Unknown Speaker 0:03
Welcome back to resilient entrepreneurs, the podcast where we talk with entrepreneurs and business people from all walks of life and from around the world, in the hope that something you hear will leave your business a little richer. The Shawn Smith is our guest today and he is not your typical entrepreneur. He's a passionate advocate for helping individuals turn their dreams into reality and achieve financial independence through entrepreneurship. Wow, isn't that really what we all want? He has a diverse background in film physical products, software, and impressive leadership roles at companies such as Amazon and Microsoft, so much experience behind him. And as the founder and CEO now of CAGR investments, the Shan is on a mission to empower new business, new businesses to accelerate their growth is primary focus, also lying in a fascinating world of AI. Can't wait to jump in on that. Welcome, LaShawn.
Unknown Speaker 1:02
It's fantastic to join you both. I'm here in the surprisingly sunny Seattle, Washington.
Unknown Speaker 1:10
Yeah, it doesn't doesn't stay sunny out there very long. Does it summer must be just about ending for you. I imagine. It is it is. Yeah. Nice. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. And I'd love to just kind of start with a little bit of your backstory. Can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up? What family life was like, and you know, where they're entrepreneurs in your family? Or are you one of those kids with the lemonade stand, give us a little bit of that? Well, I have an interesting academic background growing up, I started in
Unknown Speaker 1:44
public school, my mom was a teacher, eventually a librarian. And so we got to go to the private school where she taught at, you know, kind of tuition we could never afford. And so we, we got a great education there. But then we relocated, and I was homeschooled for a while. And eventually, I finished back in a public school. And so it's a really interesting kind of social development process, kind of moving through different kind of socio economic classes, you know, we never had much, but getting exposed to things. And so I think that was quite impactful on me. As far as kind of what I did on the outside and the seeds of entrepreneurship. I started very, very young, I think I was probably eight or nine, I was selling candy on the playground. And one of the quick lessons I learned there is I was convinced I knew what everybody wanted, because I was selling them what I wanted. And that was one of my first big lessons in business, you know, you got to figure out what the customer wants, not what you think they want. And you know, over the course, I actually stuck to that for for quite a while all the way to junior high and in high school, and I saved up enough to upgrade and buy a new computer. You know, maybe some of the younger listeners won't know what this is. But we had bought a camcorder which was like a video recorder when you didn't have it on your phone. And so it's kind of a big deal, because I was like, I'm getting all the gear I need because I'm gonna, you know, I thought I was gonna like document all these things. And I was gonna write software. And I had all sorts of odds and end jobs, you know, from grocery stores to a burger shop, I dug ditches one time, I lay tile on a roof. And you know, the two things I learned out of that is like, I'm not built for physical labor. So I need to stay in school and upskill. And then number two is along the way, I just kept meeting new people. My dad was a musician. And at some point, he was also in the military. So we moved around a lot. I've now lived in 11 cities. And when you show up to a new place, you you're posed with this question, am I going to be outgoing, go meet new people, or I'm going to like kind of, you know, kind of hole in a corner. And you know, pretend I don't have anyone I can talk to and I really embrace this idea early on of meeting strangers. And so this this mix of, you know, learning how to sell early on, you know, getting exposed to technology. And then also finally figuring out what I didn't like, I think I was just really fortunate to kind of set myself up on the right path. And then I just got blatantly lucky that I was drawn to computers, and I just showed up at the party, right as things were taking off.
Unknown Speaker 4:19
Wow, that's a great starting point. And with so much experience and so much moving around, there must have been a lot in in the development of your personality, which now carries through to the great work that you do with entrepreneurs. Yeah, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 4:39
So tell us how you came about starting up that well, first of all, you had to you've worked with like we mentioned Microsoft and Amazon leaving that couldn't have been been easy to go out on your own. So tell us a bit about that, that leap into starting your own firm.
