker 2:Well, it didn't make the phone, it didn't make the CRM, it didn't make the calendar, but it made natural language and it was able to read all the context in, regurgitate back to kind of the same way that if you hop on chat GPT for free right now and you say, hey, talk to me like you're a salesperson and you want me to set a meeting with Gaddy's premiere for Friday at 9am, it's going to blast out quickly I mean a few seconds a really good pitch to get you to meet on 9am.
Speaker 2:So that's natural language. So now there's actually only like two pieces after that natural language to make all this work have a voice, read that that sounds real and connect those into these things that already exist. So people make this mistake to say like AI has has already changed the world and it has to be fair. But if you get what I'm saying here, it's sort of like a connector, it's sort of like an enabler, it's this cherry on top of this pie or whatever that has made all the tech we've been building for years start to have these really crazy implications of productivity without people, and it's I mean you can, it's scaled like crazy.
Speaker 1:That is wild. So I mean, so people are doing that. Oh yeah, oh, my Right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm actually like that just blows my mind. This is fresh, this is top of mind because I'm working on it for some of my clients because it's huge, it's awesome. Yeah, yeah, working on it for, uh, some of my clients because it's it's huge, it's awesome. Yeah, yeah, I'm spending. I'm spending a uh and a ton of time in in ai. I'm a cto, so it's my, my job to try to keep up on, yeah, on, you know, the newest, latest stuff, because I should know a lot about it by the time someone asks me about it. So, um, I've been sitting around like listening to three hour lectures from Stanford on on data modeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so do you know like what, like what, what? So we do this in the US, like any specific regions that are picking this up? Pretty good, I'm just curious, like cause you are. Our firm is in a very rural.
Speaker 2:probably a late adopter technology, but probably a late adopter technology, but Well, I don't know if it's anywhere more than somewhere else, but it's becoming really widely available. There's better versions of it, but even like a really general use CRM. So Go High Level is a CRM. It's really cheap and it's widely used because it's so cheap. Where HubSpot gets really expensive, really fast, and even Go High Level has some stuff built in for what I'm saying widely used because it's so cheap, or HubSpot gets really expensive, really fast, um and um, even go high level has some stuff built in for what I'm saying. Like they're building stuff in and expanding that capability towards like a turn it on kind of checkbox. So I'm going to go check out CRM after this podcast. It's not perfect, like that one isn't perfect, but there's, there's a lot of promising stuff. Um, and it's crazy, it's crazy, it's absolutely crazy. But again, I just want to be clear on, like, what part did AI play there?
Speaker 1:So when people keep talking about AI, ai, ai, yeah, sort of the interface integrates all the parts. It's really cool yeah.
Speaker 2:And like that kind of gets like every time, like we iterate on technology over the years, it's like every piece of technology gets like faster and faster and faster and of technology gets like faster and faster and faster and they can all talk to each other and it's really really fast and actually the slowest, the slowest um like interface that exists today between all this technology is us to the technology, because technology can talk to each other instantly.
Speaker 2:I mean it's, it's nearly instantly, right, it's and um, we're the slow part. We have to type with our thumbs or with a keyboard or talk to it, right? Yeah, this is why Elon's working on like near length. This is why Meta is working on this bracelet like watch thing that intercepts brainwaves. They're trying to find like a faster interface for us to interact with this stuff, because we're sort of like the bottleneck in all of this right now and so like, in a really interesting way, ai doing that kind of stuff. It's almost like it's not fair to say replace, but it's subsidizing at least like our interaction, because like we're so slow to do it, because that AI agent, I mean, can just blast calls all day, every day.
Speaker 1:Man, that's mind blowing. Yeah, yeah, I don't even know what to do with that.
Speaker 2:That's one. There's a lot, but I think that's a really good like applicable thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you think I mean so? People aren't.
Speaker 2:they're intrigued by getting a call from AI as opposed to like freaked out or scared, yeah, usually intrigued and and you know, I I'm sure, like your mileage may vary, um, depending on industry yeah, so like for me, if, if I have outbound calls going and I'm a CTO and I'm offering fractional CTO services and you get called by something like that, you're like, you're interested, whatever this tech guy has got, you're interested Whatever this tech guy has got, that's good. Yeah, I don't have this. And so like for me, you know, when I'm, when I'm talking to people, I, in my industry, I want to be overtly this is AI, look what I can do, look at all this stuff I can do, and I've never even talked to you. By the time you get to me, you've talked to my robots for three weeks or whatever. Right, like, and that's a positive for me, but that's not a positive necessarily for all industries.
