Who Gets to Transform Now? AI and the Democratization of Disruption with John Harrison

Michael speaks with John Harrison, co-founder of Luminar Global, an AI firm focused on “enabling trust with AI,” about how AI is shifting transformation from big-company, big-budget initiatives to individual and small-team impact. Harrison shares his background across IBM, telecom, edtech, and communications consulting, and explains why AI can create rapid new wealth but also faster displacement. He describes how he and three recent collaborators formed Luminar through chance networking, and how they help clients avoid “shiny new toy syndrome” by focusing on fundamentals—people, process, and data—while keeping pace with rapid AI change. They discuss faster, higher-value consulting enabled by AI, practical advice for intrapreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs, and key takeaways: be curious, start now, and take responsibility.

Timestamps:
00:24 Welcome and Setup
01:35 Meet John Harrison
03:03 AI Wealth and Power
04:41 Individuals Drive Change
07:20 Launching Luminar Global
09:50 Finding Co-Founders
11:38 Avoiding Shiny Objects
13:43 Keeping Up With AI
15:47 Democratized Consulting
19:38 Redefining Value Today
20:34 Career Lessons and Curiosity
23:50 Starting With an Idea
27:08 If You Lost Your Job
29:45 Key Takeaways to Act
31:43 Analogy and Where to Connect
33:37 Closing Thanks and Wrap

Connect with John:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jharris2/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to the Top Voice Podcast, where each week I sit down with leading voices in business leadership and transformation to unpack the issues that matter most. Together we explore fresh insights, bold ideas, and real-world stories from people shaping how we think about change, culture, and what's possible. Hello and welcome to the Top Voiced Podcast. It is March 17th. It's St. Patrick's Day, and I just realized I'm not wearing green, so I guess I'm in trouble for that. But I'm here with John Harrison, and I'm excited for this conversation because we're talking about transformation, maybe at the at the micro level. There's a lot of conversation these days about AI, as you would expect, and on this show especially. But we're going to take it in a new in a new direction with the conversation about what each of us gets to do in terms of how it's disrupting our own lives, creating opportunity, creating challenges, creating new pathways. And so I'm just excited, John, to uh jump into this with you. Before we do that, for those of you that might be tuning in on the live stream, please do let us know where you're tuning in from, leave your location. We always love to see where you're at. Leave a comment or a question. We love to take those in the middle of the conversation. Great way to insert new ideas. And if you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, please do be sure to subscribe. It's the best way to support the show. John, let's jump into this. And I want to first hear about you and your background. Tell us who you are and tell us what you do and how you got to this transformation conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Okay, thank you, Michael. And I appreciate the uh the opportunity to talk to the audience. I'm uh John Harrison, co-founder of Luminarch Global. We're an AI firm that enables trust with AI. And how I got here, Michael, without going through all the boring details, uh long career in sales and services at IBM. Post-IBM, I've worked at a telecom company, an education technology company, and spent two years outside of technology in a communication consulting firm that built sales messages for Fortune 500 companies. And so all of that combined gives me just a unique perspective to be able to look not just at the technology, but uh seeing how what we're saying about it is really communicated and being received.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Yeah. You're when when we first met, we we we share a similar passion for this word transformation and what it means and how it shows up. And we're at the maybe the front 30% of probably the greatest transformation we'll all ever collectively experience in our lives. So let's let's jump into this, John, because you're you've you've founded a new AI startup and I want to talk about that, but but let's first address maybe something that I've heard quite a bit, which is this phrase AI will create more millionaires and billionaires than any other technology that's ever been created. Uh when you hear that, you know, you've had a career in corporate, now you're in the startup world. What does that say to you about how the power dynamics of transformation have changed? What's different about where we are right now?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Over time, Michael, what is the ability to gain visibility and distribute globally is getting easier and easier? I mean, we're living in a day where uh a solopreneur can be a multinational. Even if you're shipping product thanks to logistics companies, then you can easily distribute across the world. So will AI have the opportunity to create more billionaires than any other technology? Quite possibly. You know, I do believe that. But we need to remember the market giveth and the market taketh away. And that that just as easily as you became a billionaire, thanks to the speed and capabilities of the current technologies, somebody else can outflank you, outmaneuver you, and your billion could evaporate overnight. So it's the balance that that it can it can the billionaires can can kind of rise up overnight, but they may go away just as quickly.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah. I I want to dive into what that means for each of us, but let's maybe keep here at a big at a big picture level. You know, you you and I come from a world where transformation was this big word driven by big companies and big budgets. It was either disrupted from companies in the tech world during the dot-com boom or big companies that were buying new companies and merging together, building new systems, deploying new technology. It was this large movement that was happening inside of a corporate structure. That's shifted now, and you just gave us a view of that. But but what does this mean for individuals? We're we're sort of experiencing this in the our own personal way now that maybe as employees we were shielded from a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Well, as as I look back on my career, where I've seen the biggest transformation, we're actually driven by individuals and small departments in those big corporations. Um I myself fundamentally changed how IBM did business twice in my career. And it was driven in one case by a small team that I worked with around the world. The other was literally one other individual. And uh while it's the big projects that gained the headlines, the mergers, the acquisitions, it was the small departments where I found the most effective ways to transform. Find something that finding a problem that needed to be solved, finding a way to solve it in a frugal way, and then let it expand from there. Because you know, nothing breeds success like success. And when somebody sees that you've solved a problem, gee, can I have that? Um, when you look at the MA world, I mean it's no secret that over the last several decades, 70% of MA activity has failed to deliver the promises that were made when the merger or the acquisition was announced. So the power of the individual has been there. Do we just have new tools to be able to take advantage of that?