Unknown Speaker 4:56
Yeah, you know, starting my own business is something that
Unknown Speaker 5:00
I've done multiple times. And I think, you know, part of the entrepreneurial journey, you have to ask yourself, like, do I want to, you know, take all of these licks, because sometimes it's not fun. And in the early days, I did not know what I was doing. And, you know, just quickly tying back to how I grew up, I was exposed to a guy who was at our church. And one day he was he said, he was going back to his office to do something. And I didn't know what this meant, right? But he was like, uh, you know, he was like, one of my parents friends. And I said, can I go, it's like, so serendipitous. And he takes me to his office, and they're all these computers. Now I have my little tiny, you know, cheap computer at the house. But these were, you know, I guess the best computer at the time. And they were just rows of them. And like, I was just mind blown. And I said, well, like, like, What is this place, and at the time, they call it data processing. And so they were, they're doing all these things, with what today would look like very crude computers. But it exposed me to the opportunity that actually, I could actually write software for a living. And so that was like, like, a huge unlock. And so I continue to try to find opportunities to kind of come back to that passion. As I said, though, I just got lucky, I didn't know that was actually going to be, you know, kind of the super growth industry. And so I started my career in the US Navy, I worked at a handful of software startups kind of worked my way up to the C suite. And then I moved into what they call big tech, kind of the big, you know, five, or six technology companies. And I spent about 15 years as an exec at Amazon, and Microsoft. And through all that process, similar to me moving around a lot when I was young, one of the things I kept learning was, you know, while we're all different, and we share a lot of values, like the people, friction is where a lot of things fall down. And so whether I'm in a highly bureaucratic structured process, like the military, or I'm in a massive multinational corporation, or I met a startup, what I kept seeing were these patterns. And the pattern was, you know, there were all sorts of inefficiencies that would surface because there wasn't clarity of vision, there weren't alignment of values there, you know, people didn't understand, you know, why Person A showed up, you know, someone will say, this person's lazy, they don't want to work hard enough, the other person says, you know, this person doesn't understand quality, you know, of life and work life balance, and never just be all these frictions. And so, one of the things and skills I kind of really tried to hone was this idea of bringing disparate groups of people together on some common mission. And it was probably about a year into my last corporate stint, I kind of looked around, and I tell my, the folks that I coach and mentor this quite often, and they're all, you know, relatively young in their career, and these are folks who have found me in different ways I don't, I don't have a coaching business, per se. But
Unknown Speaker 8:02
I always tell them that you need to, you know, kind of live to your own values. And when you find that, you know, that customer or that pain point that you're really energized about you, you really need to chase that. And I had to be honest with myself, I had like, fall into this trap, where I was being rewarded with this, you know, fantastic job, you know, so to speak, but the golden handcuffs were there. And I like have this, like strong memory, I was in a two day meeting with a big company that they had, had me sit with and kind of talk through their strategy. And I won't mention the company, but I was sitting with a CTO, and I just had this this movement over me, it's like, I don't care about this customer. And it's not so much like they were bad actors or anything like this is just some big monster company that I don't care about. And, and I'd found like, that's what I had become, you know, at the company, they would kind of move me around passed me around, they're like, well, Shawn, we will get the deal done with Shawn will help connect all these pieces. But I was like, but I don't care about the customer. And so when I left corporate, I really wanted to go figure out
Unknown Speaker 9:08
who was the customer that I was going to kind of lean into and where I got most energized. And I don't like to use the word small business. I like to use the word small teams. And what I mean by that is, you know, when teams get large, they get sometimes a bit discombobulated. That's where the politics comes in. There's a term that we used at Amazon called a to Pizza team. And for folks who haven't heard of this concept, this was a phrase that Jeff Bezos coined that said, no team should be big enough that it takes more than two pizzas to feed them. And the goal is to figure out how you let all of those small teams interoperate with each other. And when you do that properly, you can scale that, you know, much better than a traditional hierarchical kind of org design. And I started thinking about the whole journey of my career and a lot of it was
Unknown Speaker 10:00
is making things more efficient helping people work together more smartly and doing a lot of this through software tools. And so that was the impetus. This is like, well, this is very obvious, I've kind of found the group that I care about. And I have a clear kind of pain point that I get energized about, and that folks are willing to, you know, pay to get sorted. And so that's where I focus on now is, you know, finding software businesses I can invest in, that are helping small teams be successful. And some of those small teams are in small businesses, and then others are in large companies. But we're really focused on you know, kind of helping the small team win.
Unknown Speaker 10:38
Yeah, I like that. And as a small team, ourselves, we definitely resonate, definitely resonate with that. And building in the efficiencies and software to help a small team be really successful and create a really successful lifestyle business is incredible. So I love the mission that you're on and what you're doing. But I just want to go back for a second when you mentioned golden handcuffs. It's a term I've heard a lot recently, you know, going down different paths and different podcasts and listening to and it's spoken a lot. And I understand exactly, that is a big limiting factor for people becoming an entrepreneur, they're in a job where they're making decent money, probably are investing a little they've got some savings, they can travel, they can live a good life. Having that? How do you become an entrepreneur? When that other side is so risky? It's easier to just keep the handcuffs on? Yeah, sure. Well, I think structurally, just mathematically, the first thing is, and this is like, you know, how do you get in shape, right? Like, the, the plan is not difficult to draft, you got to eat properly, and you have to have the, the right workout plan. And I would say similarly, you know, your path to entrepreneurship, the plan is not hard. What's challenging is, you know, you're eating junk food in the middle of the night. And, you know, likewise, in that metaphor, you know, you may not be, you know, as they say, growing the gap, and that's where you're spending less than you than you make, and you're experiencing lifestyle inflation, or you're making life commitments, which may be worth the trade off, but you're committing to things that are really hard to undo. And, you know, many folks understand the big commitments, you know, like, you know, raising a family is a big commitment, you should go figure out your right financial plan. But even things that don't seem like big commitments, one of the things I see consistently are pets. And so I don't tell anyone don't have a pet. But it's surprising how many people I talked to who realized later that they want to prioritize travel, whether it's professionally or you know, just for fun, and you know, how they manage their pets, not just you know, where to put the pet, that's a, that's a tactical thing. But you know, just the emotional attachment and being away and like all these things, they compound on each other. And so I think the first step is just making sure you're you're setting yourself up for the option to even move into that path without success, because I've seen entrepreneurs take on all of those compounding responsibilities, then jump into entrepreneurship, and then they're like, super stressed out, right. And that's not a healthy place to be, because you may not make, you know, confident decisions. But back to your point, I think for you know, if you can, if you can directionally get those things in order. For me, I consistently have asked myself, you know, what do I get out of the next two years, the next four years, the next six years, my brain just kind of thinks in those terms. And over the years, I've constructed a six sentence, or a six word three sentence charter. And it's very straightforward. It is,