Speaker 2:So you, really there's there's a lot of hurdles in AI adoption and, and one of the biggest ones is is basically feeling out and finding sort of like the medium spot you can meet where people feel comfortable talking to AI. Like, if you, if you reach out to someone for support and you get a bot, right, you're like, yeah, I just want to talk to a person. Talk to a person, talk to a person Right, and so that doesn't have very good adoption. So it's like what is the way to change that perception? Because if people would, would talk to the AI and be happy about it, that would be great, like we could save lots of money, we could whatever. So there's problems to solve and we're figuring it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome, Ian. Yeah, what's the rate of change? Isn't there like a term in the tech industry I don't like?
Speaker 2:how fast are things changing? Yeah, probably, I don't know it it's really fast. It's really really fast and it's really really fast, although I would kind of go, I'd kind of go back to almost like the analogy that I just said before, like all that infrastructure that got laid and happened. I always think of that book Atomic Habits when you talk about melting an ice cube. Yeah, I always think of that book Atomic Habits when he talks about melting an ice cube. Right, yeah, carol, just listened to that book. It's such a good book, one of my favorites.
Speaker 2:But they talk about melting that ice cube where it's like you know, if someone's heating an ice cube every single day or every week, whatever it was, you know for months and months and months and it's never melting because you're still under freezing, like you started like negative 100 or whatever, right, oof, it's going to look like nothing happened and you didn't do anything until you passed the freezing point.
Speaker 2:And so anyone that starts to see that ice cube melt from this day to that day would say you're an overnight success. Yeah, it happened instantly, but they didn't see the months of heating up from negative 100 or whatever it was all the way to past freezing. Yeah, so there was all this work, but it's just like at some point you start to see the result and the result looks instant, but it's actually this compounded work over a long time and I that's really what we're seeing right now, cause, again, like AI wouldn't be nearly as impressive if all this foundation didn't exist for it to connect and work in. Yeah, yeah, so I think we're seeing like the fruition of all this work for a long time all getting tied together in meaningful ways and it's mind blowing and it seems really really, really fast, but it's been a lot of hard work for a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah, just the whole. It's been a lot of hard work for a long time. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah, I love, I have the. Just the whole concept of of an overnight success is is flawed. It sure is. You know, you think you see someone blow up on the internet and it's like man, they're overnight success. Now, they've been doing this for 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got. Yeah, and you start to see results over time. And nobody likes that weight because they want to see the ice cube melt every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. I'm big on habits and structuring your life, structuring your day, because I feel like those are the things that make you successful, right? So if you do the right things over a long enough period of time, it's going to happen. You don't know when, but you have faith that it will.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you don't get healthy quickly, you don't become successful quickly, or if you do, it has consequences. It's not sustainable. Correct, you know, and yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, there's a lot there. It's just, it's like people always say stuff like you know, I wish I had like the willpower to do that, or I wish I was the kind of person that would blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think that a lot of people don't realize that you just get to make the same difficult decisions every single morning and and they're always hard, and you sort of eternally maybe don't feel like it. Yeah, and you do it anyway. That's right, or you, or you sit around and get fat and die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was having this conversation with someone the other day and I'm just convinced people that are successful are people that are really good at doing the boring things over and over and over again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I agree completely. It's an insane amount of discipline and, to your point, like the internet does not, it does not help. Like the influencers do not help, um, because yeah, they, they give this idea that it just that it just happens and I need to quit my job and just do this. But it's like I don't. I don't think, like people realize, like that job is kind of like building that muscle of your own discipline to show up every day. That's right, because when you go on your own you still have to show up every day and if you don't, you just fail.
Speaker 1:It's even more like most of it. You know most. There's like this uh, this bravado or um, I don't know, there's just a misconception on what being an entrepreneur looks like. Yeah, I don't know. There's just a misconception on what being an entrepreneur looks like. Yeah, right, and you understand, as a fractional CTO, you know so. If we go get jobs and work for a company, you can have one boss yeah, but when you're an entrepreneurial entrepreneur, everybody's your boss. Yeah, you know, I've got hundreds of bosses, yeah, and none of them are calling me at 8.05 asking me where I am. Yeah, right, right, right, right. So you're like it's even. There's more discipline required. Yeah, because you have to have that intrinsic motivation to get up in the morning to do the work. Yeah, because no one, like no one's watching over you to make sure that you do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no one's coming to save you. It's your problem every day. That's right. Who says that? I don't know, but I? It popped into my head as soon as I like, as soon as you said that I was like yeah, he's going mine. Sorry, um, but yeah, it's, it's true, like no one's coming to save you. It's way harder, uh yeah, but there's, there's so much there. Yeah, uh, um, yeah, there's a lot to it, yeah, so what?