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Yeah, uh that's really well said. The the power of the individual, because I do think now I was having this conversation the other day with someone that I don't know that it's ever been a better time to be a solopreneur, a small company. Your ability to scale, to grow, to move, it's pretty powerful. I just in the last couple months, you've seen technologies like Manus or OpenClaw that are, you know, can take over your computer and do all this work while you're sleeping and all these kind of, you know, really, really revolutionary things. So so let's talk about the world that that you're in and the startup that you launched. Because when we met and you told me the story, I I thought it was really just a unique story about your journey into the startup world. So you've launched one with three collaborators that you mentioned you didn't even know a year ago. These weren't longtime relationships. Uh, first tell us what your startup's about and this story of how you got there, and then maybe what is it, what does it tell you about this power of the individual now and where we're at?

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Okay. And you're right. We all started meeting just about a year ago now. Um uh Luminarc is dedicated to helping companies successfully deploy AI projects. We call it enabling trust with AI. Um, you know, we're seeing that that that the you know the headlines are saying 95% of AI projects are failing. And I think the headlines are a little extreme in that it's it's not that the project necessarily is failing, but it's failing to deliver the benefits that were anticipated. Um, and so the three collaborators and I, we all have different backgrounds uh in complementary skill sets. So my background is largely sales and services and strategy, uh, as we mentioned from IBM. Another colleague is uh great at product market fit. And he came from another large company. He's also founded an entrepreneur support organization and worked at several startups. Third was global head of marketing for one of the divisions at Microsoft. But he's also owned his own businesses. And the fourth uh has a business, plus, he worked at Walmart in cybersecurity and AI. So what you've got here is this blend of different skill sets, but also having the perspectives of both large and small companies so we can tailor our approach to what an individual client needs. And um, you know, from a from an individual perspective, it is that we are all each working with some of the AI tools in our own ways while also collaborating for projects that can solve very specific problems for some of our clients.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Yeah. So how did you meet? Because I think if you haven't known each other very long, I think this is such a microcosm of the opportunity that exists today, which is to find an idea. I mean, the the heart of the entrepreneurial life is to have an idea, test that idea, find a market where you can go move that forward, build it, scale it, sell it, do something else, come up with another idea. But you've really connected with three other people that are quite unique, quite powerful in their skill set. How did you find each other and arrive at this moment?