Unknown Speaker 13:41
make things stay free and Know thyself. And and the reason those are important for me is when I'm not making things, I know, like, there's an energy that's not right. And over time, you know, I found that when I'm managing teams over a certain size, I'm too far away from the making. And I don't, I don't have great energy. And so every time I've gotten around 120 to 150, people in an organization I was managing, it always broke down. And I was like, you know, almost like self sabotaging. And what I found when I was like, really honest with myself is like, I don't want to just manage the humans and that for some people, that is the destination. And for me, because of my background, I love I still spend probably six to eight hours a week now writing software, and it's not to sell to anybody. It's just I want to make sound investment decisions, you know, kind of underlying the fundamentals of the things I'm investing in. And so that's just my style. And so every time I got too far away from that things were bad. Another one so that's making things on the Know thyself. You know, many times we get opportunities that we're capable of, but you don't get good energy and what's the Japanese concept by EQ guy? Where like, you want the Venn diagrams of like
Unknown Speaker 15:00
What are you good at what gets you positive energy? What is the market value. And so anytime I'm getting you know those those circles out of whack whack, then that's bad. And then finally, I love to have agency. And one of the things that I got so frustrated with as I progressed in my career in corporate was, every minute of my time was kind of booked up to talk to someone, and I didn't have enough time to breathe, and I would go through great lengths, I had a reputation, it's likely Sean is going to fake book his Thursdays and Fridays, and he's not really booked his you know, and so, you know, my EA would do all sorts of gymnastics to like, keep it safe, because I wanted to read a book, I wanted to go think out, you know, you want to have space to dream, and those types of things. And it was, it was constantly pressure to kind of, you know, I ended up in kind of these 15 minute increments were my day was measured, and like blocked in these 15 minute blocks. And it was just like, I was not being true to my constitution. And so the inflection point for me was, you know, kind of summarizing, number one, making sure I had the math and the core mechanics in place. So I can even make the decision to move into entrepreneurship without being stressed out. And then number two, being honest with myself on what's my constitution, and then what's the gap for my current situation and what I believe that constitution is, and when I looked at how wide the gap hadn't grown, I was like, I gotta go. And you know, I'm a believer that you shouldn't just run from a bad job, it's like, you know, entrepreneurship isn't going to save the day. And so that's bactine, to the earlier point where I really believe you have to choose your customer First, figure out how you have a real relationship. And then you can, you know, there's all sorts of ways to add value, rather than, you know, if you found me when I was 22, I would be off building something. And then when I finished, I would say, like, who wants to buy this right, which is a really silly way to start a new business and very risky.
Unknown Speaker 17:03
So many golden lessons in that, and I really enjoy hearing about the charter, and I would encourage our listeners to consider doing that for themselves. I'm certainly going to take that away from this conversation and really think about what are my six, six words? It sounds like a great formula.
Unknown Speaker 17:22
Those three things and then certainly know thyself, it's for the recipe for success, I would suggest that Know thyself would be in there for most people. Because if you don't know what you want, you don't know where you want to go. You know, you don't know what makes you happy. All those things that you talked about, then you don't really have a starting point yet. So wow, thank you for that. Will ya? Wisdom? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 17:47
Yeah. And I want to say like, I like how important values are to you, clearly. And I did note on your on your website, it cagr.com Am I correct. So make sure
Unknown Speaker 18:00
that you go on there. And one of the things I saw was a whole values page, you have a page that describe your values for the business. And, you know, we were marketing people. So we work with people to build websites. And that's something we always recommend. And people are always a little surprised, like, whoa, like, why I got my services I write about us page, you know, that's important, we really recommend that values be really important to in fact, when Vicki and I built our website for 241, the first page we built was our values page, the most important thing to us 100% Yeah, I
Unknown Speaker 18:34
actually wrote a book called Value space business design. And, you know, it's really focused on Junior product managers at the time, I was coaching and mentoring a number of product managers. And I was like, Alright, I'm having the same conversation over and over. So I should probably go write this down. But the reason it, you know, it has that label, you know, it's, again, it's values, values based business design, the core premise, and it's one of those books like, you know, I don't need to sell books, I will tell you the whole thing right now in 30 seconds. So you don't have to read the book is really, if you I believe in, you know, as we continue to move forward, if you do not have a business rooted in values that and here's the punchline that you're willing to go out of business to protect, you are going to have a really hard time acquiring and retaining customers because increasingly, you know, whether someone may say it's a purpose driven business, or it's just a great, you know, kind of branded business, most people aren't going to say Nike is a purpose driven business. But the promise is very clear. The values are very clear. They, you know, are largely trying to make everyone you know, the everyday person feel like an athlete. And I'm paraphrasing their words, but it's very clear the journey and the mission that they're on. And you know, that trust is easy to lose, but I believe that if you don't truly lean and start there, you can easily get distracted with so many things and I you know, working in early stage, you know
Unknown Speaker 20:00
software products in small companies, big companies, I naturally found myself in meetings with brand consultants and folks who are kind of developing identities. And I was like, oh, goodness, this is, this is so critical to the rest of the decision making, if you don't figure out what you stand for, and I'm not just saying like culture posters that you put in the hallway at your office, but like what you deeply stand for,
Unknown Speaker 20:22
everything else is harder, the website is harder, the product is harder, your go to market is harder, your comfort, like everything is just harder. And so it's like, you know, like, why not invest the appropriate time and money up front? So you know, it's almost like the teenage years, you got to figure out who you are your identity. And everything else, I just think becomes a much easier decision process. Once you have that articulated.
