Building a Profitable Tech Business in the AI Era | Chris Wiser x Randy Bryan

In this live episode of the AI Profit Leaders Podcast, Chris Wiser sits down with Randy Bryan, founder and CEO of tekRESCUE, to unpack what it really takes to build and scale a tech company in today’s fast-changing landscape.

Recorded live at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, this conversation goes beyond the highlight reel and dives into the real journey. From navigating challenges in the tech space to building a sustainable business, Randy shares practical insights, personal experiences, and lessons learned from years in the industry.

This episode is perfect for entrepreneurs, agency owners, and anyone looking to grow a business using AI and smart systems.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:05

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the AI Profit Leaders Podcast. My name is Chris Wiser, your host here with the superstar, Randy Bryan, founder and CEO of tekRESCUE. Cool. Randy's one of my clients, so it's kind of awesome to have you on the podcast. Actually, also, we were supposed to record two days ago and he was late. No, it wasn't me. No, it actually wasn't Randy. He was not late. He got he got pushed back because other people canceled. Anyway, so here in Austin, Texas, live at South by Southwest. Love having you here. Tell me, tell everybody about yourself. So he's nervous. By the way, he's really nervous. I can just tell you he's nervous. I do podcasts all the time, but you know.

Speaker 0:45

He's outside in the sun. It's I love it, man. I mean, so I'm a I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I've got four kids, have one grandkid, pretty much been doing something around tech like my whole life.

Speaker 1 1:00

For a long time. Yeah, yeah. We've been friends for five years, five years plus now, doing cybersecurity IT tech side. But last year, I'd say what, six, six to nine months, you've been kind of venturing into the AI space. Yep. And we're here at AI Profit Machine House. And what does AI mean to you? Like you're a small business owner, you're about what, 40 minutes south of Austin in San Marcus, Texas. What does AI mean to you as a small business owner, not only as an owner, but then let's get into what does it look like for actually delivering that service to clients and talking to people?

Speaker 1:33

Yeah, so I mean, everybody knows this already, but it's basically allows people to do more. And it is a a tool in the hands of the right people, can be phenomenal. Yeah, and I I always tell a story about we were remodeling a house back in the day. My wife and I were. Next door neighbor was a contractor, and he had this amazing saw, and he he heard one day I was gonna put up crown molding. He's like, dude, you need to borrow my digital saw. It's like the best saw on the planet. And I'm like, okay, and I borrowed it. One day he borrowed it, he went off to work. Anyway, I cut my first piece of crown molding and got it up there. There was like an inch gap. And the moral of that story is the greatest tool in his hands, there wouldn't have been any gap. Best tool in the world in his hands. Exactly. Yeah. And but in my hands, it was trash. I could have just used a handsaw and done better. And the moral of the story is AI is like that. If you're an expert at something, you can use AI basically to like to like leapfrog yourself with your knowledge that you already have. Yeah.

Speaker 1 2:39

You know, one of the things that I see out there, and you mentioned a point there that's kind of pretty pretty relevant. There's a lot of people that are talking about AI, and and the big like public consensus around it is this is gonna displace all these workers, this is gonna crush the world, it's gonna end our economy, like all this doom and gloom shit, right? Versus what you're saying specifically is AI is here to superpower people that are already good. Did I read that right?

Speaker 3:06

Yes, you did. And then also you have to remember the the CEOs of all these companies need billions and billions to be flooding in. Yeah. And so if they say it's gonna take everybody's job, the investors are thinking, oh man, it's a good place to spend my billions. Yeah, yeah. And and so you're there is gonna be a lot of transition, you know, over the next three to five years. It's gonna be crazy like we've never seen before. But yeah, it's a it's a powerful tool in the right hands.