Speaker 1:um, I don't know what do you, what do you think? Uh like, what do you think draws you to that?
Speaker 2:Um, it's a good question. What drew you to that? Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. Um, uh, I grew up in poverty, like extreme poverty, Um, and I think I just didn't want to ever have to live like that again.
Speaker 2:And I think, importantly, the only kind of reason like we made it wasn't because of you know, I have six siblings. The only reason we made it wasn't because my parents kept pulling through. It was because sort of the rest of the world kept pulling through, Like people at church would show up with food because we didn't have any, or someone would pay for our electric bill because we didn't have electricity and it was the winter in Michigan and or you know whatever it was. And so I think I just kind of like saw myself and my siblings always being saved, sort of by other people and I, you know, obviously like really appreciate it. So it wasn't like a, it wasn't like a oh, I don't want to. I don't know, it was not like that was like a negative thing, but it just made me want to be able to do that for other people where it like I've been served in a way that like let me survive, and I would like to do that for other people as much as possible, and that was just like a fire that kind of got lit.
Speaker 2:And then when I was like I don't even know, probably like nine or something like that, I like read Proverbs and I was like learning about Solomon and I was like, well, that sounds cool. I mean this guy, this guy is intelligent, he is smart, Uh, he is rich. And like what a what a cool guy. I didn't know enough about Solomon. Yet there were some other real problems, Um, but uh, you know, I was like, wow, I, I think I think I want to be like Solomon, yeah. But you know, I was like, well, I think I think I want to be like Solomon, yeah, and I just I think, at like that moment I just that just got kind of like put on my heart like really heavily. That's like Solomon, like that's what you're supposed to be.
Speaker 2:And I don't know if I like I'll say like I think that was like what God kind of told me at that moment, Like yeah, that's like for you. And I want to say I was like nine or something. And since then I've never looked back. I've just known like the entire time that it was my job to go figure out how to make a lot of money, like a lot, a lot of money. Yeah, and not because you know, I just want, you know, bougie, life and all that, whatever. I want to take care of my kids and my wife, obviously, like, I want to do a great job at that and I do, Um, but you can do that with a good job, yeah and uh, that's not what I, that's not what I want, Um, and so, yeah, I think it's just, I want to, um, I want to give away buckets and buckets of money, uh, to places that can place the money well.
Speaker 1:I'm about to go buy some buckets, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it, man. Yeah, and it's just. I wake up like every day with that in my mind Like yeah, and it's just like this never ending like fire of like keep going. Like not quite enough yet, yeah, and again not in the like I need. Like not quite enough, yet, and again not in the like I need more cash. Like if it was just for us we could stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's awesome. What are your? Are all your brothers?
Speaker 2:entrepreneurial yeah, yeah, uh, yeah. Um, I'm pausing on one of them because, but he, he definitely is. Yes, both of them are. Uh, I don't know if I should mention that one is here.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, he's in the background, he's he was on our first podcast, so if you're curious what josh looks like, first podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was joshua, we're looks like first podcast. Yeah, it was Joshua. We're similar, just a little different. We're also only a year apart. We're. We're. We're so super close. Yeah, so Josh, josh, definitely an entrepreneurial and he, he runs his own media company, mostly film, and my brother Noah man he and my brother Noah man he is constantly got, he's got some big thing going on. He dude's a genius. He's got like web hosting and crypto and reselling and he makes bots and to do all that reselling and crypto for him. Yeah, he's a mad man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy. So you mentioned you know so you're, you're nine years old, you guys are are somewhat plugged into church. People are kind of helping you guys out. So it seems like you know, faith has played a played a big part in your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all of the part, man. Yeah, it's a, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that I think we all got out as unscathed as we did from the life that we grew up in. And yeah, that's all, it's all all God man.
Speaker 2:I mean, like all, all of my, all of my best friends at that time were all in various gangs and I was just surrounded by, yeah, drugs and gangs and stabbings and shootings. Actually, most of all of them are in prison or dead at this point, wow, and I never touched any of it. I wasn't even like tempted to, I didn't even care about it for some reason and like. That's obviously like a God thing when you're just surrounded by it and just no desire whatsoever. I don't even, I don't know, I don't know how or why, but yeah, yeah, god just always kind of like had my back to the whole thing and we went through all kinds of this crazy stuff and God shows up just constantly, yeah, and then just yeah, absolutely everything, everything that that I do and I, as you say, like we do is what really comes out, because I do everything with my wife yeah, who's here as well? She's here too. Everyone came, my whole family, it's all for God.