Unknown Speaker 20:48
Yeah, you said it, I love the analogy, like being in your teenage years is something that you just have to figure out. And it's not a head exercise, either. It really needs to come from the collaborative, and from the heart and true values, what people you know, and if people's values who are working in a team don't align with the values of the company, then that's a clear sign that perhaps they're in the wrong seat, too. You know?
Unknown Speaker 21:13
So yeah, very, very fascinating.
Unknown Speaker 21:18
I wanted to ask you how we bring values, which is such a human element to technology, you're a software designer, and curious how your mind works, and bringing that and AI together. for the betterment? Sure, well, you know, just kind of putting an underscore I'm big on etymology, and how we use our words, because again, it can confuse, sometimes we use simple words, and we think everyone has the same definition. And that's not good, either. But the reason I love that word values in the context of business is because the word value singular is used so often, and it's really about value creation, or the value proposition, or all these types of things. And you just put that s in there. And it's like, no, we're talking about a totally different thing now, and, and sometimes I've had to, like pause the room and say, hey, now we're switching over into this money in the bank account conversation, and like, we will get there, but that's not where we need to start. And so
Unknown Speaker 22:17
when I first started building products, you know, again, I was just fascinated, that you could create leverage out of, you know, hands on a keyboard, like that was just so fascinating to me, you know, navall Raava, Khan has this concept of, you know, four types of leverage in business, there's capital, there's labor, there's media, and there's code. And again, I just stumbled into the fourth pillar, and you can see, you know, the top 10, most valuable companies in the world, you know, seven or eight of them are technology companies. And largely, it's because you can create so much leverage with software. And the danger of that is you can lose the humanity, you can end up being very, you know, kind of an empathetic. And so, over the years, I've tried to continue to continue to refine my approach to like art, how do we use this leverage in a good way. And you know, I'm a capitalist, I don't work at a nonprofit or an NGO, but at the same time, I do believe there is a responsibility that we have, and it can be good business to kind of think of the human and so, you know, when I started talking about, you know, my focus on small teams, it's a very different approach than saying, Hey, I'm gonna go to a 30,000 person company and help them, you know, figure out how to lay all their people off, like, I'm not energized by by that narrative. And actually don't think that's a sustainable business model. I think what's more interesting is to say, Alright, here's a group of 12 people, and they have like, this untapped potential, but right now, they're, they can't grow, or they're constrained by capital. But if they had this, this small, $100 $1,000 solution, it would be the equivalent of them, like raising $500,000 in investment funds. And like, that's where it becomes really powerful. Because I really see the world, you know, through the lens of abundance, and it's not like, Oh, my goodness, if everyone's business is successful, then somebody else has to really be doing poorly. And and so you know, for me, I look at technology as kind of like this infinite leverage machine. And we got problems all around, right, whether it's how we want to be entertained, how we want to have healthier lives, I've kind of landed on life is mostly about moments, relationships, and kind of stringing together a bunch of Happy Days. And so when you look at a lot of what people do at work today, the works not even that interesting, it's not going to be in that bucket. I remember a quick anecdote. I was cleaning out my office at a job I was leaving years ago. And I found this paper and a man a PowerPoint that was attached to it. And it was like a printout of this back then when we were like hand out the deck. And I just kind of laugh because I remember I was working so hard. I was doing like, like ridiculous hours like trying to do
Unknown Speaker 25:00
do this project. And I looked at it, it's like this thing didn't matter, the project got cancelled, the product doesn't exist anymore, like none of it right. And so from a journey standpoint, it's very formative. And I got a lot out of it. But I was kind of, you know, kind of giving this value to to this, this experience that was kind of misplaced. And so when I go back to your core question, when I look at the problems, today, I'm all about simplifying and not getting too complex. There's a great quote that I learned in business school from Peter Drucker, he's kind of the, the father of management consulting, and he said, you know, the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer is like, very, very simple, right? The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. And it just never left me because there's so many other things that we can start piling on, we want to chase status, we want to go talk at some conference, we want to like all these things, it's like, like, that's not the game, right? And the, the further you get away from that, like that core focus of kind of serving the customer, I just think the more trouble we get in. And so when I look at how software, and specifically AI, I'll give you a tangible second example here in a moment, but I just look at it three buckets, there is sales, there's delivery, there's support, and I don't let my brain make it more complicated than that. Now, yes, there are many, many things in each one in sales, you know, there's customer development and all that process, there's marketing, that might be an ad strategy, that might be brand awareness, that might be audience building, you know, organic channels, you know, there's direct sales like that. So yes, there's all these things inside. But when you give your yourself permission to simplify, then you can start to see the world with clarity. And so I look at most when I say these small teams, one of the questions I asked when I joined some of the calls is like, Alright,