SPEAKER_00 10:21

It was, you know, just sheer luck. Um the uh Mike Steeley, the product market fit uh side of our business, he and I met at a networking event at a makerspace in Little Rock, Arkansas. And some someone else he knew introduced him to Chad Hodge, um, who is at uh had been at Microsoft. And a mutual friend introduced me to Zach Morris, the one who had been at Walmart. And as the four of us you know met each other, you know, we saw that there was something there, this this desire to help companies affect their transformation, but do it the right way and avoid the pitfalls that we've seen companies make over and over again. And so, you know, I joke with people that you never know who you're gonna meet. And, you know, we are a great uh example of how you never know where a chance encounter might lead to something that hopefully becomes um um uh you know a change maker for good.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Yeah, absolutely. And I want to dive into what you just said, which is the trappings of traditional transformation and now what these tools and what this moment allows. We've got a comment in the chat, which I really appreciate from someone about how different perspectives are critical. You were mentioning the four of you and how you complement each other. Uh you're talking about avoiding the trappings of traditional transformation. And AI presents some tools and opportunities to maybe think differently about that. What are some of those things that you all are trying to do differently?

SPEAKER_00 12:10

We're trying to avoid uh what's really the biggest difference in the approach is uh helping clients avoid the shiny new toy syndrome. Um, you know, with every technology and across my career, you know, I've seen this in multiple ways. Uh, you know, when PCs came out, departmental systems came out, networking, internet, you know, the list goes on and on. Everybody runs to the new technology and thinks that it can solve their problem. The difficulty is you need to clearly figure out what problem you want to solve and what you expect to gain from solving it. The tools give us the remarkable ability to do research and to explore ideas to solve some of these problems and give capabilities to our clients that they now have access to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I mean, it's it is uh, you know, the the transformation with the uniqueness is uh is is focus on the fundamentals, which quite frankly is not unique, but it's something that often gets lost in the rush for the shiny new toy.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

So, and I agree with that. I've spent many a transformation watching people chase chase the rabbit down down the hole, down the proverbial hole, as it were. And I think we we were talking about this before we got on the show that a lot of the data and a lot of the experiments in AI companies are starting to struggle to find out if they're making an impact. There's a lot of little experiments going on, there's a lot of investment. And by the time you look up, the game has changed. I think the last six months of AI activity probably more dynamic than the last three years combined. How are you and your team handling that pace of change within the clients that you're supporting, or even with your own journey as a as a foresome trying to move this technology forward? It's it's really moving pretty quick.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Uh it's moving a lot faster than pretty quick. I mean, it's moving at lightning speed and getting faster and faster. Um, it does take a dedication to trying to keep up as best you can. Um, but we also have to look at the human side of the equation with our clients. There's only, you know, humans can absorb challenge uh only so fast. You know, and and the turmoil of nonstop challenge, I I think takes a toll on us as well. And so um, you know, when when we when we work with a client, yes, we do we do take into account some of the uh the new technologies as they're coming, but again, it's really keeping them focused on the problem they're trying to solve. And if you get the foundation right, then the technology that's using that foundation can change, but you cannot feel you know the client can't feel like they're always in catch-up mode. And so we focus on you know the people, the process, and the data. Because ultimately, in any environment, whether it's personal or corporate, transformation is more about people than it is anything else.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

That's a good segue. So let's talk about that piece because obviously this show is about the democratization of transformation. That's a hard phrase to say out loud without messing it up, but I think I got it. Let's use your company as an example. Twenty years ago, if you were to meet these four individuals and try to solve or support clients the way you are now, you'd have to go through a process of building a company, build an infrastructure, you'd have to hire some people, you'd have to go through this journey. What's different about what you're able to do as this small group now? How quickly are you able to get started? How quickly are you standing up? How quickly are you getting new clients? I think that's part of the experience is that it's not just absorbing the change, but it's also riding this wave and being able to move a little bit faster, yeah?