Speaker 2:Man, yeah, yeah, like, yeah, the whole money thing, like money, money is a tool, you know, and it's a it's amoral. It's amoral, yeah, yeah, it's a source, not the resource, that's right. Or a resource, not the source, sorry, yeah, and so it's a tool to be used and I think that, like everyone has like these different kinds of gifts that can be used in different ways, and I really just feel like, yeah, god's called me to be a good steward of that and get it where it needs to go and is really helping with needs to go and get it, is really helping me with opportunity to pursue it. And, yeah, I credit everything, my whole life, yeah, everything I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what are some of the things that you do to keep faith more prominent in your life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, put God first in everything. Yeah, in everything. I would say one of the easiest examples of that would be, um, when you work in business every day, all day, um, I just talked to CEOs all day of various companies. That's really what I ended up doing. Um, money is what you talk about. It's profits, right, like it's running business. So just talk about money, money, money, money, money. And it's really really easy, because you're so consumed with the conversation of money to almost let your perception be that money's the goal, like it's like the thing, like the reason. Yep, and I think, like my moral check on that is a few things where it's like tithing and giving stuff away, like if it ever hurts to tithe, then like money's taking a spot that it shouldn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good, yeah, my wife and I do that too. It's like if there's ever any sort of hesitancy to give, that's a red flag Like hey, this is becoming too much of an idol in my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even things where it's like I wanna buy a thing and it's expensive and I'm like we could probably pull it off forever. But it'll hit me that, like some, I saw like somebody needed a car or whatever else and it was cheaper than that thing and I was like, oh man, wish I could help them or something, right, yeah, and it was cheaper than that thing and I was like, oh man, wish I could help them or something, right yeah. Then oh geez, and then actually last time that happened, we bought someone a car. It's that stuff. Because you're like, oh my gosh, how am I okay to buy myself all this stuff, but someone in need, I didn't need this, I would survive with or without it. But I had a pause to like change that person's life and that's a. That's an insane thing. Like that's a disgusting thought, and it's like buy the freaking car because you have to like keep that in check at all times, and so I think it's just kind of like this repeat muscle and only that.
Speaker 2:But like we we Annie and I, we my wife we plan everything every year. We'll plan on our entire year of all the things that we're going to try to achieve and accomplish and what that looks like on a kind of more of a daily basis. And it's always first. It's like God's first in all of those plans and like giving God and giving is like the top before you get to have any of your other stuff that you aspire to be. It's like God has to be first and that's just a given. It's just a given like that has to be it, um. So I think it's like you, you plan for it, you check it all the time with those little tests, um, and then you surround yourself with believers.
Speaker 2:I don't think you can do it by yourself at home. I think you gotta show up to church. That's right. You gotta show up because that whole worship where you are thing is what lazy people say that don't wanna wake up for church, even though you can almost go at noon, which is ridiculous. Yeah, you need to go. It's not, it's for the community. You need community or you're gonna go.
Speaker 1:It's not, it's for the community. You need community or you're going to fail. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, you have to be around people. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Carol and I are are similar. You know we do sort of our annual goals together. You know, determine what. You know. I've got a whole process I have for setting my annual goals, whether that be identified a word, identify a word or a theme for the year, accompanying scripture, correlating pillars, and then setting goals. You know, in in those specific areas but really trying to. You know, when I used to and I've talked about this here here at the office recently, it was probably 10 or 12 years ago I hated goals. Yeah, I hated them, but I didn't really understand how powerful they could be. Yeah, right, so we look at our goal setting time of the year as really a time to dream. Yeah, you know it's a time to. You know, step back 50,000 foot, 100,000 foot, yeah, and like what is God calling us to this year and what steps are we gonna take to be obedient in that? Yeah, and it's just dream about, you know, what it is God calling you to accomplish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's such an I don't know, it's like understated, it's like not popular enough to talk about dreaming, yeah, and it's so hard because I think, like the world almost tries to like demonize or like like make dreaming seem like a head in the clouds, like wasted time, sort of thing, but that's not what the Bible says. So that's interesting, um, and and I even have a hard time with that sometimes because a lot of times, my, my goals are much more like uh, I'd say not always, but a lot of times my, my goals are much more like I'd say not always, but a lot of times like linear, like a thing that I can achieve, that I can see a way, a path to right, because I'm, you know, kind of like thinking through how to achieve it. And annie does a really good job keeping me in check of like, of, of dreaming, yeah, yeah, of like, not things that like we need, but like where do you want to go, where do you want to be, instead of, like you know, and we did a vision board a couple of years ago and I was like I don't want to do this. This is not who I am, but it felt dumb, absolutely felt dumb, um, but what it did was it, and made us have to get really specific, not just on like the words, but like what it looks like, yeah, and that was really interesting. And then we ended up looking back on that, um I don't know, like a year later or something like that, and we're like, oh, we crossed off like six of these, yeah, but what was funny is we weren't we weren't thinking like we have to achieve what we put down on the vision board, like we had goals sort of like separately.