Unknown Speaker 26:52
do you have one product, one process, one sales channel. And if I hear no on any of those questions, it's like timeout. And once you force that clarity, there are all sorts of ways to leverage technology to streamline things. And so like, for instance, there's a, there's a product I recently invested in and there the business is very, very simple, it creates these internal dashboards and tools, from a 30 minute conversation. So someone gets on a phone call, and they talk to someone about some type of data analysis or other type of problem that they they have, and from a 30 minute conversation and a few CSV or Excel files, they create this whole project. Now years ago, this would have been a 30 $50,000 engagement, or you'd have to hire a business intelligence analyst or something. And they figured out, you know, how to build this in a very, very turnkey process. And so it's humans and software together. And I don't know that that that team ever gets large, like, this is not a company that's going to make LaShawn rich, it's just such an obvious, you know, kind of kind of, you know, lever to unlock. And I just look at all the inefficiency everywhere, there's an email, everywhere, there's a justification meeting, everywhere, there's like any of these conversations where again, you're not focused on kind of making or selling directly to the customer, you like, not really talking to the customer. I'm like, that's something that we can probably get out of the business and kind of focus back on, you know, kind of why we're here in the first place.
Unknown Speaker 28:33
Yeah, I hear a lot of like, the simplification of things. Yeah, like being the being the key? Yeah, I'll give you one more more piece, you know, when I was
Unknown Speaker 28:44
when I was in graduate school, I took a class and you know, sometimes we take these class classes were told to take and I was like, Why do I have to take this class, this is so silly. And two of them that I did not want to take that you're probably the most important one was organizational behavior and design. But the other was around supply chain and logistics and kind of how you move things around. But the core section of the course was around process engineering. And it really focused on like, ignore all the technology. Let's go back to the 50s and the 60s. And there's just like a bottling company, just like filling up bottles of Coca Cola. And what they would do back then is they had these folks who were process engineers, and they would literally, like sit with a clipboard and an analog stopwatch and they would like time, all the different steps. And then they would go back to their office, they would type up a bunch of things. And they would say, we believe here's where you can improve, you know, your throughput or your capacity or what have you, right. And once the 80s and the 90s kicked in, and everyone had a computer, a lot of that practice just got moved away because you know, many folks weren't doing capital intensive manufacturing or other types of things. So we all kind of forgot that. And one of the things that I love about AI is it's forcing
Unknown Speaker 30:00
every business owner or manager doesn't matter if you're in a small or large company to say, well, if I want to use this, the AI needs you to articulate your process. And so these old, you know, kind of techniques from the 50s, and the 60s are now being brought back. And I'm seeing folks, you know, their 20s, and 30s. And they're just like, oh, like, this is really innovative. Like, no, this is the old stuff. This is the tried and true process. And really, what it's about is getting the stakeholders together to document your workflows and your processes. And you kind of think about all your actors, right? These are maybe different people in the team vendors that you work with, and that documentation process, it's almost like therapy for for business team. Because there might be a pain point that folks have been enduring for months or years. And no one's took a break popped up and say, like, can we just write this whole thing down? And the reason, you know, coming back to why I'm so focused on simplification is the more you allow these branches in your process to kick off, the more you kind of create these little pockets of inefficiency. And then the human later layer can hide that because you know, a manager or a team. You know, sometimes people don't want to give up headcount. And they're like, Well, if you solve this problem, where are these three people go? And you know, that becomes a mindset thing that you need to develop with your leaders. But I'm just so focused on the simplicity, because once you force that, you almost find that it's not the technology that was the real broken piece. It was a lot of the organizational design in the end the people interaction, but you need some type of mechanism to go and force that therapy.