SPEAKER_00 16:38

It it is, it is. And um, you know, it's it is this this wave is uh as as uh Zach on our team likes to say, this this tsunami is resetting the water level. So uh it's not that the that this tide comes in and then goes back out. It comes in and it stays. And we just have to get used to the to the new water level. And so if we were to look at what we were doing 20, you know, if we were to try to do what we did 20 years ago, the projects would have taken on more of the classical consulting approach, lots of market research, which was guess what? Manual. Assembling the data, largely spreadsheets or manual. Today, uh, and I'll just use one of uh one of our clients as an example, they have a moonshot project. They had an idea as to how they wanted to solve the project. Using some tools, we were able to look at their business model, look at the services they wanted to provide, reverse engineer and find out that the model they had in mind was not economically sustainable. So before they spent a dollar on of investment in creating the business model that they had in mind, we were able to test it out, reverse engineer it, come back with recommendations, and through the course of a few iterations, um then we have been able to uh you know reset the expectations and they're rethinking the services they want to deliver.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

That has an impact as well on the on the the uh you know the both the client and and the vendor because you know for for a long time consulting companies have based their value on the cost of labor, kind of a cost plus model. That's right. Number of hours you well, with these tools, we can accomplish the same end result, probably a better end result, much more quickly. And so that you know the industry, and we're moving to having to move to much more value-based pricing.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Because the val the value to the client is actually higher today, I think, because the quality of the research, the quality of the output is better. And they get it faster, which gives them uh gives them the ability to take advantage of uh getting ahead of the opportunity cost with their investments.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

It's it's well said, and you we got some more comments in the chat uh from Randy here about really uh a big fan of what you're sharing, John, which is concentrating on the fundamentals, uh building trust, uh you know, and and those key pieces. And I think those those are always good concepts to be building behind. And I think you know, one of the one of the things that really spurred me as you were as you were sharing about the redefinition of value, I think AI is is rebuilding or redefining what value means. For most of our world in the business, for most of the time in the business world, the the definition of value has been built around productivity. More output faster is the definition that most people tend to use. But what we've got now is where output is pretty ubiquitous and pretty cheap, and where productivity is really commoditized because it can we can get information so fast, the definition of what you contribute changes. It's what is your unique perspective, what is your interpretation, what is your analysis of a situation when you look at the scenarios and the options? And I think that's getting towards maybe the opportunities that we all have as individuals. So so let's talk about let's talk about you and maybe your arc of a career and what it tells us about this individual transformation. You went from the corporate life to now a small team in this new world being able to test ideas. What can people start to take away from maybe your experience? We all have the chance to be John Harrison's building new companies, testing ideas.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

It's funny, when I graduated from university, I thought I wanted to be a programmer for the rest of my life. And I um I quit programming for a very good reason. Um but uh the transformation for me personally came with a manager who believed in me and got me into some training that technical people were typically not allowed into. And um she saw something in me that I never saw in myself and put me on a path to be able to do things that I had that I didn't know was even possible. You know, I uh inside the the company, I was an intrapreneur, started uh a comp basically a company that and grew it to uh eight figures in three years before moving on to go to do something else. Um participated in two mergers, um, grew a business from$400 million to five billion dollars. Wow. By by transforming how the business ran and and you know the the skills of some very talented people that I was fortunate enough to work with. And so the the big lesson to me is uh take advantage of whatever opportunities come your way. And um in fact at this this conference that I'm at right now, there was a former ambassador who was just giving the very same advice to students of three universities who are agriculture students. Take advantage of the opportunities that are there because you never know where that's going to lead, but you're gonna learn something new. And we continue to learn. Um, the curiosity and the desire to learn something new is critical, I think, for success. And in this world that we are in today, it it's changing so rapidly and getting faster. And the possibilities, things that were seemingly impossible just a year or two ago are suddenly now solvable, then uh you can't wait for somebody else to write your future. You have to grab your pen and write it yourself.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