Speaker 2:Yeah, didn't even like cover that. But I think I don't know something about just the act of like putting it down saying like this is who I want to be, this is who we're going to become. Yes, we became it. Yeah, it really did. And I was like dang it, this works, um, yeah yeah, I love.
Speaker 1:I love the idea of of who do we want to be, who do we want to become over, what do we want to achieve? I think it can almost be like a chicken and the egg thing, like if you strive to achieve something, like you will become the type of person but I mean mean we are called human beings, not human doings, and so really focusing on who is it that we want to become, and I think that's so powerful. You mentioned something earlier about, like just God calling you to like to make money. I think there's. You know, I do believe that God always gives us, like it's a complimentary gift, right? So if you have, if God has given you the ability to make money, you're a giver. Yeah, and I think that holds true for most people that I know. Yeah, I think it's a healthy practice, like if you were, you know, if God gave you the ability to make money and you didn't give, like, you would not be, it would not be a good thing.
Speaker 2:No, it would be terrible and yeah, I don't want to take all credit for that. Like Annie again, my wife, she's much better than me in most all things and she really she makes sure that we give. I actually I'll just be working and I'll like have to check in all the time. I'm like, did we like what have we like given away in the last like few months? Cause, like I don't know, Did we not do it? I think did we not do it. I think did we not do it? Yeah, and I'll know like what we I handle like the church type, so I know that. But that's like you know, baseline, what do you give other than that? That's right. And she's like I, I, yes, here, and she'll just start like naming off this like list of stuff and I'm like, okay, sweet, I'm just checking, get lost in like no, just driving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you need, you need, you need to feel it Right. It needs to be tangible. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Because again, it's just so, I man, you, you you've seen, you see so many people get consumed with money and again I'm surrounded by it and the decisions of it and the focus on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's like what will? What will stay true as?
Speaker 1:my God. Yeah, you know, and hopefully it's God yeah, yeah, well, I think most people I mean a lot of people that are. I mean, you can be, um, not wealthy and consumed by money. Oh yeah, you can be wealthy and consumed by money. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter how much money you have, whether it's whether you consume by it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and uh, and yeah, there's even like a good argument that like not having enough makes you more consumed by it because you have to. Could be, you're obsessing over not having enough, yeah, which is like gets to this really weird conversation of of like, uh, I don't know the whole um church, like, uh, it's bad to be rich, or you know prosperity, gospel, stuff, but at the same time, it's like you're trying to like make sure that everyone only has enough for themselves and not enough to help other people. That doesn't feel biblical. Uh, you know, and yeah, so it's. It's like this weird thing where it's almost like this, like, uh, corrupt. It's like this weird thing where it's almost like this, like a corrupt version of humility and like poverty, yeah, Like creates this worship of money because you don't have enough and and like destroys, like giving and and and. Yeah, it's a weird thing. It's weird. It's all like a weird perversion of what is good. Yeah, Very much so.
Speaker 1:Hate all that. Yeah, cool man. Well, matt, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you, your wife and your brother, my whole family not your whole family well, yeah, actually a small part, yeah, but, um, I really appreciate you coming. Like I can't tell you how much I've just enjoyed getting to know you over the years and your encouragement. I know we are able to have, you know, very honest and frank conversations about you, know what kind of goals we're trying to achieve, what we're trying to do, yeah, and that is just that is invaluable to me. So, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, man, I'd say the exact same it is. It's tough sometimes to find. Well, it's tough all the time to find that. Yeah, so same mutual Awesome. Well, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me have fun. Well, thank you for joining us Again. My name is Derek Hines, I'm a partner here at Gattis Premier Wealth Advisors, and if you like this podcast or content like this, please like and subscribe.