Unknown Speaker 31:40
Yeah, and clarifying the target, which is your simplicity is knowing exactly what you're in it for the Peter Drucker quote, all of this is very much
Unknown Speaker 31:52
we reaffirm reaffirming that we need to know what we're doing, and why we're in the game. And then all the other stuff can be a distraction, or it can lead towards the mean, tell me when you all are or engaging on a campaign or something like that? Do you ever find this tension where someone or some folks are like ready to hop on your methodology and go and then others are just like, can you just give me the deliverable? Like, how do you balance that tension when folks are trying to rush the process? Oh, yeah, that happens a lot. Oh, they'll want to explain why we're doing something. And I'm the one that gets frustrated and says, Just trust me, I've been doing this all this time. I'm, you know, I have a success track record. Let's just do it the way it needs to be. But the analogy would be somebody wanting to understand why we're documenting everything. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. And I think there's always a bit of fear, you know, with all of this, there's the fear for the people who might lose a job because of AI, or the technology comes in and takes away this manual thing that they've always done. And what what are they going to do that? And are they going to have to rescale? Are they just going to be fired, or they you know, past the age of, you know, finding a new job and, and so there's a lot of hesitation on people to embrace the new the new technology, the new system, the efficiencies, because the inefficiencies have been working just fine all this time. And I've still got my job, and everything's still fine. And, you know, there's all the fear of AI is going to take over the world, and people are going to be out of jobs. I mean, for that so much over the last few months. hasn't yet. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was gonna chime in with something. But you first, then go ahead. Go ahead. I want to hear what you what your thoughts are? Well, I was gonna say, I think, two sides of this AI coin. Number one, I'm not of the belief that
Unknown Speaker 33:48
even if we got to what is called Artificial General Intelligence, so AGI This is like the big, you know, oh, my goodness, we're going to work for the computers.
Unknown Speaker 33:57
This is back to the earlier part of our conversation, where for 1000s of years, and it's really funny, because, you know, we've been working as farmers or, you know, different types of agriculture. You know, there's military forces, like we've had some of the same types of focus areas, but, but the idea of a career where you go work for someone else, you know, that's only two or 300 years old. Like, it's really like, we have to remind ourselves this idea, like I go work at this place is largely a function that emerged from the Industrial Revolution. And
Unknown Speaker 34:30
through that lens, a lot of business success was about information asymmetry. So I know something you don't know. And from capacity, and that capacity could create scarcity, right. And so you know, how many, you know bottles of Coca Cola? How many sneakers can I make, how many, you know, whatever the thing was, and then supply and demand would kick in and all of these kind of economic principles that we know
Unknown Speaker 34:55
what I find interesting and maybe not surprising is that we
Unknown Speaker 35:00
we automatically think about the worst in humans. And we're like, oh, the AI is gonna be the same way, right? Because we come from this place of scarcity. We're like, oh, that the AI is gonna treat us bad. And I just have belief that the AI would never think, you know, if we ever got to some, you know, now we're in sci fi land. But if we ever got to that point, they is not thinking and scarcity. It's thinking there's enough for everyone. And so I'm just, I'm just generally an optimist that, you know, you definitely have to work out what's called downside asymmetry from a human getting this, you know, if you say, hey, it's been very challenging for a human to make a bomb. And now some new technology lets one bad actor go and create something that can damage like, yes, we have to go, I think find the right, you know, conversations and processes to handle that. But I'm not afraid of the AI. I'm very optimistic, and I believe it'll see things up through through that lens. But on the flip side, you know, if I'm being dialectic, I'm kind of challenging my viewpoint. One of the things that I think people in technology Miss was something you said earlier, lower on the rescaling part. If you work in the software, industry, and many parts of technology more broadly, it doesn't matter what you learned in college or grad school, you're almost constantly relearning your craft every 2436 48 months. And like for the rest of your life, right. This is part of the reason that sometimes there's some ageism, that creeps into technology, because some folks just get to a point, they're like, I'm tired of rebooting my career every two years, because this, this old thing that I learned went out of business. And so what you see as a common pattern, not not with everyone, but you see a common pattern with folks in the software industry, that they the best folks become meta learners, they become really good at learning quickly. And I think many of those individuals have, they're lacking the empathy to recognize like, many other industries don't work that way. There are many folks who've been doing the same thing for 15 years. And this idea is like, Oh, crap, I gotta go learn something new that muscle is not exercise. That's not the way they've been moving like that anxiety is real. And so I think there's part of that conversation that doesn't get worked in that many of the people building these products, they just assume everybody's okay with rebooting their career every 24 months. And that's just not true.
Unknown Speaker 37:27
Yeah, I've really liked the way you said that. I think that makes so much sense. It really helps to clarify why there is the uneasiness with so many people while there are others who were like excited about it, I think to like, because I've always been in design and graphic design is constantly relearning learning new skills, there's everything changes, every couple of months, there's a new, you know, update for the software. So you just got to go learn the new bit. So it's part of ingrained in me. So for me, it's like, Woohoo, AI exciting, you know, what is it going to bring what is going to help me to get better at
Unknown Speaker 38:05
versus I know other people who you said I didn't do in the same sort of job for the same, you know, numbers years? And like, Well, wait a minute.