That's that's really good advice. So uh I I've thought about this. I I was an entrepreneur as well in my early stages of my career, building businesses within businesses. And I think I, well, I don't think I know that I was always scared to jump out into the entrepreneur world. I felt safe within a big company, but I was always been a little bit of a troublemaker and I like to create new things. And so it was a safe way to do that. But if I'm somebody now in this new world and maybe I'm at the later end of my career, maybe I'm thinking I have 10 years left or something like that. And I've been in a corporate job for a long time. I've followed the rules, I've gone through the promotion cycles, I've done all of the things I'm supposed to do. And I'm sitting at this stage now and I have an idea. Maybe it's in with my own company, maybe it's an idea for a new business, maybe it's just an idea that I want to test. How do I take advantage of the moment? What should I be doing with AI, with other tools, with collaborators? How do I step out? Because I think a lot of people are interested in not just the moment feels so big for a lot of people that they don't know where to start. So if I had an idea, where would I start?

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Um and I I agree. It it can feel overwhelming and intimidating. Um if you really have an idea about a problem you can solve. And I think it's important to understand from a you know from a background in sales, uh companies and people buy when the value of what you're offering to solve their problem outweighs the cost of living with the problem. And if you have an idea that solves somebody's problem, you have the ability today to um to try it out on your own. Uh there are a lot of organizations that actively encourage side hustles. I've got I've seen others that don't discourage, but they don't necessarily actively encourage. If it's a problem inside your own company, then what I learned was go solve it yourself. You know, don't ask for permission. I had one had one project where I was in beta test before I had any budget. And uh, you know, that that project ended up becoming patentable. So um uh you know, you can't wait for somebody to solve the problem for you. If it's something outside the company, you can still do it off hours. And as you mentioned, Michael, once you get a business set up, it can run while you're asleep, it can run while you're at work. Um so long as you are giving to your employer what you've agreed to do, then there's little that they should be able to say about what you're doing outside of work so long as you're not competing with them. Yeah. And so um, you know, take advantage of the of the opportunities, try it out. Uh again, you're gonna learn something, even if the answer is no, that your idea doesn't work as you expected, you're gonna learn something, and that'll provide the way for you to iterate to to you know continue to scratch that itch.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Yeah. Yeah. Now, if I'm so that's for someone that's that's that's in a job now, excuse me, that that's maybe in a corporate role now. Let's say I'm in the unfortunate position of having lost my job, AI came and removed a department or a team or a layer, and I'm I've found myself in this new world as an individual with these tools and maybe the opportunity with an idea to start something new. Is the answer the same, or should I be thinking about a different path if I've lost the safety of the big company around me?