Speaker 1 3:31

Yeah, and I think, you know, what one of the things that's key with that, and I want everybody to kind of realize what Randy is saying there, we are going to see change. Yep. But one of the reasons we have AI Profit Machine here and AI Profit Machine House and AI ProfitCon that we're doing, all these things are here to help the consumer, not only you as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner, as a dad, all these things, but also to help you as a as a human to kind of get away from that negativity, that mindset around that. And it's helping you be profitable, to be successful, to have a livelihood, right? Would you agree with all that? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because I I don't like I think this is the greatest opportunity small business owners have had ever. And you know, I you and I are both old enough to go back to the dot com boom and Y2K and all that, all that stuff to kind of watch that stuff happen. It's never been like this. No, right? Never. Do you have that same feeling that I have? Like it's never, it's never been like this. In fact, I off I feel a lot that I I'm why I I need to sleep. Shit, I gotta sleep. Damn it. I don't want to sleep. I want to keep working on stuff because it just like superpowers me so much, right? Right. How are you using that to empower your staff?

Speaker 4:45

So, first off, I sat down with my my team about a year ago and said, hey guys, I don't know what this is gonna look like, but we're going to become an AI first company. We're we're not gonna.

Speaker 1 5:00

So it started here.

Speaker 5:01

Yeah. And we're not we're not gonna re replace your jobs. We're we want you to use AI so you can do a better job, so you can get more more done. And that's that's really where it it started.

Speaker 1 5:13

So what was their, you know, so you're you're saying as a leader, and this is a really good, actually, I I absolutely applaud that because that's such a positive mindset and such a good thought process. Because you're a year, you're a year, I mean, we're March of 26th right now. Yep. Go back a year, that's a big change. So you're empowering yourself. What was their reaction to that? Were they like, AI is dumb, I don't know anything about AI, F this, like what was their mindset?

Speaker 5:36

Yeah, I think the level, like level one techs, I think they were a little bit afraid of it. But I I just sat down in a few hours and made a level one tech custom GPT, helps them fill out the tickets, yeah, ask questions, and you know, they just went right in, went right into it. And it's gotten better over the last year or so.

Speaker 1 5:58

So, well, I mean, it if anything, it's like being early like that, and just so you know, just for you that are watching this, even if you haven't started right now, it doesn't mean like you missed the boat. We're still early. Get into it. Like the best time was when Randy started, honestly. The second best time is tomorrow or today. Like, get on get on it and work on it. But the fact that you had a strategy that was head first on it probably made them happy and relieved and excited versus oh shit, he's gonna replace me with robots.

Speaker 6:28

Right. Would you agree with that? I would agree, yeah. Yeah, okay. Because we've not used it to replace anybody, but we've used it to be able to do more.

Speaker 1 6:34

Well, I think you can, you know, one of the things that I see with it, and and you've kind of watched, you know, we've known each other for a while, seen my my business owner side as a why for a while. You've kind of watched these things happen. I'm using it to superpower my staff. Like we have our VAs doing crazy stuff now, we have our assistants doing amazing stuff now. So I think all of it is we're using it to strap like rockets on the back of our what was, I don't want to say low, low performance is the wrong term, but our our entry-level people, it's enabling them to do so much with with less now, like right. So I think it's been a really that's a really powerful mindset.

Speaker 7:13

So early on, I also made sales, basically sales helper helper from my wife is basically she does that for tech rescue.

Speaker 1 7:22

You're not using the wiser method, yeah, custom trainer?

Speaker 7:25

No, no, no. We we are we take I take everything I learned from you. And like right now, we're we just met on yesterday with a 200-member nonprofit about AI. And we we just go into the dashboard and get all the stuff and the tools you have to help and put that in a custom GPT.

Speaker 1 7:46

So it's opening up opportunities for you that are because I will I want to ask you this straight out. Would you be in a place as an IT company where you could go into that 200 person company, do their IT?

Speaker 7:58

Sure.

Speaker 1 7:59

But you could, but would they be looking at you versus how they're looking at you for AI?

Speaker 8:03

I don't think so.

Speaker 1 8:04

Exactly, exactly. So the opportunity is bigger and awesome.

Speaker 8:07

Yeah, and that came out of one of my speaking engagements, and I met the the CEO afterwards.