Unknown Speaker 38:13
So it makes a lot of sense. Thank you for clarifying in such a good way. Yeah. And the show and talking about being a lifelong learner, we see a lot of books behind you. So I have to ask you, favorite book of the moment? Or a favorite book of all time? most impactful book, whichever you prefer to answer? Well, so one of the things that I love to collect is movie production and art books. And so probably a fifth or even a quarter of my books are picture books, you know, and so they're very easy on the read. And, and the reason I collect those is I love to kind of see, you know, whether it's storyboards or all sorts of art books. And for folks who are not familiar with this, usually when a big blockbuster movie comes out, there are so many crafts that have to come together, they're illustrators, there's music composers, there's 3d artists, there's wardrobe and production designers, and all of these crafts. And these books aren't very profitable to produce, but more as a respect to all these crafts that come together, they go kind of compile some of the pieces. And so fans get a little behind the scenes kind of look at all the pieces that led up to making you know, your favorite Pixar movie or what have you. And then, you know, the folks who got, you know, were part of that they get this kind of momentum that they can keep. And the reason I really am drawn to those types of books, is it's a reminder of how when you bring a set of disparate, you know, functions and domains and expertise, like you can really make some magic in that case, telling an emotive emotive story that connects with you know, all sorts of demographics, right. And so, that's something I just like to remind myself like the power in this world when we come together
Unknown Speaker 40:00
There is like really transformative, back to your actual question, one of my favorite books, and it's a very simple book to read. And when I read some of my favorite books, I'm like, Yeah, this could have just been a blog post, but I don't mind giving them the $20.
Unknown Speaker 40:15
But the, there's a book called The Psychology of money. And the reason I like this book is, you know, personal finances tied to so many of the anxiety points that people create in their life. And, you know, mostly, you know, as I said earlier, like, we're in a relationship with ourself, we're in a relationship with the people close to us, we have, you know, our health to take care of, and we need some money, right to move around the world. And so, you know, as they say, Money won't solve all your problems, but it will solve your money problems. And what I love about this book is it's a great reminder through anecdotes and stories, and some research that going broke or making money is largely a behavioral exercise. It's not how much you know, it's really about how you behave. And so people who are highly educated, I know, folks, you know, that I went to school with who are investment bankers, hedge fund managers, some of these folks are still broke, right there, they either have like gone to the extreme of lifestyle, inflation, right. And so it's like, Oh, my goodness, they have like two crazy houses, and they have a yacht. And they're not really liquid. And so as a result, they have this crazy anxiety. But they also sometimes have this arrogance. And so they make poor decisions. So like, of course, I know how to make this trade, of course, I can see this arbitrage opportunity. And so sometimes I think folks feel like once I get past a certain point, I'll make great decisions about money. And it is just simply not true. And so what I like about that particular book is, you know, when you when you talk to people today about how they learn, you know, paid coaches are a popular topic. And I don't really not pay coaches, like whatever you can do to accelerate, you're kind of ramping up on things like you should go do that. But many paid coaches are just sharing what they learned in a book. And some of the best books and some of the ones behind me that I liked the most are books that are,
Unknown Speaker 42:15
they're really old, right? Like, I have a book I just bought off of eBay from the 30s. And it's on economics. And I love finding like, I usually can't, you know, justify the first edition, because it's like, really, for collectors. And I'm, I'm going to actually read the book. So I'll find like a second or third edition, but like, these books are really old. And those are books that people wrote when they had like, 20 years of experience. And so your 2030 $40.08 hours of your time is going to take on 20 years of someone's experience. And so when I look at the biggest levers of where people kind of make missteps, or they make big confidence, or they make big decisions with low confidence, you know, kind of datasets, I'm like, those are the books people should read. And so on the nonfiction side, I really liked that book on money, because that's one of the levers that like eight hours of your time could change your life.
Unknown Speaker 43:09
Yeah, I like what you said. And it's such a good point to remember is it's somebody's 20 years of mastering whatever they've been focused on, for all that time, written for you to learn the most important things from them. Like, we we spend four years, maybe more six years in university trying to get all the knowledge. And it's there for you in a book like, Yeah, more people need to read, we have a book club. And I think that one needs to be on our list for the book club, Vicki, we're gonna have to add psychology money. It's definitely one that's been on my list for a long time. Our next one up is atomic habits, which is, yeah, great one. Yeah. And you know, the thread with many of these types of books, is that Dan cedar home now, that's not Dan's book, who's the author of atomic habits.