SPEAKER_00 27:33

I think it's uh a very similar path, Michael. You know, again, define the problem you want to solve, figure out how to solve it. Um, and along the way, when you're trying to solve a problem, you inherently think through who would benefit from the solution. If you're inside a big company, it could be your department, it could be yourself, it could be another part of the business. You you you never know. But if it's something more universal, not necessarily specific to your company, then who is it that benefits? You know, it the the the marketing term of the ideal customer profile, who would be interested in in what you have to sell? Because we've all got plenty of problems and we all spend money solving them one way or another. And it's a great way to test it. You can also use some of these tools to do a lot of your market research, as I indicated before for one of our clients. We used it to vet the business plan, look at their cost model, and make changes before they got too deep and dug themselves into a hole.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Yeah. I I would add to your list is to go talk to people that you think have the problem and ask them what the problem looks like. And if someone could solve it for you, what would be that ideal solution? I think it, you know, even though AI has become such a ubiquitous part of our lives, nothing will replace talking to another person who's got a challenge. And that challenge, they're looking for someone to maybe think differently about it. I would also say, I I know for me, I I use AI to brainstorm all sorts of things that help me just get ideas moving and get things to think of. Now you've got to be careful with the agreeableness factor. And so be smart about how you set up the brainstorming session. Always, always let it know what you want it to do. Challenge my ideas, give me new thinking, think differently about a problem. Don't just agree with me all the time, but really help me work through that. And so I think to your point, there's never been a better time to test ideas rapidly in pretty safe ways. Um, John, this has been a great we're, you know, this 30 minutes goes by pretty quickly, and and I want to make sure we get a chance to kind of give people the maybe the quick version of what are two to three things that you want people to take away from this conversation about the transformational moment that maybe each of us are going through individually, whether we're still in a corporate role or maybe thinking about branching out into an entrepreneurial life.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Um I I would suggest, first of all, be curious because that's how you're going to find the problems that need to be solved and ways to solve them. You know, the transformation is upon us. Uh Peter Diamondis says we're in the middle of the singularity. You know, it's not something far away. Yeah. Um, you know, and then secondly, it's there's no better time to start than now. And and third, I would say nobody's gonna come do it for you. So so if if you really want it to be done, it's best to have it done by the one that looks back at you in the mirror.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Wow, that's that's that's great advice, John. And I think it's something that we all need a reminder of. And I used a phrase, it's something that I talked about in my book, and it's a it's really an essential part of the change experience and the transformation experience, which is called uh this is a phrase I got from a client years ago, initiate movement, which is to move in the direction of your goals, even if it's not perfect. Movement creates motivation. Motivation gives you the willingness and energy to move into the next phase, and you don't have to know the answer. And I just love your your summary, which is be curious, get started, and take personal responsibility for the opportunities that are in front of you, because it's it's moving fast and it's only going to get faster. Uh, what a great way to wrap up this bigger conversation, John. Before I give you a chance to let everyone know where to find you and connect with you if they have other questions, as you know, we have a tradition on this podcast, which is to uh a bonus question that's left from the last guest uh to the next guest. And they're always really a great way to get to know you. And I think this one really has some nice uh nice applicability to it. So, what is one analogy that you use to describe a complicated topic or concept to people to help them understand it? What's your favorite analogy that you go back to on a regular basis?

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Because my dad was a carpenter, and because one summer he and I built a house for a customer from the ground up. I use house building as the analogy because even complicated projects require a solid foundation and a great plan before you start putting up the walls and and the roof. Because if you don't do it right, it's gonna fall down.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Love it. Love it. There's you know, good analogies go a long way, and I think that's a perfect one. Uh, John, where where can we follow you? Where can people reach out if they have other questions or want to get to know you more, learn about your business? Anything else you want to share about what you're up to?

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Yeah, the the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. Um I I'm active there, obviously, uh, you know, as part of the top voice program. Um and then you can check out Luminark at luminarc.ai. That's L-U-M as in Mary, I-nazin Nancy, A-R-K dot AI. Um, and you can reach us through there as well.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Great. We'll be sure to put that into the show notes and make sure that everyone can find you uh if they have other questions. So once again, John, I really do appreciate it. I think you're an example of the career arc that many people are taking these days, that thinking about transformation as an individual experience that we all have a responsibility to step into and to experiment with. Uh, no one's gonna do it for you. And I think that's just a really, really strong way to remind everyone that they've got a personal, not just responsibility, but opportunity to rethink the back end of their career or wherever they're heading and take advantage of this moment. So I want to thank you for that. Thank you for the comments today. Thank you for those that tuned in. And again, if you're listening to your favorite podcast platform, please do subscribe. It's the best way to support the show. Thanks again for another great episode, and we'll see you next week on the Top Voice Podcast.