Unknown Speaker 44:00
I'm forgetting his name. But what I love about what he's done is like on Twitter and other places where he shows up, he really kind of he gets to the essence of like the daily activity to reinforce the point and atomic habits. Yeah, I think that that makes sense. But what I love about the thread I see is most of this stuff is mindset. Right? They the actual hard skill is usually fairly easy for most folks to take on. And it's like, what are you really going to change your behavior, and I heard this great definition of learning. Someone says, You don't learn something or you have not learned something until you change your behavior. So like filling up your head with knowledge, so you can go in jeopardy, like okay, maybe fine, but like you really haven't learned something until you start acting differently. And so, you know, not just taking these books, but figuring out what's the actionable piece that I can go put into practice tomorrow and
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Start compounding that. And that's really you know, kind of the why I called my company CAGR investments in finance. You know, it's kind of like it had a derogatory term for many years because they would say the Wall Street bros always throw around this term CAGR because they would use it in private equity and investment banks to talk about, we're gonna squeeze out all the growth, we're gonna lay off all the people we're gonna get paid. And, but mathematically what it means it's the, it's the geometric progression of of growth year over year, right. And so if you see a 10% CAGR or 20% CAGR, that's showing you how much that that asset is growing, or that market or industry is growing year over year. And Einstein has this famous quote, that
Unknown Speaker 45:44
compound interest is one of band's best and greatest inventions, right? Because we really don't understand how to how to conceptualize hockey stick growth, like our minds just aren't built to understand an exponential curve. And while you can apply CAGR to math and finance, the reason that resonated with me is that if you look at yourself, and I like to use time as a key currency, and you look at, you know, how many you know, what, we have 761 hours in a month, you know, having minutes in our life, whatever, however you want to slice it, if you look at that, as your bank account, you're going to figure out how am I going to spend that if you spend that in a way, you know, wisely in a way that compounds, it's like, you will create an exponential curve for growth. And so many times I see folks trying to, like, make these crazy leaps, it's like, no, just do something consistently, every day. And that's likely going to get you there more consistently than the person who is like, ignoring it for six months, and then they're like, I'm gonna take off a week of work, and I'm really gonna go get after this thing like, no, be consistent. I think that's, I think that's a really core part of success. And I think it ties, you know, actually, to my understanding of your, your, your podcast name. When I think about resilience, a lot of it has to do with with consistency. And if you don't, if you don't have that, I think you end up in a place where you're frustrated with the starts and stops. But at the same time, like you could see like, well, if I just did this thing every day for six months, I'd be way over here. And for whatever reason, you know, that's a that's a muscle that we have to exercise to get there. Yeah, I was just about to ask you what your definition of resilience is, would you say it's consistency? I would I would maybe put a finer point. You know, as I said, you know, my mom's a librarian. And so, you know, books and learning is has been around me for for quite a long time. And she has like two words that have been her favorite words for decades. One is journey. And the other is resilience. And so I really love the name of your podcast. And for me, if you said, Hey, LaShawn, what's your definition of resiliency, I would say consistently getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Unknown Speaker 47:59
And
Unknown Speaker 48:01
it's just so easy. You know, we talked about the golden handcuffs, we talked about finding the justification to, you know, maybe take on a new scary challenge. A lot of it is just, you don't want to exercise. And you know, there's different types of exercise, I'm using the the fitness metaphor here. But if you're not making your skill set uncomfortable, you're not making your network or how, you know, I like to say you gotta go meet strangers. If you're not exercising all of these things, yes, you're going to be out of shape. But the first day, you just got to put on your shoes and at least run a few blocks. And they're like, Okay, I started my streak, right, you don't have to be a world champion. And so for me a lot of resilience is finding the courage and the grit and the drive to consistently, you know, be uncomfortable, be okay being uncomfortable, because eventually, that exercise gets comfortable. But then this new thing shows up, and that that back to the compounding and then you look up, you're like, Oh, my goodness, I can't I can't imagine. I can't believe I used to be afraid of this, like really small activity, right? When I first used to, I had a great manager, years ago, and he said, Shawn, we're gonna make you famous. And I didn't know what he meant. And the short version was there gonna put me on a panel circuit, they sent me to PR training, like they did all this investment in me. And it was like, fantastic. And I remember the first one, I was like, so so nervous, and I was just talking about my product. Like, it was like, there shouldn't be zero, you know, anxiety in this thing. And the second one, I was still nervous. And then the third one, I, you know, it wasn't like I had some type of trick. Imagine the audience naked or anything silly. But I just was in a hotel, and I was like, Hold on here. I just like, need to treat this as everything else I do. When I first learned how to code in a new language. I'm not like, oh my goodness, I can't write the best software today. I have to treat it like I'm learning a language right? And I'm like, Alright, what's the verbs? What's the nouns I have to piece all this together? And once I started treating those acts,
Unknown Speaker 50:00
nobody's like that.
Unknown Speaker 50:02
I would get past that anxiety. And then there would be another one. I was like, oh my goodness, I didn't know this is another thing to learn. And now it's almost like I get a dopamine rush on learning a new thing. And I think if folks can find their version of tackling that a lot of our anxieties and fears can be tackled. Yeah, I love that it's so true. And it's such good advice. There being learning to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, I think is one of the biggest things in being entrepreneurs, a lot of uncomfortable. A lot of learning a lot you know, your stuff, so many things going wrong. Yeah, failures and learnings and mistakes and you know, the the roller coaster that goes up and down. And eventually, over time, we know the roller coaster slows down and evens out a little bit. It's a little less wavy and crazy. But you do have to hang on, hang on for the ride and, and just keep stretching. I think that's that's really it when we just keep stretching, it's going to be uncomfortable. But it means you're growing, it means something new is coming. It means you know that exponential curve is closer and closer. So yeah, I really appreciate all your incredibly in depth advice today. And I hope the entrepreneurs listening, got some of that and will continue on continuing on being great entrepreneurs being resilient, and, and all growing together. So thank you, Shawn. We will leave your information in the show notes. So people can can look you up and check out your website. Love your website. It's really great inspiration, both your personal one and your business one. If you don't mind sharing your personal one. I think it's really fun, and a great way to have of how you really share your values and who you are in a really authentic, genuine way. Which is why we invited you on this podcast and I've enjoyed this conversation so much. So yeah, thank you for the time. We really appreciate it and thank you for tuning in to resign entrepreneurs
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